Peter Wilhelm pulls a ‘Grexit’ from the Mount Nelson – ‘ATM swallows debt card’
By Peter Wilhelm
Curse this Grexit rubbish! Suddenly the word is on everyone's tongue, like a liquorice allsorts in parallel veins of pink and green that stick to the caverns of your mouth to certify you will be regarded as a gatgawie should you gob it onto the pavement where bare-footed joggers normally keep their dog faeces and multiple bacterial infections.
It's one of those words, such as "redux", that no-one actually grasps but which you use over high tea at the Mount Nelson lest others smirk silently and wonder where the mouldy hole in which you live is located.
However, state boldly: "This Grexit bollocks is like, so 20th Century it's almost redux – like a new Harry Potter novel …'' and your table will collectively bubble nostrils in their Golden Monkey Tea, each leaf and bud is hand-plucked, dried and fired by skilled artisans. Dredging up an archaic word puts you on the side of the opinionistas who mould what passes for thought in aerated city gardens.
Of course, having said that, I excused myself (never to return for reasons I will shortly reveal) and traversed the colonial recesses of the hostelry to sniff my way home where I could Google "redux" and relax with my feline companion, Puddentat, and a beaker of lemon-flavoured ethanol. I had accomplished my first mission: to test whether I could achieve my own Grexit.
Repetitive criticism and disdain has flooded my gall bladder – or whichever organ is copious in its production of nausea. At times I have even considered a cholecystectomy (got you there!), but if you began the systematic removal of all bodily appendages that seem to serve no purpose, or are ill-designed, one would soon need a whole-body transplant. It could go wrong and you would end up with arms like tattooed jail dragons.
Nonetheless, declaring my unique exit from (a) either the human race or our beloved Zumocracy (or both), should suffice to get me on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah once Jon Stewart has left to do voiceovers for the Teletubbies. That makes you a celebrity and assorted wingnuts pay you to escort them to the nearest Automobile Association, even if once there you are asked to affirm that you are powerless over alcohol.
My Grexit kicked in when I shuffled to the nearest ATM only find it wouldn't babble and squeak and grind out those essential banknotes. Instead a message flashed on its screen: "LISTEN SCHMUCK, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY LEFT AT ALL." My credit (actually, debt) card was rudely snarfed by the machine and I found myself standing at the vibrant intersection of Rouwkoop Road and Myrtle Alley selling blow-up purple dinosaurs for a bread and slap-chips sandwich. At nightfall I crept to my secret burrow where I live with Puddentat, fed her a chip, and read the evening paper.
On the front page of this door-to-door Caxton rag was the inaccurate and dismaying legend: "No load-shedding 02:30-04:00." The sooner we get the second-hand Rosatom Chernobyl on top of Table Mountain the better. You'd think we were living in Pyongyang rather than (as the travel advertisers put it) "The Bar-Stool & Mariners' Pole-Dancing Emporium" of the gilded Cape.
The main headline of this free carrier of advertorial told me, "GOGO WINS CELLPHONE IN SPAR BAKED BEANS LOTTERY." I went to bed.
Long before dawn, even as the pterodactyls had begun their hideous mating cries and swooping to snatch up wheedling poodles from the manicured grasslands of Constantia, I was awoken by a sinister grating noise. It was two uniformed men armed with grenade-launchers who had come to seize my ancestral rubbish bin (undisturbed since 1895) in terms of a Sherriff's Warrant decreeing that my service was terminated with immediate effect.
"Hold your hands over your head!" one rasped. "Any anti-social twitches and we can take you out." I complied. Later my bunker was stripped and my archive of Cliff Richard Christmas songs puzzled over.
Say what you like about the Greeks, they have a working democracy whereby winners of elections are held to their promises. Strengthened by millennia of combat, they know what to do about Teutonic mini-Führers; upper-class Soviet spies in elegant positions in Parliament, the armed forces, and the judiciary; and Spanish bravos who stick pikes and stuff into helpless animals.
Their heroism was recorded in the Iliad, also the first romance in the Mills & Boon franchise of bodice-rippers. Yes, they spent tonnages of money they didn't have (we all do) but remember: they gave the world taramosalata, fried squid and octopus, and snails in tomato sauce.
So that's why I crept away from the Mount Nelson after my tea. Default means never have to pay for anything again. They have the memory of my wise observations on Grexit to rave on about. Puddentat agrees.