Musings of a Different Kind

By Frederik

An anthology of short stories and poetry capturing the mood of a white African migrant easing into European life. Often bordering on the politically incorrect it reflects the author's wonder at his experiences settling in the UK as he explores his new abode by bus, train and foot. The people he meets inspire the stories, but the reader must decide whether they are fact or fiction. The sub-text includes the moral decay of a Europe once the harbinger of light and Christianity, now exporting tools of death and destruction, but reveals a respect for life in Britain generally. The work is divided into five components. Paradise and Abroad about relationships between people going about their business in public places on the transport systems locally, in Germany and France. Doggerel and Crambo contains the verse. The stories in Tilting at Windmills are darker. Almost Discarded Baggage has a South African flavour with Mhlobo Wam, Xhosa for My Friend, as the main narrator.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9780244921446

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Musings of a Different Kind

Musings Of A Different Kind

Frederik

Copyright

© Copyright 2017 by Frederik Jacobus van Zyl

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2017ISBN 978-0-244-92144-6 Frederik Jacobus van Zyl

To my lovely wife Diane

Paradise

Paradise

Paradise lost and paradise found

it’s all in the mind you see

Losing is finding, gaining is bound

to the inner eye that sets you free

One Day In Paradise

On my way to Huddersfield to lecture business skills I took the bus down-town to catch the train. An uninspiring driver takes my money mechanically. He's not really in the cab. After picking up passengers at the Malvern Street Church halt, his progress is impeded by a red traffic light.

While most of the bus is still inside the bus bay, a woman tries to get on, the driver ignores her, the door stays closed. She smiles sheepishly at a passenger on the bus and retreats to warmer climes in the bus shelter.  There must be something wrong with the traffic light, it stays red.

On the radio someone from the control station concernedly wants to know why he isn't moving. It's peak hour and a stationary bus is of no good use to the travelling public. His brief explanation doesn't communicate the cause of his plight effectively so she questions him. It wasn't third degree stuff, very polite and accommodating, but he has clearly taken umbrage at being questioned.

Before pushing the button that will connect his voice to her ears, he says at the top of his voice: Are you freaking - here I'm not sure, maybe it was flipping, I know it was an f sort of word - stupid?

Some animated discussion follows and she finally tells him what the passengers have been suggesting to one another for a while, just go. He goes and at the Spinning Wheel, he doesn't want to let another woman, madly fidgeting inside her handbag, beyond the cab into the bus. She has no ticket and only big notes. He's adamant and she gets off without a fight.  Bloody-mindedness, a closet misogynist? Maybe one day we'll see him come out, on TV perhaps?

At the station a conductor comes through a slowly opening sliding door of an East Coast Train coach. She looks out regally over her domain, clears her ample heaving bosom with a cough and harrumph, eyes still focussed on some spot in the distance and leans forward slightly.  Whothluh! She expertly sends a yellow flash with her tongue between her generous lips, long drop style, betwixt the coach step and the platform's edge.

It disappears in the void underneath the train, euthanising the last cockroach that managed to hang on for dear life amongst the oil and toxic excretions from impatient or incontinent passengers who wouldn't or couldn't wait for the train to clear the station.

Got a seat on the Manchester Express which came in minutes earlier than scheduled.  A young woman gets in and aims to sit opposite me. She catches my eye and I smile at her, having witnessed the low level misanthropic  abuse against woman earlier on I thought some kind of corporate male penance was called for, it was the least I could do.

She's off in a flash to seek a seat elsewhere. My grey hair methinks. Another woman follows her into the train, they exchange smiles. Sisters, mother and daughter, friends? They eye each other fondly and smilingly, whispering sweet nothings to each other in an eastern European tongue, dispelling the blood relation theory instantly.

The rejection hadn't anything to do with my achromatic coif, nothing as perfunctory as that. I didn't understand what they were saying of course, but sweet nothings sounds the same no matter what the language.  They seat themselves on the aisle next to me. 

The train pulls out and picks up speed. Soon going fast and almost furious, swaying irregularly, the lines pulling the coach now this way now that way.  No wonder the train was early. It was a bit uncomfortable. The coach whisperers had found a solution to this problem, they held hands under the table separating them and their feet were intertwined.

They weren’t going to be put off by a silly and disapproving train trying to unseat them. 

Huddersfield soon came, I shouldered my bag of pearls and alighted, nary a goodbye, not even an askance good riddance from my fellow travellers. How indifferent can you get?

Another Day In Paradise

Cool and windy out there. See what the day brings. Lunch and then to town shopping. Traffic was on the heavy side. The wind wasn't too cold, my eyes didn't water, not much. Couldn't get everything I wanted.

At the Market two women so drunk they had difficulty in standing upright, long unkempt hair, unable to articulate their needs to the stall holder, a young Asian looking man who spoke and treated them with a tender sort of kindness. The one was thin to the point of emaciation. They wandered off, puffy faces housing non-seeing eyes and grey matter sozzled by the drink the medula oblongata giving motion instinctively, brain dead - what a way to die.

Man was made in the rational image of God, the only part of creation intent on killing itself - life style - alcohol, nicotine, drugs and other deviancies. All other life fends for that life, flora and fauna do not knowingly commit suicide. Self destructive lemming cliff diving and whale wallowing in shallow surf can only be explained by neurological short circuits.

Some days at the Market are pleasant, others are not, mostly it's the weather. Not so much the cold. At times I enjoy the cold, but not the cold wind which disturbs my eyes, tears brimming on my