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Welcome readers,
Aren't you glad you opened the door and ventured inside? Many thanks to Johannes Wessmark for being the featured artist this month and having his work adorn the cover of this issue of Round the Bend ... it's a visual and auditory dream. Enjoy the ride.
A particular ride I remember from my young days, that was far less enjoyable, was during a camping holiday in Hermanus. One of my friends, trying his best to impress a blonde German tourist, let her drive his new company bakkie in search of late night Irish coffees. You can see from the cosmopolitan mix of ethnicities that problems were destined to occur. Well, fräulein blonde did mention to Reggie that she was practising for her driver's licence in Germany. Reggie, having his judgement impaired by the foxy fräulein's form and a teardrop bottle of cheap rosé he got everyone to club together and buy for her, let her get behind the wheel of his brand new company bakkie. Fräulein, Reggie, Russell and I all sardined ourselves onto the bench seat of the bakkie and off we went, destined for Irish coffee comfort.
It didn't take fräulein tight jeans long to start enjoying the complete driving experience and shift the vehicle effortlessly into third gear. It was in this specific gear we learnt that German girls get very tense if they go above 60 km/h. Fräulein blonde then jammed her foot down on the accelerator in rigid fear and the gleaming company bakkie sped headlong towards the 90 degree turn that can still be found in Hermanus today. If perchance you are driving in that particular neck of the woods, missing that 90 degree turn will take you directly through a flowerbed fringed with large white boulders and then into dense
indiginous bush that is hardy and gnarled, to say the least. We took the straight route and the only reason the bakkie actually came to a halt was because the trees that the vehicle had mowed down, lifted the bakkie clean off its wheels. Fräulein tight jeans still had her foot firmly depressed on the accelerator pedal and this added certain big screen movie appeal to the accident when the spinning bakkie wheels came into contact with the branches below and produced voluminous clouds of acrid smoke. Move over Stephan von Spielenberger!
Eventually, Reggie managed to yank the fräulein's leg off the accelerator and the four of us sat quietly, gently feeling to see if our limbs were still intact, while firmly embedded in the bush. I'm not sure if Reggie ever hooked up with the German stock car queen, but his manager's reaction to the irrepairably scratched paintwork on the once new bakkie would have been sufficient to negate any nookey he might have benefitted from. The point? Well, don't go to Pizzabos campsite, if it's still there. Don't wine and dine a blonde German tourist with a cheap bottle of rosé and definitely don't allow her to drive when you go in search of Irish coffees after midnight.
Below is a pic I snipped from Google Earth of the crime scene and nearly 30 years later, it looks very much the same. Okay, the bakkie was towed out of the bushes, the bushes have grown back and the boulders reset in the flowerbed, but other than that, it's just the same, sans fräulein stock car girl. Those were the days! That fräulein certainly had an aversion to Round the Bend.
That's all from the engine room. See you in July!
vehicle direction
dense bush & trees
90 degree turn
Stuart Reichardt