A metaphor seeded by a moment of terror on the Akkedisberg Pass yesterday morning. A combination of corrugations and sand on a gentle bend nearly upset more than an apple cart. Youthful years getting to know the handling limits of my old Austin Cambridge, or criss-crossing the country in overloaded Documentary film panel vans paid off in a split second…
I was on my way from Tessies to Gansbaai, and it made sense to take the direct route from home to Stanford on the gravel road, rather than head back to Caledon to pick up the R316 and R326 which arc a long way round to arrive at the Stanford junction.
I’ve just looked at the map – on closer inspection, it wasn’t the Akkedisberg Pass, which is on the R326. My route also traverses the Akkedisberg, but the road isn’t even on the map!
I had slowed down as the road rose into the low cloud, but haste and insidious vertigo caused by the light mist meant that my speed increased imperceptibly. I saw a thick wall of cloud ahead and gently backed off the throttle, not wanting to brake on the loose surface. The right-hand wheels hit a trough of fine gravel, skewing the car slightly just as the left-hand wheels hit bad corrugations and lost adhesion. Suddenly the car flicked sideways 45 degrees to its vector, just as the road curved gently to the right and disappeared into the cloud, downhill!
I survived, with minute flicks of the wheel, gentle prods on the accelerator – yes, NOT the brakes – and a lot of luck because the curve more or less matched where the car wanted to go. Oh, and the road was now empty. A twenty-two-wheeler grain truck was skittering away into the distance behind me…
The phrase “Sideways In The Mist” popped into my head as my heart-rate calmed to 175 or so and resonated throughout what turned into a sweltering day hawking financial services in Gansbaai. I had signed on to do a technical job, installing terminals, but here I was, with no sales experience, no aptitude for it, temperamentally unsuited to be an acolyte in the Cult of Sales Targets and Daily Reports, trying to persuade at least four people a day to sign on the dotted line, when I should be developing Boggy Pond…
I was chasing daily targets set for eager young men working dense suburbs and townships with high potential for “hits”. For them, an extra journey to sort out an incomplete application package meant a detour of a few kilometres, photocopying facilities were abundant. My nearest towns were 25 and 40 Km away, with the next nearest similar distances beyond in an area where the economy was a mix of seasonal holiday homes and depressed townships.
I’ve pitched and won many an advertisement treatment or Corporate Video idea, but I couldn’t sell a rope to a drowning sailor. My stress levels were returning to those I had experienced as a DOP on under-budgeted, under-equipped films or TV series.
I was truly “Sideways In The Mist”. Time for a few flicks of the steering wheel…