Accident & Emergency

I had an interesting Friday night. I wanted to write about it yesterday, but my memory's only now cleared up enough to remember most of it.

I was invited to a birthday party in Sea Point by one of the Rhodes Nerds who's birthday it was. (They are a couple of friends who all went to Rhodes and studied computer-related things, so I affectionality call them that.) One of them is very much into geocaching and I asked him the day before to bring all his geocaching goodies along in case we get opportunity to do so; I'd never done it before and was eager to give it a bash.

So around 11pm, we decided to go geocaching. First we scoured the cache website looking for a suitable treasure to go and hunt, which proved a more difficult task than initially anticipated. There was one on Signal Hill, which was physically closest, but it was a mission to get to and we weren't in the mood to get raped or mugged, especially not on a birthday. We settled instead for being hassled by beggars as we braved the inner city and headed for St Martini Church in Long Street.

Our clever geocaching guide informed us that we would be looking for something metallic, possibly attached to the fence. Spreading out, we began to search the church fence, all the while trying to look inconspicious to the German church goers who were standing around talking in the parking area, suspiciously eyeing us. Unable to find it, we gathered around and our guide double checked the coordinates and we reread the "treasure map", trying to make better sense of the clues.

This is when the first beggar arrived. Usually if I have something to give, I try to do so. This might have been a mistake, because after I did so he stuck to us like glue. And then more zoomed in on us. It was like feeding seagulls; you give one a piece of bread and the next moment you find yourself in a Hitchcock movie. Nonetheless, this didn't deter us. Even when the one huddling around me like a squire to a knight started shouting at another one "you won't stab them, you won't stab them!". I admit it was a little disconcerting.

We didn't have to endure the onslaught for too long because one of our clever friends found the cache (I won't say where since that would give too much away, but it was rather amusing). Thrilled that we'd completed our mission, we fled the Long Street beggars and then decided to go to Adam & Eve for celebratory drink... but it was closed. So off we went to Manhattans where we hung out for another while.

Around 1am the others decided to go clubbing, but I was longing for my bed so I decided to go home. Unfortunately I didn't get there. The number 13 proved unlucky for me in the early hours of 13th Feb, because I headed down Somerset Road, the car in front of me stopped suddenly. Always keeping a safe driving distance, I was able to stop in time, but the woman behind me didn't. And so she smashed into me, causing me to smash into the car in front of me, and bumping him into whoever was in front of him.

I don't remember much detail after that because I banged my head pretty hard on the steering wheel. I didn't black out, but it took me a moment to recall where I was and what had happened. The guy I'd rammed into got out of his car and came shouting at me, and I for a moment I thought I must have driven into him. He disappeared and came back a second later, apologising and filling me in through my window that someone had driven into me. When I looked behind me and noticed that the backseats were a lot closer than they'd been before, it sank in.

The police were on the scene pretty quickly, but I think they were in the street already. One of them told me that they stopped the woman, who had apparently tried to get away; she'd been drinking and was over the limit. After that I just remember frantically searching for my phone, which had landed up under my seat. Half of Cubana had come out and were crowding the sidewalk to see what the fuss and flashing lights were about. Paramedics arrived and checked me over, but luckily I was fine. My memory was just shot because for the life of me I couldn't remember the names of my friends I'd been with just 20 minutes before.

So then I called the friend closest in town who's name I could remember. He was kind enough to come and help me out even though he was already asleep, and for that I'm very very grateful. Never understimate the comfort of a familiar face in a bad situation. All in all I had a great night though, even though it ended in a traffic sandwich and my poor little car being written off.