So I take the Land Rover for a service. It’s what motorists do, apparently. Sometimes I need reminding. Often it’s the vehicle that reminds me. This time, though, the car wasn’t complaining at all. It just seemed like a responsible adult thing to do.

“I’ll call you if there is anything major that needs doing,” said Sham the garage man. His name could only have been more suited to his profession if his mother had called him Scam.

It wasn’t long before my phone rang. “Heeeey my bru,” said Sham. “Big problems. Beeeeg problems. Better you come this side and all.”

My Landy was up on a hoist with his legs off. Sham walked me around the car, kicking, prodding, pulling, spitting and coughing. He pointed out all manner of widgets, doodads and fandangles that needed replacing. I nodded my head. Sometimes I shook it, but it was mostly nodding.

My level of understanding when it comes to a car’s engine is on a par with that of a nine-year-old girl. I mean no disrespect. Some of my best friends are nine-year-old girls. No, they’re not. What the hell am I saying?

Whenever I find myself in conversation with a mechanic, usually around a car with its mouth open and legs off, I start to feel a bit gay. Not Elton John gay. More Oscar Wildish. I want to bring out a lute, strum a chord and cry:

“I have no store
of gryphon-guarded gold;

Now, as before,
Bare is the shepherd’s fold.

Rubies nor pearls
Have I to gem thy throat;

Yet woodland girls have loved the shepherd’s note.”

The only thing that stops me is a fear that he may misinterpret the words.

“I don’t want your fukken pearls in my throat, okay?” he might say, before ramming a spark plug into my eye socket.

I couldn’t allow Sham to know the horrible truth. I’m talking about my lack of mechanical knowledge.

At the same time, I couldn’t pay untold thousands to repair and replace stuff that, for all I knew, wasn’t terribly important to the general functioning of the vehicle in question.

I know for certain there are things a car can do without. Shock absorbers, for one. Sure, it’ll be a bumpy ride. But so is life.

“Your brakes are shot,” he said. “Forget the brakes,” I said. “Let’s just focus on the important stuff . I need new windscreen wipers and … and …” My voice trailed off. I kicked the tyres a few times and nodded.

He kept the car for three days and charged me R11 000. Now I know why Land Rover drivers wave at one another on the road. It’s a gesture of empathy.

Anyway. Mustn’t complain. Does no good. Especially if you’re complaining to the Office of the Consumer Protector in the Western Cape and you have spent months trying to get them to act against a Supakak garage in Fish Hoek that murdered one’s beloved Hyundai. The mechanic’s incompetence was matched only by the yawning muppets who take refuge in this particular sheltered cove of Helen Zille’s government.

That’s enough about confederacies of dunces. Let’s rather talk about conspiracies.

Have you heard the story doing the rounds? The bombing of the Boston Marathon was the work of the Boston bomb squad. This was a false-flag operation aimed at putting more armed Homeland Security agents on the streets and giving the Obama administration an excuse to hunt down right-wingers, red-blooded patriots and other fun-loving fundamentalists.

This is absolute rubbish. Those bombs were placed by Xenu, ruler of the GalacticConfederacy. In the old days – 75 million years ago – Xenu brought billions of his people to Earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is obviously making it hard for Xenu to get his hands on weapons-grade plutonium and he has had to go back to using pressure cookers. Quite frankly, I am surprised nobody has thought to question Xenu’s representative, Tom Cruise.

While we’re on the subject, there are a few things I would like to say. I have kept my mouth shut for too long. It’s time someone told the truth and to hell with the consequences.

President Zuma? Just because he looks like one of us – well, close enough – it doesn’t mean he is. I can reveal today that he is an agent of the Lizard people. His extra cranium is not merely for decorative purposes, but is in fact a storage chamber for eggs.

When the time is right, they will hatch and thousands of lizards will crawl out of his ears and slither into the suburbs. They will be able to change our minds. Judging by the number of gekkoes on my wall, this may already be happening. No, it’s not. I take it back. None of this is happening.

And did Zuma really go to Algeria a few days ago for “bilateral talks”? Or was he reporting to his handlers on Alpha Draconis? Does Algeria even exist? Do you know anyone who has ever been there? Oh, sure. There were pictures. But there were also pictures of the “moon landing”. I rest my case.

There is something else you should know. Who is really controlling the weather? They say nature this and nature that, but we don’t know for sure. Who is behind wind, for example? It is more unpredictable than al-Qaeda and more annoying than Steve Hofmeyr.

And who is Derek van Dam? What do we know about this man? Some say he is a missionary sent here by a secret cabal of Christian superheroes. Others say he is the leader of a race of shape-shifting amphibians, similar to the Saurians but more scaly.

His mission is to take control of the Western Cape by sending waves of cold fronts to Cape Town. Soon, people there will be able to talk about nothing but the weather. That’s when he will make his move. I don’t know what happens after that. I’m more worried about the missionary bit.

Speaking of semi-aquatic vertebrates, was Margaret Thatcher a politician and nothing more? For a start, she “died” in the Ritz Hotel. Do you know what kind of people die in hotels? People like Sid Vicious, Whitney Houston, Jimi Hendrix, John Belushi and Janis Joplin, that’s who.

Her death was a false-flag operation. Don’t believe me? Ask MI5 and the CIA what really went down in the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984. That’s two hotels, right there. And these are just the ones we know about.

Want to know something else? White people are in fact black, and vice versa. Most of us have been programmed into believing otherwise. A brave man by the name of Kobus Myburgh recently exhibited a painting in Nelspruit depicting Zuma and Mandela as white and apartheid leaders as black.

Afraid that their plan to start a race war would be exposed, alien agent Themba Mona, posing as the Mbombela council’s arts and culture head, removed the evidence and locked it away. He will undoubtedly be rewarded with a free trip to somewhere nice in the Andromeda Galaxy.

All this carnage on our roads? They want us to think these are “accidents”. But accidents don’t just happen. They are deliberately caused by a group of militant eco-warlocks on a mission to rid the planet of cars.

Trained by a Moscow-based group of vegetarian terrorists called Veganagetya, they practice mind control on taxi drivers. Tabula rasa. That’s all I’m saying.

Pretoria’s car guards work for the North Koreans and FW de Klerk has been programmed to delete people’s memories of the past. He did himself first and now can’t remember what his mission was. He had a covert meeting with his handler, John F Kennedy, at a safe house near the Camden Town tube station on Wednesday afternoon.

Indonesian pangolin smugglers? I don’t think so. Try human soul smugglers from the Airborne Division of the Great Arcturian Brotherhood. Pangolins don’t roll themselves up like that. Only human souls do. I have seen photographs.

And whales are transmitting sensitive information to the Japanese. Not all of them, obviously. Only the minkes. Humpbacks can’t be trusted. Allowing themselves to be harpooned is nothing more than a very clever cover.

Soon, the Japanese will take over the world. Well, they call themselves “Japanese” but they are really part of a pan-galactic organised crime family known as the Ngirizushi. Don’t believe me? Why do you think they are always taking pictures? That’s not tourism. That’s surveillance, my friend. They are gathering intelligence. Luckily for us, they are fighting a losing battle in South Africa.

I need a beer. Here’s to a brave new world order. Or the people who are behind it, anyway.