Hitting the road is the best way to forget you’re homeless

I confronted him but he just laughed. “You’re not that old,” he said. I wasn’t going to argue with a diamond diver. Especially not when there were slavering hounds straining to be unleashed.

Homeless, I packed my surfboard, pointed my Subaru’s snout eastward and gunned it out of Cape Town. There is something exhilarating about hitting the open road on your own. The fields of whatever that stuff is. The cows waiting patiently for their turn to die. The flashing of speed cameras in every little town. It’s all rather lovely.

Veering off the highway, I penetrated the defences of what appeared to be a city designed by the four architects of the apocalypse. At first glance, I thought I might like Mossel Bay. There is an air of lawlessness to it. But after watching the passing trade I realised it was the kind of lawlessness that descends on a town moments after the zombies have taken to the streets.

The guesthouse has a chiming clock that reminds inmates every fifteen minutes that they are not immortal. It also has one of those weird honour bars that cry out to be abused by the less honourable. “Help yourself to whatever you want,” said the auntie. “Just write it down in the book.” I gave her the lazy eye. “You’ll be needing a bigger book,” I said. I was wrong. What they needed was a bigger fridge. Preferably one that didn’t have the skin of a small wildcat draped over it.

The property rides high on a hill overlooking the wind-ravaged sea. Small boats dart across the bay to the bigger boats, exchanging previously-loved Cambodian whores for sacks of heroin. I am the only guest. There is something very wrong with this picture and I expect I will find out what it is around 3am. My only weapon is a machete but I fear nothing will be sharp enough to cut out the heart of whatever jaded beast feeds off the arcane soul of Mossel Bay.

I woke up alive and got the hell out of town. It’s not a long drive from there to Knysna, but it is crushingly dull. There is nothing but scenery to look at. Rolling hills and farm animals. Mmm, lambs. I pulled off at a roadside stall and stuffed my mouth with as many lamb products as I could find.

The first thing you encounter as you come barreling down the N2 looking for a cold beer to dislodge the lamb knuckle that has become wedged in your esophagus, is a tangled knot of traffic.

Knysna is one of the few coastal towns with a freeway tearing through the middle of it. This means you can sit at a pavement café and wave cheerily at the cattle truck drivers as they escort their terrified passengers to a violent death.

I had booked a place that looked like a tropical paradise on the internet but which, in fact, looked onto a Chinese takeaway and a dangerously disagreeable bar. “This wasn’t in the brochure!” I shouted. “What extraordinary luck!”

I had visions of lying in bed barking commands to a brace of servile factotums who would scurry back and forth, feeding me oyster-flavoured beer, oyster shooters and oyster vermicelli with oyster sauce while scantily clad geishas stood quietly by with the vomit bucket and mopped my fevered brow whenever things became too much.

I took up temporary residence in the bar, where a waitress with a cleft face introduced me to the day’s special – a brandy and coke and four angels on horseback. Angels on horseback? I was smitten. What manner of celestial snack could possibly bear such an exquisite name?

“It’s bacon wrapped around an oyster,” she sighed. “You want some or not?” I pulled up a chair, being careful not to cut myself on the shattered illusions.

Then it was off  to St Francis Bay. The town was named after some dude from the bible who walked around with badgers and wombats on his shoulders. Spoke fluent pigeon. Good for him. Actually, he might not be in the bible.

Given the power failures and state of the roads in the town, you’d think the Kouga municipality was trying to punish the rich white folk who live there. Then I drove past the township and realised that they don’t discriminate at all. They care nothing for everyone equally.

After spotting a polar bear doing laps in the canal outside my bedroom, I repaired to the Breweries where there was less chance of dying of hypothermia. A retired couple took a shine to me and insisted that drinks were on them. I wasn’t complaining. That only started the next day when I had to drive to Jeffreys Bay.

I jumped out of the car in the parking lot overlooking the legendary Supertubes, staggered a few paces and fell over. A dog came up and barked at me. I could barely walk. My right foot felt as if shrapnel was embedded in it. Other surfers were putting on their wetsuits. I went looking for drugs.

For many years, these were easily obtainable in J-Bay. Then the troglodytes descended, with their brutalist architecture and facebrick mentalities and nothing was ever the same again. Now, you have to get your drugs from pharmacies instead of hippies.

The chemist said from the sound of it, I had gout. I laughed and said, “For a minute there, I thought you said I had gout.” Ja, she said, gout. I was outraged. Gout is something from which fat, old, rich men suffer. Could she not tell by the way I was dressed that I wasn’t rich?

“How much did you last have to drink?” she said. An odd question since I was wearing sunglasses and, for all she knew, I was a Jehovah’s Witness on a mission from God. It is, after all, only by the eyes that one can tell someone who is partial to the odd dram, or, in my case, eleventy-nine beers and four tequilas.

I removed my sunglasses and looked her square in the eye. She flinched and handed me a canister of colchicine. If I hoped to surf, I needed to cure my foot and began guzzling the pills the moment I left the shop. The more you take, the better you feel. Isn’t that the rule for pharmaceuticals?

Colchicine works on a different principle. One of the side effects of overdosing is that you swerve violently into a driveway and vomit in someone’s garden. In front of their children. On a Sunday morning.

“It’s gout,” I shouted. I wouldn’t want them thinking I am spreading blackwater fever through the neighbourhood. But I could see they didn’t understand.

My body eventually calmed down enough for me to get into the water. Surfing at J-Bay is to surfers what kissing the pope’s ring is to Catholics, only more hygienic. It’s also the best way to forget that you’re homeless.

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