Johannesburg Sports
We were advised at any number of Johannesburg boutique hotels that the car is king and that it will be difficult if not impossible to find a cab in this laid out city and, furthermore, the people are very punctual. I don’t why that last bit was thrown in but it is good to know and Inoddled appreciatively at the man. But we were hungry and thirsty and asked where we could get a pint and a little lunch or a lot of lunch. He gave us directions that seemedpunctuated in a kind of waggling sign language that seemed incomprehensible in the lobby, but Toni and I found out were spot on once we were outside and in the South African day of blue skies and light clouds.
We popped into the pub and ordered pints and overheard gentlemen boasting about the upcoming World Cup that South Africa will host which is all anyone there wanted to talk about, if it wasn’t talk about rugby or, gulp, cricket, of which I know less than anything about and after much study of the video monitors in the wood lined pub with its brass rails and thick glass I couldn’t decipher. One fellow who seemed to have a bowler hat on the rail beneath him and an umbrella that looked like it could have been present during the Blitz of London. I tried to tell them how in some ways the game looked like American football, a purer and less regimented form of the tackling artful game weAmericans know and love, well some of us anyway, and they wouldn’t have it. “Tut tut, old fellow!” the guy with the bowler hat said between intakes of his dark ale. “You won’t see thatabominable sport here!” and I must profess I kind of got into the rugby game on the tube. Now if they would only do the wave.
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