Flicks

As fondly as we remember our little, red-soiled teapot-shaped piece of Africa, and as much as I’m constantly telling maningi lies and even some bits of truth about growing up there back in nineteen voetsek, there wasn’t really that much for a whenwe in his teens to do.

Thing is, aside from bundu-bashing, trying not to get bashed at Club Tomorrow or any other RLI on R&R hotspots, watching PEfukkenS play rugger, smoking weed with Willard in the garden at 4 Ridgelee Way, Avondale, Salisbury, Rhodesia, grazing ‘tong and drinking Bengal Juice, going to Guido’s for clear soup and T-bone, Barbours for toasted chicken sandwich, High Chaps for hot chocolate, trying to fray tabs with GHS gwarras, making assorted kak with Shamwari #1, hanging out at various swimming pools where girls in bikinis also hung out, playing pinnack and table soccer there by Uncle Teddy’s Rhodes Motors, fucking about on Lake Mac, queueing for petrol and dodging June, boredom was such a constant companion it may as well have worn RichRags, a Merrisex t-shirt and had the same heady scent of Ego and Kingsgate as we did. Strue’sbob.

The flicks, which is what we trendy okes called it – madalas used words like bioscope, and also the wireless – was the one place you could always go to find entertainment. While Rhadeejah had the highest ratio of bisocopes per (very select few) members of population ever known to mankind, your Seven Arts, Rainbow, et cetera (and that was just Bamba Zonke) it also possibly – thanks to naughty Uncle Ian and his live-in lover Cliffy du Pont – had the lowest ratio of films to bioscopes. Thanks to sanctions, as a piccanin I saw The Horse in The Grey Flannel Suit so many times I got fukken saddle sores.

Christ Steven, can you not sit still for ten minutes? Ants in your pants my boy, that’s your problem. Sorry Ma – I’m bored hey. You’re what Steven? Bored? You’re much too young to get bored my boy. Ja Ma, sorry Ma. Can I get some money for the flicks Ma? And can I get some money also for something to eat in the interval? Do you think I am made of money Steven? Hey? Do you think I just go outside and pick money up off the ground every morning? Use your pocket money to buy something in the interval. But you don’t give me pocket money Ma. Do not get bloody cheeky with me my boy. Do.I.Make.Myself.Clear?

My prolonged love affairs with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and JC Superstar are described elsewhere in other kak I’ve written here.  Jawitz – who always loved the flicks and is now running Hollywood from Cape Town – and I went to see The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with The Sea and both developed not so mild Kris Kristofferson crushes. Shamwari #1 and I went to see Tommy, and I learned that going to a flick with music with your best mate who is tone-deaf and insists on singing along is very amusing, but not for the other buggers at the flicks. I saw The Exorcist, stoned, and it took me months to recover; same for Jaws. The Sting. The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, Marathon Man, Kelly’s Heroes, A Bridge Too Far, Clint Eastwood, 007, anything Monty Python made. Flick after flick, always good fun.

Also there by Blakiston they sometimes showed a flick on a Saturday evening. Maybe Friday. Who knows? Someone, but not me. See previous notes on getting old and dagga. Those old flicks on a reel-to-reel projector that jammed and whined and whirred and never worked properly but still, a flick hey. Once, sitting upstairs in the balcony which is where us older kids sat, Mandy Burgess, one of the really main gwarras there by Blakiston, decided halfway through the first reel that she would hold my salty-with-chipstix-sticky-with cream-soda hand and I sat terrified, unmoving, for the rest of the film, in case she let go.

I wish June had been there, hey, just so she could’ve seen me sit bloody still for more than ten minutes…