How times have changed.

Most of the stories that I write are set in real places. I managed to +Google Earth an area of Swaziland where I used to live. Over forty years ago.
Well, Executioner rock is still there (famed for solving a few tribal issues back in time!) but the abode seems to have now become a chicken farm, or dare I say what looks like a salt mine!
Still, this little sojourn into the past via satellite rekindled fond memories.
You should try it sometime!
Here is the link to Miles Anderson reading Chapter Two of the novella. Please feel free to comment. Your comments always help.


Two Feet - Chapter Two

Lost in Bankgok

Whilst stuck in the traffic here in Bangkok out of boredom I asked Siri where I was.
Here was the response:

...if that doesn't sum up "life" nothing does!!!!
Traffic in Bangkok is relentless -- when it moves, it is, from a foreign perspective, chaotic. An endless cacophony of vehicle and people movement, of disturbed ants. Then it freezes, and the smells take over. Wafts of frying food and sun blasted sewers, of human sweat and incense invade -- over loaded scooters line up like the starting grid of a Grand Prix. Dogs sleep, nonplussed.
Then it moves in a rush, a blast -- another block of weaving, concrete above, a bus so close you can exchange names -- then that pause, that wait -- passengers side saddle with no helmet and a street vendor crossing the road with pork still frying.
Smiling.
Accepting.
A great city.

Journey to nowhere

Shopping in the wind.

...having recently endured a painful journey to the bowels of a cold, industrial, shopping mall, I thought it a wise thing to remind myself of how we once went shopping. So here's a FREE chapter from the novella, Two Feet, which roughly illustrates the days before malls, supermarkets and on-line shopping.

...about the size of it!

SHOPPING IN THE WIND

 But they did come and repossess the car. It was a red Mini-Imp, and the men that came were from a large, prosperous city across the border, and they didn't even stay for coffee. They just drove it off down the thin, corrugated and eroded dirt road that led down the hill onto the main road.

We stood and watched it go. “Shit,” is what my mother said.

We were left with a black bicycle, and on this bicycle I would pedal on the tarmac road to the local General Dealer every day. It was a long road bordered by pineapple fields, and the labourers working in those fields wore old, plastic fertilizer bags tied to their legs to avoid the sharpness of the pineapple leaves. They were like human scarecrows.

This was a good road. It had a few hills and a few potholes, but pedalling was easy especially on the way to the Store. I’d park the bike outside the Store where the hulking overhead diesel drum was positioned, and then walk across the dry patch of red earth where the chickens fed, and climb the few concrete steps onto the porch of the building. Here, a Cobbler and a tailor worked. The tailor had a milky eye and his left leg would furiously pump the plate on the floor to make the sewing machine rattle. He looked as though he was riding a bicycle to nowhere. The Cobbler, who wore a white shirt and a tie, had a tiny anvil and a mouthful of little black tacks that protruded from his lips like snakes’ tongues. Beside him were heaps of shoes that I thought would never cover a person’s feet or tread on a road again. But they did.

There is always a group of people gathered on the porch. A mother feeding her baby on her bosom, her head bent low over the infant to keep away the flies, an old man leaning on his cane peering from beneath the brim of his recently purchased hat, and another woman tying up her cash in a piece of cloth that she would thrust down her blouse for safe keeping.

The business of shopping was a muted, respected affair by customers in the Store. An aisle was approached with caution, almost in awe, bare feet scuffing on the concrete floor. Canned goods were held carefully in both hands, and the picture on the label was studied with the intensity of an art scholar. A bar of wrapped, Lux soap was sniffed and smiled at, and the bulky bag of Hullett’s refined, white sugar, stroked and prodded.

At the rear of the store, alongside gardening implements and paraffin lamps, shoes for men and women, made in Taiwan, beckoned. The shoes were never tried on for size but measured against the foot, the brightness of the shoe’s plastic alluring. The appearance of high heeled shoes would cause much stifled giggling.

The weighing of maize meal, sugar or flour by the Store’s owner was a solemn affair, the customer having ordered it, not by weight, but by what he or she could afford. As the grocer’s scale shifted on its fulcrum, so would the head of the customer, as if mentally trying to balance the brass contraption by telepathy. When the scale righted itself, the customer would do likewise with his or her head. Then the maize or flour would be poured into a paper bag and fastened with cello-tape. Whatever money the customer had was offered to the store owner as payment. It was accepted that the store owner would count out what was needed, and the balance be returned. A sticky sweet or two always concluded the transaction.

If a can of paraffin was listed on my mother’s shopping list, the road and the ride home was a challenge. Paraffin was an essential fuel. It kept the deep freeze and the fridge cold and the hurricane lamps alight when there was a power failure. The bag of meagre groceries I could hang on the handlebars, but a five-gallon metal container filled with paraffin was heavy and cumbersome, and the only place for it was between my legs on the hard saddle so I’d peddle off with knees and elbows wide like a frog in mid-flight and my backside almost touching the rear tyre.

The road I travelled was often shared with one or two eighteen-wheeler railway trucks.  Red, monstrous and loud, they travelled across the country transporting cattle, timber and sugar cane. Long before they came into sight the tarmac beneath the bicycle’s front wheel would vibrate, and as fate would have it, we’d meet on the downhill, so there was no time or place for stopping. Feet would start pumping wildly on the pedals and my backside would take to the air and the paraffin would begin sloshing left and right as the grocery bag began to scream and tear against the spokes of the front tyre.

To this day I don’t have a clue why I thought going faster would save me from the metallic beast that was coming up behind me. It is what boys do.

The driver of the monster would purposefully sound his foghorn as he neared. The sound of the tyres and the metal was ferocious as the vehicle passed, like a freight train coming out of a tunnel and crossing a steel bridge. It felt endless. It was a red blur out of the corner of your eye. The handlebars of the bicycle shuddered like a jack hammer in your hands. The tarmac was a dark blur, and the yellow grass on the verge becomes a spray of colour without shape.

Then the wind, the gale, the blizzard, the hurricane hit.

It came off the passing vehicle and slammed into you as you quickly tensed your flailing knees, and sphincter muscle, around the five-gallon paraffin can. You try to turn the bicycle’s juddering wheel into the wind with no success. You bend your head so low you are just short of chewing the metal of the handlebars.

Then you are in the ditch, and you are being watched by a group of labourers that work in a pineapple field dressed like human scarecrows. The bag of sugar you bought has exploded on the hot tarmac, and the bar of Lifebuoy soap has disintegrated against the fence-pole, and the bicycle has curled up some twenty feet away shaped like a modern sculpture.

But you are still holding the five-gallons of paraffin to your chest as if it were liquid gold.

Which it was.

 *****

Mabuza once told me that when travelling on any road and there is a fear of being struck from behind by an ill wind, get off the road.

*****

Visit the home of shopping!

Two Feet - somewhere in Africa.

In response to Mr.S's comment/question regarding which country did some of the chapters of Two Feet take place? Thanks for your question, Mr.S. and your spending your time to ask !! Always willing to oblige.
When I scribbled Two Feet I intentionally kept dates and the name of places vague -- Africa is and will always remain a mysterious continent to me  -- perhaps because it is ever-shifting, forever in chaos, future events unknown.
Two Feet and its contents are primarily based in the mountainous Kingdom of Swaziland.

Where the hell is that you ask? 

If you peruse the map of Africa, drop your eyes down South toward South Africa. Swaziland is nestled, somewhat fragile, between the borders of South Africa and Mozambique (...in my day it was called Lorenco Marques,http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Lorenzo+marques , and was Portuguese territory and promised the best King sized prawns since the invention of sliced bread). Alas, the prawns disappeared during the intervention/invasion of the Russians, Cubans and the AK 47. I do have a memory though that when Lorenzo Marques gained its independence, on that historical day, as the new flag was raised, the flag-pole collapsed. Somewhat symbolic, I dare to add.
But I digress as always -- Swaziland's claim to fame, during my young years there, was that it boasted the longest remaining monarch ( I think it still does?) His name was King Sobhuza II Longest reigning monarch. Maybe I was naive ( I was 10 going on twelve) but life seemed pretty good under King Sobhuza II. Fruit, cotton and sugar cane was abundant and rumour had it the King was well into his 200th wife and tourism was on the up : especially as across the borders in +South Africa  both gambling and access to soft-porn and even a tantalising view of a woman's left or right breast, was religiously banned.
Swaziland jumped on the bandwagon and soon the valley of Ezulwini was festooned with casinos and a cinema that projected anything or anybody in the nude. My younger brother, not even sixteen, became the ticket seller, manager of the only Drive-In and its midnight attraction of French porn was well populated by porn starved South Africans. The Story of O being a major magnet.
Again I digress -- Swaziland was granted its independence from the United Kingdom in 1968. Much shield banging and drinking of corn beer heralded the event -- I was there and King Sobhuza II was festooned with the feathers of the Sobhuza bird. It was a momentous occasion and I would like to say the picturesque Kingdom has never looked back since. Alas, I read today that since Sobhuza's death in the 1980's, the country is now plagued by HIV and corruption. And that marijuana is now its major export -- ah well, another opportunity lost on my part. Marijuana in my time in Swaziland grew like trees -- even the birds flew higher than most. I don't jest.
So -- there you have it, Mr.S. -- Swaziland it was and no matter its present state, a country of many memories it will remain.

Thank you for your question --  I hope you enjoy the remainder of the read.

TWO FEET

Two Feet - Lesson #4 from the playground

Two Feet's home

I viewed the first episode of the BBC's period drama, The Village, last night. I thoroughly enjoyed it: well written (no nonsense dialogue) strongly directed and it depicted the period without unnecessary garnish.   Perhaps a little dark in mood in some places, but without the dark we wouldn't appreciate the light, would we now?  There were one or two scenes set in the boy's classroom that evoked memories of our Meneer Gerber, hence the following extract. 

Please feel free to comment!!

IS GOD A MECHANIC?

 Meneer Gerber once said we were all marching forward on God’s road.

 God was our engine, driving us on.

 God was our petrol, fuelling us around the bends and up the hills and down the hills.

 God was a powerful motor vehicle, and we were his passengers.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God wore a crash helmet as the racing car drivers do that I had seen pictures of. But I did not.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s car as it zoomed along, also left behind clouds of red dust that asphyxiated bird and insect as it travelled. But I did not.

I wanted to put up my hand and ask if God’s car had any gears, especially a reverse gear. I was thinking that a reverse gear would be a good idea for God’s car because if there were any mistakes to be fixed, God could just reverse over the mistakes and then drive forward again. This way he could fix the mistakes and make certain they never occurred again. But I did not ask.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s engine ever broke down. But I did not.

But I should.

Was a submersible borehole-pump not a part of God’s engine?

I won’t ask.

But if God was in control of an engine, any engine, then He would know how to repair it?

But I should ask.

A borehole was an engine. It had an engine, a pump. It was buried deep down in the shaft after the drilling machine – Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! -- had driven away leaving mounds of red clay and diesel and black oil stains on the grass. Yes, a pump engine that sucked the water from down there where it was quiet and still and dark. Immersed in the bowels of the earth, where the sun didn't shine and where the water was sweet

I won’t ask.

I will.

Will not.

Will.

I raised my hand.

“Meneer?”

Meneer Gerber had his feet up on the desk. He twisted his feet and separated them so he could get a view of me. He remained lounging back in the wooden chair that often creaked with the sound of a timid fart. He looked at me between his polished shoes.

“I did not ask a question, boy.”

“No, Meneer.”

“Then what the bloody Hell do you want?”

“You are in deep kak (shit), Rooinek!”That was Pisskop’s whispering voice. He sat at the rear of the class, but his words were like rifle shots in my burning ears.

Stand up, Feet. Make me stand. Please!

I stood on shaking knees trying to focus on Meneer Gerber’s shoes that partly hid his face. I was deeply flushed. I felt as if I was rolling in a field of stinging nettles. The soles of Meneer Gerber’s shoes were worn thin, and there was a patch on the left shoe. I spoke to the patch.

“Dust, Meneer. There is only dust now because the borehole engine has broken. In the vegetable garden where my mother is growing radishes, beetroot, cabbage and carrots so we can sell them at the road shop. (Breathe, chest in and out) Mister Kelly, he says the pump is old and worn, and he showed us the remains of some rusty pieces (cheeks hot, so hot)...so... so now there is no water, Meneer because of the pump so we...we are carrying water now from the dam in Mister Kelly’s jerry cans. (Bare-feet now sweating on the wooden floorboards and toes curling) We use a pole, Meneer, so we can carry the water on our shoulders, you see? But the grass on the hill is dry, Meneer and we are often falling and (hearing a dry chuckle from Pisskop)...and Mabuza is helping with some rope to pull the jerry cans up the hill, and my mother, she is really trying to show the water the way to find the vegetables. (No breath anymore. Sucking in air) Meneer, but it is not enough water without the borehole engine so...so...I...the plants are dying in the dust so I...so I...was thinking that maybe God because he knows engines, Meneer, can fix the submersible pump?”

Meneer Gerber abruptly swings his feet off the desk. He sits slowly upright in the wooden chair that makes a farting sound. He does not lose focus on me.

I remained standing. Sweaty, naked feet glued to wooden floorboards. A strong smell of chalk suddenly, a waft of Pisskop’s sour body odour. A movement from Max, the baker’s son behind his desk: more of a nervous squirm, like someone waiting for a film to be projected.

“You are in deep, deep kak (shit), Rooi-Nek”, whispers Pisskop from out there amongst the blurred faces.

Think: - mother on hands and knees in dust whispering to rivulet of tepid water. Solution: - God repairs pump. Result: - mother not necessary to be on hands and knees in dust whispering to tepid water.

“Are you...”His voice is shrill with pain, like the sound a rugby player makes when he is kicked between the legs. He coughs then again speaks.

 “Are you are asking me if God is bloody mechanic, boy?”

I am I suppose, so I nod, and my head feels heavy, so I know the gesture makes me look like a dumb child with his bare feet glued to a wooden floor.

I am soon bent over with my head in the corner. Above my head, just a few inches away, is a small book shelf. It carries two heavy books – the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places of the World. There is a layer of chalk dust on the books. They are not a part of the curriculum so are never read and left to gather chalk dust.

When a child is bent over in a corner of a room and he is given a caning, his first reaction is to recoil; is to lift up his head. That is what the bookshelf is for. When you recoil, you slam your head into the bookshelf. This way Meneer Gerber gets you twice with one blow. This way the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places in the World also have some use.

I look down at my two, bare feet as Meneer Gerber lands the first of six strokes. He will land the second stroke half an inch above the first, then the third will strike where the first landed. He is a master of his craft.

I wonder if God will try the reverse gear for me.

Two Feet - lesson #3 from the playground

LESSON #3 FROM THE PLAYGROUND:

(...for those who didn't catch #2, its in the Blog Archive)

Meneer Gerber is the only teacher that speaks English. That is why he teaches only the Rooineks of which I am one. I think there are less than thirty in the school. The Rooinek class consists of students of all ages: eight to twelve years old. Most are the children of farmers whose forefathers came on the ships in the 1820’s, but I think Max’s parents own the cafe where you can buy bread already sliced, so he is not the son of a farmer. Meneer Gerber is a knowledgeable teacher. During every lesson he makes us read a chapter from a textbook whilst he smokes his pipe and reads a Marvel Comic book which is usually a story about Superman.

I wonder if the inmate at the Eastern Cape Lunatic Asylum also serves sugar and milk with the tea that he is pouring.

Near the end of the class, Meneer Gerber will occasionally ask us questions on the chapter we have just read. There are usually twenty questions, sometimes less. If we get less than sixty-percent right, Meneer Gerber calls you to the front of the class, and he canes you. Usually it is three or four strokes across the backside, or he gestures for you to put out your hands, palms up and touching, and canes you there. This is the most painful. Especially if you need to continue writing with your pencil a few minutes later.

I wonder whom it is the inmate is pouring tea for.

Meneer Gerber does not allow any questions to be asked about any subject, especially Divinity. This is the only subject we do not have a text book about because Meneer Gerber can pretty much recite anything he wants from memory when it comes to stories about Jesus and God and Mary and Joseph and Moses. That is why I wrote earlier that he was a clever teacher.

I wonder why the inmate smiles the way he does as he pours his tea. It is a slight smile, almost soft as if he is being tickled by a feather. It is the smile I think, of a sleeping child. It is the same smile the Herd boy wears on his face when he is smoking that tobacco that has a seriously sweet smell.

Meneer Gerber has told us eight to thirteen year old Rooineks that we are all no better than Judas because of what we did to the Boer children and women during the Boer war. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks that tied the women and children to the front of the trains so the brave Boers would not use dynamite to blow up the train line. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks who built the first concentration camp and not the Germans. He insists that we Rooineks will always walk with guilty souls under the eyes of God and that because it is God’s Will, most of us will be cast out to sea before we become men and that we will spend eternity questioning our guilt.

I wish I can, but I am afraid to, ask Meneer Gerber the question about who created God and who was God’s father, but we are not allowed to ask questions, especially in Divinity class.

The inmate has stopped pouring his tea as I hear the school bell ring. He now sits with his hands folded in his lap. He looks calm. As if he is waiting for something or somebody.

Or maybe he is simply waiting for the kettle to boil.
Two Feet's website

Two Feet - lesson #2 from the playground.

I now walk with bare feet upon the same, drought stricken kikuyu grass that the over-age for his class farm boy they call Pisskop does. I can see Pisskop now on the playing field as he gathers a team to play touch rugby. Pisskop is fourteen and is the hairiest bastard in the school. Pisskop has shown everyone his pubic hairs. That is why he is called Pisskop. He also owns a .22 rifle, and they say he can shoot a hovering Kestrel out of the sky three-times-out-of-three. That’s a lot of hovering Kestrels to die in one day I wanted to say, but I did not for fear of having my head forced into the long drop.

Pisskop’s feet are ingrained with the colour of the earth; red. He does not wash. When he gets on the school bus every morning, he is always scratching his groin or picking at his feet. I look out the window of the bus trying not to look at Pisskop because he gets angry if I look at him.

But I am happy to walk the same earth as Pisskop because I am left alone to my own devices.

Around me the game of touch rugby is being played. Dust is being raised off the barren field by the players' naked feet and there is a lot of shouting and the occasional sound of a wet thump as the leather clad ball is kicked high up and over.

On the other side of the high, wire fence that separates the school, is the lunatic asylum. This is common knowledge. I can see an inmate sitting on a fallen, blue gum branch. Behind him is the shape of the Government built asylum. It has a corrugated tin roof that is painted red and has a long veranda. There are iron bars across the windows behind which I can see the faint glimmer of mosquito mesh. I can see other pyjama clad inmates roaming about on the veranda. Some are not roaming at all. They are simply standing as if they are waiting for something or somebody.

There is a bed on the veranda but no-one lies on its black striped, piss stained mattress.

There is a smell of boiled cabbage and human shit wafting in the breeze; a smell that not even the scent of the nearby blue gum trees can defeat.

The inmate sitting on the fallen branch is pretending to be a tea-pot.

The game of touch rugby has turned into a brawl, and I watch Meneer Gerber, who teaches Judo, Hygiene, Mathematics, English, Geography, Science and Divinity, weigh in with his cane and the boys, including Pisskop, scatter leaving the main culprit at the mercy of Meneer Gerber. The Culprit tries to get to his feet. Already his nose is bloody. Meneer Gerber gives the Culprit two quick strokes with his cane across the back of his legs and the third somewhere across his spine because he’s trying to turn away and run.

“Are you blerry stupid, man, or what!?” Meneer Gerber shouts at the bloody nosed, now goose-stepping Culprit. “Answer me! Hey!?”

“Nee, Meneer!” (No, Sir)

“You are blerry stupid!”

“Ja, Meneer!” (Yes, Sir)

Meneer Gerber walks away, already reaching for his pipe that he always carries in the pocket of his khaki coloured safari-suit along with a copy of a Superman comic that he reads to himself when he’s meant to be teaching us.

The Culprit wipes his bloody nose and stands alone on the barren playing field. He is rubbing his legs and wincing against the pain of Meneer Gerber’s bamboo cane. Pisskop and the other children have wandered away.

“What the blerry Hell you looking at, Rooinek!?”The Culprit shouts at me.

I look away.

I am a Rooinek, a red neck, because I speak English and during the Boer War all the English were called Rooineks. This is because the African sun burnt their pale skin which was from England, where there is not much sun at all, a rose red.

The inmate has his arms pointed over his head. Slowly he bends from the waist, dips, and pours. In a semi-circle, one cup, then two, then a third and a fourth. Then back to the first cup.

I wonder what blend of tea he thinks he is pouring.

The Novel Two feet

The Bone Traders - notes from a film set.

Notes from a film set:

Many, many full moons ago before the invention/ rude interruption of CGI, I was working as a Second Assistant Director on a sword and sandals, sort of Sci-Fi, sort of Medieval, straight to VHS film. (Long before DVD and iPhone). This cinematic masterpiece will remain nameless to protect the innocent. (For those that are not in the know, the 2nd AD is the fellow you see running amok with a walkie-talkie stuck to his ear and a schedule board glued to his armpit. Amongst his many functions is to co-ordinate cast, extras, never sleep and bare the brunt of all complaints.) 
The palatial(?) set was built on the top of a mine dump. A few hundred steps took you to the top, where the final shot of the day was about to be filmed. Except it was all going astray. The African sky was beyond being tempestuous. Forked lightening marched the horizon. The lighting team was ready to wave the red flag. Lightening doesn't marry well with cables and generators. And the bloody arrow wasn't working. The rig that was to propel the fake arrow (imported from the USA)into our protagonist's neck had the strength of a tired rubber band. The effects team were under the hammer and much verbal abuse to redesign the rig which was now starting to look like a trebuchet.(Nowadays the computer boys will simply animate the arrow but there's no fun in that, is there?) Sarcasm was as rife as the sound of thunder.But that was not the major problem.
Oliver Reed (an actor I will forever hold in high esteem)played the protagonist. He had been kept waiting in his trailer for hours. This you never do to Oliver. If you didn't work him, he sought solace in a bottle. And to top it all, this was to be his last shot of the film. Contractually he had thirty minutes left. Anything after that, he was into Golden Time which meant costing BIG money for the producers. 
Walkie-talkie was incessant.Why aren't you shooting? The arrow isn't working I tell the producers. Shoot without the &*%^(*& arrow. The director wants the arrow. More expletives and I'm told to go and fire the director. Pretend too much static and cannot hear. 
The arrow is tested. It works. Get Oliver. Now. Raindrops begin. Sky is black.

...the nameless film!

Knock on Oliver's trailer. F-off, I'm told. Usual. I can't F-off, Oliver; you have a plane to catch. Get your skinny arse in here. Where's Oliver, asks the W-T?Coming...expletives aimed at me now. Enter Oliver's trailer. Miniature bottles of whiskey lined up like an army. The arrow is ready - we are ready. F-off. My skinny arse is on the line here, Oliver! Good, then drink with me. It's 5 in the afternoon. Okay, then F-off. Where's Oliver? Why aren't you shooting? Expletives. Big grin from Oliver. I drink you climb the stairs? Yes. I drink. Fast. Ready? Have another. Big storm coming, Oliver...please?? DRINK! Golden Time looms...I drink. Fast. Head starts swimming on empty stomach. The F-ing arrow is ready...where is Oliver!? Grinning. Stairs, Oliver..up we go. Skinny arse...move.
Up the stairs I'm carrying the train of his now sodden,dumb costume as rain begins. He's staggering and I'm limping. Crew, camera awaits, arrow is poised. Set is swaying. Reach the pinnacle. Give me the F-ing hat, skinny arse. Hand over hat that looks like head of mutilated ox to Oliver. Hat on. Stand there. Rain. Five minutes till Golden time and Oliver is grinning...arrow ready. 
Roll camera...three,two,one...fire the F-ing arrow...

(..to be continued...)

http://landoflegendslv.com/50gorean/images/book-cover-art/01-tarnsman_of_gor.jpg

The Bone Traders Hovel