As the dust settled, I was forced to confront a simple, unarguable reality:
the life I had imagined, and strived woward, for the previous ten years was over.
Fishy Pete’s had been bankrupted and wound up.
My marriage was over.
I was divorced.
I was living in a small bachelor pad in someone else’s basement, working for a boss I couldnøt stand and had no respect for. I’ll get into the details of that relationship later, but for now it’s enough to say that this was the terrain I found myself standing on.
There was no plan B. There wasn’t even much of a plan A.
So I decided to do two things as well as I possibly could. I would do my absolute best at work — trying, against all odds, to make Neil’s cockamamie patents into something tangible. And when I had my children, I would give them my full attention.
That decision, modest as it was, led to some unexpectedly lovely memories.
The kids would come to stay with me in that little basement apartment. I cooked for them. We played hide-and-seek. One evening, I remember clearly, Olie was hiding in a cupboard and I found him curled up inside. He looked genuinely frightened.
“What’s the matter, Olie?” I asked.
I looked at him and said, “You’ve got to remember — you’re Olie the Brave.”
Many years later, he still remembers that moment. He’s told me it gave him confidence, and that knowledge gives me a quiet, disproportionate amount of happiness.
Another evening became known — at least in my mind — as the night of the long knives.
I’ve always been a handmade knife enthusiast, and at the time I owned a few particularly beautiful pieces, displayed under the glass top of my Balinese coffee table. One night the kids asked if they could take a closer look. I took them out, showed them properly, and before long they were posing for photographs holding the knives, grinning proudly. I still have those photographs. I still cherish them.
There was also the evening I nearly burned the place down.
I’d put a pot of sunflower oil on the stove to heat up for chips, foolishly leaving the lid on. When I lifted it off, fresh air hit the oil and it ignited instantly. Without thinking, I grabbed a towel, lifted the burning pot off the stove, and carried it into the middle of the room, placing it on the rattan floor covering. I then grabbed a large blue bean bag filled with polystyrene beads and smothered the flames.
It worked.
The only downside was a perfectly circular, charred hole burned clean through the rattan. Replacing it before I moved out cost a small fortune.
Another weekend I took the kids to the German School’s annual festival in Johannesburg — rides, sideshows, noise and chaos. There were camels there offering rides, a real novelty . I didn’t know it yet, but that sight would resurface in a much stranger context.
At work, Neil had come up with the idea of a CHC Family Day — a grand affair where employees could bring their families onto the CH Chemicals campus in Edenvale for food, entertainment, and speeches. Mainly speeches. Neil enjoyed those, particularly his own.
Each division was tasked with organising something. Despite not being a managing director, I was put in charge of coming up with an attraction. I was desperate to prove my value at CHC, particularly since I’d made little progress with Neil’s patents.
And then I remembered the camels.
I tracked down the organiser — an old Afrikaans chap from what was then South West Africa, now Namibia, who owned a small fleet of camels.
“You know,” he said in his thick accent, “it’s nice letting the kids walk around on camels, but have you ever heard of camel racing?”
I hadn’t.
He explained. A hundred-metre sprint. All we needed was a stretch of road.
CH Chemicals sat on top of a hill, the only factory in the area, with a long road running down the side. It would do perfectly.
On the day, I kept the full plan to myself. The idea was that each division head — and Neil himself — would race. Including me.
One person I was particularly keen to impress was a young woman named Sam from the open-plan office. She was there with her boyfriend — later revealed to be her fiancé — but I was newly single and not making especially sensible emotional decisions. More importantly, my kids were there, and I wanted them to be proud of their dad.
There were no helmets. It was a tar road. Camels are enormous.
The handlers mounted us, offered no instructions beyond “hold on,” and when the whistle blew, slapped the camels hard on the arse.
They took off.
I remember gripping the saddle, kicking my camel’s ribs, and thinking very clearly that this was either going to end brilliantly or catastrophically. My camel flew. I crossed the finish line first.
There’s a photograph Sam took of me charging through the line, with Neil coming in close behind. It’s reckless. It’s absurd. It’s completely indefensible from a health-and-safety perspective.
But when you’ve lost your business, your marriage, and your sense of direction, you take the wins where you can find them.
That one mattered.
Small wins do help.