Living for Disco

My friend has lent me his car while he is up north doling out polio vaccines in remote communities.  He works for the UN, so I have been driving around in a super-shiny black Toyota with tinted windows, and UN license plates.  I love these plates.  They give my pathetic ego a sense of gigantic importance.  They say “Hey, I work for one of the largest and most bureaucratic organisations in the world!  Bow, insignificant minions”.  It makes a change from the impression you make in a cycle helmet.

As importantly, displaying them gets you waved through all of the roadblocks on the way out of the city without having to stop and irritate anyone within a 2 mile radius with a futile search for your driving license, which is somewhere in your bottomless handbag.

Mind you, the car has an alarm remote so sensitive that if a mosquito so much as breathes on it, all hell breaks loose.  Last time I borrowed it I ended up standing in my driveway, in front of my landlord’s entire extended family, shouting ‘Shut UP! Shut UP! God’s SAKE!’, while the car beeped and yowed and blinked and inspired all the neighbourhood dogs to take up opera, all because I’d put the remote in my jeans pocket while I shook someone’s hand.

It’s a bit nerve-wracking.  I’ll be out and about, sitting in the cinema, for example, unable to concentrate on Antonio Banderas dancing the tango because I’m worrying that if I move in the wrong way, I might unwittingly unlock the car, which is half a mile away, and come back to find the stereo and all the leather seats have been forcibly relocated, and I’m in debt to the tune of N$80,000,000,000.

So, I’m quite glad, in all, that I have to give it back tonight.