White Horse
By PG Jonker
As people grow older they seem to develop a need to see what happened to the folks that were at school with them. So it became time to attend the reunion of the class of 1981 of Vredenburg High School. That was not my class, but my wife’s.
As is incumbent upon South Africans, we kicked of with a braai the Friday evening, at a semi-outdoor establishment, Vlakvarkgat, on the West Coast road outside Langebaan. A lot of laughter and backslapping abound. Now 1981 had been a while ago. So, although everyone in attendance still knew who they were, some urgent and discrete enquiries were occasionally required to remember what that good buddy of yours’ name was, before you could do the jovial back slapping thing.
At one stage a horse walked into the bar. I kid you not! I checked my non-alcoholic beverage, but could smell no alcohol in it. I checked the other patrons to see their response, but no-one responded with any measure of surprise. In fact, it is as if it is the most normal thing under the sun for a horse to walk into the bar.
So now I’m thinking, maybe they do not see the horse (in which event I think I’m a bit in trouble), alternatively, for them it is a run of the mill kind of thing for horses to do around here. Come to think of it, does the Whiskey bottle not sport a white horse? So maybe it’s just me.
But I decided to check this out. So I walked up to the horse and politely enquire: “Howzit, horse?” The horse responded by nudging her mouth into my hands, looking for something to eat, (sugar, more in particular, I later realised). Clearly the horse thought nothing of being chatted up by a human. Just for the records I took a picture of the horse.
I did wonder afterwards whether my fly might have been open, or why the horse seemed to be laughing like that.
PGJ