Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 32
Part 2 continued
1956–1966
It’s an awful feeling when something goes wrong and for that moment one has absolutely no idea how to fix it. My well-spoken, wealthy but inebriated passenger had left the cab. I rushed to the front of the Royal Hotel and spotting a group of youths chatting on the pavement, I approached them and asked, “Have you guys any idea where the nearest bar would be?” They looked at me with amusement. One of them pointed to some stairs heading downwards to the right of the hotel entrance and laughed. “Close enough?”
I thanked them and dashed down the stairs to find myself in the Royal Cellar bar. It was crowded but nevertheless I quickly saw my escapee seated on a bar stool in front of the counter, speaking to the barman. As I approached, he saw me and grinned. “Just in time, what’s your poison?” I shook my head and replied, “Sir, you’re booked into the hotel. They’re expecting you upstairs.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “They can wait.” He turned back to the barman and said, “Give the lad what he wants.”
I stepped away from the shameless old drunk and signaled to the barman who crossed over to me. In a low voice I told him, “This man has been booked into the hotel but as you can see, he’s had too much to drink. I need to get him up to reception and installed in his room. Can you help me?”
The barman grinned and nodded. “He’s been here a couple of times. We know all about him.” He picked up a phone on the bar counter and spoke in a low voice. The old man had forgotten about me and was telling some fairly incoherent story to the man next to him. Within a minute or two, a couple of young and fit-looking porters arrived wearing hotel uniforms. They swiftly moved to either side of the old drunk and after telling him that he should come with them, they lifted him up off his bar stool and literally carried him up the stairs and out of the bar. What amused me was that the man tried to get his feet on the ground, but the much bigger porters kept his feet a few inches off the stairs. Then just like in a comedy movie, he started to take rapid steps in the air, never touching anything solid. A burst of laughter erupted from the people in the bar as the man finally disappeared from sight.
I thanked the barman and followed the old reprobate up the stairs and into the hotel. I headed for reception intent on getting paid for my services before the man went up to his room. I was confronted by a grim-looking concierge who told me that his men would now take the gentleman back to my cab. There had been a mistake. There was no booking for the man and he needed to leave the hotel immediately. The porters moved in again and this time allowed the man to touch the ground with his feet as they frog-marched back to my cab. What in the hell was I to do? One of the porters took pity on me and suggested that there were a number of cheaper hotels in the city that would not be so fussy about the condition of their clientele. He advised me to take the man to one of them then get some money from him to bribe the concierge to look the other way and get the chap into a room. After that he would not be my responsibility anymore. In theory the advice was sound. In practice it was a disaster.
I tried hotel after hotel. On each occasion they took one look at my passenger and refused to book him in. After about ten attempts I thought I would try one more and failing to offload him, I would return him to the police station that had called me to transport him in the first place. The last hotel was the seediest of the lot. This time I left the man in the car and went in search of someone at the hotel’s reception. The man behind the desk gave me a big smiling hello, which quickly faded as I explained that I had a passenger who had had a few drinks and was sleeping it off on the back seat of my cab. His first reaction was negative. They did not accept drunks. I assured him that my guy was not as bad as all that and he should come and take a look at him. The receptionist reluctantly followed me to my cab. We both peered into the rear seats only to see my passenger sprawled out with his hat over his face. I opened the door and gently removed the hat. He looked up at us, smiled indulgently, then closed his eyes and started snoring. The receptionist was adamant that he would not admit my passenger into his hotel.
I then pointed to the large roll of banknotes in the right hand of my nemesis and told the receptionist that he would be handsomely rewarded for looking the other way. The man shrugged and stepped away. I took this for an affirmative, grabbed the arms of the sleeping beauty and jerked him upright. He glared at me, “Wassa matter?” he asked.
I told him bluntly that we could get him into the hotel if he behaved. If not, I would leave him on the pavement where he would probably be mugged and all his money taken. He had sobered up sufficiently to understand what I was saying and rather meekly allowed me to put my arm around his waist and propel him forward to the hotel entrance. The receptionist had gone ahead of me and as we entered he thrust a key at me and said, “Fourth floor, 409. Make it quick and don’t let him talk to anyone. Pay me on the way out.”
I squeezed him into a wheezy old lift and we rattled our way up to the fourth floor. I was beginning to feel that my nightmare was nearly over. However, as we walked down the corridor towards room 409, a young, rather pretty woman was ironing some clothing on an ironing board, with the iron plugged into the wall behind her. This was definitely not the Hotel Royal. As we squeezed past the woman, who had her back to us and who took up much of the corridor space, my man reached up and pinched her bum! She turned furiously and lifted the iron with the clear intention of hitting him with it. I frantically stepped between them and told the woman that the man had had too much to drink and I was making sure he made it to his room. I added that I would see that she got some financial compensation for his rudeness. The woman shrugged and mumbled “OK.”
I finally got him to his room. He stumbled in and collapsed on the bed. I removed his bankroll, took out twenty pounds for myself, twenty for the ironing woman and another twenty for the receptionist. There was still plenty left. I stuffed the roll into one of his trouser pockets and left the room. The woman held out her hand as I approached and took the money without saying a word. Downstairs I found the receptionist back behind his desk. I handed him his money and said, “He’s asleep on his bed. I think he’ll stay there now. I’ve left him enough money to pay for the room. It’s up to you if you want to charge him a premium.”
Meanwhile, Dennis Bughwan and I had started filming during the day. I would finish driving the cab somewhere between 4 and 5 a.m., stop on the way back to the taxi depot to buy a “bunny chow’ (half a loaf of bread, hollowed out and filled with authentic Indian chicken curry) and collapsed into bed for a couple of hours before staggering out again to resume my other role as a film director.
Two other taxi incidents are worth mentioning. The Apartheid laws at the time (1963) decreed that no taxi registered for white passengers was allowed to carry black passengers. I had great fun picking up African-American sailors at the docks and driving slowly and conspicuously past the nearest policeman, who would react and angrily stop my cab. “Meneer, you know you’re not allowed to carry black passengers. They must get out!” I would nod and explain. “Officer, these are African-American citizens and have every right to take any taxi they wish.” We could see both fury and frustration on the face of the cops that stopped us. On the three occasions I pulled this trick, not one of the cops had anything to say after I explained who my passengers were. The sailors thought it was hilarious.
Lastly, I was asked to take a Mrs. Jones to see her family on the outskirts of Durban. She was a stunningly attractive woman and we chatted cheerfully on the forty-minute drive. We finally arrived. The family house was in a rural area and well away from neighboring homes. Mrs. Jones told me to wait, saying she would only be half an hour or so. She was carrying a portable radio with her. She quickly disappeared inside the house. I parked under a tree a couple of hundred yards away and waited, thinking about the scene I planned to shoot the following day.
Nearly an hour went by. I could hear a rising sound of voices coming from Mrs. Jones’ family home. The front door suddenly burst open and Mrs. Jones ran out screaming and heading for my cab. She was followed by a couple of men and three or four women, all of whom were shouting and shaking their fists at the woman. I suddenly realized with a shock that all her pursuers were people of mixed race known formally as “Coloureds” in South Africa. Mrs. Jones reached my cab and yelled at me without getting back in the vehicle.
“They’ve pinched my radio. I’ve called the cops and we’ll wait here until they come.” The group chasing her slowed down and stopped a few yards from the cab. They started to hurl abuse at Mrs. Jones but made no attempt to come any closer. At that moment a police siren could be heard approaching at speed along the road. The police car screeched to a halt close to the cab. The policeman in the front passenger seat got out. He was a white man in his fifties wearing sergeant’s stripes. He looked at the family group and raised his hand, signaling for them to remain where they were. He then turned and addressed Mrs. Jones who was still standing next to the cab.
The sergeant spoke in a weary and long-suffering voice. “Mrs. Jones, why don’t you just go back to your white husband and leave your family alone. Every time you come here there’s a row and we never have any trouble from them except when you arrive.” She pretended to cry. “They’ve stolen my radio!” One of the men stepped forward. “Sergeant, she’s been drinking again. She’s probably hidden the radio somewhere in the house so she can blame us, as she always does.” The sergeant shook his head and told everyone to get into the house including Mrs. Jones. They meekly obeyed him, including Mrs. Jones. The sergeant stuck his head into my cab and gave a wry grin. “She only comes back to cause trouble. Don’t know why. She’s managed to pass for white and lives a comfortable life with her white husband. Her family are decent folk. She must just leave them alone.” He gave long sigh. “It’ll take a while, but I’ll sort it out.”
The sergeant turned and headed for the house. This was a side of Apartheid I had never seen before. The sergeant seemed like a really nice guy trying to calm everything down, unlike most of the cops I had encountered who were mostly bully boys. I had heard of people of color passing for white and had even met another woman in Walvis Bay years before who was also married to a white man. She had come into my fish and chip shop one day and my colored assistant Charlie had dashed into the back of the shop, leaving me to serve her. Later, Charlie had explained that she was his aunt, but they did not speak to each other. It struck me forcibly how evil racial hatred was at many levels. When a family turned on a member who had the “good fortune” to escape the stigma of having a brown skin, it made the situation even more terrible. In the case of Mrs. Jones, however, she was clearly a troublemaker regardless of her situation, not her family.
Another hour went by before Mrs. Jones reappeared carrying her precious radio. She had nothing to say during the entire trip back into the city.
There are many other sources of bitter disagreements.
Looking back over the years that Peter Warren has successfully pursued his dream of lifting the technology of computing to another level, the journey hasn’t been without opposition. Numerous attempts have been made to derail the project, but Peter’s fierce determination has won through. Those that resent his success are fast falling away and ExoTech is on the verge of showing the world what computing should really be about.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.