Politics - they're idiots, the lot of them. What do they know about government, half of them are still in the trees. Sport - Naas Botha was the only one who knew how to kick a ball, why don't they bring him back? International news - she just wasn't interested. I searched for the shorter, human interest articles that she liked and had just finished reading aloud about a snake from Bloemfontein which swallowed a Maltese poodle. "Shame, that was somebody's little pet, let's hope it didn't suffer too much, eh," when my eye caught the headline below.
"Man found guilty after shaggy tortoise story."
Something made me scan it before I started reading to her. It was about a man being tried for the possession of uncut diamonds. He'd attempted to sell them to an undercover policeman, who had looked at the stones he offered and promptly arrested him. In his defence, the man said he'd come across the squashed remains of a big tortoise on the highway between Johannesburg and De Aar, and he'd found the stones right there amongst the broken shell. He claimed the tortoise must have found them somewhere and eaten them and by rights, this gift from the gods was legally his. The policeman hadn't believed a word of his story and neither did the magistrate. Five years and no option of a fine.
I must have made a small noise, because my mother snapped, "Come on, what have you found? Read it to me! Don't skip the good bits!"
"It's nothing, ma, just some man found guilty of IDB."
"Only fools would get involved with illegal diamonds," she said.
I turned the page and carried on reading aloud about a homing pigeon that came home after three years away from its loft.