Entertainment, Obsession and a Bit of Regret

So, I’ve been thinking about what I used to read growing up. Proper books, the ones that stayed with me. As a kid, it was all Asterix and Tintin. I had the full collection, and they were neatly stacked on the shelf right next to my bed. I kept them in perfect order. I mean, I probably had undiagnosed OCD, back before anyone knew what that was. I’d read them at night before falling asleep—every night, pretty much. Over and over.

When we were still in Mallorca, my mom would read to me in the evenings. I must’ve been about seven or eight. And not baby stuff either: full-on Tolkien epics. The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings. Later it was My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, and then All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot—the vet from Yorkshire. I loved those stories. They made me feel like I was part of something smart and funny and gentle. And when we moved to South Africa, of course, my Tintin and Asterix books came too. They were non-negotiable.

As I got older, well, I’ve mentioned before that there were a few porno novels. The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander, and then Xaviera’s Fantastic Sex, which was an education of a whole other kind. Totally inappropriate for a teenager—but completely enthralling. Let's be honest: those weren’t read for the plot.

But there were also proper books that got their claws in. Wilbur Smith, for one. And then Hemingway—The Old Man and the Sea stands out. I must’ve been thirteen or fourteen when I read it. I remember sitting there, reading it in one go, and just bawling my eyes out. It hit me in a way no other book ever had.

The World According to Garp—I think I picked that up from Niels’s part of the house. He wasn’t much of a reader, but the book must’ve been lying around. And then Hotel New Hampshire. That one stuck for... let’s call them complicated reasons. I had a weird adolescent crush on my sister, and that book didn’t exactly help. But John Irving’s writing—he just got it. There was something in there that made you feel like even the bizarre stuff had a kind of logic to it.

Then, of course, there were the books we were forced to read at school—To Kill a Mockingbird, Cry, the Beloved Country, and then Shakespeare. Endless Shakespeare. And I just never understood why we had to wade through all that archaic crap. I know that makes me sound thick, but it didn’t click for me. Still doesn’t.

TV came to South Africa around 1975 or '76. By the time we moved there, it was just starting. There was only one channel. I think it kicked off around five or six in the evening, started with cartoons, and then the news came on at eight. English one night, Afrikaans the next. That’s how it worked. But we watched it, because what else was there?

I remember Cosmos with Carl Sagan was a big one. I watched that religiously. And then Dallas, which was massive. It aired Tuesday nights at half past eight, after the news. And Johannesburg would go dead. The streets were empty. Everyone was glued to their TVs. And when I say everyone, I mean the white population. I’ve got no idea what the black population was doing—probably getting ready to serve their white masters the next day. That’s just how it was.

We got a Betamax video recorder around 1981 or 1982. It was this massive thing. Before that, if you wanted to watch a movie at home, you had to rent a projector and film reels. You’d get this big case with the projector and another with the reels. You’d set up the screen at home, run the film, and hope the lamp didn’t burn a hole through it halfway. And if it did, which it often did, you’d have to cut and splice it yourself. That was the only way to watch anything unless it was on live TV.

But once we got Betamax, everything changed. I think the first movie we rented was Dirty Harry. That was a big deal. The other thing was, you could actually record stuff off the TV onto blank tapes. That was revolutionary—nobody had seen anything like it.

Then came the early video games. When I first arrived in South Africa, I was living with the Barclays, and we went down to Swaziland for the weekend. Stayed at the Holiday Inn, and they had a game there—Pong. Simple black-and-white screen, a dot bouncing back and forth, and you’d move your paddle using a wheel. Blink, blonk. That sound still lives in my head.

Arcade games started popping up everywhere. Space Invaders was massive. You’d line up, throw your 20 cents in, and try not to die in thirty seconds. Then Asteroids came along—the one with the little triangle ship that spun around and shot rocks. That felt futuristic.

But the game that really stuck with me—the one that actually shaped something real—was this big old machine at Space City. I can’t remember the name of it. It cost 50 cents instead of 20, so you knew it was serious. You didn’t just stand and play it—you got into it. Sat down like a fighter pilot, hands on a yoke, eyes down into this screen where enemies came at you in what felt like 3D.

And it wasn’t just flashy. It had this incredible detail—the way the controls didn’t respond instantly. You’d pull the yoke, and there was a delay. Like you were actually moving an aircraft. If you didn’t anticipate that delay, you missed. If you were sharp, you’d hit everything. I got so good at it I clocked the machine (score maxed out). The owner gave me free games for life. That was my local claim to fame: I’d basically become part of the furniture.

Years later, I was sitting in a Piper Tomahawk on my first real flying lesson. General flying area over Johannesburg. Instructor next to me, giving the usual talk—altitude, trim, speed. And then he said, “Right, your job now is to keep her straight and level at 6,000 feet. Constant speed. Go.”

So I did. Just like that. And he watched me for a bit, then turned and said, “Have you flown before?”

“No,” I said. “Only commercial flights.”

He shook his head. “No. I mean, have you flown like this before?”

And I said, "I’ve never flown a plane in my life.”

He didn’t believe me. Couldn’t. Because apparently, nobody on their first flight just sits down and holds it straight and level like that.

But I knew exactly why I could do it. That game at Space City. It trained me. Sounds mad, but it’s true. That anticipation—making a correction before the machine responds—it’s exactly what flying feels like. That weird delay between what you do and what the aircraft does. Same thing happened years later when I started driving boats. I already had the timing, the balance, the touch. All from a 50-cent arcade machine.

And then, portable games started coming out. We had these early handheld ones—probably Nintendo, but this was way before Game Boy. Simple stuff, but they were brilliant at the time.

David and his brother, who lived across the street at 44 First Avenue, got an Atari. We weren’t best mates, but we hung out sometimes. They had a driver who’d take us to school. But what I remember most is the Atari—they had games like Space Invaders on cartridges. Plug it into the TV, and you were set.

At Niels’s factory—Wood Creations—they had one of the first Apple computers I ever saw. This would’ve been around ’82 or ’83. It had a floppy disk drive, and on it, there was a game called Adventure. Just green text on a screen. You typed what you wanted to do. “You are in a valley. There is an angry dwarf to your right.” That kind of thing. Richard and I used to go there after school, get dropped off by my mom, and we’d just sit there for hours. We drew pages of maps by hand. No graphics. Just imagination. Try explaining that to anyone today.

Later on, when I got my first proper computer at university, we’d play Leisure Suit Larry. Then there was the Space Quest series, fantastic stuff. But this was around ’86 to ’88, and those games were everywhere. All on floppy disks.

At the same time, I was devouring Trout by Ernest Schwiebert—two volumes—and Cartridges of the World, which basically became my bedtime reading. I could tell you the difference in muzzle velocity between a .222 and a .22-250. The energy a .375 H&H puts out compared to a .458 Winchester. I knew it all. It was almost like memorising poetry. But it was about bullets.

And when we weren’t watching movies at home, we’d go to the cinema—Niels would take us once or twice a month. I remember Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, The Long Riders. But the one that really stands out is The Hunger. Must’ve been ’83. I was 16. David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve. Vampire film. Super erotic. There’s this scene where Sarandon goes to interview Deneuve, and next thing you know, they’re in a full-on seduction. There are breasts, kissing—nothing beyond that, but it was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. It slipped past South African censors somehow. We saw it at a tiny indie cinema in Rosebank. How we even got in, I’ve no idea. But it made an impression. Still does.

And then I look back on all of this, and yeah—it was a hell of a time. But I can also see now what I missed. St John’s was offering me the best education a white South African boy could get, and my parents were footing the bill. I could’ve gone to Cambridge. I really could’ve. They would’ve paid for it. No argument. But instead, I was reading Xaviera’s Fantastic Sex, Old Man and the Sea, and trout fishing manuals. I was busy memorising bullet calibres and arcade game patterns. I thought I was being clever. I thought I was smarter than the system.

But deep down? If I had my time again—if I knew then what I know now—I’d have taken it more seriously. I really would. I’d knuckle down. I’d give that opportunity the respect it deserved. Because I know now how rare it was.

I’ve had a full life and I’ve been lucky in more ways than I probably deserve. But that version of me—the kid with his head in the clouds and a joystick in his hand—I sometimes wish I’d grabbed him by the scruff and said, “Oi, pay attention. This stuff matters.”

Would I change it all? No. But I wouldn’t wing it quite so much, either.