✈
on the move
on the
1st of February
I flew out of Jan Smuts International Airport, as it was then called, heading for Heathrow. Landing in a freezing, but clear skied London, the following morning.
I made my way there (and back) on the now-extinct Zambian Airlines! There had been concerned glances and some snickering when I told people this – but – I must say the flight and service on board were perfect. And, as you can see, I lived to tell the tale.
Three blissful days were spent touring and shopping around the icy, but thankfully dry, English capital. Virgin Megastore, the HMV in Oxford Street and Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus were must-visits whenever I went to London. When I say shopping, I mean buying a sackful of CDs to take to Ireland.
Needing something to play these CDs on, I also purchased a portable Blaupunkt CD player similar to the one pictured below.
When my brief London sojourn ended I excitedly boarded a British Midlands flight bound for Belfast. Final destination: Donaghadee in County Down, Northern Ireland. The beginning of my cricketing year on the emerald isle.
While waiting to board my flight at Heathrow my thoughts drifted to a song by the Irish group Energy Orchard which had been released with little fanfare the previous year. I didn’t own a Walkman, so I hummed the melody while nursing a pint in the busy airport bar.
Belfast, how I know you so well
You’re like heaven, you’re like hell
Times, times change, though the bond still remains
I’ll be with you till the day I die
Till the day I die
I wondered to myself what Belfast would be like and continued quaffing my now warming ale, amongst the throngs of people bustling by.
The flight to Belfast was made even more thrilling by the famous dude sitting alongside me for the one-hour flight over the Irish Sea. But, that’s a story from another blog, and I won’t bore the shit out of you, by telling it (yet) again.
Hello!
Landing in a cold, wet and windy Belfast, I did not realize it would be around three months before I’d glimpse even a little piece of blue sky. A heavy, dark cloud would hang from the heavens, so low you could almost touch it, for almost the first hundred days I was in Ireland.
The novelty of their weather soon wore off and it wasn’t long before I yearned for even a glimpse of blue, let alone sunshine!
A small welcoming committee from the cricket club greeted me in the arrivals hall with one of those cardboard signs with my name on it. Fame at last!
There were three of them: I remember the chairman Jimmy Fraser clearly as he would feature prominently throughout my year at his cricket club. Mainly of course, because I developed an instant crush on his lovely daughter Susan, from the moment I laid eyes on her. I would then spend the rest of year doing my best to convince the gorgeous young Irish lass that returning to South Africa with me would be the best thing she could ever do.
She only rarely fell for my charms and I definitely came back home alone twelve months later.
The other two men who had welcomed me awkwardly were Larry (the club treasurer, I think?) and Brian (I think?)(the club captain, again I think?)
At first glance, Belfast looked like a drab, depressing place. Freezing cold too! Jimmy’s overly warm car was a welcoming respite from the biting North Sea wind that pummeled the airport as we walked in our little gang from the terminal.
I wondered what I had got myself into as I sat in the back of the scruffy maroon sedan – desperately trying to decipher what these funny-looking men with accents as thick as pea soup were saying to me.
One of the first questions they did ask me, (that I understood) as I shook their hands back in the airport building was if I played rugby – and if so – would I consider turning out for the Donaghadee rugby club. Being South African, over six feet tall, and a bit heavier than I am now, they must have thought they were in luck when they first spotted me.
There was no effing way I was going to play rugby in this cold, miserable weather I thought to myself. Also, it had been eight years since my last game in high school. Ultimately, there was no way I was ready to play that contact sport ever again. I came up with some feeble excuse about having a bit of a knee injury or something. It wasn’t the last time I was asked either.
We soon left Belfast behind and headed east. Past fields of assorted greens, towards a grey coast, and my new home, in the little village, of Donaghadee.
For What It's Worth 
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