If there’s one thing Rhodesia was in the 1970s, it was murra fukken dangerous. Over and above small calibre eastern bloc ammunition, strip roads littered with landmines and certain countries to the north of us being the hell in with Uncle Ian and his boyfriend PK van der Bilious, there was all sorts of other katunda waiting to make you peg. Mambas in an assortment of colours, flatdogs (which as I may have mention before is the greatest whenwe word of all time), your puffadders, gaboon vipers and vine snakes, scorpions, spiders, shumbas, ingwes, nayati, rhinos, mvus in every waterhole, angry RLI buggers on RnR in every bar between Bulawayo and Beitbridge and drunk safari suit clad uncles at the wheels of their Peugeot 404 station wagons on the way home from lunch at La Boheme and other swinging Salisbury spots. That’s of course if you managed to dodge the malarial mosquitoes, tsetse flies, ticks and other goggos that shared our little red-soiled teapot-shaped piece of Africa with us. Survival of the bloody fittest hey? Sterek. Darwin’s Theory was another great Rhodesian invention, named after Mount Darwin.

But all of the above was as gentle as two-ply paper on your zoompipe after piri-piri prawns compared to a ten year old jewboy with time on his hands, a low boredom threshold and a box of Lion Matches. Fucksakes hey – nothing was safe. I would mix things in the bathroom basin – Vitalis, a good splash of Old Spice, some Dettol and what have you, and see if it would burn. Kitchen consumables such as cocoa powder, sugar, salt, mielie meal were wrapped in tight twists of the Rhodesian Herald and set on fire behind the kitchen to see what might happen. It was only the timely intervention of Aaron the garden boy that saved all our lives when he refused me access to the large bucket of Alginate every Rhodesian household kept, regardless of whether they had a swimming pool or not. I was a pyromaniac deluxe, and it dirrint take the old queen long to notice.

Where are the matches Steven? The what ma? The. Matches. Steven. Oh those matches ma. I dunno; I dirrintouchemhey. Really Steven? Strue’sbob ma. Crossmyheartandhopetodie. What’s that Steven? Hope to die? You won’t have to hope to die; I will bloody well kill you in cold blood my boy. You took the matches – shut up – you took the bloody matches and you will not take them again. Do. You. Underbloodystand. Me? Ja ma sorry ma.

Now, as if playing with matches wasn’t bad enough and made all the more sweet by being expressly forbidden, I very soon learned the delights of playing with matches and a tin of Killem. Fucksakes man, what a tit discovery. Stalk a fly, light a match, aim the Killem tin and wooooosh – no more fly and no more fingers. I was in my element. Little Airfix soldiers – woosh. Little Airfix spitfires – woosh. Matchbox cars, seven singles, Barbie Dolls. Woosh, woosh, woosh. The garden was littered with small lumps of melted plastic. And then I remembered the bamboo. Lapaside the kitchen, there was a stand of bamboo. Not that play-play decorative stuff. The real fukken thing – tall, thick, knee deep in bat-shaped hairy bamboo leaves and full of brown house snakes and other things. I wondered what might happen if I applied the Killem/ Lion Matches contraption to the bamboo. I fukken found out quickstyle. One woosh, and flames starting spreading at a rapid rate through the leaves, crackling and leaping higher and higher. Willard, who had been watching me from the kitchen window came running and knocked the can out of my hand. He yelled for Aaron, who came running with the hosepipe, and between them, Aaron and Willard managed to get what looked like an enormous fire but was probably quite small out very quickly. Aaron sprayed water around the general vicinity to make sure things were out, and I followed Willard back into the kitchen. Jeez Will, did you check that hey, a fire, hey man, jeez -. Willard turned around to look at me. Do not talk to me about this fire ever again he said, and turned his back on me again. That hurt more than anything June had ever said.