Father Christopher meets Buzz Aldrin
This is ground control to Major Tom | You've really made the grade | And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear | Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare...
Late one night during the mid-80s, I sat in a Rondebosch pizza house chatting to Buzz Aldrin.
I mean, y'know, in a situation like that, one just has to ask. "So, Buzz, what was it like?"
I don't really remember his answer to my question, but I do remember, on many occasions and with a large circle of friends, lounging around that Rondebosch pizza house.
On Wednesday evenings, we'd drink coffee and talk until the early hours of the morning.
Buzz seemed a nice guy.
1984 was an especially good year. It's not really surprising therefore that, through Chris and RageBoy, it was in 1984 that Father Christopher became my Spiritual Guide and Mentor (SG&M)™.
I just didn't know it — all those years ago.
When I climbed that step to enter the warm gloom of the hall under the bridge in August of that year, I was stark-raving mad. I mean it. Twenty-six years old and completely barkers. Insane, cracked, bat-shit crazy. I was fucking psychotic and I was as scared as all hell.
Had I not climbed that step — it was about two feet and a million miles high, I'd have ended up dead or in jail. I'm not convinced of it. I know it.
But it's the year, i.e. 1984, and Buzz being the second man on the moon, that stick in my mind.
As, over a couple of years, I learnt just how fortunate I was to meet those hard-talking, heavy-smoking people who frequented the pizza shop in Rondebosch, I might have guessed that halfway around the world, Chris had taken that first step a while before me.
Back then, Father Christopher, his ever-faithful stenographer Locke, and the vile and evil RageBoy were already reconstituting our lives, the universe, and whatever else there might be in store for us.
It's a good feeling. Congratulations, thank you, and lead on, Chris. Without the likes of you, I'd not be here today.
This is Major Tom to ground control | I'm stepping through the door | And I'm floating in the most peculiar way | And the stars look very different today...
David Bowie | Space Oddity
