No Regret Friday

Scary, lonely night

This time it happened to ME and I would really like to share my real story with you all, so that you might learn from my experience and hopefully prevent this traumatic event happening to any of you guys.

It started with a few glasses of sparkling wine at a gorgeous wedding on a Saturday evening, and ended in a really dark, cold, filthy jail cell early on a Sunday morning.

How often do us “wives” say we will drive home because the hubby is far too drunk? Yip, I always do it because I think I am better off than Steven (and we usually are), but this time we got caught in a road block and I was over the limit and arrested on the spot. The limit now is 0.24 and I was 0.29 on the breathalyser.

I had drunk four glasses of champagne, I had eaten, I had also had 2 glasses of water in between, so by 11.30pm I was right as rain and ready to get home to bed. So Steven and I left the Indaba Hotel, and a few minutes later on Witkoppen & Cambridge we got pulled over in a  massive road block. They stopped everyone! There was no escape.

They told me to blow, but I tried not to blow too hard to see if I could fool the breathalyser, but you can’t! They arrested me, put me in the van and we drove to Randburg Civic Centre to have blood drawn. This is where it gets scary –they poked and prodded – they couldn’t find a vein the first time, so no blood ran. This was really scary. They eventually tried the other arm and finally got a vein. My arms were so bruised the next morning!

After taking blood, they start with the paperwork – this takes  one hour whilst you sit and freeze your bottom off. It was terribly scary. Then back to Sandton Police station and “escorted” to your cell for the night. No words can actually describe to you the state of the cell in which I spent 8 hours (2.30am to 10.30am). Honestly it looked like someone had had an abortion in there, and even poo on the walls. Never mind the hard, cold concrete floors and walls. This was the coldest most lonely night of my life. I spent two days in bed with flu after this.

Finally the sun started to come up, and at 10am I was “called” to be booked under the Road Traffic Act, where they do your fingerprints and take your bail money of R1000 (which my husband had fortunately drawn in cash that morning) and then you are released. By the way, my poor husband spent the entire night outside the cells waiting for me in case something bad happened. We even had our attorney there and I was still not released.

It now takes the state one year to process the blood and then I have to appear in court to hear if they want to prosecute me, which then means you go to trial… drag it on and on why don’t you!

So not to bore you with any more gory details – because there are more – but please think of me every time you think you are okay to drive. Just get Goodfella’s or Roadtrip to fetch you – it is not worth it in the end.

I have had to have a post trauma counselling session just to help me deal with the humiliation and embarrasment I felt. I couldn’t even face my little boys the next day!

So please Be safe and be clever.

~ Janine, Johannesburg