Faking it for a steel phallus

It's that time of the year when the procrastinators among us are busy finalising holiday destinations. This is often cause for great consternation for my better half.

She's responsible for organising our breaks, you see. This is because she knows that if it were left up to me, we would probably spend two weeks doing a tour of the taverns in northern Zululand or something similarly absurd. However, the real source of her angst is that she has grown to understand the nature of the beast that is yours truly.

In the past, I have waxed lyrical about my impressive array of personality disorders. Trust me, I have not scratched the surface.

Another addition to that list is that practically nothing impresses me. Tell me if I'm the only one who feels this way. In June there was a lot of excitement due to an impending lunar eclipse.

People invested in goggles, telescopes and whatnot in anticipation of this "event".

On the evening of the lunar eclipse I was on air on East Coast Radio where I host an evening talk show. My technical producer, Sirshin Moodliar, was almost shivering with excitement. And he kept on prompting me to say something about it.

Now, I have an acute understanding of what a lunar eclipse is. I could drive you to distraction with a detailed explanation of how it occurs. However, it seems a lot like being excited about two snails running into each other.

But I have learnt that people frown upon non-excitable individuals, so I faked excitement on air for a few seconds.

I have a long list of things that I know should impress me. But they just don't. In fact, I often feel that I'm in a constant state of being grossly underwhelmed. I remember the first time I went to Paris. Someone inevitably decided to take me to the Eiffel Tower. I understand the fanfare around the structure. But when I got there, all I could see was a giant iron penis jabbing at the sky. I stood there for five minutes in bogus admiration for the benefit of my guide before I faked a tummy ache so we could move on to something more interesting, such as staring at the legs of French women.

The same fate met me the first time I went to London. Our guide kept on pointing out grey, ugly buildings and inciting enthusiasm in us by regaling us with tales of beheadings at every corner.

By the time I finished that dreadful bus tour I was convinced the only thing that happened in medieval England was the ritual decapitation of women. I don't know about you, but I have little interest in the separation of women's heads from their torsos. The minutes I spent staring at that obscenely grotesque structure called Buckingham Palace was a total waste of time. The only thing that could have possibly interested me there was if the Queen Mother (who was alive at the time) had appeared on a balcony in a tutu.

The only interesting thing I saw was a purple-haired young man in biker regalia wearing a T-shirt with the words "Fornicate the Queen!"

I felt the same way when my wife dragged me to Edinburgh. I refused to pay the equivalent of the price of a good bottle of Scotch to go inside that old building to hear about people who died in 1267.

Even Rome, my favourite city outside SA, got a bit stale after a while despite us having an excellent chaperone with an acute appreciation for its rich history.

I spent the entire time we were at the Colosseum thinking how cool it would be if they still had slaves they could feed to lions. Okay, that's cruel, but a boxing match or some other activity involving bleeding people would have helped.

If you think I'm picking on Europe because they're broke, banish the thought. I was just as unmoved by Dubai. I found Singapore cold, sterile and with about as much personality as a parliamentary committee chairman.

I ended up getting uncontrollable urges to publicly unwrap some Chappies bubblegum, throw the wrapper on the floor and then light up a blunt of ganja just to invite some excitement into my life.

Let's keep our collective fingers crossed that Mrs N will find an appropriate place for us to recharge our batteries.

Lord knows, we need it.