A Blog That Reads Like Something From The Letters Page/ It's Not On

This morning I was stopped by a traffic officer on the freeway outside Humansdorp. She was a tall woman, wearing a neon orange waist coat over her blue uniform and a smile full of gold teeth. ‘Standard road block,’ she assured me, scanning my wheels for bald edges and scrutinizing my driver’s license photograph.
I knew she’d sting me for the out of date license disk on the windscreen. I’ve avoided replacing it since October, using detours and driving as little as possible. She signaled me out the car by curling her index finger. I nodded, shut the engine off and took a walk with her to the caravan under the bridge.
‘Maneer Truscott, yourrrr dishk is stok oud. I’m afraid you’ve won yourrseylf a little prize to take home. Congratulations.”
I smiled and did a little victory dance. Fair play.

On my way back to the car, I noticed someone else, in a silver corsa bakkie, getting fined. He wouldn’t leave his seat when a mustachioed officer asked him to take the ‘caravan walk’. The officer said the same expired disk shpeel, but the driver was having none of it. He spoke about rights and regulations, to the tune of, ‘I don’t hef to do a balladdi theeng yoo say. Aa’ve got the right to sit here the hol taam. Yoo got mu laaisince, so jist use it to take ma details. Wots so hard aboud that?’

I watched this chap get angrier and angrier about the fine. To get out of it he tried being funny, being nice, then swearing a lot, and finally ended by asking them to understand, ‘like any good Christian would’. I got bored after 20 minutes and drove off before they finished up. Another 15 minutes passed before a silver corsa bakkie shot passed me down the road at about 180km/hr.

Now, hear me out: I’m not saying that I enjoy traffic cops or police having ANY sort of say over my actions— I think HAVING to pay a fee to surf the reserve is heinous enough. The concept of a society watched and monitored by authorities disappoints me. But what I’m talking about has more to do with the public’s response to police and traffic officials.

It’s because of people like the nincompoop in the silver bakkie that we have to play ball and follow the law. He’s the sort of guy that complains about taxis and public transport being dangerous, but drives like a fool himself. There is no ‘special treatment’ when it comes to public safety. Drunk driving is another one. I’ve been very guilty of this MANY times. It’s not on. I hope I get caught if it happens again… no, actually I don’t. But I hope IT doesn’t happen again. Faulty public transport vehicles, reckless speeding, drunk driving, speaking on the cell phone at the wheel; they’re all equally dangerous. All classes are guilty of these crimes at the same time. I’m sick of hearing wealthy people whine about ‘them’ (taxis, buses, people with fake licenses), like they’ve got nothing to feel guilty about it.

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You can probably tell by the length of this blog that the waves are shocking again. I'm sorry if you feel like you've been reading a rediculous letter to the editor about the service you got a Pick 'n Pay last Friday (or something equally petty).

The wind is howling straight east, and its looking to swing offshore by Friday. On the plus side, it’s building the swell quite nicely— kite boarders are probably having a ball at the moment. There’s a great website my cousin Mase put me on to a while ago, called windguru.com. It’s marvelous. They give you wind direction, swell period, size and direction for a week in advance.