Book Excerpt: Pops and the Nearly Dead by Edyth Bulbring
BOOK SA is pleased to bring you this excerpt from Edyth Bulbring‘s latest youth offering, Pops and the Nearly Dead – a book whose blurb makes judicious use of the emoticon:
When I told my two best friends that I’d be spending three months with my grandfather at a retirement village in Port Elizabeth, they said there was no ways I’d survive the boredom. Not in a million years.
Themba said it sounded worse than being sentenced to life in a monastery without his stash of naughty mags.
And Buster said that even James Bond couldn’t have survived this kind of torture – and we all know what happened to his goolies in Casino Royale.
But Themba and Buster didn’t know anything about my crazy grandfather Pops – who isn’t boring at all – or the weird stuff that was going to happen to him.
And they hadn’t met Regina Versagel – a girl who may or may not wear black knickers.
Get to know Randolph St John Goodenough and his world of ultimately-surmountable obstacles (one hopes) a little better:
* * * * * * * *
My father says that a chap has to be an expert at something. He says that being a kind of general knowledge all-rounder just means that you land up not knowing very much about anything.
Take my friend Buster, for example. His specialty is James Bond – the movies, not the books. Buster’s a bit dense when it comes to the written word, but you can ask him absolutely anything about Bond Movies and he can tell you. And apart from this fantastic knowledge, he also has sound opinions on the topic – opinions that you would feel confident adopting as your own if you were in a conversation with members of the opposite sex and wanted to sound interesting.
Buster knows which of the Bond girls is the hottest. It’s Halle Berry, of course – except Buster pronounces it like Hell and not so that it rhymes with Sally. It’s the cool way to say it. People who are intimate with Halle say it like this, Buster says. He’ll tell you she’s the hottest – at least once a week. ‘Halle is the hottest,’ he’ll say – which is quite funny when you first hear him say it, or say it out aloud yourself, but not every week.
And Buster holds the view that the latest Bond guy is the best. I’m of two minds about this. I wasn’t crazy about the powder-blue swimming trunks in Casino Royale. Not the cut you understand – that was just fine for a guy who packs a healthy lunch box – it was the colour I found a bit dodgy. That’s not to say I’m a Roger Moore or Sean Connery fan. They were both a bit crumbly at the edges towards the end, and Roger’s gums were in a bad way – a complete age give-away (like in an old dog).
I’m grateful to Buster. Because of him, I can hold my own in any conversation about Bond Movies and sound like I really know what I’m talking about. Chicks go crazy for guys who can converse. Absolutely crazy. I know this from this other guy, Themba. He’s the expert on All Matters Of A Sexual Nature. And that includes what turns babes on.
But Themba’s not as open as Buster and when he does share something he’s not as clear and direct. He likes to speak in double meanings and make mysterious hand signals and mouth movements. Most of the time I never understand what Themba’s going on about and I don’t like asking – you don’t want to look like a complete virgin. But what I do understand makes me feel like throwing up or dying from a heart attack. I’m never sure which is the stronger feeling.
My father’s area of expertise, however, is not as useful as Themba’s and Buster’s. He’s an expert on Water. He knows where to find it, how to find it, how to clean it, how to transport it, even how it tastes (it doesn’t taste of anything). Which you must admit is pretty dry. For Water.
I suppose there are a couple of people who find my father’s knowledge useful though, because he keeps on getting job offers in faraway places with strange names. The latest place is called Bangkok. When I told Themba he fell on the ground laughing. I hadn’t given it much thought until then, but I admit it’s a pretty rude-sounding name.
Where they got it I just don’t know. It’s kind of hard to imagine a whole bunch of government people sitting around a table considering what to call the capital of Thailand and coming up with Bangkok as a serious option. Maybe they held some kind of national competition, where people had to enter names, and then they pulled one out of a hat and some joker like Themba entered Bangkok and they were stuck with it. That’s probably how it happened.
Unlike my name. I was assigned my name before I was born. If I’d been a girl, I would have been called Hermione. Like one of those big-toothed princesses from some random Northern European country – not the Harry Potter girl (she’s hot, as hot as Halle).
Hermione St John Goodenough. Pretty ghastly. But not as bad as the one I got. Randolph St John Goodenough. I mean, shoot me. Put me out of my misery.
There’s a whole bunch of us Randolphs. My father, his father and his father all the way back along the family tree. It’s a tough name to live with. When I meet people I like to say, ‘Call me Red, all my friends do’, on account of the fact I have hair that looks like bad sunburn. Red. Now there’s a name for a real guy. But people tend to go for the easier options – Carrots, Ginger or, kill me now, Randy.
Randy! I mean, Themba has the stats at his fingertips, and he says that guys think about All Matters Of A Sexual Nature every thirty seconds. Well, it’s something like that. And it really doesn’t help having a name like Randy. It kind of puts me in the percentile of guys who think about it every fifteen seconds.
To make matters worse, Themba calls me Randy Handy on account of the fact that he says that my only sexual experience has been with my hand. Mrs Hand and her five ugly fingers. Themba says it like he knows it’s a fact. He has this real expert air when he speaks of All Matters Of A Sexual Nature.
I used to be a bit envious of people who had The Knowledge. Even of my father and his boring Water, because at least he earns a packet and gets to go to capital cities with sexual names. But I’m not any more. Because I too am now a bone fide Expert.
It’s a recent thing. Up until a year ago I was an all-rounder. One of the despised who knew nothing of any real value because it was stuff that anybody could know if they watched enough television or read a couple of encyclopaedias. Then, one day, I woke up and discovered that I was an Expert, part of that group of people who others seek out for specialist advice.
To be honest, I didn’t feel completely over the moon about it. Because, hey, my area of expertise is not a big crowd puller. It’s hardly going to make me the centre of every conversation with the babes and it’s certainly not going to make people all hot and sweaty like they get over the stuff Themba and Buster know. But I didn’t feel totally peed off either. Maybe it was because of how it happened. Because, you see, The Knowledge didn’t just come to me over night. Nor did it come to me from books and movies, like Themba’s and Buster’s, or from years of serious study, like my father’s. I gained my expertise from real life experience. My knowledge is on the ground stuff – like a trade. And even though it’s not something that I decided on and then pursued, I worked for it too. I have scars to show for it all. I earned my stripes.
It all happened because of Bangkok. Last year my father received a job offer from an organisation asking him to go and organise some water for the people of Thailand. Not all of them, just some of the ones who live in Bangkok.
To cut a long story short, my father thought this sounded pretty interesting, so he accepted the job and told me and my mother that we were relocating from Nairobi (where we had lived for the past four years) to that place which I will call the capital of Thailand from now on because calling it by its name makes me think of All Matters Of A Sexual Nature. And I don’t want to use up more than my quota. It wouldn’t be fair – especially if I stole time off some poor bloke in the lower percentiles who only got to think about getting it every fifty seconds.
I was dead keen when I heard. Everybody, even those with hardly any general knowledge at all, knows that the people from the East can’t say their Rs. There, in the capital of Thailand, I would be Landy. Landy Goodenough. Or Led to my new Thai friends, like a wrinkly rock and roll star who’s still hot. No more Randy or Randy Handy or Carrots or Ginger or any of the other names that define me as the poster boy for contempt and ridicule.
My father’s posting to the capital of Thailand was for five years. There were a couple of things my parents needed to organise before I could join them – a house, a school, a car or two, a washing machine, some staff, et cetera et cetera. They said I needed to be patient. They would send for me when they’d sorted out their lives and got settled. In the meantime, I was being packed off to the Nelson Mandela Gardens Retirement Village to live with Pops.
* * * * * * * *
- Pops and the Nearly Dead is published by Penguin
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- Pops and the Nearly Dead by Edyth Bulbring
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EAN: 9780143026501
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Apr
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