Rescued by Rupert

A thin Indian man asked where the gents was. I didn’t know I was part of the establishment. I had only been there ten minutes. I confidently steered him in the direction of the ladies room, and he set off across the lawns with determination. I presume the bewilderment came a little later.

A fat lady stopped in front of the table. She didn’t look down at the books. She looked straight at me and her oversized lips unrolled in a peculiar unfurling motion, followed by an even more peculiar sound. “Good morning!” I proclaimed. She stared straight through me and said nothing. I felt like a mannequin. She did the lip unfurling thing again and made the same odd sound. “Good morning!” I proclaimed with equal volume and enthusiasm as I had a moment before. She waddled off in silence, as the model train trundled past.

I told my family that I knew what this was all about. This idea of manning a table and selling books. In my student years Kevin, PD and I had a table at a girl’s school fete. We demonstrated fly-tying with enthusiasm. That was for about twenty minutes. Fortunately we had brought beer. Beer at a girl’s junior school.

There is not much interest in fly tying at girl’s school fetes, and it doesn’t help to be tucked away around a corner.

The train trundled past again.

Maybe the Sandton brigade that parades these lawns will be interested in a flyfishing book?

“Owe Da-hling, the kids are jaast playing p-hut-p-hut. We will be along in a seccy. Did you find Derek? Let’s have some coffee shall we. Soop-her!” Lots of gold jewellery and tight jeans, some on bums where they belong. Some definitely not. Sausages.

The train trundles past again.

Two young girls come asking if I have any Agatha Christie titles. “Never heard of her” I want to say. Men stand on the porches, in casual clothes. Shorts and slops. Hands in pockets. Bellies hanging out just a little more than they perhaps planned. I can see they have escaped the corporate world for the Easter week-end. They have endured 5 hours at the wheel. Now they are spending top dollar on some quaint B & B, and they are lurking while their wives spend what is left on the credit card. Three days of this, five more hours in the car, and they will be back behind their desks. What the hell makes them tick. Not fly-fishing. Not books.

The bloody train goes past again.

The Indian man comes past a second time. He must have survived his trip to the ladies room, but he is not asking me for any more guidance. He is returning from the car, where he collected his banana, and now he takes up a position on a bench and eats it in a painfully deliberate way, facing me but noticing nothing but his own fruit.

The damned noisy train-full of kids passes again.

A middle aged woman approaches. Everyone says she should write a book. She is not sure if it will be any good. How does she start, she wants to know. I encourage her. She is a lovely lady. “Just get out a pen and write” I say. At the prospect of having to commit, to actually get started, she retracts. I can see it in her body language. She paints too. She could do her own cover. “What will you write about?” I ask her. She hasn’t thought about that and the question scares her off, and she leaves as the train trundles past. Again.

“Sunil” comes to chat to me. He is from Durban (and all). He is staying at a hotel. The one between the freeway and the railway line. “You all so lucky here man” he says. “Fresh air and all”. “What this book?” he wants to know. “Ay! Nice man. Well done. Good luck man”

That train. It has a lot of adults on it. Many are not accompanied by kids. Their facial expressions are interestingly dull for someone on a fun-ride.

Alan and Lynn drop by, and we catch up on their family matters. They are just taking is easy. Sauntering. They love the book. But they don’t fish.

The train’s bloody whistle is now working.

Someone tries to buy the painting that I have on display. Another asks if the book is about painting. Some youngster lies down on the rails in front of the train as it approaches and his friends get a picture of him, just in time before it rolls past.

Mothers wander past with all manner of prams. Prams with decals and suspension systems that look like they belong on cars. Some babies sleep, granting the parents thirty meters of peace, sometimes even more! Others just scream and smear once edible substances over themselves and everything in reach. The Dads get their turn too. What a lovely outing.

Someone brings grandad. He is 103 years old. He bustles along with surprising agility and then takes up a position in the shade, where he reverses the walker and sits watching the train, which whistles on its way past again.

I sit and stare at the people and wonder if there is more than this for them. Petro assures me that there is. “They probably did a good hike in the mountains yesterday, and this is their rest day”. My scepticism isn’t buying it. I don’t see scratched skin, or a stained shirt, or a worn pair of shoes. I just see bling and boredom.

I start wondering what it would take to derail a small scale train. The rails measure about 30mm each, and are about 400mm apart. The coaches weigh 200Kg each, and can take 600Kg of smiling kids (complete with bored looking adult companions). They say a coin on one of the rails can dispatch a big one.

And the $%#@!>* train passed again.

My misanthropic, antisocial and reclusive tendencies thoroughly reinforced, and with the rays of the sun cutting in low from the west, we pack up. Just before I carry the last box to the bakkie I have a perverse thought of riding the train, but just as suddenly I realise that to ride it would be to let it get the better of me, so I shake my head to clear it, and get the hell out of there.

I need home, and I need the hills.

PS. Rupert stopped by. Nice guy. He is a flyfisherman. We talked knot strength and how long one should expect a co-polymer leader to last. He had lost a few fish the day before. Windknots.

Thank you Rupert