10th June - 14th July – Days 253-287 – Stories from Strand, South Africa
For the first few weeks of the World Cup, we were stuck in Strand, for many reasons. Firstly, we didn't have a car to move around quickly and efficiently (not that we would be quick or efficient even if we had a car). Secondly, we wanted to watch all of the games and (for the most part) failed to get up long before the first games started. Hence for the entirety of the first and second rounds we were either: a) sitting on the couch watching football; or b) sitting at the Seafarer watching football. During this time we were either a) drinking beer or b) eating popcorn/crisps/biltong/other unhealthy snacks or, occasionally c) eating something relatively healthy. The anti-health drive far outweighed the health drive though (as it should when one watches football for a month) and so our only other activities of these few weeks were a) watching our stomachs slowly expand and b) watching France and Italy, our chosen teams respectively, crash out amid dire performances. As a sideshow, we got to know the interesting characters introduced in the previous post, enjoying many hours of drunkening and utterly pointless conversations which no-one outside of Strand would find interesting in the least. Hence we will gloss over most of them.
The Frenchies are on the cusp of embarrassing themselves. Again
One person who appeared to disapprove of our behaviour on regular occasions, bizarrely, was Stompie, the owner of the Seafarer. We quite quickly made friends with all the barstaff and most of the regulars and so were often left to prop up the bar at the end of the evening, after the lights and music had been switched off, chatting with Carl or Chris or whoever else happened to be around and owned a pair of ears. Stompie would then emerge from his office and shepherd us out, sometimes with more urgency than others, at one point physically manoeuvring M through the door and closing it in her face. Our first such episode of many was very early on in our stay where M had become slightly inebriated and had developed a sudden urge for something to happen, as anyone who has been inebriated would know. This urge was to hear a song by her favourite band The Killers, and as time went on it developed into an obsession, culminating at 2am when, as usual, the lights and music had been switched off and Carl was already wearing his jacket and was ready to go home. A shrill voice suddenly rang across the bar - “I'm NOT leaving until you play THE KILLERS!!!”. Stompie decided that this was enough and emerged from his office like a bull teased with a red cloth, and M was quickly ejected from the premises. Stompie's efforts to rid his bar of us was always a source of great amusement although, given that we probably single-handedly provided him with a generous pension plan for his older days, we didn't really understand it. We had a good laugh about it anyway.
M demonstrates the art of healthy eating (after healthy drinking) by destroying a packet of biltong in record time
In Finland, as is well known, a deal struck in a sauna is one that cannot possibly be reneged on by either party. As Finns generally like to drink quite a bit before and after going to the sauna, you would have thought that they would be well-versed enough to avoid striking potentially poor deals in a state of inebriation. Apparently this is not so. “Chris the Yank” presented himself as an amateur artist and his pictures, which he enjoyed touching up at the bar, seemed extremely well drawn. M then struck a deal with him to draw a picture of Dixon. He agreed, then did pictures of all three of us and, for some reason, we paid for them all. A closer inspection revealed to us that they were probably printouts which had been gone over with charcoal. They will hang on our walls as a reminder. Be careful who you deal with. We didn't see much of Chris the Yank after that.
Having nothing to do - the mother of artistic expression. M takes a break between games
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