When Susan emerged from the womb, her tiny lips beamed a smile,
wide enough to light up the rain-soaked African plains.

Her mother knew she’d reared a mischievous child,
by the way she winked when sucking her thumb,
attracting envious glances when running through the grass playing skip-along games.

But by morning’s light she was studying her textbooks,
in the hut that served as a classroom,
where Susan’s teacher, Father McAleef – told the pupils how neighbouring
South Africa’s aspiring president, Dieter Vanderbroom,
had referred to their homeland as
‘That hotbed of communism, run by illiterate blacks’.

But she glowed with pride when the priest explained how their
little country had provided sanctuary to refugees escaping over those encircling peaks
– christened by early Lesothians as ‘The Dragon’s Teeth’ (pictured),
now known to mountaineers the world over as The Drakensbergs.

She’d marvelled when the elderly cleric told her enthralled class
how as a young man he’d left the Irish village of Dunmore East,
on a spiritual journey which saw him teach guerrillas in Guatemalan jungles,
war-ravaged refugees in the Lebanon and Eskimos torn from their homes by melting icebergs.

The priest felt there was something magical about this little girl.
It wasn’t just her amazing ability with mathematics – why,
look how fast she solved The McBurnick Equation.

But a sheltered life left her innocent, so it was no surprise
when she fell for political agitator Fergus Mogambon,
whom Susie discovered was handy with his fists.

But she followed him to the streets of South African city Durban,
and they were soon topping the apartheid police’s top 10 subversives’ list.
Alas, tragedy struck when her love was killed by a plastic bullet, fired by the police,
who claimed they were protecting the public during a riot,
and with the net drawing closer she raced along the coast, 
arriving in the semi-desert land of the Karoo.

Here, a farmer provided shelter among his ostriches
after she nursed one of them, called Brave Beatrice,
using a potion gathered from the Mallagotomo cactus
(the bird was so named because, when a rustler tried to steal her,
she kicked him over a fence).

But, betrayed by an informer Susan escaped, clinging to Beatrice’s neck.
The ostrich galloped to a subterranean stream into which her grateful passenger dived, 
following the Buffalo river to Port Elizabeth.

Here she joined a cruise ship bound for Liverpool as children’s entertainer, Marvellous Millicent.
On arrival in England, in one of those curious twists of fate,
because Fr McAleef had said the city was synonymous with slavery,
she jogged along the Manchester Ship Canal, settling in England’s rainy city.

Here she dallied with the affections of Doctor Frederick Freudmaster,
but scorned his expensive gifts, and when they went hill walking,
stayed in youth hostels instead of hotels.

However, he was successful in encouraging her to take up running,
and she joined him on group runs through the countryside with Prestwich Park Puffers,
but she put their noses out by joining Manchester Harriers.

Due to her childhood experience of racing mountain lions,
Susan excelled at cross country and on the fells,
but was quite good on the track, setting a club record for the 1500 metres.

All the while she harboured an ambition to appear on the big screen, nurtured when,
as a child in her village’s makeshift cinema, she’d watched US detective series Kojak,
laughing at those silent films of Buster Keaton,
but none was funnier than Charlie Chaplin playing a bumbling cop.

So, she flirted with roles as a supporting actress,
even playing a feminist version of Shylock in The Merchant Of Venice.

But Cupid’s arrow struck once more when she starred in a
pop video for Scottish band The Naysayers’,
playing a black skinhead singing classic hymn Jerusalem,
as the band sang thir new single, Reversal,
casting a spell on manager Jim Junketman,
who took her to his mansion, Browbeaten Hall,
nestling on the shores of Loch Ness,
where his sweetheart cooked him an African version of haggiss.

But her heart skipped a beat when a stranger appeared in the village,
claiming in a phoney American accent to be a descendant of Fiery Fantuck,
famed chieftain of those fiercesome warriors, The McPeagles,
and saying ‘I’m from a long line of Highlanders,
I even bought the kilt bearing the emblem of the clan.’

But her housekeeper pointed out, ‘His skirt’s tartan is that of my ancestral tribe,
The Mighty McSteagles, and they’re from a different glen.’

Intelligence sources revealed him to be Peter Van Der Billing,
a South African secret agent.
So, she left for London, disguised as Liberian nun Sister Mary Millercapelling,
falling in with a bunch of poets and playwrights,
and even had a fling with a circus master from Moscow,
but ran off after discovering he kept a knife-throwing mistress.

So, hoping to get a a walk-on role as an East End barmaid, 
following the method acting school of thought, 
she visited the Cheeky chappie Cafe in Eastham,
where she met TV producer Bert Bittlemight, 
poring over a script for new police series, Bill And Ben.

Renowned for picking unknowns, he cast her as detective Susie Shoegrass.

Her friends back home, watching British programmes on a little TV,
delighted in spotting their exiled country woman.

One day Fr McAleef laughed at a magazine feature linking his ‘Little Susan’ with a former spy,
who’d admitted he was a member of the apartheid regime’s security services.

The cleric laughed when this chap told a press conference,
‘I became enamoured of Susan when I was ordered to Scotland,
to report on her movements after she’d fled there,
but my cover was blown by my inane attempts to portray an American.

‘You see, I’d only joined my country’s intelligence corp to impress my father,
who’d talked about how his forebears the Boers had overcome the Zulus at Blood River.

‘However, I came to a country largely untouched by the smear of prejudice.
Whether it was the Rastafarians in Brixton or Liverpudlian Jamaicans in Toxteth,
I realised the truth, that I wasn’t really racist.

'Which was just as well, because I’d fallen in love with my quarry,
who’d tickled my sense of humour, for she was using the pseudonym Sue Servicios...’

Then Susan interjected, ‘I acquired it on a visit to Barcelona, it’s Spanish for loo.’
The article finished by saying the couple were to be married.

Meanwhile, former South African president Dieter Vanderbroom
was cursing while reading the same story, in a care home on the dusty Karoo.

‘Why,’ he spluttered, ‘I gave the groom his medal, after graduating from secret-agent college.'

A week later, a horde of school children gathered on the border between South Africa and Lesotho,
to see a former pupil marry a man who’d once carried the baton of the apartheid police.

The groom laughed when reminded of this, saying, ‘I couldn’t catch her, she was too fast.’

Fr McAleef, now no longer erect and sprightly and sporting a long white beard,
announced, ‘Please welcome a former enemy of our homeland,
here to marry the first Lesothian TV star, ace detective Susie Shoegrass!’

Then all the children cheered.