Carol’s Column

A little perfection can go a long way

Often I listen to people discuss perfection. The sun setting as a red ball in a wild sky, that is perfection. A herd of elephants walking across a horizon is perfection.

The lines of a sleek sports car is perfection. The Springbok cricket team beating Sri Lanka, the Springbok rugby team beating anybody. Bafana Bafana winning the soccer World Cup.

Perfection.

Ag, ja, well, no, fine. There is perfection and perfection.

My own perfect heaven would be a car boot lid that, when you lifted it up to remove parcels from the boot, didn't come crashing down on your head because the holding spring was worn.

I'd like a car door that opened without having to push my shoulder upon it and give a rugby scrum shove just to make it budge.

And then there would be the joy of a poopless dog. One that didn't require me to walk behind him with a plastic bag and a shovel, my eyes concentrated on his rectum in order to catch each malodorous ejection.

Perfection for me would be a new toothbrush wrapping that didn't break a nail and a tooth as I tried to open it.

Perfection would be a lawnmower without an attitude. One that worked the moment it was switched on.

It would be a weed-eater which never ran out of fishing line or a pair of garden shears that cut like King Arthur's Excalibur.

Perfection would be not having to stand in a queue for three quarters of an hour at the post office just to collect a registered letter.

I love sport. But really, all this Mallett dribble. For heavens sake, rugby, soccer, cricket, etc are just sports.

You know, the games that people used to play, hopefully to win but all in a wonderful atmosphere. They're the sports everyone enjoyed watching because of the skills of the people participating and above all, because it was a game.

For me, perfection would be knowing that sport was still a game. So the national rugby team has a bad patch, is this a reason to fire the coach? The soccer team performs badly the coach is to blame?

C'mon, what happened to the word sport?

Perfection to me would be switching on the hot water tap and having an instant gush of hot white water.

Not having to wait for 10 minutes and a trickle of brown H20 because, "Modom, the hot water pipes in this suburb were put into place 70 years ago when they used the old copper pipes and they're corroded. Really, they should be replaced."

As replacement will cost almost the price of this house, this is a perfection which will never be achieved.

For me, perfection would be an efficient Department of Home Affairs which gets its act together and doesn't take almost six months to deliver a new South African passport.

It would be a car that could fly above the morning traffic jams and a parking place to call my own.

It would be the banishment of voice mails asking you to "leave a message stating the time, date, intent, bank balance, measurements and a telephone number".

Perfection would be a total ban on cellphones, guns and cigarettes, not necessarily in that order - and it would also be mandatory for all politicians (and aspirant politicians) to appear on TV between the hours of 11pm and 5am.

Finally, I guess my own personal idea of perfection would be to take the dog for the walk around the block at 11pm without fear.

Then go to bed, leaving the window wide open, without having to bolt the door and make like I am under siege.

It's all a matter of perception, really.

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