Lekker party in a fuel queue
Another bad start to a day… I was in a peaceful sleep when I was shattered awake by the persistant ringing of the phone. I fumbled around, disoriented. I tried to switch off the alarm clock, but it wouldn’t stop. I finally shook my head clear enough to realise that the phone was the culprit for my rude awakening. I reached for the phone, glancing at the bedside clock - 5.30 in the morning. Someone was phoning me at 5.30 on a Saturday morning! Sacriledge! Saturday is the only day I get a lie-in. This had better be good I thought to myself. I had just ended one of the worst weeks I could remember, with problems taking turns to crawl out of every corner just when I thought I had got on top of the last one, and overtime - lots of overtime! Thoughts of road rage flashed though my mind - no! Not my Saturday morning lie in! No! I’m not going to give it up! Just then my thoughts crashed into an unruly heap. An emergency? Nerves jangled - it could only be an emergency! Why else would someone disturb my lie-in? Steeling myself for the bad news, I reluctantly I lifted the receiver to my ear. I tried to say “Hello”, but a knot in my still sleep-dead tongue made it come out more like “hurrgo”.
“Hi Peter! It’s Jamie here!” came an excited voice almost drowned out by the background noise of what sounded like a disco. Jamie? Who the hell was Jamie? “Jamie who?” I grunted, relief swiftly being replaced by rapidly deteriorating annoyance. “Jamie Smith of course” came the undaunted reply (Jamie works with me), “I’m in a fuel queue, isn’t that great! I think I’m going to get petrol!”
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br />My mind reeled - was it just me, or was Jamie missing something here? Something like his sanity? I know things are pretty bad in Zim at this stage, but wasn’t disturbing people’s hard-earned Saturday morning lie-in pushing it a bit too hard?
“Yah, its really cool here! Me and a couple of the ownes got a call about five to say that Burnside Garage was getting petrol again today. So we rushed here and we’re ONLY fifty-three cars from the front!”, he breezed on with continued enthusiasm.
“Mike’s here with his lekker new stereo and we’re pumping the vibes!” So that was the source of the constant thudding in the background. “Come and join us - we’ve got plenty beers and we can get petrol too!”. He’s lost it - that was all I could think, he’s finally lost it! I should have never have made him do overtime. I should have let him go home earlier this last week - these kids need their sleep - not like us seasoned adults. “No thanks Jamie, I’ll pass this time. I’ve got some petrol still (and if I haven’t, I’ll just walk to work, I thought to myself). See you at work on Monday”. “Okay cool, Pete - see you then - but you’re missing a lekker party!” said Jamie, and he hung up.
Yeah - like a hole in the head I thought, as I put the receiver down. What was it with these kids? Did they not realise how serious the situation was in Zim. Sitting in a petrol queue at 5.30 on a Saturday morning drinking beer, with a stereo almost blowing the windows out of a pulsating car, in the middle of a (normally) quiet residential area - someone was likely to set their dogs on them! Oh heck - my age is really beginning to show. Then the phone rang again. In a flash, I had the receiver to my ear. “No, Jamie, you can’t have Monday off!”, I growled. “Aaag Pete, man, but that’s so unfair”, Jamie said, to howls of laughter in the background. No doubt his (as yet) unemployed mates had put him up to it. “But I’ll be so tired from sitting in a queue!”. “So sad Jamie”, I replied “See you Monday 8 o’clock sharp” and put the phone down. Nope - I wasn’t guilty about the overtime issue any more!
So - back to my thoughts about my shattered Saturday morning lie-in! Burnside Garage! The name awakened my thoughts of sitting in one of those fuel queues a couple of weeks ago. I know what! I now know where he lives! I’ll write him an anonymous note complaining that he doesn’t keep his customers quiet! Laughable to us, yes, but worth a few blood pressure points to an idiot like him! Now I was feeling better, and I rolled over and went to sleep.
That’s the problem with Zim today - nobody has any respect for anyone else. No, I will not sink to generalisations! Not nobody - but distressingly few people - care, or show respect for anyone else. It’s just another aspect of the corruption that the zanupf regime has deliberately forced into the local culture, and it is so easy to succumb to. But I will continue to fight it! Just please ……. don’t phone me early on a Saturday morning!
