Boys, recipes and court stuff

This morning’s grey weather set the tone for the day as I once again headed off to the Joburg Magistrate’s Court to cover the ongoing trial of the High Court Judge accused of driving drunk, crashing his Jag into a garden wall and then fighting with the cops who came to arrest him.
The matter was set down for 9am, but in true tradition, it took more than an hour for proceedings to start. So for a good 60 minutes a bunch of us sat in the public gallery, twiddling our thumbs as we waited for something to happen. Fabulous Shoes was there, sporting a natty pair of black patent wedges fastened with fancy bows at the ankles. Two young guys in school uniform graced the back bench so we took to interrogating them. They were prefects from Parktown Boys High – the school that made headlines last week for its particularly violent initiation traditions. Bonus! They gave us great stuff, but it was all off-the-record. Ah well. Whatever.

We chatted about the merits of matrics bashing younger kids, of the proud traditions of the high school and it was all very pleasant.

Then Purple Jersey from the local news agency arrived. She joined us in our time-passing exercises by hauling out a copy of “French Women Don’t Get Fat” – a kind of guide to eating for pleasure.

“Check out the recipes,” she said, offering pages of no-holds barred recipes making generous use of sugar, cream, chocolate and all the stuff that should jolly well make French women fat like the rest of us but apparently don’t.

A little more idle chit chat and then in walked all the legal beagles and we all stood up for the Magistrate as he made his grand entrance.

We were ready. Today was the day we would find out the exciting new evidence the defence had uncovered and was going to use to blow the case wide open. Or else they were going to lodge an appeal to have the entire case thrown out of court because the state had messed up and failed to prove anything. This was going to be a cracking good story, baby! Gripping stuff indeedio.

And then it all fell apart. They took like 30 seconds to simply postpone it. To another day next month when we will just have to come back and hear why the case should be chucked out. After almost two years of hearings and postponements and evidence and testimony. The much-anticipated bright light at the end of the tunnel simply faded back to a tiny little dot far in the distance. Ah man!!!