The Chipniks of mirth and destiny

When you’ve lived in the same city for many years, as I have, you eventually find yourself surrounded by places that trigger some of the most exquisite memories. And because we spend so much of our time in Johannesburg travelling, we are constantly greeted by these living monuments to our past exploits.

Perhaps when we move here, Joburg is a city of possibility, a blank slate, that we are thrilled to be populating. Over time, as we inscribe that slate with experiences and achievements, a few spectacular failures and some events of indeterminate meaning, the city changes.

It becomes a city of memories.

Sure, there are still opportunities and mysterious possibilities lurking within Jozi’s sprawling infrastructure, but they must compete in our psychic space with the past moments of our legendary lives.

Those memories can be triggered by driving past your old digs in Melville, where they came back three times before eventually managing to steal your car properly. The Magic Centre, where you streaked around the block at high noon. A glimpse of the route you ran when you qualified for Comrades. The aptly defined paintball range, where John Vlismas shot you in the scrotum…

There is no shortage of assets in this massive memory bank that we inhabit. Every one tells stories on different levels. Here you were on your way up, young, brave and entitled. There you ran out of luck. There, you were staging a comeback. There, fortune smiled upon you…

One of my personal little memory triggers is an unremarkable place: the Total petrol station on William Nicol Drive. You know the one. If you turn north out of Sandton Drive, the Total will be there on your left as you head up towards Randburg. That one.

It’s strange why it triggers such nostalgia in me, because not much has happened there. It has an above-average convenience store, friendly staff, and a good location. One time I had a sweet party there with some strangers, as we sought refuge from a roadblock just over the hill.

But the real trigger for me is that the William Nicol Total reminds me of a perfect time of my life. A time where my modest ascent up the job ladder was balanced by a wide-open future of possibility.

The circumstances were these: I had started a job at recently disowned men’s bikini magazine FHM. In those days in the noughties, gender politics had not yet occurred to me, and I was blissfully looking forward to a life of photographing scantily clad models on tropical beaches around the world. Bizarrely, the latter fantasy would actually come to pass.

But at the time, that was only a speculative possibility. In the meantime, I was a mere staff member, and I was on my way to my first “stunt shoot” for the magazine. It was to be a pool party, complete with assorted blokey challenges, and three aspiring bikini models. There was one Lee-Ann Liebenberg among them, and her prospects looked promising, as prospects tend to do.

The shoot was in Randburg somewhere, so I was heading that way, when I stopped at the Total convenience store for supplies. Specifically, a large bag of Chipniks, a Nosh and an Energade.

I was heading off to an afternoon of stunts by the pool with a bevy of bikini models. I was headed for a career as an executive in the glamour industry. I was single!

Like I say, life was in a decent space. This must have been visible from the very glow of my aura, because I remember the man behind the till even remarked on it. He said, “Wow! You look really happy!”

He was right too. I was happy. I was kind of thrilled with life at that point. Looking back, this has given me a better understanding of what really informs happiness. My insight is this: Happiness is not really about what has gone before, or where we are now. I was living in a granny flat in Melville, and skollies kept trying to steal my car!

But no matter, because happiness is really about the future. It’s about possibility, opportunities. For me, happiness is about hope. At that point in my life, when I pulled into the garage on my way to a bikini party. I had hope and optimism.

And that’s what I’m reminded of, every time I drive past that Total. That was the happiest I ever was in my life. Buying Chipniks at a petrol station.

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