There’s a fly in my …..
By PG Jonker
[Published on Leisure Wheels’ blog on 10 November 2011]
Ja, gory stuff, getting a fly in your soup. Not appetizing at all, except, maybe, if you are a cannibal. I do suspect, though, that even cannibals have their pride. Certain things are just not on, you know. Universally, kind of.
But no, the fly I’m writing about is not in my soup. It’s worse. After all, this is a motoring blog. So let me get to the point. One day I’m driving my bakkie, minding my own business, and enjoying the rumble of the big six. [Although sometimes I imagine hearing the liters of petrol fighting each other to get to the carburetor first].
Then a movement inside the speedometer cluster caught my eye. And there, ladies and gentlemen, sat a fly behind the glass. Well, he did not do much sitting. Appearing rather flustered and agitated, he would fly from the one end of the cluster to the other. Admittedly, it was more like a STOL kind of exercise: Short Take-off and Landing, given the confined space.
Now, you will not believe how annoying this 3mm sized little fella can be. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on the road, my eyes kept getting drawn to this spectacle. Now and then I would bang with my knuckle on the speedometer to get him to calm down. He would not listen.
Now I ask you, how this fella got there in the first place! Later, back home, the fly and I sat eyeballing each other. It’s a bit like having an itch somewhere that you just cannot reach. And the fact that you cannot reach there causes that itch to become an annoyance out of all proportions.
I assume the fly must have had similar feelings, only his might have bordered more on the panicky side of emotions. Bearing in mind how stupid my bulldog is then, given the size of the fly’s brain, I have to assume that he would not even have remember how he got himself into this mess in the first place.
Over the next few days the fly disturbed me every time I drove my bakkie. However, as time passed, the fly ran out of energy, and eventually passed away (well, he probably sommer just died).
Some locals from around here sport oranges on their aerials, fur on the dash and those little doggies with the heads that bounces up and down when you drive. But I reckon I’m the only guy I know of who sports a dead fly in his speedometer cluster.
Sometimes driving on corrugated road the dead fly would still draw my attention, merrily bouncing up and down. But otherwise I have since made peace with him.
He also seems at peace now. It’s just a pity I can’t show him off, you know, being quite a unique feature in my car.
PGJ