• The chance to win Sh13 million proves too sweet an offer to turn down
Image: Courtesy
The older I get, the more I find that making new friends can be such a chore. I don’t mind meeting new people, for a journalist it is an occupational hazard, but getting to know new people in more than just a professional capacity is something I find most tedious.
Under the banner of friends, for the purposes of this story at least, I will put down the breakfast crew of my favourite Cape Town radio station. The show I listen to every morning as I prepare for work and the one I listen to as I drive in and out of the city.
Since I moved to this city in 2012, I have stuck by the show through one major change of personnel, when they changed the main presenter after the fellow who does the show now returned to the station and the show after a hiatus.
I have been there for their highs and lows as well as the ordinary days, when there has been nothing particularly outstanding on the show, but it just felt like hanging out with my mates. They make me laugh, I enjoy their banter and ordinarily would have no reason to switch, except that a rival station has just offered me and the rest of the city two million really compelling reasons.
The rustling of crisp brand new cash is luring me to a different breakfast show on a different station by offering one damned lucky listener the chance to win R2 million (about Sh13 million).
This temptation has got me thinking of the old joke that some ascribe to Winston Churchill:
A man asks a woman if she would be willing to sleep with him if he pays her an exorbitant sum. She replies affirmatively. He then names a paltry amount and asks if she would still be willing to sleep with him for the revised fee. The woman is greatly offended and replies as follows:
She: What kind of woman do you think I am?
He: We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
I am rationalising my betrayal by saying it’s only until I win the cash (like a gambler, I am that certain), and also, I have left the familiar for the unknown several times when it has suited me. For instance, after a couple of years of visiting the same barber here in Cape Town, I recently decided to try the services of a different tonsorial artist.
In Nairobi, I had at least three barbershops that I visited regularly, and while some people would consider cheating on one's barber as bad as cheating on their significant other, I'm not that crazy.
That said, my loyalty to one bar is legendary. For those who don't know, I spent so many years visiting the same local that some people thought I had shares there.
Okay, to be honest, most people who drink have a neighbourhood pub that they would choose over all others for a million different reasons, so that's not the best example, but you get the drift.
So I’ll be selling my usual station out for a few weeks in my bid to get rich quick, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone.