Meet the parents, and the Durban July

Yes, yes, it’s been a full week and a bit since the bringing together of the Gilb’s parents with mine, but it still bears telling. Well, only sort of. To be truthful, there was no melodrama beyond the expected foibles of our parents. The assorted adults (including the Gilb’s friend’s buffer parents) arrived on time, bearing polite gifts of chocolates and wine.

Dad herded the flock into the never-before used lounge (all other social events take place in the family room, I still don’t understand why this shouldn’t have been the case here, but, whatever), then promptly herded them into his cluttered study to show it off (which he refers to as a ‘drawing room’ in particularly pretentious moments, such as this one). I made sure that everyone had copious volumes of alcohol to drink while we waited those agonizing thirty minutes for dinner to be served, during which Dad spoke lots and everyone else nodded dutifully.

Mom announced dinner, we all went through to the table, and the ice was broken. Old long-forgotten tales were unearthed by my nosy father, such as the fact that I have crashed into both the Gilb’s gate (the first time I went to his house to visit – the gate completely derailed and had to be straightened by the Gilb and his DIY Dad, d’oh!) and a tree in his driveway (in a drunk moment in Dad’s car) – both stories I had kept from him to keep melodrama to a bare minimum. Ah, well. Then my father proceeded to tell them he was disappointed they didn’t like opera music (why oh why can’t you shut up for a change, Dad? I completely made that one up to prevent him from blasting Pavarotti or Bocelli while we tried to eat and digest), and of course that lie caught me out, embarrassingly.

Thank God at this point people were pretty well-oiled, and lots of shrieking and uproarious laughter was omitted throughout the rest of the meal (over nothing in particular, really), not so much by the Gilb’s parents, rather from my Dad and the buffers. The Gilb and I had to leave before the adults did, to go to a birthday party, and it would appear no calamity occurred during that period. The verdict? “His Dad’s terribly reserved, his Mom’s quite nice”, my father says. “Her Mom’s lovely, her father doesn’t ever shut up”, his parents say. All as expected.

Since then, of course, more interesting things have happened, most notably the Durban July. Peas, Guy She Has Eye On and Moogs winged it down to the city mid-Friday (which I realised I haven’t visited since 1999, I know more of Bloemfontein than I do of Durbs, which I plan to rectify soon), and got us put up a surprisingly posh hostel right on the beach in La Lucia. I joined later that evening , and after wandering around aimlessly in the airport with Moogs trying to find his lost parking ticket and forcing him to drink a Red Bull before driving me to the hostel on two hours of sleep in 48 hours, I insisted we go watch the Italy-Ukraine game in a public place (I had not seen my team play a single match in this tournament, shockingly). So we hit the local Italian restaurant, I screamed profanities loudly at the tv while my team lazily hit the ball around the field (much to the dismay of other patrons, who didn’t share my enthusiasm), all the while threatening the waitress that the outcome of the game would affect her tip, and downing red wine (Sangiovese, what else at a time like this?) copiously. It all turned out favourably, as you’ll know, so the weekend got off to a good start.

On far too little sleep the next morning, we got up collectively (we had no choice, four loud people sharing one room will do that) to coif and groom and down some pre-races G&T’s, then headed off in our ludicrously fancy outfits for a right old piss-up, with the pretense of watching a horse race or two. Moogs, R and I placed bets on horses in 6 of the races, and thanks to some almost-scientific selection, coupled with excellent insider tips from a girl with a really posh accent I figured must know something about the horses, we each netted R20 (which would’ve been R60 if Moogs hadn’t lost another friggin’ winning ticket!) While the boys went off to score lasses (neither accomplished anything we were told), Peas, Em and I got down and dirty (quite literally, we couldn’t keep our teetering heels on all night, and the ground was very muddy) on the dance floors in four different tents – one for which we had legitimately paid entrance fee, one in which I posed as a certain Nomhle Sithole while Em convinced everyone she was Craig Hoskins, the Tilt tent – for which I convinced the ticket lady that our friend inside had our tickets and wasn’t bloody answering his phone, and the Millers tent, where Peas and I convincingly barged in the back through the bar unhindered, while Moogs’ dodgy face got the boys thrown out.

There was ass-groping aplenty from dodgy old men who wouldn’t take the hint that we weren’t into them, booty-shaking of the highest order, and quaffing of a huge quantity of Jaeger bombs that plundered our bank balances in a big way.

I will leave most of the story for Peas to elaborate on far more wittily when she returns tomorrow (the lucky lass and the boys have stayed on in Durbs for an extra day), and will end with the bizarre (yet very responsible) behaviour of the boys when we eventually did leave to climb back into our beds in the early hours of Sunday morning – while walking back to the car, the boys headed off towards a police van (“Moogs! R! What are you doing?!”) to get themselves breathalysed to see if they were drunk (if you ask me, that’s a sure sign of the fact that you indeed are). To us three girls, the humour of the situation is that it did not occur to either of them that they should simply ask one of us to drive. I indignantly took the car keys, for once being the most sober of the lot, and took us home safe in one piece. Needless to say, getting up early on Sunday to catch a flight back to Jozi (and convincing one of the team to kindly drive me to the airport) was a difficult task, one I nevertheless thoroughly plan to repeat at a future Durban July.