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  Julian suggested that we should call it off and cancel our house play entry. Anderson told him to get stuffed and Emberton spent the rest of the rehearsal kicking the bin and terrifying Runt.

  Tuesday 2nd July

  Vern and Runt spent the afternoon watching me pack my trunk. Once I’d banged it shut they both left the dormitory without saying a word.

  Mom called to say that Dad would pick me up at 7am on Thursday morning. My whole body shivered with excitement at the thought of London, England!

  Wednesday 3rd July

  HOUSE PLAYS HUMILIATION

  As predicted we came in stone last in the house plays. There was almost constant laughter from beginning to end, although this was aimed at us rather than with us. It all started badly when Vern forgot to get into the canoe before the play began and then tried to creep onstage after the curtain had already gone up. Unfortunately, Vern’s attempt at getting head first into the canoe without being seen caused so much laughter that the first five minutes of the play wasn’t heard.

  Then Devries forgot his lines and pretended to rummage around in the garbage bin for food like a tramp while Runt was giving him his line. (Devries was playing the part of God Almighty.)

  Anderson got a bit thrown by the sight of God Almighty riffling through a rubbish bin and forgot his next lines. There was a long pause as all of us ark animals stood around waiting for Anderson/Noah to say something. Simon (the gay Australian sheep) let off a timid bleat to fill the silence. The bleat started off some loud guffaws among the cast but didn’t manage to jog Anderson’s memory. Eventually Anderson/Noah announced he was going to check on the ark, marched over to the canoe, bent over and stuck his head into the hole. There was a lot of loud whispering until Vern became frustrated and started shouting Anderson’s lines loudly from inside. Emberton stepped forward, pointed at the canoe and said, ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’ Everyone packed up laughing (including all the actors and animals) but then Vern got out of the canoe to a loud chorus of laughter and applause by the school. He bowed to the audience before turning to Anderson and showing him his lines in the script. Anderson tried his best to cover up for the fact that the prompt had just become a part of the play and accused Vern of being a tramp who had been illegally sleeping on the ark. Vern looked terribly confused and furiously paged through the script looking for a line about tramps. Anderson didn’t know what to do so he turned to the other actors and carried on with the scene. Vern, realizing that he had made a balls-up, crouched down and then crept offstage in a very sneaky and disturbing manner.

  But it got even worse when Roger came strolling onto the stage and started meowing at the canoe and calling for Vern. Pike jumped forward and said, ‘Look, Noah, a pussy!’ and the whole school erupted again. Poor Roger scuttled off the stage in terror. Then Rambo stepped forward with his hands around his massive blue baboon gonads and shouted, ‘Behold!’

  My Dove of Peace was completely humiliating. To make matters worse one of my wings fell off before I reached the other end of the stage. Rambo stepped forward as the talking Baboon and said to Noah, ‘My Lord, your dove of peace is now a dove in pieces.’ I sat in the wings waiting for the nightmare to end and felt my cheeks burning with shame.

  It also turned out that Noah and his mates weren’t strong enough to pull the anchor (Fatty) out of the orchestra pit. When it became obvious that the ark anchor wasn’t budging, Vern (closely followed by Roger) streaked on from stage left and joined in the rope tussle. Then God Almighty entered the fray and with the others started heaving away at the rope and managed to lift Fatty to the very edge of the stage. Unfortunately, they couldn’t pull him over the lip and poor Fatty fell head first into the orchestra pit with a shriek and loud crashing of cymbals. Thankfully Pike (hiding in the lighting box) decided that enough was enough and plunged us into darkness before playing out with It’s the End of the World as We Know It.

  The adjudicator was an old woman who used to be a big cheese on Springbok Radio. She called our play ‘an aberration’. On the plus side she said that the performance of the brain damaged tramp/prompt character was extremely realistic and incredibly disturbing.

  Barnes House took the whole thing far too seriously and did a serious play called My Footprints on Water, which won the trophy. It was completely boring, although the adjudicator called it ‘mature and measured’.

  After lights out I said my goodbyes to the Crazy Eight and then lay awake for hours thinking about London and how weird it is that tomorrow night I’ll be on a Boeing 747. I then thought of beautiful Amanda and how we kissed like lovers on my bed. But then I thought of Mermaid in her bikini and was forced to think about cricket instead.

  Thursday 4th July

  MILTON OVERSEAS ADVENTURE BEGINS

  12:00 The folks, Wombat and I travelled to the airport in a big yellow Eagle taxi. Mom and Wombat spent the entire trip discussing the hottest neighbourhood gossip. Dad’s big buddy Frank (who is house sitting our house and feeding Blacky) has a new girlfriend who is only nineteen years old. (Frank is forty-nine!) Mom said it was sickening. Wombat said it was grotesque. Dad said, ‘Lucky bugger.’ Mom and Wombat pretended they didn’t hear him and demanded my opinion on Frank. I didn’t know what to say so I did my AA trick (shaking my head and looking forlornly out the window). It obviously worked because Mom said, ‘You see, Mom, it’s sickening. Even Johnny’s upset.’ Wombat commented that Frank was old enough to be the girl’s father. Dad piped up and said, ‘Ja, but if the cap fits…’ He forgot the rest and said, ‘Then Bob’s your uncle?’ By the end of the journey even Alvin Naidoo the taxi driver was shaking his head at Frank and his nineteen-year-old girlfriend.

  Mom has finally persuaded Wombat to visit her sister in Brighton so that she can bury the hatchet. Dad looked at me and said, ‘The only place she knows to bury a hatchet is in somebody’s head.’ I asked Mom about Wombat’s sister but she said she had to concentrate on not losing the passports and said she didn’t have time for questions.

  12:45 Wombat had a fight with our taxi driver over the fare. She said forty bucks was highway robbery and reminded Alvin that he was an Indian and that she was onto his shenanigans. Alvin tapped the taximeter and said there was nothing he could do. Wombat then accused Alvin of having a faulty meter and demanded a complete refund plus damages. The next minute there was a really loud burst of church music from the speakers of the yellow taxi. (Wombat had obviously switched on the radio instead of the meter.) Wombat eventually got out of the taxi and said, ‘I got him down to thirty-five. Really, it’s a scandal! This wouldn’t happen back home.’ She then tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Remember, Roy, take care of the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves…’

  13:06 Wombat refused to allow the black security guard to look in her handbag. She turned to Mom and said, ‘They steal, these people, they steal.’ Mom and Dad both nodded. I slunk back a few metres and disowned my family. Eventually a white security guard came along and Wombat allowed him to look in her handbag.

  Wombat drank three gin and tonics on the flight to Johannesburg. When the plane touched down she thought we had landed in London and applauded the pilot.

  We had four hours to wait at Jan Smuts airport so I took my Walkman and my Sports Illustrated magazine and settled at a safe distance from the Miltons. The woman next to me was sobbing to her husband. He kept saying, ‘Think forward, Cheryl. Remember we said we were going to think forward. We’re doing it for the kids!’ This didn’t seem to work because Cheryl started howling and digging in her bags for tissues.

  I returned to find the Miltons all reading different sections of the Citizen newspaper. Dad, who had the sports section, said, ‘If Tony Watson doesn’t make the bloody Springboks again I’ll eat my head off.’ Wombat was shaking her head about an elderly couple who were murdered on their farm and Mom was cursing because she had forgotten to set the tape for the final episode of Twin Peaks. I turned up the volume on my Walkman and stared at the list of cities on t
he departures board.

  London

  Paris

  Geneva

  Frankfurt

  New York

  One day I’ll see them all.

  Our Olympic Airlines Jumbo touched down in Athens in the middle of the night. Wombat applauded again and welcomed us all to London. Mom told her we were in Greece. Wombat looked horrified and asked if the plane had been hijacked. Dad sneakily gathered up a huge pile of empty mini brandy bottles, dumped them in his sick bag and then slid the bag under Wombat’s seat.

  We had an eight-hour wait for our flight to London so we decided to take a taxi into Athens and see the Acropolis. It was pitch black outside and Wombat hailed seven taxis before she found an honest driver. (She reckons you can tell by the shifty look in their eyes.) The only word we all understood was Acropolis. This didn’t stop Mom and Wombat from giving the poor man half an hour of recent Milton history. Dad asked the taxi driver what time the sun rose. The taxi driver rattled off a long reply in Greek. When he had finished speaking there was a pause before Wombat turned to Dad and said, ‘What did this gentleman say, Roy?’ Dad shrugged his shoulders and said it was all Greek to him. He then roared with laughter and thumped his hand on the dashboard. The taxi driver must have seen the funny side because he laughed along with Dad.

  The climb to the top of the Acropolis was a real test for Wombat who at times seemed to be walking horizontal to the ground. Dad reached the top, took a look around and said the place was falling to pieces. I told Dad it was thousands of years old but he still wasn’t impressed. I then showed my father the ancient theatre of Dionysus where theatre first began. Dad said the place could do with a facelift.

  The sun rose over Athens revealing a dusty, dirty, but beautiful city. I feel like a real traveller in a far-off land.

  Heathrow airport is gigantic! It’s like a whole city with planes instead of cars. It also makes Jan Smuts look like a chicken shed. Wombat was thrilled to be ‘home’ and shook hands with every security person she came across. She proudly showed off her British passport and gave me a pound and told me not to spend it all at once.

  Dad was stopped and searched at Customs. He blamed it on Tutu who he says has given white South Africans a bad name abroad.

  15:10 (Greenwich Mean Time) Wombat had yet another argument with a taxi driver who wanted forty quid to take us to our hotel. Wombat called him a shyster and shouted, ‘This doesn’t happen back home, you know!’ before slamming the door of the cab and pointing us to the tube station.

  Mental Note: Keep Wombat away from taxi drivers wherever possible.

  The tube thundered into the station and around us people swarmed onto the train. There was a desperate rush to lug all the suitcases on board before the doors closed. Poor Dad was lugging huge cases backwards and forwards while Wombat stood in the middle of the coach shouting, ‘Don’t close the doors! He’s one of us!’

  We found ourselves packed into the tube like scared little sardines, clutching our suitcases. The people on the train all read newspapers and listened to Walkmans. It amazed me that nobody spoke – it was like a travelling morgue. Wombat lectured one Londoner on his ripe body odour, and asked him when he had last taken a bath. The man didn’t answer. In fact he didn’t even look up once from his magazine. Dad looked at me grimly and said, ‘Welcome to London.’

  The Kensington Palace Hotel isn’t quite what Wombat was expecting. It’s a massive hotel with tiny rooms and the longest corridors I’ve ever seen. All the maids and cleaners are Filipino and don’t speak much English. (Actually most of them don’t speak any English.) I doubt Princess Diana has ever set foot in the place. Poor Wombat burst into tears and blamed it on falling standards, which she blamed on John Major.

  Saturday 6th July

  MADAME TUSSAUDS & PUB LUNCH

  After a greasy breakfast of egg and kippers the Miltons hit the streets of London. Wombat and Mom decided that our mission was to be the Madame Tussauds wax museum. London is a mad hustle and bustle of people from all over the world. Dad was shocked to see a beautiful blonde girl walking down the street hand in hand with a black guy. I must admit it did look strange. We all stopped in the middle of the pavement and watched the young couple walk by. Wombat told us that it would never have been allowed in Thatcher’s day.

  Madame Tussauds is truly amazing. Dad made me take pictures of him standing next to Roger Moore and the Beatles although he told me to chop John Lennon off the side because he was a commie. Wombat curtsied before having her picture taken with the Queen. Mom, Dad and Wombat posed with Margaret Thatcher. After the photographs Wombat said she was exhausted and was off to find a chair. I posed with Anthony Hopkins and Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, there was no replica of John Milton (the poet).

  Then Dad and I went down to the Chamber of Horrors where we saw the Jack the Ripper murder scene. Further down the chamber a huge crowd of Japanese tourists were jabbering away and taking pictures. We pushed through the crowd with Dad saying ‘Saki saki’ to everyone as if he was greeting them. There was another crowd of Japanese photographers snapping away in the far corner of Murderers Row. As we got closer Dad and I stopped dead in our tracks. A large sign read DOCTOR CRIPPEN. Next to the sign was a bench. On the bench was Wombat, fast asleep with her mouth open and her yellow tongue exposed. The Japanese were pointing at her, shouting ‘Kippen! Kippen!’ and snapping away with their fancy cameras. Dad took out his camera and snapped a picture too! Then a second crowd of Japanese tourists came over and photographed Wombat. I told Dad that half of Japan would think Wombat was a savage serial killer. Dad shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Who am I to argue with half of Japan?’

  11:30 After spending the morning impersonating Dr Crippen the serial killer, Wombat peered up at the overcast sky and announced that the sun was over the yardarm. The Miltons piled into a local pub. Dad seemed thrilled with the place and said, ‘You can say a lot about the Poms, but when it comes to pubs…’ He gazed around looking impressed and whistled softly to himself. Wombat handed Dad a twenty pound note and told him to get a round of drinks. Dad looked around to see if anybody had seen him taking money from his mother-in-law and then shot off to the bar. We found a table and settled down to a lunch of pork pies and chips with gravy. Dad drank three pints of Guinness and got completely smashed. He blamed the Irish who he says make crazy beer. Our lunch cost us sixty-eight quid. Mom and Dad were astonished. Wombat didn’t seem too concerned about the cost although she had drunk five gin and tonics and had repeatedly piped up with morbid old war songs whenever there was a pause in conversation.

  Sunday 7th July

  OXFORD STREET

  Mom and Dad said they were jetlagged. They sent me down to the Pakistani corner shop where I bought them bread rolls, cheese and pickles. They reckoned they were going to spend the day watching TV in bed. Wombat shouted, ‘When you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life!’ and then turned to me and said, ‘Come along, young man, we’re going to Oxford Street.’

  Wombat is brilliant in London. She’s also not shy to abuse people where necessary. We hopped onto one of the red double-decker tourist buses and sat on the open top roof. She showed me so many landmarks and interesting historical buildings that I was starting to think that perhaps Wombat isn’t losing her marbles at all until she pointed at a Barclays Bank building and told me it was Buckingham Palace.

  We jumped off the bus and made our way up Oxford Street. There were so many CD shops – looks like tapes are soon to be a thing of the past. We stopped at a fancy coffee shop called Lace & Syrup for what Wombat called ‘elevenses’. (Basically a pit stop between breakfast and lunch.) Wombat ordered a pot of tea and a round of egg sandwiches. I had a huge stack of crumpets and a chocolate milkshake and then felt too full to carry on living. After elevenses Wombat gave me twenty pounds and said she was off to buy shoes. We agreed to meet back at the Lace & Syrup in half an hour.

  I figured that with twenty pounds I had enough money to buy a new release and a c
heap old CD. I found a small music store under the level of the street where you could listen to music on headphones for free. I settled for U2’s The Joshua Tree and the Greatest Hits of Bob Dylan.

  I decided Elton John, Phil Collins, Erasure, Fleetwood Mac and Lionel Richie were too naff. I thought about impressing everyone at school by buying Metallica or Iron Maiden but I hate heavy metal.

  I arrived back at the Lace & Syrup to find no sign of Wombat. By one o’clock I realized Wombat was missing. I suddenly felt scared. There I was, stuck and disorientated in the middle of London with hundreds of people around talking in different languages. I walked up and down Oxford Street looking in each shop for my grandmother. She was gone. I was too scared to take different roads because I had the feeling that I’d never make it back to Oxford Street again. I took a few deep breaths and counted the money in my pocket. Three pounds fifty!

  I tried to retrace my steps to where Wombat and I had got off the bus. But then I noticed buildings that I was sure I hadn’t seen before so I turned round and walked in the opposite direction. Around me were London traffic and shops and strange faces. It felt like I was striding along in a great army of ants. (Except all the other ants knew where they were going.) I stopped to get my bearings once again. A blonde lady about Mom’s age walked up to me and said, ‘All right, son?’ I must have looked in a bit of a state of panic because she put her arm around me and asked, ‘Where you going?’ I don’t think I answered her because I was a little caught up with her strong cockney accent. I eventually told the woman I was staying at the Kensington Palace Hotel. She said, ‘Oooh bless.’ I then told her I was South African. She said, ‘Oooh dear.’ My final killer blow was when I mentioned that I had been deserted by my grandmother. She shook her head sadly and said, ‘Well, lovey, you stand here until a big red bus comes and then you stay on that selfsame bus until you find South Kensington.’ I repeated the words South Kensington like a moron. She nodded and said, ‘From the station it’s down the road and you can’t miss it.’ I thanked her for her help and stood behind a queue of wombats waiting for the big red double-decker bus.