Carol’s Column

Every mother should have a Jody Scheckter in her life

THERE is a noise pollution officer in Johannesburg.

We also have an aesthetic officer, in case you didn't know.

I almost called him the other day when I returned home and discovered that my house looked like a scrap yard.

Scattered around the parched, shrivelled, Parkwood prawn-infested lawn, leading up the driveway on to the stoep and into the house were bits of dirty metal.

Mothers never panic. It is not dignified.

“A missile has landed in the garden! An unidentified flying object! Call the police, the observatory, the fire brigade!” I screamed.

“Relax, Ma,” Jamie's head popped out of the upstairs window. “Do you like my new go-cart? Isn't it brilliant?”

Brilliant?

Disappeared

My diningroom table had disappeared under an assortment of screws, bolts and varying bits of scrap metal.

“Jamie, this is a go-cart?” I shouted. You must understand, I was not happy at the sight of oily, greasy machinery on the diningroom table.

“No, that's not the go-cart, Ma. It's just a part of the engine. I'm having a little trouble assembling it.”

“Jamie, the diningroom table is not the place to assemble an engine.” Perhaps I should mention that our diningroom table, made of railway sleepers, is my pride and joy.

I'm always telling people how for 50 years, trains trundled across our diningroom table before South African Railways replaced the wooden sleepers with concrete ones.

Jamie reminded me. “Ma, for 50 years trains have trundled across these well-worn, beautiful, hardy pieces of wood. Do you think a few bits of broken engine can harm them?”

There are times when mothers cannot win — but this shouldn't stop us from trying.

“If you don't get those bits of junk out of the house into the yard immediately,” I bellowed, “I'll throw the whole lot away.”

Jamie moved fast. Within 10 minutes, the back yard looked like a scrap metal yard.

A petrol-driven go-cart is every 13-year-old's dream. Day and night Jamie worked on his cart.

A stray piston pitched up in the toilet. A spark plug was found nestling in a pot plant, a valve found its way into the fridge. But the crunch came when I found myself in bed with a toolbox.

“Jamie, what the hang is your toolbox doing in my bed?” I yelled. Unhappily.

“Ma, I answered the phone, put my toolbox down and then forgot it.”

Supersonic

Then, last Monday, while dusting the keyholes, I heard a most terrible noise. It sounded like a supersonic jet revving up in the cabbage patch.

I looked out of the kitchen in time to see Jamie and his cart shooting off down to the Zoo Lake.

That night, at supper, he was elated.

“Ma, do you realise that this is how Jody Scheckter and Niki Lauda started? This week it's the Zoo Lake. One day it could be Le Mans.”

That's all very well.

In the meanwhile, there are problems.

“I was arrested,” announced Jamie desolately on Tuesday night. “A traffic cop stopped me and asked how old I was. He then told me I had to have a light-vehicle licence, my go-cart was not roadworthy, it had no lights, and I needed a safety belt. He said he'd let me go this time — but if he catches me riding on the road again, he'll arrest me and confiscate my go-cart for ever.”

“For ever?”

For five days now, I've been trying to trace that cop. I know one's not allowed to bribe a police officer, but ...

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