I bite my nails . . . And Go!
Home-town-time, oh yeah! Okay, where do I begin . . . I'm going to go with the name, because its long enough to give me time to think about what else I could possibly say that would make it any different to any other "home town", while I'm typing it - you guessed it . . . Multi-tasking. Plettenberg Bay, what? Exactly! To narrow down this little town on a map, you'd have to look really closely at a map of the Western Cape (in South Africa) and graually run your finger along the coast line heading east until you accidently skim over it, back track a few times and eventually get frustrated and give up completely while convincing yourself I'm fucking with your head. Unless you live in South Africa, thereby making that previous sentence - the ridiculously long one - NOT FOR YOU! Moving on . . .
Plettenberg Bay was still considered a village when I moved down to the coast with my family, 20 odd years ago, A FUCKING VILLAGE! Imagine that . . . (Its safe to use your imagination here, I condone it.) The thing is, however, when you're 6 years old that means nothing to you, especially if you've just come from another small town - in this case its a small town on the South African side of the border to Lesotho, near its capital Maseru, called Ladybrand. Wow, super town name drop there. You should know at least one of those places . . . Come on, Lesotho is a real place, I'm not bullshitting! Some even call it a kingdom, others think its just a gaping hole in the middle of South Africa, but really its just another fucking country . . . No, I'm kidding, you most likely haven't heard of Ladybrand. No bother, its dead to us now anyway, so no use lingering . . . where was I . . . Oh yes, nothing special about small towns, when you're that little, everything is big. My sister (funny story,) used to think that whenever we left Plett (Okay, 'Plett' is officially accepted as an adequate short name to the town with a long name like Plettenberg Bay. No really, look it up,) DAMN IT! Filling you in on what I'm talking about is so annoying. I hate brackets. . . Yeah so, whenever we left Plett my sister was convinced we were leaving South Africa as well, and it took a lot to convince her otherwise. She just couldn't seem to wrap her little head around it. Then again, she was 3 years old, I think.
Plett was great growing up in, kids could ride their bikes in the streets, people left their houses open - sort of - during the day. It was 'the South African dream', so to speak. Sandy beaches, sunny days, nature reserves, forrests, other 'small town' folk . . . It was great. Nothing could be better. Of course this is the reality of a child from 6(y.o.) upwards. Now days all the same things are there, and much more, but no longer could you safely ride your bikes in the streets in fear of Sea Rescue members running you down in their oversized four-by-fours as they scream around bends like they're Aqaumen in Batmobiles. Nor leave your houses open with previously segregated people prepared to hide in your trash - and I don't mean in the big black bins outside your property, I mean in the little metallic ones located under the sink in your kitchen. Street kids are fucking ninjas these days, they really don't make them like they used to. Whatever happened to sniffing glue like the good old days? No, no they smoke tik or stab people for being in the house they're robbing. I blame FW de Klerk, incompetant bastard, and Nelson Mandela. But thats for another day.
Plett was cool . . . If you went to school there, that is. (I'm not sure if I really believe what I'm saying there. Regardless,) I found it painfully difficult to connect with people in the town, because I went to school in a totally different town altogether, 30 kms heading west, called Knysna. I'm going to go into too much detail about the town, just imagine an airline toilet seat, but with a lagoon in the middle and two islands floating like terds. Yeah, I'm all for neighbouring town rivalry. So what, you wanna fight about it? Anyway, so I took the bus to school every morning for 12 years. 12 fucking years. I want you to imagine I sound like Archy from the movie, Rocknrolla, when I say that. And of course, the return trip 30 kms back every afternoon. For 12 fucking- . . . No, kidding. The real problem was the fact that all my school mates then lived 30kms away, which made afternoons back in Plett fairly lonely (which is probably why I picked on my younger brother so much.) And it was only until the last 2 years, of those 12, that I really started to make friends, my own age, back in Plett. And I'm guessing because we all had one thing in common . . . Wreckless teenage drinking and partying in the local night club called the Cave. You should have seen this place, it literally looked like a cave, but its the meer fact that everyone behaved like neanderthals in there that made the name so appropriate. Might I add, I started going there when I was 15 or so, and it was there that I met my pack of closest friends, to this day still. And that says a lot more than what you may be thinking . . . We're good people. Just bad teenagers.
I've decided. My next post will focus on the wreckless teenage pack I brought up previously. I'm not going to go into my school career just yet, just some of the fucked up extra-mural activities we got up to. I hope I've given at least some insight into where I am, who I'm with and where I come from, so far. More will come with plenty of events ranging from the Rocky Horror Picture Show to getting arrested for driving without my lights on. Its going to be fun, I promise, no I don't promise, promise is just a word these days . . . I reckon? Yeah, I reckon. Ooh . . . Reckon . . . Look at that word for a moment. Its so cool. Reck-on. Ha. Awesome.
Done. (You know what, I'm going to go ahead and tell you not to pay much attention to that previous paragraph. That is all.)
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