#brycecourtenay

It was one of those marvellous high veld late summer days when the air is polished clean and sits warm on your back and the sky is blue, the colour of a much-washed cotton shirt -- though it was the time of year when a storm could build up in minutes. Seemingly from nowhere the big cumulus nimbus clouds would build in the late afternoon. If you went indoors for a moment you'd sense from the change of light that something had happened and then when, minutes later, you came out again, there were the towering castles of grey tinged with white, real estate for Gods and frightening giants to live in. Rain would come down in torrents. First a sharp 'ting!' like a pellet on an iron roof, then a half dozen more and the preliminaries were over; down it came, crashing, so you couldn't hear yourself speak, filling the gutters and flooding the dirt roads, each drop heavy with malice, washing away the red topsoil and generally behaving badly.Then, as suddenly, it would stop, leaving the whole place polished in the bright evening sun, the sky bluer than before. That was a high veld rain storm for you, full of braggadocio but not very big in the long-term department.

…a dream is often lonely, but provided you’re prepared to prevail, it’s invincible.

Mama Tequila wasn't a woman who put a lot of trust in life; she knew that in the process of living it you did more picking yourself up and dusting yourself off than tapdancing. She had long since discovered it didn't do to harbour grudges. The world was full of bastards and hating them was a time-consuming and poorly payed business.