Two New Yorkers, a hungry tour guide and a premature imploder....

One of the hallmarks of notable columnists is the ability to weave current events into a meaningful piece of prose that stimulates the mind and captures the imagination.
So, in my grandiosity and eternal optimism that this will be read by more people than just my wife, I am attempting to adopt the opening paragraph as my mantra for the week.

Hum.....bloggers block.....journos jam......composers congestion.....and my favourite.....scribes shutdown. Alliteration - the appealing little authoring assistant that helps to fill pages, which is great when you are being paid per word - which I am not - so let me get to the point.

So picture the scene, here I am persuing a dream of writing, conjuring up romantic moments of penning poems under a willow tree whilst beloved looks on. Alas dear readers, none of that today. Far more important exciting and macho things happened in Cape Town this week past.

With great fanfare and huge support from the residents of our beautiful city, the two large cooling towers that dominated our skyline for more that fifty years, were imploded on Sunday.

We awoke to a dismal rainy day, perfect for implosions, I later heard, and headed out to collect my clients for the day. Its always with a sense of trepidation and slight nervousness that one meets new clients, a bit like a blind date. Most days you score, some days you hit miss, luckily this day it turned out to be a delightful couple from my second favourite city, New York, who were in my most favourite city celebrating ten years of marriage. The plan was to hike up Table Mountain to get a birds eye view of the noon destruction.

Off we head off up the old flat top, with me dispensing sage advice on marriage (I can hear my beloved sniggering when she reads this)

Its a tough slog up Platteklip Gorge but its by far the safest and most direct route up the mountain. Now Cape Town is not dubbed the Cape of Storms for nothing as many a sturdy ship captain will attest, but we are not to be scared off, despite the ominous clouds descending the gorge.

Fortunately we had the good sense to stop and buy some disposable rain coats on the way, the over priced, super thin, modified garbage bag variety. With waterproofing donned, we continue the ascent. Now the problem with these cheapo rain coats, is that when one exerts one self the perspiration can’t escape and you get just as wet inside as you would without the damned thing. The rain comes sideways, the plastic poncho gets flapped around, the sweat condenses inside and I am starting to think to myself -  it’s Sunday morning, I could be perusing the newspaper, nibbling on an almond croissant, lying in bed......

New Yorkers are a tough breed, they’re not easily scared off, what’s a bit of rain anyway......Have you seen NYC in the winter? So they just keep going and going and I'm trying to calculate the average client bail out rate per millimeter of rain over the last 18 months - anything to get my mind off the almond croissant.

Suddenly I hear the first cracks in their resolve......" Do you think the rain will stop", so I respond with vague weathermanspeak and dodge the question. Instead I employ a mountain guide basic training tactic- the motivational reverse psychology move. A dastardly trick - "Cmon, you can do it – don’t let a bit of rain stop you....keep your eye on the prize....follow me.....let’s go" and stride off up the hill at a cracking pace. I think it’s at that moment that the client realises that he has hired a maddened sargeant major to chase him up the mountain, and they begin to doubt there own sanity, the cracks widen - I could smell the almond croissant.

It wasn’t long after that we convinced each other that this was silly plan and we gave up - I offered to provide them with fake certificates to prove to their friends that they had indeed climbed to the top but they graciously declined. We turned around and began to walk down, the mood was light, happy and relieved, the sun even came out for a few minutes. Sometimes the joy of a task is in the ending of it. A bit like the feeling one would get when you stop hitting your head against a wall.

My interesting, shortlived, somewhat relieved clients went above and beyond what most others have done in the past. It was a valuable life lesson immortalised in the words of the great Homer Simpson - " It doesn’t matter"

Don’t get me wrong dear reader, I love my job, but this day needed a restart.

Almond croissant in hand, heater humming, clients waving, I turned South and floored the accelerator. I had an implosion to attend.

For some weeks before there had been a huge hype surrounding the demolition and I got swept up in it. Rhodes Memorial above the University of Cape Town was the Facebookers, venue of choice. One conveniently forgets that Facebook is not only limited to my little group of friends, and as I sped around the corner I realised that a few thousand others had the same thought. Cars were backed up for a kilometre or more and families were walking with picnic baskets, nervously glancing skywards.
Being a native Capetonian and resourceful tour guide, I know a few things about shortcuts, and so I make a last second diversion, cutting dangerously across three lanes, returning to the middle campus of the university. There is loads of space as I park, and a few minutes later I am feeling very smug as I position myself amongst some students outside the ivy clad Botany building. Perfect view.

The anticipation builds and so do the crowds, cameras ready, videos on standby, lots of chatter, awaiting the noon deadline. It was apt that noon was chosen - Cape Town has a long tradition of firing a cannon at noon - originally to help the ship navigators to set their clocks. Despite our terrible reputation for being late, the one thing a Capey knows is that the noon gun is always on time - always. So its a given that they will get the even bigger explosion on time.

Not to be....... four minutes before noon the Athlone cooling towers are imploded. Most people miss the moment, including tv reporters - the look on the etv network reporters face is priceless, check it out on youtube. It turns out that Dan Plato, the mayor of Cape Town was commissioned to press the switch or depress the plunger, and it wasnt his fault that it was early - the passing rain squall was perfect to dampen the dust and so they said "Go Dan go......"

Within minutes the jokes were flying around about Dan being a premature imploder and it probably would have been better to get a woman to do it as they last longer. Mayors can never do anything right anyway.

Myself on the other hand had got it all wrong - my car was well and truly and thoroughly parked in by dozens of others. Forty five minutes later I made it out the carpark, just in time to restart my day, again.