Out to lunchConfessions of a drunken driver |
David Bullard reflects on the days when he couldn’t even remember driving home.
JOHANNESBURG - A few readers of last week's article got a little upset at my comment that I used an air gun to maim small animals when I was a boy. One rather hectoring e-mail told me that this was nothing to be proud of. And obviously I'm not proud. I was aiming to kill the small animals and not to maim them and either I was a bad shot or the velocity of my air rifle wasn't up to the task. Just to put your minds at rest though. Any animals I maimed were quickly dispatched with a shovel and no hedgehogs were ever hurt because they were too slow to be considered sport.
Something else I'm not proud of but had to do because it was part of growing up was driving drunk. And I don't mean over the limit. I mean stinking, rotten drunk. The sort of drunk where a two lane road blurs into an eight lane highway, even when you close one eye. I used to occasionally play cricket with a wandering university team in West Sussex. In those days the place was full of real pubs serving decent beer and good bar snacks. We played a game near Midhurst one weekend and Ian Paice, Deep Purple's drummer was playing for the opposing team. So we had a few in the pub to get to know one another before the game and then had quite a few more after the game. Then we all got in our cars and drove slowly home. It was a normal weekend ritual and the village policeman would often be in the pub with you.
I used to stay with a school friend of mine in Graffham and we would try and visit as many pubs as possible on a Saturday night. To avoid wasting drinking time we would take a half pint each in the car while we were driving to the next pub. We would have a couple of pints at the Foresters at opening time, a couple more at the White Horse, then we would drive to the Three Moles for more beer, a drunken sing song and some whisky and then back to the Foresters for a nightcap and a puke. It was wild hooligan fun and if we'd been from a council estate we would have been called "young hoodlums" by the courts but because we had all gone to expensive schools and had parents who were respected in the community we were referred to as "young men in high spirits".
Every so often we were so pissed that we lost control of a car and crashed into a farm gate. One mate borrowed his father's 3l Ford Capri and we managed to land that in a ditch in Devon. It needed a tractor to pull it out. Fortunately we crashed quite near a pub called the Digger's Rest so we got out of our skulls there and cadged a lift back to our digs with a fairly sober bloke who had only had seven pints of lager.
I've had evenings when I couldn't remember driving home. I've woken in the morning and rushed down to see what damage has been done to the car. But there it has been, perfectly parked in the garage with not a scratch. How it got there safely heaven knows. If I'd hit something I would never have known. I knew a bloke at the JSE who would get trashed and then drive back to his home in Pretoria. Legend has it that his party trick was to set the car on cruise control, open the sun roof of his Mercedes and then sit on the roof of the car steering with his feet at 120km/h. This probably wouldn't amuse the JMPD.
I mention these dreadful deeds because they are all in the past. I am staggered to still be alive and even more staggered never to have been arrested for drunken driving. I now take the sensible view that my luck is about to run out which is why I have no intention of being picked up by the local police with more than 0.024 of alcohol in my blood. I am delighted to learn there is going to be a crackdown over the Christmas season in Joburg because I really don't want to be wiped out by a drunkard driving on the wrong side of the road. Having been a frequently drunk driver in the past I shudder to think what would have happened to my life if I had ever hit a pedestrian. So these days I am driven or I use a taxi service and very occasionally I stay over if I am at a boozy function.
My only questions on this new drive for sobriety are these. Will it be possible to bribe the cops and will this apply to black drunken drivers in crappy cars? If it's possible to bribe a cop then not wanting to go to prison and possibly even lose your job is worth a lot of money. So let's hope the cops have been carefully chosen or this could turn out to just be another redistribution of wealth racket. I ask the question of equality before the law because the police do seem to target vehicles that suggest the inhabitants may have full wallets. Most of the cars I find weaving around the roads late at night and obviously driven by drunks are missing lights and held together by masking tape. It would be comforting to know that this is about enforcing the law and not about boosting a cop's personal coffers.
There is a downside to this welcome clampdown. According to Transport Spokesman Logan Maistry, you can also be arrested for drunken walking which strikes me as a bit draconian. If I choose to drink too much and responsibly decide not to drive I don't want PC Plod nicking me for walking home and being drunk in charge of a pair of legs. If I'm walking in the middle of a busy road singing rude songs then maybe I deserve to be arrested but if I'm staggering home on a pavement and bothering nobody then leave me alone please.
All of this may make life rather difficult for the bibulous editor of a well known Sunday newspaper and his cronies. Rumour has it that they are burrowing a tunnel through to Katzy's bar from 4 Biermann Avenue to avoid being arrested for drunken walking. That way they can reach their luxury cars in safety and then drive home as normal.
Click here to view more of David Bullard's bloody dangerous articles
*After 24 years as a trader in the global financial markets David Bullard decided to opt for an easy life and became a journalist. His iconic "Out to Lunch" column has been running for 15 years and is as offensive as ever. Not that he gives a damn...
Write to David Bullard: davidbullard@moneyweb.co.za
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