I’M reasonably well educated, vaguely knowledgeable and, dare I say, fairly well-informed, although that’s up for debate.
So how come I’m such a superstitious guy?
I’m not saying I believe in voodoo or the Tokoloshe, but I certainly believe in luck.
I’m aware, of course, that you make your own luck, and being lucky does not mean winning the lottery.
No. Luck to me means regular good fortune, and I have that in spades.
My kids have turned out way beyond my wildest dreams (touch wood) and my wife understands me better than I do myself.
I eat well, drink too much and come and go as I please. To me you don’t get better luck than that.
But I was thinking about luck last weekend when I caught the biggest rainbow trout of my life.
The lake was choked with ice leaving just a slither of clear water for a tight cast on the south bank. So conditions were not ideal.
I knew there would be no insect life, so tied on a Fritz booby which looked like a Christmas tree.
I seldom fish with ultra-gaudy flies, but these were extreme circumstances.
I felt a tug, then my rod buckled like a divining stick. The fish rocketed out of the water in a spectacular tailspin, and I was slow in dipping the rod to minimise chances of the hook being thrown.
It took me five minutes to land the 2kg beauty, and then I discovered I had hooked it in the fin.
It definitely was originally mouth-hooked as it would not have been able to jump otherwise, but it had obviously thrown the fly in mid-air. Then, by a hundred to one chance, it had re-hooked itself.
The joy of fishing is the chance to ponder the … um, mysteries of life.
I have had ultra-good luck on numerous occasions, particularly as a journalist. For example, at a remote rally outside KwaDukuza late on a Saturday afternoon, Nelson Mandela – newly released from jail – chose to name and shame the ‘sinister third force’ (the Civil Cooperation Bureau), that was destabilising the country before the 1994 elections.
All politicians were obliquely referring to the ‘third force’ but no one had publicly said who was responsible.
Big scoop
As fate would have it, I was the only mainstream scribbler there and got the scoop of the week.
Having said that, I have only won one journalism prize in my career; the Occupational Health Association of SA (OHASA) award, which you will guess is not exactly the Pulitzer.
In fact, neither I nor my boss had ever heard of it before. The Editor consented to me flying to Jo’burg and collect the wotchamacallit-award, but suggested I find some other story to pay my way.
I did. Thanks to some insane good luck, the never-heard-of award was held on the same day the Proteas flew home after almost winning the World Cricket Cup.
South Africa had been isolated in sport for decades and Jonty Rhodes’ incredible run-out of Inzamam-ul-Haq made world news.
I arrived at Jo’burg airport just as the Proteas were being mobbed like rock stars.
Unbelievably, right next to me was Jonty himself, totally bemused by the adulation.
‘This is insane,’ he kept saying.
Then before flying home, just by chance I saw a snippet in the local press calling ‘Mad’ Mike
Hoare’s former Congo mercenaries to a reunion braai, so I went and spoke to a bunch of ageing gunslingers harking back to the wild old days.
The story of me winning the OHASA award was a two-line filler on page bazillion, while my fluke interviews with Jonty and the Wild Geese dominated page one.
So perhaps I do believe in voodoo after all.
But back to my fish. I need some serious good luck this year as I’m publishing two novels.
One is almost ready to go, and my beta readers (that’s what writing geeks call test-drivers) have given encouraging feedback.
However, I’m worried. Having hooked a monster rainbow in the lake, and then landing it completely by fluke … have I used up my annual quota of luck in one go?
Watch this space.
