Inanda, Johannesburg (circa 1978)
It was during one of our annual trips back to South Africa. I was eight at the time. As always, we stayed with the Barclays at their big old house at 72 Forest Road, Inanda—just across from the Inanda Club.
Bruce and I picked up right where we’d left off. We were still playing cowboys and Indians, still exploring the bridle paths around the club, still armed with cattys, and still convinced we were deadly.
But this time, Bruce had something new: his older brother John’s pellet gun.
This was a proper weapon. It fired actual projectiles. I was fascinated.
I remember Bruce standing in his bedroom, and without blinking, using the barrel to crack open a pane of glass in the leaded window so he could shoot out into the garden. He didn’t even open the window—he just made his own hole.
It was thrilling.
Later, we walked the bridle paths and Bruce brought the gun with him. He shot a couple of doves—rock pigeons, really. It sounds awful now, but at the time it didn’t feel cruel. We gave the birds to Philemon, the Barclays’ gardener, and he cooked them and let us try a bit. That seemed to make it alright.
That was the moment I knew: I needed a gun like that.
When my mum saw how lit up I was around it, she told me that Niels had an old BSA Meteor and hinted she might bring it to Mallorca for my next birthday.
Wow.
The Gift That Made Me Dangerous
As you can imagine, the days leading up to my birthday felt endless. But finally, it arrived. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before.
As soon as it was light, I walked into my parents’ room and woke them up. My mum smiled, got up, and dragged out a rolled-up Persian carpet that had been shipped from South Africa. She unrolled it—and there it was.
Niels’ old BSA Meteor pellet gun. A drawstring cleaning kit. A tin of pellets.
She showed me how to clean it. I nodded along, probably not taking in much of it. I was buzzing. I finally had one. My own gun. Not a toy—a weapon. And the fact that it had once belonged to Niels only added to the weight of it. He was legendary to me.
What I didn’t realise at the time—but can see clearly now—is that this was the first thing in my life that gave me any real sense of control.
My early childhood had been full of turmoil. My dad’s affairs. My mum’s sadness. The weird emotional undercurrents I could feel but didn’t understand. I’d been a nervous kid. Anxious. Over-sensitive.
Whether that was nature or nurture or just how I was wired, I’ve carried that feeling my whole life—that sense of being powerless.
But this… this was different.
Naturally, I had to try it immediately.
I stepped out onto the front doorstep of Campo de Rosas, loaded the gun, looked up the driveway to where one of those old-fashioned street lamps stood by the road. I aimed at one of the glass panes—and fired.
Bang. Glass gone.
I walked up to inspect the damage, taking in my work like a tiny assassin admiring his craft. Then I turned and looked back down at the house.
Next to the front door was the big plastic toggle switch for the doorbell.
I raised the gun and took that out too.
And that was that. The gun was confiscated immediately, and I didn’t see it again for months.
But the point is—I had tasted something. I’d lined up a shot and made something happen. That wasn’t something I’d had much of up to that point—not in my family, not in my emotional world.
That birthday was the start of something. I wasn’t just a scared kid anymore.
I was a kid with a gun.
And very soon, I’d prove just how accurate I could be.
One Pellet, One Legend
A few months passed—or maybe it was only a few days, but it felt like months—before the pellet gun was returned to me.
I’d apparently learned my lesson. Or at least, I’d gotten better at pretending I had. For a while, I played it safe.
One of the first things I did was accidentally shoot a small songbird. I hadn’t meant to—it just happened. The bird dropped straight to the ground. I remember feeling awful. I dug a grave, made a little cross out of twigs. That was the end of that. After that, I stuck to targets—cans, fruit, whatever I could find that didn’t bleed.
And I got good. Really good.
Then came the rat.
It had been hanging around Campo de Rosas for weeks—a big, mangy thing that lived in the ivy along the terrace. My mum hated it. My dad didn’t care. But I noticed it.
One evening, my parents were inside playing bridge with friends. Briony and Bernard Kaye were sitting out on the terrace. Bernard, one of Briony’s hopefuls, was trying his best to impress her. They were seated roughly halfway between me and the rat, unknowingly inserted into a live shooting range.
I was in my room when I heard my mum yell, “A rat! A rat!”
I grabbed the Meteor, stepped out, and saw it—right at the far end of the terrace near the dining room. Sitting there in the ivy, clear as anything.
Briony and Bernard looked up in mild alarm but were still oblivious to the fact that just above their heads, I was lining up a shot.
I took aim.
Fired.
Thwack. Plop. Gone.
My mum ran out, grabbed the fireplace tongs, bolted down to the wood cellar, and came back holding the rat like a trophy.
Bernard was speechless. Briony gave me a look.
It was a clean shot. No luck. All skill.
For once, I wasn’t the annoying little brother.
I was the one who got the job done.
The Gun, the Power, and the Fear
Looking back, I think that pellet gun represented something far bigger than just a fun toy—or even a tool for pest control. It was power. It was control. It was the first thing in my life that put me in charge of what happened next.
I’d grown up surrounded by instability—by things happening that I didn’t understand and couldn’t influence. But with the BSA Meteor, my hands were steady. I squeezed the trigger, and things changed.
It was intoxicating.
Of course, the lessons that followed were equally important. The songbird. The rat. The destruction. All of it had consequences.
But it also gave me something I hadn’t had before: agency.
It’s strange to think that something as small as a pellet gun could mark such a profound shift in my life.
But it did.