Spud - Learning to Fly

by John van de Ruit

  15:00 As soon as Mom left, Wombat turned into Gollum and accused me of coming round to steal her money. My grandmother also announced that my pimples looked revolting, and that I was eating far too many sweets. She then charged off to hide the sugar.

  15:05 After hiding the sugar bowl and padlocking the fridge, Wombat became strangely pleasant again and we sat down to a long afternoon of tea and boudoir biscuits. I talked about school and Wombat prattled on about the war.

  16:00 Made a gruesome find under my bed. A disgusting plate of fried fish, tinned peas and mashed potato – Wombat said it was my dinner and ushered me into her bedroom to demonstrate an identical plate lying in wait under her double bed. (?)

  16:15 The phone rang and Wombat rushed through to my room to say that Graeme Pollock was on the phone. It was just Dad playing nasty tricks on Wombat – he says it’s one of life’s great pleasures. Once my father had finished his snorting and sniggering, he said he’d organised a braai at Frank’s on Saturday night and then a game of golf on Sunday afternoon to save me from the Wicked Wombat of the West.

  16:30 My grandmother set off to buy the evening paper, brandishing a very long walking stick. She then made it very clear that when she returned she needed absolute silence because she had to listen to the news, weather, and shipping forecast on the radio. I didn’t argue and was just relieved to be alone.

  16:50 Wombat returned from her walk with neither her walking stick nor the evening paper. I offered to run back to the shop to buy her paper and find her stick, but Wombat brought up my ‘drinking problem’ and said I couldn’t be trusted with her newspaper money.

  16:55 Wombat set off again, this time armed with a yellow umbrella.

  17:30 I began to worry that Wombat was either lost or arrested. I thought about calling Mom but decided against it, thinking it would only drive her into a panic.

  I really don’t think Wombat should be living alone.

  17:45 As I stepped into the bath there was a loud knock on the door. I then had to step out of the bath, dry myself, and get back into my school pants and shirt. The knocking became loud banging and general shouting. I eventually opened the door to a bald eighty-five-year-old man brandishing a bread knife. Behind him stood a large crowd of old ladies, including Wombat, who pointed at me with her umbrella and walking stick and cried, ‘That’s the rapscallion! I heard him using up my bathwater!’

  The old man with the knife demanded my name. When I said it was John Milton he immediately looked suspicious. Another old duck glared at me and said, ‘They all operate under assumed names these days.’ Another old geezer wearing a cream safari suit joined the geriatric lynch mob and suggested the block should hire armed security men to keep the riff-raff out. His name was Mr Jeffreys and everyone agreed with him.

  Thankfully, a woman about Mom’s age burst through the crowd and screeched, ‘Oh, look, it’s John Milton.’ The crowd began muttering among themselves, unsure what this latest development meant. The woman shook my hand and explained to everyone that I was Wombat’s grandson and that she knew Mom. Another old lady said, ‘Oh, he’s the one at the posh school with the beautiful singing voice.’

  Wombat stepped forward as if seeing me for the first time and screeched:

  ‘It’s David!’

  The old man with the knife kept his weapon raised and seemed to be getting a little hot under the collar. He looked at me savagely and barked, ‘Which is it, sonny – David or John Milton?’ I told him David was my middle name. Suddenly everyone broke into a cheer and began introducing everyone else to me. I felt like the prodigal son returning from years marauding around the desert on a camel. Turns out, the old guy with the knife is the block supervisor Buster Cracknell whom Wombat accused of yoghurt theft in 1990.

  Then an old lady demanded that I sing a hymn. Everyone cheered and excitedly stepped forward to hear me let rip. I tried to explain to the old bat that my voice had broken and that I was no longer a singer but the growing crowd of geriatrics refused to let me go until I had given them a performance.

  Jerusalem reverberated around the foyer and my voice sounded pretty impressive. Not quite up to pre ball-drop standards but solid enough to avoid disgrace. Soon the oldies joined in a rousing double chorus followed by applause and more handshakes. There were loud calls for a second hymn but Wombat chased everyone away because she said she was about to miss her beloved six o’clock news.

  Once inside the flat, Wombat carefully locked her security gates before turning on me with tears flooding her eyes. ‘David,’ she gasped, ‘I wish somebody had warned me. I’m old now – it’s not fair of you and your mother to surprise me like that.’ Then the sound of the news pips could be heard from Wombat’s radio in her bedroom. Her eyes lit up and she stormed into her room before cranking up her news to a deafening volume.

  I’m blaming too many news bulletins for my grandmother’s dementia. It can’t be healthy to be confronted with so much bad news on a daily basis.

  18:15 After listening to the news, weather, shipping forecast and a dreary tune played on a tuba by a man called Nigel Galleon, Wombat re-emerged in an electric blue ball gown. She poured us both a whiskey and soda without asking if I even wanted one. She reclined in her armchair, took a great gulp of whiskey and began telling me once again how she met Winston Churchill. She went on for ages about the twinkle in his eye and how the prime minister had winked at her and complimented her dress. Wombat looked at me with a cunning smile on her face and said that the only way to win over a girl’s heart is to smoke a cigar and never leave home without a stiff collar and tie. She tapped her whiskey coaster with her fingernail and said, ‘It’s very manly to smoke.’

  The night wore on and Wombat’s whiskeys made me feel light-headed.

  19:56 My grandmother places the radio on a stool in front of us.

  19:57 Wombat and I fetch our cold fish in unison and then sit down in front of the radio waiting for eight o’clock.

  19:59 Wombat says an emotional grace.

  20:00 Nibble a dinner of cold fish, mash and tinned peas while listening to the news.

  20:15 After the news, weather and financial indicators Wombat cleared the plates, told me it was bedtime, and began switching off the lamps.

  20:30 While Wombat’s radio droned on in the background, I settled into my grandfather’s bed with On the Road. It’s set in America in the 1950s. The main character hooks up with a wild bunch of mates and hitches his way across America and back. Kerouac’s world suddenly felt a long way from the one I’m living.

  I’d take drifting around America like a bum over a life of cold fish and shipping forecasts.

  Saturday 29th February

  4:30 Awoken by the nasty smell of Wombat frying fish in the kitchen. Buried my head under the pillow but could still smell it.

  6:00 Wombat woke me up with a screechy, ‘Rise and shine, David!’ She placed a cup of tea on my bedside table and ordered me to bathe. The smell of fried fish was still everywhere.

  7:15 Leisurely stroll up and down Musgrave Road.

  7:55 Return from walk in time for eight o’clock news, weather and shipping report.

  8:15 Breakfast. Two grapefruits and another cup of tea. No wonder Wombat is so desperately thin and yellow!

  9:00 After breakfast Wombat called for absolute silence while she went over her daily finances.

  10:00 Dad picked me up and together we sped off to visit Blacky at the kennels. Dad said that a worried woman from the kennels phoned this morning to say that Blacky has become incredibly stressed and appeared to be eating his front right paw. My father reckons Blacky is neurotic. He shook his head in wonder and said, ‘Buggered if I know where he gets it from.’

  Poor Blacky looked terrible, curled up at the far end of his cage. His big brown eyes were downcast and he shrank away from the other dogs that barked and yapped incessantly in the cages around him. When Blacky noticed us at the gate of his cage he leapt up and charged towards us. He then started whimpering desperately
while licking Dad’s face through the mesh wire. The woman in charge was wearing blue rugby shorts and didn’t look very impressed when Dad began to get emotional. She said that animals can sense our emotions and that the personality of the dog often takes on that of its owner. Dad sensed that the woman with the rugby shorts was calling him a nutcase so he told her that I was Blacky’s owner and that I had a drinking problem. The woman in the blue rugby shorts looked even less impressed and gave us both a stern lecture about taking proper care of dogs.

  Eventually, we had to force Blacky back into his cage. The cretinous animal wouldn’t walk on its own so Dad had to carry it back into its terrible concrete home. Dad promised Blacky he would be out by Wednesday at the latest but the poor animal didn’t understand and curled itself back into a ball and whimpered sadly. Dad tried to cheer Blacky up with some loud whoops and shouts but only succeeded in creating chaos with Blacky’s fellow inmates. The woman in the blue rugby shorts stormed back out of her house to see what the commotion was all about but Dad and I were already in the station wagon screeching down the driveway, leaving a huge cloud of red dust behind us.

  When I told Dad about what Wombat was feeding me, he shouted, As mean as bloody cat shit – even to her own bloody grandson!’ He then did a dangerous u-turn in heavy traffic and tore off in the opposite direction.

  10:45 Once seated at the Wimpy, my father called the head waiter over and ordered me the biggest fried breakfast on the menu. He ordered himself a Castle Lager.

  10:48 Dad drained his beer and called the waiter over again. He ordered another beer and demanded to know why the breakfast was taking so long. The waiter scampered off to the kitchen looking concerned.

  By the time my food arrived, Dad was so ravenous that he ate most of my bacon, sausages and fries while telling me a series of stories about Uncle Aubrey’s disastrous fishing trip to Coffee Bay. I had to eat faster and faster because Dad kept plunging his fork into my plate and wolfing down whatever he stole at top speed.

  17:00 FRANK’S BRAAI

  Dad and I arrived to find Mom and Frank’s girlfriend Shannon in the kitchen making salads together. The atmosphere was very awkward and they didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. Obviously Shannon knew about Mom’s poor cooking skills and relegated my mother to washing lettuce.

  Hysterical laughter from the braai outside meant that Frank was up to his practical jokes again. I stepped out of the kitchen to witness Frank parading a new cooking apron while my father rolled around on the grass in hysterics.

  The apron read:

  WARNING!!! SIZZLING BOEREWORS READY TO SPIT!

  Underneath the inscription was a phallic arrow pointing towards Frank’s crotch.

  Frank poured us all champagne and made a toast to Shannon, whom he called his ‘Little Squirrel’. Shannon turned twenty on Thursday. Frank placed his arm around her but she didn’t seem to be very affectionate and wriggled free of his grasp. He then tried to kiss her but she turned her face to one side before walking back into the kitchen.

  What followed was a terrible silence. Dad’s eyes were darting dangerously from side to side as he desperately racked his brains for something to say. He finally came out with, ‘It’s been dry, hey?’ My father’s eyes then darted from Mom to Frank and then back to Mom again.

  ‘Hell of a thing,’ said Dad in conclusion.

  The evening went from bad to worse when a flaming red Mazda 323 zoomed up the driveway and came to a halt on the grass next to the braai. Shannon strode out the kitchen door looking incredibly sexy in tight jeans and high heels. Dad, who was desperately trying to get the party back on track, let rip with a loud wolf whistle. Nobody saw the funny side so Dad darted into the kitchen saying he needed a pee.

  Frank and Shannon then had an embarrassing argument right in front of Mom and me. Shannon said she wanted to go out with her friends to celebrate her birthday. Frank refused and then tried to compromise by inviting the crowd in the Mazda to join the braai. A guy with spiky hair in the passenger seat snorted at Frank’s invitation and said, ‘Nought, dude – this is an old ballie gathering. No offence.’ He then banged his hand on the roof and shouted, ‘Come on, Shanny, let’s hit the road!’

  Frank wasn’t the same after Shannon left. He didn’t even make any more raw jokes. He drank heavily and repeatedly looked at his watch. Every twenty minutes or so, he would slip inside to check if there were any messages on his answering machine.

  Sunday 1st March

  6:00 Tea

  7:00 News, weather, financial indicators

  7:15 Walk

  7:45 Breakfast

  8:00 News, weather, shipping forecast

  9:00 Eucharist at St Thomas’ Anglican Church

  Oh, and how is it that Wombat knows every single word in the Anglican prayer book but can’t even remember my name?

  11:06 GOLF

  I’m really not looking forward to the father and son golf day. If today’s performance is anything to go by, the Miltons will be humiliated. I shot 128 and Dad, after boasting on the first tee that he was going to take the course apart, ended up carding a whopping 141 shots. Dad’s round included twelve lost balls and an eighteen on a par three where he hit six consecutive shots into the swamp. Frank laughed so much that he had to wait five minutes before teeing off because he said he’d lost all strength in his arms.

  The good news is that I now have my very own golf bag and set of clubs. The bad news is that they belonged to an old geezer who died last month. Even creepier news is he had a heart attack on the 8th green of his local golf course. This means he died holding his putter …

  Monday 2nd March

  I’ve never felt so happy to pack my bags and dress in my school uniform before. The long bus trip back to school was an absolute pleasure. I played U2’s new beast Achtung Baby twice through as the evening became night and the orange sky changed to navy blue. Sawing guitars shredded my ears as headlights and mad visions flashed by. Spud Milton on the road again …

  You’re dangerous because you’re honest.

  You’re dangerous; you don’t know what you want.

  WEEKEND SCORECARD

  SIMON Went to Mala Mala game lodge where a huge male lion slashed on his dad’s car bumper.

  VERN Dug a hole. (?)

  BOGGO Read a box of his mom’s old Cosmo magazines and says he’s (again) cracked the code to scoring chicks once and for all. (Yawn)

  SPUD Dodgy Wombat weekend and his first ever round of golf.

  GARLIC Went back to Malawi to see his parents and thankfully didn’t have time to get to the lake.

  FATTY Visited his grandfather in Port Shepstone. Fatty says his granddad eats more than he does but is as thin as a rake.

  RAMBO Joined a gym and allegedly had sex in the toilets with a gym instructor.

  Simon and Rambo weren’t very impressed with my golf clubs. Simon said they were so last century, and that if my golf was as bad as my cricket then I might as well quit before I embarrass myself. Fatty was most interested to hear that the previous owner had died on the golf course. He closely sniffed my putter before declaring that it reeked of death and was most probably haunted by the geezer’s ghost. Let’s just hope he was a decent putter.

  Tomorrow is the Shrove Tuesday pancake race around the cloisters. Our house team hasn’t been announced yet although Rambo’s already begun warming up. He stole the frying pan from the prefects’ kitchen and spent the entire evening flipping a slice of bread high in the air and catching it in the pan.

  Tuesday 3rd March

  HOUSE PANCAKE TEAM

  Viking

  Meany Dlamini

  Rambo

  Spike

  Sidewinder

  We ran in a close second behind King House although we were later disqualified because it was judged that Viking deliberately shoulder charged a first year from Barnes House. Viking was furious about the decision and called it a miscarriage of justice. From where I was standing the collision looked deliberate –
particularly the way the first year flew into the wall at right angles to where he was running. The first year knocked a tooth out in his violent collision with the library door and had to be taken to the sanatorium. Viking refused to apologise.

  Wednesday 4th March

  Because it’s Ash Wednesday our confirmation class became a bizarre hour of watching Reverend Bishop chanting in Latin. Vern, who was desperately keen to get involved in the ceremony, began chanting along with the chaplain in complete gibberish. Vern’s fake Latin didn’t fool anyone, and the chaplain asked him to pray without speaking.

  After an eternity of chanting and prayer, Reverend Bishop made a cross of ash on each of our foreheads as a commitment to Christ and a celebration of Lent. Vern then spread the ash all over his face and ended up looking like a coal miner.

  12:00 Lennox’s History classroom has been stripped, painted and emptied. Apparently the school has decided to turn it into the new computer room. Lennox called it ‘a forced removal’ and he taught our lesson under a tree as a sign of protest.

  Fatty reckons computers are about to take over the world. He also reckons it’s already illegal in Japan to vote in elections unless you have your own computer and printer.

  Thursday 5th March

  The new computers arrived after breakfast. A group of workmen dressed in white lab coats and gloves carried them through the quad to the computer room. Fatty said the reason the delivery company had to wear special suits is because the computers contain dangerous gamma rays that can cause brain tumours if handled incorrectly. Vern wasn’t impressed with the arrival of the computers and slunk around the cloisters making notes and drawing pictures in his notebook.

  Saturday 7th March