ARRIVING ALIVE

A three day work week. Sweet lord, what the hell is the point? I’m so used to having long weekends, I’m not sure how I’m going to cope when things go back to normal. I may have to take a holiday.

As used to driving in Jo’burg as I’ve become, nothing prepared me for my drive on Friday night to visit The Queen who was up for the weekend. I try not to drive at night since I’m usually drunk but also I’ve noticed my night vision isn’t what it used to be. Just the other day I thought a blue light was green and I drove straight past a cop car who was trying to pull me over.

Listening intently to Tim the talking GPS (who incidentally has great night vision) he told me to pull into a main road and keep going straight. What he didn’t say was what to do in the event of a shooting.

Driving merrily along trying to decipher if the red light in front of me was a traffic light or a star, I noticed lots of blue lights coming up fast behind me. Thinking ‘The Milky Way is bright tonight’ I heard the familiar sounds of police sirens. Realising I had the entire Jo’burg metro police brigade behind me, I tried to pull to the side but the taxis were having a ‘lets see if we can build the longest taxi rank ever’ competition when I heard shots. Looking into my rearview mirror I saw two very panicked faces behind me as they hooted which I translated as ‘We’re driving a stolen car, get the f*ck out of our way’. I couldn’t, so I didn’t, which really pissed them off and just as they were trying to ever so politely nudge me, I pulled up on the pavement as a stream of bullets went flying in their direction.

Getting over that little hiccup I turned into the highway and was hit by bumper to bumper traffic. I wasn’t sure if this was a result of the shooting or because highway’s hate me but after an hour of stop/start my car started telling me it wasn’t loving the game so much and could it overheat quickly. My instinct was to phone my dad which in hindsight was completely pointless since the guy was sitting on his couch in Cape Town.

Me: Dad!
Dad: Baglett! This is a nice surprise, what’s up?
Me: So I almost died in a drive-by shooting and now my car is threatening to explode if I don’t get off this highway.
Dad: Sh*t Baglett. Who were you shooting at?
Me: I wasn’t shooting anyone dad, the cops were.
Dad: Why, what did you do?
Me: Dad, I didn’t do anything, there was a stolen car behind me. They were shooting at him, not me. More urgently, my car is overheating and I need to get off the highway.
Dad: Put on your emergency lights and take the emergency lane. If anyone stops you, tell them to phone me.
Me: Yes I’m sure that will help.
Dad: And stop shooting people.

Before I could explain again, that I still wasn’t the one doing the shooting, I lost signal and after two and a half hours of driving that should have taken twenty minutes, I arrived to meet The Queen where my speech on how she must move to Jo’burg was severely tainted by the drive by shooting and massive accident. She’s promised to visit again, but is considering renting a helicopter so we just fly to all destinations.