The daddy of black holes

I suffered a minor financial miscarriage recently, a situation which is compounded by my being trapped in Europe paying R350 for a bog-standard chicken burger, R200 for a pint of odd-tasting beer and sacks of money to fill the tank of the ridiculous Citroën I hired from Europcar in Paris.

- BEN TROVATO

I specifically didn't want a Citroën. The French can't make cars. They make things like croissants and baguettes.

To be fair, if you think French women are elegant and desirable, you haven't been to one of the pâtisseries in the 4th arrondissement. But cars? Non, monsieur. So I booked a massive Ssang Yong. But the woman behind the counter had just given my car to someone else and all she had left was this shitty little Citroën.

With a Gallic shrug, she tossed the keys to me and waved in the general direction of a parking garage down the road.

The accelerator is the size of a box of matches and whenever I meander across the road, an alarm goes off and a message tells me to stay in my lane. I doubt any other car has been told to fu*k off with such regularity.

Anyway. I was talking about my financial mishap brought about through no fault of my own. It was thrust upon me, slashing my already meagre earnings in half. This is what happens when you work for people. They can stop giving you money at any time and blame it on the economy, the exchange rate, Panyaza Lesufi, the price of sardines or anything else they can think of to shift the focus away from their inability to run their business properly.

There are ways of making up for this unexpected shortfall in my income, all of which are illegal or unethical.