The long distance call

I love the drive to work. Generally I crank up my aircon, followed by my radio. And I sing at the top of my lungs and in between I swear a lot, at bus-drivers overtaking in the wrong lane.

On Sunday and Monday’s trips in this week, my eyes were still half-closed, (see previous Insomnia posts), but today I am fresh from last night’s nine-hour vrek. At 06:25 am this morning I hit Sheikh Zayed Road in a splendid mood.

Sometimes I tune into the SA Radio 2000 equivalent, ‘The hooooome of classic hiiiits’. This only happens occasionally, when I am not into the R&B / Dropthapresshaaaaaa vibe of Radio 1.

It is the stuff my moonbag and rockies-wearing aunt and uncle would listen to. Dubai’s ‘hooooome of classic hiiiits’ plays a lot of Roy Orbison and Cliff Richard. If you’re lucky you’ll get some Bob Marley or some Fleetwood Mac.

Anyway. This particular morning, this Paul Simon song came on, when out of nowhere, I got these goose bumps:

It was a slow day,
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road,
There was a bright light -

So I turned down my aircon. Still had the goose bumps. So then I turned the radio up.

These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry -

And I was crying. Crikey. My eyes welled up with the emotion of it all. All of a sudden I was back at age five, at one of my folks’ raucous parties and Paul was pumping from the hi-fi and I was skipping around the pepper tree dodging the cans of Amstel and the potjie pot, wearing my grandmother’s long silk gloves and shorts and my home-made cardboard tiara, singing like a banshee and I was so damn happy.

There is something SO nostalgic about that song. It’s amazing. It is so growing up in South Africa.

Last time I heard it I was on a mate’s i-pod on a grey miserable day on a bus from Leeds to London, packed with unhappy looking northerners, and someone in front of me was eating these offensive-smelling cheesecurls, (but the prawn version).

Man it makes me homesick.