Dear John,

It is with great regret that I have to write this letter, what with you and the other boys biting the bullets on the frontline against all those blacks in New Zealand. But see-through nighties are the fashion statements and on the tax invoices here and so I am going to be brutally transparent: I’m leaving you for another guy.

I am not going to say who he is, because transparency comes with responsibility, but you can guess: he is Franco-German or  maybe Germano-frantic. Some say he is a shark, but they’re just jealous of his teeth. Anyways, you have left him on the bench too often with me, and one thing led to the other thing.

John, I haven’t read the Bible in such a long time so I tend to mix up my proverbs. I can never figure out which is the right one for the occasion: Out of sight is out of mind, or Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The problem is not that I see too little of you. We live in postmodern times, and so I just see too much of you. You’re on billboards, in advertisements, on programmes, on back pages, on websites… I find it difficult too escape such doubts as, When is his hair going to grow again, or Green is for carpet cleaner salesmen.

But the worst is, when you’re live on TV, people get upset.  They say you are P Divvy’s blue-eyed boy, and then I realise I can’t tell, I can’t remember the colour of your eyes. And you’re not into hip-hop anyway, you’re too old.

If a girl can’t remember someone’s eyes despite seeing him every night, it’s time to move on, isn’t it? You have had your fifteen minutes of foam with me; and my jacuzzi is too small for more than one hooker at a time among all those props we use.

Why don’t you just come home. Nobody is expecting you to fall on your sword, bring it with you, every smith (I never liked your surname, it sounds like you have been smite with some or other lock) is entitled to his hoard of scrap metal. And the market is surging on the back of Gautrain cable.

You’ll be such a hero if you just walk away. Nobody will call you Johnnie Walker, not in a pub anyway, it can lead to expensive misunderstandings. Johnny Come Lately, maybe, but most girls I know are appreciative to the implications.

But you want to avoid John the Baptist, whose head always rolls in the end.  Why wait for somebody to chop it off for you? Fact is, you have been so unsuccessful as a captain for so long, always winning the war and seldom the battle, even the platter that would have had your head on should have been auctioned off by now.

The thing is, your whole platoon’s heads may roll if things carry on like this. It looks like you guys will have to face Australia in your quarters. These are a bunch of burglars; they know their way around the room. I mean, you may not even make it out the door.

Even if you make it to the semi’s, you’ll find all those blacks have moved in next door! These are blacks with tattoos! And they spell hooker “haka”, and then yell at you. And the ref won’t let you shout back. You can’t win against cheats like that.

Now Bismarck, oops, I’ve said it, Wikipedia says he’s into battleships.  That’s what we are going to need against all those blacks. Rather come home John, before it’s too late.

You’ll always have a corner flag in my heart

Your soon-to-be-ex

Tags: #New Zealand, #Springboks