Stories from the 'hood: Saturday night madness

Yesterday was extremely hot during the day and there was a huge rainstorm last night. I work night-shift until 9pm but due to the fact that it was pouring with rain at that time, I stayed at work after closing because I didn't fancy biking home in it. Eventually, around 10pm, the rain had let up and I put on the rainsuit, fired up the bike and set off for home. When I was about half-way there, it began raining again and when I reached the next main intersection, I saw that the road was full of fairly large gravel, indicating that a certain amount of flooding had occurred. That's a recipe for slipping and falling on a bike but I made my way through the intersection slowly and kept on and started cursing as the rain started coming down harder. It was pelting down by the time I reached the suburbs adjacent to mine.

Bertrams is an old, lively and fairly notorious inner-city suburb that is subject to a lot of urban decay. There's never a dull moment there and maybe because it was an hour later than my usual going-home time or a side effect of the rainstorm but the residents seemed even crazier than usual.

As I turned into the street that I use, there was a sudden rain of clothing. Some people on the second floor were having a domestic spat and it looked like the man was making a point by throwing his woman's clothing off the balcony into the garden below. Some of the items landed on the pavement, where they were being picked up by a passerby using his telescopic baton, a common self-defence item here. This morning, as I drove by, I noticed a lot of washing hanging on the balcony. Perhaps they made it up when he was sober.

Passing the taxi-rank, I noticed that the usual drinking and street gamblers had adjourned for the evening, normally they are out in force but at least they had moved the party inside somewhere.

I continued on slowly in the pouring rain as there were no working street-lights in that part and the stormwater drains were blocked, leaving huge pools of water all over the road. Suddenly, I realised that a large tree had fallen over in the road, making it completely impassable. The large pools of rainwater and long, uncut grass made the prospect of mounting the pavement to get around it unappealing so there was nothing to be done but turn around and head back the way I came and take another route.

A few blocks down, there was a young man staggering around drunkenly in the middle of the intersection in the pouring rain and he was trying to get me to stop my bike. He appeared to be either extremely drunk or high or both so I declined to stop, evaded him and continued on my way.

All the streetlights were out and the rain continued unabated but I was close to home and I was very grateful to reach it in one piece and take my wet clothing off and feed the hungry cats because by then, it was close to 11pm. What a night!

This morning, the streets are littered with large stones, a testament to the flooding, and I noticed that the fallen tree is still blocking the road and it is likely to be there for a few days before city officials get around to clearing it, if the last time that this happened is anything to go by.

An underrated inner city sport: attaching old sneakers to overhead cables. This takes some skill because they need to be thrown in such a way that the laces wrap around the line, securing the sneakers, so that they stay up there for years, slowly rotting. They finally fall off when the laces give up the ghost