Ranked in ascending order of awfulness:
Your own suggestions in Comments. Bonus points if you’ve ever actually received any of them.
So after arriving at Heathrow yesterday, I wasted no time in re-submerging myself into Britishland culture: sausage roll and a cuppa at the station at 10am, followed by a lunchtime pint of Fuller’s London Pride (my tipple of choice where Wadworth 6X isn’t available).
…which I imbibed at this fine establishment:
For this last leg of my sabbatical, I’m staying in another hotel in Ye Olde Fleabagge Inne chain, this time in Earl’s Court. It’s been many years since I stayed here, but fortunately, it hasn’t changed much — although I continue to lament the disappearance of the excellent Hi-Tide chippie: last night’s fish & chips dinner in a nearby pub was mediocre. (I won’t mention the fucking background music because it was so loud it was actually foreground music, requiring that conversation had to be shouted to be audible; and in true Earl’s Court fashion — because all residents of Earl’s Court appear to be ESL* — the screams emanating from the neighboring table to mine sounded like a conversation between Latke and Simka from the Taxi TV show.)
All that said, I love Earl’s Court; it’s regarded with absolute horror by the upper crust — and I have had several letters from friends in said demographic commiserating with my plight — but I can think of no better catalyst to wake me from my somnolence after having relaxed in one of Johannesburg’s toniest suburbs for the past two weeks.
The difference between this:
…and this cannot be overstated.
And now, if you’ll excuse me… I’m off to find a decent Full English Breakfast amidst the curry palaces, Italian bistros, vegan vendors and halaal kebab restaurants hereabouts. If you’re looking for me, I’ll be the only bloke in the place who’s reading the Daily Telegraph.
I love London.
*ESL = English [as] Second Language, to my non-U.S. Readers.
Fuck me but it’s cold. I just left the city with the world’s best weather and am now in late-December London.
‘Nuff said.
I’ll post more as soon as I find my willy.
Yup; by the time you read this, I’ll have left the Old Republic to its own devices, and will be winging my way back to Britishland.
That’s assuming there was no Unpleasantness With TSA (Seffrican version). You’ll find out tomorrow, assuming there’s wifi in a South African detention cell.
As I get ready to leave South Africa, some random thoughts:
Unless something really strange happens, I won’t be back. Had you told me as little as a few months ago that I’d be coming back to the Vaderland, I’d have laughed in your face. I’d never planned on coming back, ever, once I left back in 1986; but here I am anyway, which means never say never. I sincerely doubt that I’ll come back again, though, because now that I’ve seen the post-apartheid Seffrica, it’s a case of “been there, done that” and repeating the experience would be meaningless.
The only thing that might tempt me into returning to Johannesburg is the weather. I’ve often said that Joburg (or “Jozi” as it’s now called) has the best weather in the world, and this trip has only reinforced it. Hot days are made bearable by the cool breezes — and there’s always a cool breeze blowing, 24/7 — and even if it gets really hot, the relative humidity seldom tops 10% unless during the frequent afternoon showers, which cool everything down. It’s what I’ll miss the most in chilly Britain and oven-like Dallas.
Times change, and so have my tastes. Castle Lager, for example, doesn’t taste as good as Wadworth 6X; even though Castle is better than any other lager I’ve drunk, I don’t enjoy lager beer as much as I now do bitter ale.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the quality of South African fruit. Good grief; I’ve lived in the U.S. for thirty years, have eaten fruit there for all that time (I love fruit, just about all of it), and honestly, South African fruit beats it all by a country mile. This is not some kind of “fruit chauvinism”, mind you: it’s just better than anything I’ve ever tasted in the U.S.
Neither Seffrica nor Britishland offer us yogurt fanatics the variety and quality of the Murkin stuff. No other brand or type (and I’ve tried LOTS) in either SA or the UK has provided a decent substitute. I can’t wait to start eating Noosa again when I get back to Texas in January.
Malls are malls are malls. I’ve been to five different ones across two South African cities, and other than the local brands and kiosks, they are completely interchangeable with those in the U.S. and the U.K. All suck green donkey dicks, and unless I need a specific product or service that I can only get from a particular store, I don’t want to go back inside another one, in any country. The homogenization of retail has finally been achieved, and meatspace mall shopping is unexciting and a total drag. (Biggest letdown: Sandton City outside Johannesburg. Once the crown jewel of South African malls, it’s not only unremarkable now, it’s crappy, especially when compared to the Menlyn Park mall outside Pretoria, which is twice as enjoyable despite having about 80% of the same stores.)
As I mentioned earlier, I love the emergence of the Black middle class in South Africa. Here’s what actually makes me the slightest bit hopeful about the situation here: middle-class South African Blacks want precisely the same things as middle-class Brits, middle-class Americans and perhaps as the middle classes of any capitalist country. And the sheer size of the middle class Black sector is going to propel South Africa into a prosperous future, as long as (a big if) the government doesn’t fuck it up royally.
I’d forgotten how much I like full-service gas stations, with free checkups of fluids and a windshield cleaning thrown in. (The price of gas here, however, makes me homesick for Texas. Even the Brits have it better than the Seffricans.)
Not many girls have tattoos, thank Gawd. Maybe it was just a feature of middle-class Johannesburg, but I saw very few in evidence. The Seffrican men are about the same as Brits and Murkins, tattoo-wise, but guys are idiots so ’nuff said on that.
I cannot repeat often enough how much I hate the walled-up fortresses known as “homes” over here. Apart from the ugliness (and it is really ugly, even in otherwise-beautiful neighborhoods), I hate the insecurity and paranoia that the barbed-wire-topped walls must engender. This alone makes my return to SA a remote prospect — and despite the exchange rate that would give me a decent standard of living over here, the compromise of the quality of life… eh, forget it.
I met a bunch of old friends over here for the first time in many decades, and I’m pleased to say that nothing has changed. We’ve all gotten older and more rickety, of course, but our friendships have endured absolutely unchanged from back then. All of them — and they know who they are — have an open, undated invitation to visit me in Texas. True friendship really does seem to be eternal, makes nonsense of both time and distance, and I cannot express how glad I am of that.
And if there’s a better note on which to end my experiences here, I can’t think of it.
As I said yesterday, the African National Congress party (ANC) held its leadership elections yesterday, the chief candidates being former socialist / trade unionist Cyril Ramaphosa and ex-wife of current SAPres, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, rabid African Nationalist and so on (whom I predicted would win in a walk, she being the worst possible choice for ANC leader, and this being Africa).
In keeping with most of my political predictions (i.e. total crap), I was wrong about this one, and Ramaphosa won, albeit by only 179 votes out of many thousands cast. His victory was greeted with sighs of relief by the SA business community and most financial institutions (e.g. Moody’s, who are considering upgrading Seffrica’s rating from Not-Quite-Venezuela to Better-Than-Zimbabwe). Even the trade unions seem to be okay with the result, Ramaphosa being one of their erstwhile heroes.
However.
This is South Africa, so things are seldom that simple. You see, one of the ANC’s platform planks is that lovely euphemism, “expropriation” — which, in this case, means “taking land away from Whites to give to Blacks”. A large number of ANC supporters and officials support this policy, and many are complaining that Ramaphosa will ally himself with the “big business interests” (Whites) and not carry out the expropriations. White land- and business owners are hoping he’ll end, or at least severely curb the policy — and given the implications, he should.
But the ANC also has to make sure that they maintain their hold on power, and in the next general election in 2019, they’ll have to fend off a party of rabid assholes called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who, according to their electoral rhetoric would not only take Whites’ property away, but their lives as well if resistance were offered. Needless to say, this policy would sit quite well with their philosophical comrades inside the ANC, who have been quite content to ignore (and even tacitly approve of) the ongoing slaughter of White farmers in rural areas.
So when the time comes to take the place of current SAPres Jacob Zuma, Comrade Cyril is going to have to walk that little tightrope very carefully: accommodate the business community and bring investment back into South Africa, and try not to alienate the land-thieves inside the ANC.
And by the way, that’s only one of the problems facing Ramaphosa. Another one is that Zuma might not want to go quietly into that long (albeit well-financed, bribe-fed) dark night of retirement — in fact, he’s kinda acting that way right now. (In the rest of Africa, Zuma would simply be assassinated, but this is the kinder, gentler South Africa now.)
The next few months are going to be interesting, in an African kind of way.
Oh, and one last thing. I’ve said several unpleasant things about Dlamini-Zuma, the loser in the current leadership contest. But credit where credit is due: despite the slenderness of her defeat, she’s not behaving like certain (all?) Democrats we know, and is not going to the courts to challenge the results of the election. Granted, the courts have repeatedly signaled that the ANC has to fix its own problems, but still. Party unity seems to be of paramount concern for the ANC, and it should be: the last general election gave them a very slender margin of victory (from memory, 54%). Anything less than 50% would force them to create a coalition government with one or more of the smaller political parties in South Africa — and man, an alliance with some of those (e.g. the rabid EFF above) would mean economic disaster for the country. To some, economic disaster in this still-capitalist country would be a feature, not a bug (as it is with their philosophical allies Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Maduro in Venezuela, and Bernie Sanders in the U.S.). But I’m pretty sure the ANC does not want to see “Venezuela” happen south of the Limpopo River, and that may be the only thing that saves the country.
My cynicism in matters African, however, tells me that I’m an idiot for thinking that way.