35. Jo’burg and our exposure the culinary delights of Russian sausages

The three hundred mile drive from Beitbridge to Johannesburg was uneventful. It was finding an elusive Mister Billy Crauser once we got there that proved difficult. 

We spent hours driving around the streets of Jo’burg trying to locate his address. Around 1 a.m. we decided to call it a night, pulled into a deserted car park to get some sleep. 

Early next morning we woke cold and hungry. Shops wouldn't be opening for hours. 

A milk delivery wagon drove past, so we started up the combi and followed at a discrete distance.The milkman reached the start of his round, parked up his float and criss-crossed his way down the street leaving bottles of milk on doorsteps. After he disappeared round the corner we waited a for a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t returning then slipped furtively from the combi and ambled nonchalantly past doorsteps stopping momentarily to tie our shoe laces – although there’s no shoe laces on Chelsea Boots – and under the pretext of tying our bogus shoe laces, slipped bottles of milk under our coats. 

If any insomniacs that morning and had happened to look out their windows as we made our way down the street they'd  be excused for believing they were witnessing the world’s first ever shoe lace tying epidemic. Five blokes stopping to tie their shoe laces, continuing for a few steps then stopping to tie them again...and again...and again.

Once we had a couple of dozen bottles secreted on our persons we drove back to the car park and consumed our liquid lactose breakfast with relish. Milk never tasted so good...well the first two pints never tasted so good after that it went downhill.

It was on this very same morning we were introduced to the culinary delight known as the ‘Russian Sausage’. Across from the car park a cafe cum corner shop opened its doors and we ambled over to see what culinary delights were on offer. The guy behind the counter recommended we try a spicy Russian Sausage. I don’t know if having nothing but milk for the past twenty hours had anything to do with it, but I cannot remember eating anything so delicious before or since...and at 10 cents a sausage they were cheap. Delicious and cheap, now that’s what I call a winning combination. The Russian Sausage is extremely versatile. It can be eaten cold or as was our preference on that chilly Jo’burg morning, fried in a deep fat fryer. Not only did we end up eating four each that first cold morning but we returned every morning for the rest of our stay in Jo’burg to chosser away on a breakfast of Russian sausages.

For those interested in sampling the delights of the Russian Sausage – I won’t be ordering any as I’ve since become a vegetarian – I just checked on the internet and there is a South African company selling, ‘South African Russian Sausages’ – how crazy’s that ‘South African Russian Sausages’. It’s like selling ‘French Scottish Salmon’ or ‘English German Lager’. And why were they called Russian Sausages in the first place? Bizarre.

We eventually made contact with Billy Crauser who had been busy hustling away on our behalf and managed to set us up with a two week engagement playing alternative nights at ‘Archies Club’, ‘The Flying Saucer’ and the ‘Fire Station’.