Blog

Down and Out

Down and Out

Ian Martin in Pearly Beach

image left

Down and Out

Half a century ago, at the age of 21, I travelled around the UK and Europe for a year. Because I arrived without any money, I had to take temporary menial jobs to finance my stay. I worked on building sites as a labourer, was a window cleaner for a while, and even spent time as a lavatory attendant in Amsterdam in order to pay my way from one place to another. At times I was obliged to live rough, like sleeping on railway benches or in cheap hostels frequented by individuals who were down on their luck.

About a year after returning to South Africa, a fellow traveller sent me a book with this inscription in it: ‘Hello there. I wonder, doesn’t this strike a familiar note?’ The book was Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell and it did indeed resonate with memories of roughing it in Britain and on the Continent.

It is now fifty years later. A week ago I was sitting in my car outside Blue Bottle Liquors, when a man approached me. He looked exhausted and dehydrated, as if he had been wandering in the desert for a week without a hat. He said he wanted to buy a rooidoppie but was R5 short. Could I help?

As I handed over the coin, I asked him what a rooidoppie was. He said it was a plastic bottle of wine with a red screw top. When he emerged from the bottle store with his purchase I watched him make his way down the street to a narrow alley and he disappeared from sight.

It was then that I remembered the Orwell book and its depiction of Salvation Army refuges, squalid doss houses and grimy city streets. I tried to imagine the kind of life endured by the man I had just helped to buy a bottle of booze. What condition would I be in, I wondered, if I had fallen on hard times and was homeless? I concluded that by now I would most certainly be feeding the worms.

See the video here on Blogger.

Down and Out

Ian Martin

This is my writer's blog and it's a pleasure to have your company. You’ll see that the site is designed to showcase my writing.

View Profile

What is Xplorio?

Xplorio is your local connection allowing you to find anything and everything about a town.

Watch the Gansbaai Video
Read More

Recent Posts

Waiting for Walter

Waiting for Walter

On the last of our ten days in Joburg, Guy drove us to Lanseria Airport to catch a 12:05 flight on a Safair Boeing 737 back to Cape Town.

The Real Danger

The Real Danger

In the past 40 years I have witnessed several fires burning through the bush on the northern side of Broadway Street in Pearly Beach.

My Building Career

My Building Career

In my late twenties, disillusioned with city life, I began to dream of building a simple seaside cottage well away from civilisation. At that time Pearly Beach seemed as good a place as any, so, on returning from a year on Gough Island with a few tho...

Habituation

Habituation

It must be about 40 years ago that I read a short story by Nadine Gordimer in which a toddler gets trapped in razor wire surrounding his parents' upmarket Johannesburg home.

The Ashton Bridge

The Ashton Bridge

When I heard they were going to build a new bridge over the Cogmans River at Ashton, and that it would be the first tied arch design to be constructed in South Africa, I looked at my wife and said, "That sounds interesting."

In the Podiatrist’s Dental Chair

In the Podiatrist’s Dental Chair

For more than a decade I paid Doctor Carey to work on my teeth whenever one or more of them caused me pain in the form of toothache.