I watched part of the pre-race goings-on from the roof of the pits. (Imagine doing that today!)
What a charmed life you led, John.
Today the Mounty sniper on the tower will shoot you on principle before you can commit a terror attack. The security services are paranoid about overlooks and other heights. We used to be a lot freer in the last century.
Hey, Mike, your omelette-scarfing at the Royal in Durban reminds me of the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne in the early 1970s. The first reporter to interview me when I settled in Melbourne introduced me to their omelettes; they were served in only one of the restaurants, so you had to know where to go. But what impressed me even more than the omelette was that the weekend chef could make an outstanding split pea soup. I was disappointed when I discovered he too was a South African, as I had hopes of split pea soup being an Australian specialty -- nothing warms you through faster after a cold winter ride. The swill that you could get when the pubs emptied on Spring Street from a man with a cart, which had a meat pie in the so-called pea soup and was called "a floater", was "a national and international disgrace" according to Bruce Cavalier (you might remember him as the cartoonist Cav); I didn't try it twice for fear of becoming a floater myself. Buzz, the resident wit of our circle said, "The floater is an Oz manhood passage: if you hurl a duke, you lose."
