29th April 2013 - Gauteng

Roy and I have just returned from the National Yearling sales in the Germiston area of Gauteng, aka the Transvaal of the previous Apartheid rule. Bloodstock SA had invited guests and prospective buyers with free accomodation & five packets of condoms at the picturesque Emperors Palace Casino Hotel alongside the serene landscape of the Oliver Tambo International Airport, & hosted by a slim brunette with a fixation for the pious.

Jeffrey 'Garmin' Dlamini before his audition

After a wonderful day's racing at Turffontein Racecourse, situated next to the remains of the once flourishing gold mine dumps previously owned, managed & operated unilaterally by Anglo, we were kindly offered a lift home by our hosts in their crowded new customised Datsun ZX, courtesy of the Japanese Dept of Trade & African Exploitation. Our driver, Jeffrey 'Garmin' Dlamini, with his sixth sense of perspective & orientation that only a seasoned pick-pocket artist could possibly have, decided to take us through a cultural African odyssey whilst meandering through the seedier parts of Downtown Jeppe. The local taxis complete disregard for, and total dismissal of the South African highway code, led to our Jeffrey eventually auditioning for the Force India Formula One racing team as an experimental test driver. 

and after !!!

During the audition ...

Species of the night

With the sunroof ajar, we hurtled down narrow side roads at speeds beyond safe as the initial stages of hypothermia settled in & we were lulled into a state of semi-consciousness usually confined to the downward climb on Mount Everest. I barely had time to notice the African ladies of the night propping up the littered pavements with their flimsy lingerie imported from Vietnam, and with all sorts of glands & orifices clearly on display like a biology anatomy lesson and as authentic examples of the missing link from Darwin's anthropological expose, 'On the Origin of Species'. When we eventually stepped on to terra firma outside our hotel, we looked like a wide-eyed bunch of Don King impersonators & transformed Neanderthals imported from another time & place. Little did we realize that the fun had barely started.

Roy after the ride home

In the morning, we were rudely awakened to what I initially thought was champagne corks being let off by over exuberant revellers as they left the casino. The next rattle of automatic gun fire quickly dispelled any of those foolish ideas as I unwrapped myself from the extra length king size duvet on the back seat of the voiture and hid behind the central armrest. A group of gangsters had been foiled, and many of them decided to hotfoot it through the hotel parking lot to the accompaniment of an orchestra of AK47 rapid machine gun fire. The screams were starting to get to me until I realized that if was me and the early shift janitor tripping over one of the edentate car guards lying semi-comatose in the bushes after a healthy tip of a partially drunk bottle of Johnny Walker Black.

The car guard

I scrambled into the safety of the breakfast dining room to settle my nerves, and I was barely in to wolfing down my second mouthful of Eggs Benedict, when a group of Kevlar covered locals burst through the dining room doors babbling loudly in their native tongue like a troop of over-excited Mandarin monkeys in the middle of the Congo mating season, sending the international visitors to the carpeted floor like frightened rabbits at the finish of a Cornwall Beagle Hunt. The only thing missing was the pack of over-excited & partially rabid Beagle hounds who hadn't been fed properly since the previous Sunday, mostly due to the Head Huntsman being side-tracked by the amorous & decidedly lascivious advances of the ageing Lady Beaverbrook from the local manor.

Where's breakfast ?

Barely recovered from the breakfast festivities, and after a twenty minute session of gastric reflux in the hotel foyeur toilets, we rejoined Jeffrey for the short trip to the sales ground and a morning of abstract voyeurism rating various juvenile equine progeny according to their physical prowess & pedigree, or lack of it, or parts thereof. Inbetween discussions on the relative merits of anabolic doping in UK racing & whether owners should be allowed to nominate horses or accept with jockeys, or whether they should even be allowed in a racing yard at all, we waddled around the sales ground sampling wines from every conceivable vineyard in the Cape & beyond until we clearly forgot why we were at the sales in the first place. It was at that point, we all congregated at the main bar to drink ourselves into absolute oblivion whilst discussing the relative merits or othwerwise of even having a regulatory body for horseracing, never mind a testing protocol. Why mess with wealthy investors anyway seemed to be the final consensus. Afterall, we need their interest & investment as much as we need the air that we all breathe. And we certainly need their horses, in any form.

The man suspected of starting all the trouble