Journal: 24.12.2026. Haag i Oberbayern
So, tell us the good news –
I seem to have that line as a sort of
chorus of a song I must have heard on LM Radio Mozambique. I usually have that
on when I am using the laptop for all sorts of weird and strange activities at
home.
I tried to look it up and nearly swooned.
The shite the dumb ass search engine found had some yowling dork going on about
Jesus. Christ all mighty, as if we haven’t enough of that crap today and
tomorrow when thank God, by Wednesday, your eardrums are no longer subjected to
Xmas shopping songs backed by jingles of cash register’s tolling up the Chinese
made goodies to hand out to family and friends for no apparent reason at all.
I suppose I have to wait and hope it plays
again someday.
And so it was that for me, a day in the
life of me can never be summarised as, and I quote from a WhatsApp question and
reply from my step-sister who lives in East London, South Africa, in September
this year –
‘Happy Birthday. What's happening?’
‘Thank you. We're going out for dinner, but
there's not a lot going on. Mostly same old, same old.’
How exciting is that? I wish I could have some of that ‘same old.
Same old’.
Same all
fucking what? I shall explain to you a classic, same all, same all that
happened to me yesterday –
Get out of bed at 5.30am, make coffee,
watch the news, shower, shave, shit, swallow the 7 pills I take, get dressed,
catch a taxi to Muhldorf Hauptplatz, formally known as Adolf Hitler Platz, and wait
for the bus to take me to Lady D’s pad in Haag i Oberbayern. The only small
variation to this traditional same all excise of being a ‘family
together for Xmas’ , is that I am a day earlier than usual.
The same all Whats app message to
Lady D from myself occurs at 8.31 am. As usual. No fucking bus. I am at stadtplatz
for last 20 mins.
Before
this escalates into another fiasco like last year, the fucker turns up. I am
being picked up outside the brewery in Haag. (hah-hah, its all true), and into
the small carpark, her dark grey Opel Mokka (what a fucking stupid name for a
car! It is like, asking your Rhodesian friend ‘Hey mukka, hows that mokka doing
ya old fokka?’ and he replys – ‘I like to muck about in my mokka drinking mocca
me mucka.’) and -
I point to a parking spot, bend down pick
my rucksack up and a plastic shopping bag containing a huge leg of frozen lamb,
walk to the boot of the parked car, open the boot, and as I place the objects
in I call out ‘Hello Mrs Greenberg’, just as I heard the driver’s door open,
slammed the boot shut, and turned to face someone I have never before seen in
my life.
Either that or Lady D’s holiday in South
Africa had, because of the accident in Cape Town where she broke her arm, was
SO traumatic, she grew taller, thinner, more deep wrinkly, old looking with
short cut black, dyed hair. She spoke as I looked at this apparition in
complete confusion, regretting that it was maybe a bad idea not to have turned
up stoned that was same old –
‘Ich glaube sie sind hier
falsch.‘ Which translates to ‘What the fuck are you
doing, you mad fuck.’
Before I could reply, an identical car but
not so dirty, pulls up alongside and out climbs the same old.
Same old
does the same old moaning and blah-blah, I drive her to a specialist
because she is expecting to get an X-ray, and whatever, and after a 40 min
drive (I am driving, that being the reason I am not the same old dope
head I am at this time of the year - all year.) There is a small shopping mall
and…yup, that same old music playing and I went into a drugstore that
doesn’t sell any drugs.
I was still in a shitty mood. Lady D had
brought up, again, the subject of my forth coming trip and with fear of
mosquitoes, I stocked up on a fly whisk and a couple of skin repellents and
then my eyes beheld a sight so wonderful, I thought I would never see such a
beautiful object as this on a shelf again – A green, metallic painted tin with
the logo BRUT. Aah, those were the days hey.
Same old buzzed me, that she was finished after 25
mins and moaned the fucker couldn’t be arsed to do an X-ray and just gave her a
sick note and to come back in 4 weeks and all a load of shite as she works
anyway and I could have stayed at home for another day. We do some shopping in
Haag, I stack up on tobacco for Egypt and back to her pad at about 1.00 pm.
Just about the same all. Or just about?
Once in her same old place on the
couch – ‘Show me your booking as the place sounds awful, you will starve to
death if not worse. Maybe you can still cancel.’
I start up the laptop, go to gMail, open
the booking and hand it to her and speak,
‘Yeah, yeah, one moment first, I need a
spliff or two first and I have a feeling that I might need a third.’
This meant I had to go out into the cold.
On her tiny balcony. Its fucking freezing. There is a small crack as you can’t
shut the door from the outside and as I suck with the eagerness of a hungry
baby on a fat juicy breast, I could hear her same old style of chirping –
‘You booked with AIR B and B, are
you insane? There a bunch of crooks and liars. ‘
Me thinks, so are those lawyers in England,
just the same old…
‘Aah for fuck sakes, Karl. Were you stoned
when you booked this? What is this? –
Zimmer in Boutique-Hotel in Nuweibaa,
Ägypten
2 Gäste16
Schlafzimmer8 Betten1 privates Badezimmer
Back inside I am giggling stupidly now. I
am having a great time. I sit down next to her and look rather blankly at the
screen. It did seem rather odd. I don’t recall I was going with anyone and why
do I need 16 bedrooms, 8 beds and 1 private bathroom?
Lady D scrolls through the pictures. There
are none of a toilet or bath. ‘There is no kitchen. Holy shit, this is worse
than a kraal hut in Soweto.’
She is in a serious shitty mood. Not surprising
really as looking at her last X-ray, the only thing keeping her arm on is the
skin. I had offered to give her a joint but she refused. I had brought some as
a present for my eldest son and was testing the quality.
‘Aah, now you sound just like your mother
when you had that fight in Rhodes National Park in Inyanga.’
She looks at me evilly. ‘And what was that
about?’
‘Well, she said that you were a bad
daughter and what kind of a daughter forces her own mother to sleep in a cow
stall.’
Lady D sniggers, scrolls more pics.
Me points - ‘And, look, they have a fire
place and I can maybe take a spear and spear some of those coral fish and cook
them on the fire.’
Now she is messing with her phone and
finding more things about the place –
‘Look at these pictures. You sleep on the
floor on carpets and they recommend you bring a sleeping bag! Do you have to
bring your own toilet paper?’
‘Well, you still have that one I got from a
charity shop for you, don’t you? Anyway, I can always use a carpet as a
blanket. Look – here they say what amenities are available. Lots of things,
even toilet paper.’
‘You idiot. It is WHAT IS AVAILABLE. Not
what you have booked. In fact, Holy shit, read this description I just found.’ –
I look. This is so fucking funny!
For
accommodation at Sawa Camp we use traditional Hoosha huts which are ingeniously
woven together using Bamboo and palm leaves.
Inside the floor is made from concrete (not
sand) and covered with brightly coloured, locally-made Bedouin carpets.
The Hoosha’s roof is made from palm leaf
thatch which allows the moonlight to enter and the sunlight to peek.
‘AND, if it rains?’ Says same old.
‘Maybe the mattress is a blow up one and I
float out the door and go boating. I presume I could get wet.’
‘Please cancel, you still can without cost.
Here, why don’t you go somewhere like this?’
She shows me a pic similar to the last
place I was at. Exactly what I didn’t want.
Lady D is in full swing - ‘How are you
supposed to get there?’
‘Taxi.’
‘No, you idiot, you’re flying. Who you book
that with?’
‘The cheapest I could find. A Turkish
budget airline that has only bad reviews. I will be the first to do the impossible.
To go where no Rhodesian half-Jew has gone before and survive 26 days in the
Sinai desert with no food and no toilet paper - seeking the truth that is
somewhere out there.’
‘Like your brain was when you booked this,
is the way I see it. You arrive at Sharm El Sheikh at 1.45 am on New Year’s Day
and you presume a taxi will be waiting for you? WITH no idea what to expect
when you get to your cow stall. Fuck me, you would have been better off booking
the same place where that Jewboy checked in 2026 years ago, at least that place
had cows and goats, donkeys and camels to eat.’
‘Aah, but no fish. Plus, because I am
clever, I will take some salami and smoke-dried bacon and I have two boxes of
crispy wafers and sunflower margarine and a Swiss army knife. I always take
one.’
She ignores me. ‘Aah. Hang on, this is
interesting. They do have food. You just have to pay for it.’ She shows me a
picture of the restaurant’s menu.
‘If I claim refugee status, maybe I get fed
for free! Who cares? I am the Gokwe Kid. I am indestructible. I might get lucky
and some of the other tourists will be old, plump, stoned hippie grannies.’
She sighs, rolls her eyes. ‘Whatever. You
made your bed now sleep in it.’
***
End of subject. I did add a few very anti-pc
comments that would be very inappropriate to say in writing, but one thing was
very clear, her schadenfreude maybe a little pre-emptive and false.
So, take a look at this, I think it is not
so bad – just same all -
