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Tuesday. I’m stoked. My diary is done for the week. The bosses are in conference, so I have a couple of hours to myself.
It’s a glorious day. Durban has either ignored the memo that winter is halfway here or has not received it yet.
The world is looking rosy. The Gooners have pulled off second in the English league, even if Arsène Wenger is still running the show.
Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid warriors are still in the Uefa Champions League, even if they screwed things up in La Liga at the last minute. Maybe we will get lucky and Cholo, as Simeone is known, will land at the Emirates next season.
Closer to home, I try not to think about the Buccaneers’ dismal league form this season and focus on my other reasons to be cheerful, given that it is my birthday.
I have somehow managed to make the ripe old age of 51, despite three and a half decades of burning the candle at both ends, some seriously impaired decision-making when it comes to women and politics, and a general inability to wind my neck in, professionally and personally. Not bad. If I’ve managed to pull off more than half a century without having to grow up and get a proper job, I guess I will never have to.
I head for the beach and a quick swim. The light reflecting off the swell at North Beach is golden. The waves are banging – glassy, about a metre and a half, with a lovely little left breaking towards the pier.
I drop my jeans and step into my baggies, hoping that I don’t get nailed by the cops. There is a new city bylaw that levies a R15 000 fine for exposing one’s genitalia – the ANC councillors pushed it through without reading it and are now trying to find a way to stop the cops enforcing it.
I hit the water. For 60 minutes there are no deadlines, no bills, no politicians; just sweet rides. I feel clean.
Then reality kicks in. I am late for question time in the National Assembly. Maybe the commander in chief – President Jacob Zuma – is going to give me a birthday present and pay back the money. That would be nice.
There is no time to get home or to the office, so I head for the bar at the Parade Hotel. Robert McBride blew it up a few years back, before the president decided to screw him. I arrive in time to see a man in a white shirt kicking a female Economic Freedom Fighters MP in the head.
Payback, but not the money.
