African adventures
Dave has an epiphany while lion watching in the bush.
The audience said âAwwwwwwâ. It was a first, Iâll give you that. In this game you learn to cope with most eventualities.
Hecklers, fire alarms, technical breakdowns, singing (thanks Glasgow), snoring (thanks Tokyo), snogging (hello Moscow) even having your whisky being hijacked (thanks Joburg), but no-one can hold a crowd when thereâs a bush baby dangling from a branch above your head.
Itâs certainly not a topic which I recall reading up in whisky class manual. Come to think of it, there wasnât a chapter on âhow to conduct a tasting in the African bush at night.â Nothing for it but to press on. The bush babyâs eyes grew larger as I started the camp impala impersonation.
It had started like this. One moment I was singing âFlower of Scotlandâ in Joburgâs Sandton Square as the dawn came up, the next I was in the bush looking at a lion gnawing on a newborn giraffe. Quite how I got there remains a blur. I seem to recall giant chickens, bags of biltong, ravines, a soundtrack which switched between Paul Simon and Samuel L. Jackson, the slow encroachment of the thorned, many-eyed bush.
Somewhere along the line I had changed my name. âWhatâs Shangaan for broom?â Fasie asked our receptionist. âNkukuluâ came the reply. âThen meet Nkukulu,â he said. âHeâs a Shangaan from Scotland.â As the amused and bemused staff tried to work this out, I was trying to make sense of the sky. If the constellations are upside down, then how can I teach the Sh.....
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By Dave Broom
Section : A dram with Dave Broom
Page number : 15
