Dear Gerard [former workmate]

... The shame is that after 9000 metres of RC drilling since my last letter I am not quite so excited about geology. I think I mentioned then that I had stopped reading high-brow literature between drillholes, taking to the hills instead, yes? Well guess who is currently sitting on the passenger side of my Landcruiser? Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's official: I am burnt out.

Speaking of books, I have read but two about Africa [Gerard had just got back from a trip there]: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and a biography of Cecil Rhodes. Neither, you will understand, endears me to the continent, but both were thoroughly excellent. The Rhodes biography was read at the tail end of a long period in my mid-late teens when I read only non-fiction, declaring to all that there was no need for escape to fiction - then I became an adult and discovered Aldous Huxley, who could tease the joy out of a dinner party, and Henry Miller, who could make it out to be a fiery pit of terror. So I altered my stance: The only books worth reading are those that find the joy, the terror, and the magic in the everyday world. Hmm, a tangent.

But yes, Rhodes - what a cunt, but what a brilliant cunt. And I mean brilliant, not as good or clever, but as 'shiny'. Yes Cecil Rhodes was a shiny, polished, flawless cunt, and if you don't know his story well then learn it. Cunts like that need to be spotted at an early age and shot. There's heaps of them out there, and all that you and I can do is buy a shotgun and read about the life and times of Cecil Rhodes. Knowledge is power...