hey So I'm feeling boyish today - whatever that may mean. I thought I'd selected "braindead" from the drop-down list, but my mouse hand is giving me gyp again, so I misclicked and ended up with boyish. Yeah, that's cool. I do suffer from boyish good looks and charm, of course; slightly different from plain ol' good looks and charm. So yeah, saw my baby this morning. No - not that one; first up, much to my disappointment, she's not mine, and secondly, she's diving in Mozambique. Well, she was diving in Mozambique - got home to Jnb (that's Johannesburg, for anyone who does not know international airport codes) yesterday, all in one piece and entirely not chowed-up by sharks, which I think is a good thing. Which brings me to a point of rather interesting irony involving a resurrected surfer and a rather large and presumably hungry (or just downright pissy) great white shark. So there was this local kid, about 15 or so, who got chowed by a shark. Leg taken off just above the knee, at Muizenberg in False Bay which is part of the Cape Town metropole. This happened in March sometime, end of summer, on a Monday afternoon. It was, at the time, the second fatal shark attack in three months, the first having occurred just west across the mountains at Noordhoek (geography lesson: The Cape Peninsula is kind-of a weird shape. As it heads south to Cape Point, it narrows (to get to a point, obviously) so it has 2 coastlines - one in the Atlantic Ocean proper, the other in False Bay. At its widest point, the 2 coasts are only about 6km or so apart, and separated by a rather mountainous backbone). So it was all over the local radio news - kid taken by shark, mates managed to fend off said shark - I will say that for the surfers, all of whom are pretty much stoners, they will do anything for a fellow surfer, even leap into blood-ridden shark-infested waters to rescue a mate (three years back another kid had his leg taken at the Strand - its across False Bay from Muizenberg heading east - and someone went after the shark and wrestled the leg from its mouth. I can't recall whether the kid died or not) - and this poor kid ended up on the beach in Muizenberg, one leg missing, bleeding out and although Metro Emergency got there within minutes, he had died. It was a big tragedy, understandably so. Until later that afternoon. This all happened around 2pm; at around 3:30pm the news bulletins on local radio were saying things like "*unconfirmed* reports of a fatal shark attack" and then, as local radio is wont to do, they had the EMS doctor who was on the scene on the phone confirming that the poor kid had died. Until about seven minutes later, when the paramedics who'd rushed him to a nearby trauma unit phoned in to say "er... no, he's on life support in theater having emergency surgery" and then they had the hospital spokesperson on the phone confirming that the kid was alive, out of theater, critical but stable and that the prognosis was good. Not too sure about how good the EMS doctor is at this stage - don't they teach you how to identify death at University medical school?? Anyway, to cut a long story short, kid recovered over the course of the next few weeks. Lost his leg but otherwise fine, been recovering and going back to school and doing as well as he can. Cut to Friday's news headline (and this is where the earlier irony comes in): -Young JP back in the water.- For indeed he was - it was spring break and he was back in the sea for the first time since the attack, apparently, in the same spot where it had all occurred, Muizenberg in False Bay. Cue the second billboard on the very next lamp-post: -False Bay beaches closed after great white sighting.- Seems the shark still has the kid's number, huh? If that isn't irony, well, then nothing is. Anyway, Mozambique being fairly tropical and riddled with beautiful warm water and coral reefs is apparently a fairly impressive shark-watching spot. This had not escaped Claire when they were making their plans to go diving. So it was a standing joke (although infairly bad taste) that she was merely a shark-biscuit and that she should carry a sharp stick or something suchlike to fend off any over-zealous toothy demons of the deep. And of course she was convinced that her plane from Cpt to Jnb (Cape Town to Jo'burg, yeah?) was going to crash, so she booked a seat on the wing. I asked whether it was so she could enjoy the view on the way down. She said no, it's so that if the plane explodes, the fuel tanks in the wings go first and so she'll be killed quickly. I asked what if the plane didn't explode but the tail fell off or something. I was greeted with a look which could curdle milk - much the same as when I called her a shark-biscuit, come to think of it. But judging from the text message sent to my mobile yesterday, I am apparently not on her shitlist, so that's a good thing. But that's not what I came to talk about. Came to talk about my other baby. The beautiful, scarlet 575M in the window at Viglietti Motors, just over the road from Fruit and Veg City and my mom's offices in town, aka The Ferrari Shop. The earlier 550 Maranello was described as "sculpted flawlessness" in the local press. The new 575M Maranello (M for modified) is supposed to piss all over the 550, and is just as beautiful with its single nostril on the bonnet and the little pleated vents on the side. And its red, which makes it faster than other cars (this is a well-documented fact: red cars are faster than other cars; red guitars sound cooler and play louder than other guitars; teams wearing red on the pitch always win etc etc), and it has a price tag approaching 4 million ZAR (that's South African Rand, in international forex terms) which is like 750k in Yank money and a good 350 000 Sterling, which is rather a substantial chunk of cash. In my youth I was very much a proponent of the Lamborghini Countach; and while the good folks at Lamborghini still produce magnificent automobiles (like the Diablo and the more recent Murcielago - think Eminem and Dre in the Without Me video in their green one - and the baby Gallardo) those cars are kinda butt-ugly next to the elegant sculpted lines that the good folks at Pininfarina produce for Ferrari and have since 1952. And those folks at Pf deserve a Nobel or something. See, Ferrari produce engines; Enzo Ferrari himself was not big into aerodynamics, so he had others, like Sergio Scaglietti and Pf, design his car bodies. In fact, in his honour, Ferrari have recently launched the funky new 612 Scaglietti to partner the limited edition F1-inspired Enzo. Enthusiasts among you will also recognise Pf's design in the '98 spec Peugeot 406 V6 Coupe and the old 1990 Aston Martin Zagatto (which was kinda butt-ugly too, with half its massive v8 sticking out of the hood) as well as a massive amount of Alfa Romeos, Maseratis and Fiats. Man, hat I would do for a 575M (although I'd get a custom green one). Or the old 355. Or a 456M. Or an old 348 or 512 or 308 like Magnum drove. I guess a love of exotic sports cars kinda fits the erstwhile boyishness after all. Drive safely - you do not want to have to pay for repairs on a car worth 4 million bucks. -d-