Photo: Tim Knight
Surfer’s Corner, Muizenberg, from Tim Knight’s living room window
n Tim Knight
A letter from the end of the world If I have to be in solitary, I can’t think of a better cell. Compared to the millions of people rotting in the disease-ridden slums of South Africa, I’m the rich man who’s gone to heaven
I
know you haven’t asked yet, but I’m in great shape mentally and physically – although approaching my prime with scary speed. I wake to the thrum and thunder of Atlantic surf on the beach outside my window. I check that the various aches and pains mandatory for an 82-year-old man who’s lived hard haven’t worsened noticeably overnight. Then I check my state of mind.
And find, somewhat to my surprise, that I’m curiously sanguine. Content. Even happy. Which means, no doubt, that I don’t fully understand the seriousness of the situation. Instead, I choose to be positive. I live alone on my Canadian pension in this glorious apartment up on the seventh floor at Surfers’ Corner in Muizenberg near Cape Town. All of False Bay stretches out from my windows on one side.
Awesome Muizenberg Mountain towers on the other. If I have to be in solitary, I can’t think of a better cell. Compared to the millions of people rotting in the teeming, sickening, disease-ridden slums of South Africa, I’m the rich man who’s gone to heaven – despite biblical disapproval of such an undeserved reward. Which inevitably brings me to politics and the precarious state ColdType | April 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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