Infallible Dick

I’ve met many interesting characters on my travels but few as memorable as Dick. I remember our very first encounter at the infamous Castle Bar in Cape Town in 2011, just a five-minute walk away from my cockroach-infested apartment. The Castle Bar was a bog-standard pub with a special kind of clientele. To this day, I’ve yet to encounter as many loose cannons in one place.

It was the watering hole for the misfits and the straight-up mentally unhinged, the functioning alcoholics and the not-so-functioning ones. It was Cape Town’s odd sock bag full of marginalised melters. Most importantly, there was a shared sense of not giving a sweet fuck which made Castle Bar one of my favourite hangouts in Cape Town.

One sunny afternoon during a drinking session at The Castle Bar, I got chatting to one of the regulars, a guy who used to come in dressed as Beetle Juice, make up n’ all. When he found out I was from the UK, he introduced me to Dick, an English expat, and UK Special Forces veteran.

Dick was in his fifties; he was tall with a grey shaved head, huge lamb chop sideburns and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He used to remove the filter from his fag and smoke the living daylights out of the thing with an unmistakable sucking sound audible from within a five-meter radius.

Dick immediately took a liking to me when he found out that I was a Northern Irish Protestant. He’d been stationed in Northern Ireland during the conflict and like most British soldiers at the time, he sided with the prods and didn’t think fondly of the Catholics which he associated with the IRA. I feel compelled to point out that I am a Protestant by birth, and I don’t identify with the dogma. If I could choose, I’d be neutral but if you’re born in Northern Ireland, you don’t have that luxury.

Either way, we hit it off and when Dick found out that I was soon to be homeless because of a bust-up with my flatmate, he wanted to help me out. He had a daughter around my age and so probably didn’t love the idea of her alone and sans abode in a city like Cape Town. Plus, I got the feeling that Dick respected courage and strength in others and well, he thought I had some serious balls, aimlessly gallivanting around the infamous South African city on my todd. So, he agreed I could crash at his place until I found something more permanent.

Dick and Beetle Juice at the Castle Bar

Dick lived in a house not far from the centre of Cape Town with let’s just say, an eclectic mix of tenants from South Africa and beyond. When I moved in, Dick moved out into a tent in the front courtyard which he called his “kennel”. Deep down I think Dick loved sleeping in the tent because it reminded him of his army days. I shared a room with Becs his daughter who was staying with him for a few months. In true Dick style, he ingeniously cordoned off a section of the room for me with some army camouflage netting. The other tenants consisted of Nobu, a Zimbabwean guy who lived in a cordoned-off area of the kitchen and had an unhealthy obsession with R Kelly. He especially loved hitting the high notes in the morning before work.

Then there was Shot Gun Shed Guy, a 40-something-year-old South African guy who lived in a small shed in the courtyard accompanied by a huge shotgun. He was a man of few words and wasn’t around much so we never got properly acquainted, although this could have been intentional on his part.

Shot Gun Shed Guy’s daughter lived in another room inside the house equipped with an impenetrable makeshift locking system devised by Dick and her dad. Dick told me that this was to deter Zimbabwean Nobu because according to Dick, he used to get horny after a few drinks and go wandering with questionable intentions. Nobu struck me as a very foolish man to attempt to pull a fast one with a girl whose dad was sleeping less than ten meters away with a bloody shotgun at arm’s reach.

When Dick wasn’t boner-proofing his home security system, he was at the pub, his favourite pastime. He had a select few favourite haunts which he liked to frequent throughout the duration of the day. Like many ex-military types Dick had the constitution of an African bush elephant which I can only assume was a result of all the tough military training over the years. He could put away more liquor than the entire crew of the HMS Victory and would regularly walk home from the pub late at night armed with nothing more than a can of mace – a risky endeavour in Cape Town at the best of times.

Dick lived and breathed the military, and I could sense that he felt a lot of nostalgia for that period of his life. I’d sometimes find him watching army training videos from the 80s and 90s and he always had a hefty stash of tinned beans in his pantry.

One of my fondest memories of Dick was when he would return home late from a day at the pub. I was usually in bed asleep in the makeshift bedroom when I heard him come in the front door. “Fuckin’ civilians”, he’d say in a thick northern accent as he made his way down the hall. Sometimes it was more of an elaborate monologue. “This is gold”, I thought as I lay there like Sigourney Weaver in a scene from Gorillas in The Mist, listening to Dick regress to an earlier period of his life as a Paratrooper in the army. It might sound unnerving, but truth be told, although I have no doubt that if the situation called for it, Dick in his day could kill a man without a second thought, I never felt unsafe around him.

Dick front second left during the Northern Irish Troubles

Before meeting Dick, I’d never known anyone who had spent so much time-fighting in conflict zones. I began to see how such profound experiences go on to influence veterans in every aspect of their lives; and why there is such immovable solidarity among them. Only they can possibly understand what it feels like to have that very specific set of impactful experiences. Joe Public could never fathom such a thing. I imagine that without connection with fellow veterans, life after the military could be extremely isolating.

In the end, I was too damn reckless for Dick’s liking and before long I was politely nudged out the door and on the lookout for a new place to stay. I think it was the drugs that sealed the deal. I remember bringing one of my druggie pals back to Dick’s house one evening where we proceeded to stay up all night snorting synthetic khat - a powdered version of the khat plant which is an addictive stimulant that people chew in the horn of Africa and Yemen.

Dick had woken in the morning to find us wide-eyed and not so bushy-tailed, so he decided to indulge our madness by brandishing a photo of a couple of dead soldiers, presumably the enemy in one of Dick’s wars. At the time, I didn’t think much of it but looking back, it was a bit mad. Dick, having fought in every modern war imaginable went on to tell us that the Northern Irish conflict was the most bloodthirsty war he’d fought in. At the time this filled me with an odd sense of pride.

As a side note, I’ve since come to the conclusion that there’s only one thing worse than drugs and that’s African drugs. The quality ranged from “I think I’ve just ingested poison” to “utter shite”. One could argue that I was at a slight disadvantage having started my foray into nasal annihilation in South America – the babymaker so to speak. Of course, in South Africa if you had the money and the contacts, you could get your hands on something better. I didn’t have the money and my contacts consisted of a handful of morally destitute Nigerian hustlers, but that’s for another day.

Dick was an old-school booze and fags kind of guy. He didn’t appreciate the “awake for days speed gremlin vibe” and so I understand why he felt that our lodging agreement wasn’t working out. He was a mad bastard but he had a big heart and a sensible streak. He loved his daughter dearly and I’ll never forget his kind gesture of taking me in when I had nowhere to go. Everyone knew him. He was a likeable guy, probably because he was to the point and transparent. Plus, he generally avoided conflict and he didn’t give a crap about what anybody thought of him. People pleasing was an alien concept to Dick. I admired this.

It wasn’t long until I secured my next sofa to crash on at my pal Chris’ house in the dodgy as fuck neighbourhood of Woodstock. I say sofa but it was more akin to a fold-up medical bed from the Boer War. Nevertheless, I was glad to have a roof over my head for the foreseeable future.

To be continued….

Infallible Dick