Captain Cook, Friday, March 2, 2012

THE gals of the Thunder Bar are strumming their suspender belts in anticipation of tomorrow night's match against the Stormers. This time the Sharks must surely hit the jackpot. Last week it was nearly nearly. And what a corker of an opener! We ended it on song with the only try of the game and really going for them in that last 15 minutes. Stretch play of that quality over 80 minutes and we're in business. It can be done.

The Bulls were formidable. This was test match quality rugby, tough and unrelenting. Their box kicking was superbly effective and the pressure told. The penalty count against us was slow poison and we weren't able to fully recover. But the part-recovery was uplifting and there's no reason we shouldn't dish it out in style tomorrow.

One thing though: our big fellas must change their body posture when they break out. They must go into bushpig mode, head down and legs pumping, the way they are currently doing so effectively in the northern hemisphere. Too often our big fellas have too upright a stance. Last Friday Northerns, I mean the Bulls, too often were able to send in two or three tacklers to stop the guy at chest height and drive him backwards. Nobody has ever done this to a bushpig.

Also, we have to sort out whatever was jinxing our line-out. It was puzzling, it looked like what golfers call "the yips". All in the kop. We've just got to get rid of that.

A feast of rugby beckons. The Super matches plus Ireland-France in the Six Nations. And what a cracker of a game between Wales and England last weekend, a close-fought classic and a wonderful break-out try by Wales. The boyos have the Triple Crown and are well placed for a Grand Slam. It's been a-coming ever since their showing in the World Cup.

And there's been some manful stuff in the English premiership league. These games are always worth a squiz, partly for their intensity and skill, partly for the number of South Africans playing. Gloucester ran out winners 29-23 against Harlequins, an absolute thriller of a match, played at an amazing pace and with close to faultless handling and phase-setting. There was also another West Country derby between Exeter and Bath, which recalls the limerick.

There was a young lady of Exeter,

So pretty the men craned their necks at her;

One went so far

As to wave from a car

The distinguishing mark of his sex at her.

Bath took it 12-9. Those Exeter fellows need to keep their mind on the game.

 

And we need to keep our mind on the good stuff; the rucking and mauling we showed in the last 15 minutes at Loftus, the phase play, the short passing and the handling. We've got it. All we've got to do is unlock it. I hear the gals' knicker elastic twanging. Stand by for the traditional feu de joie as we shoot out the streetlights in celebration.

CAPTAIN COOK

The Idler, Friday, March 2, 2012

Seduction and debauchery

 

BOSMAN comes to the Berea. Meanwhile, the literati are in a fever of speculation as to what cats are going to be let out of which bags at St Clement's on Monday when Spyker Koekemoer (aka Pat Smythe, raconteur and rugby personality) again brings the Bosman idiom to this weekly soiree.

 

Last Monday we had readings from Dylan Thomas, after which Pat got up and gave the briefest of previews of what is in store next week: The Airline That Never Flew (a story I've heard before – and it's a hoot!); plus – and here he was most enigmatic – tales of seduction and debauchery.

 

There's a frisson of nervousness. Is Pat sticking to his normal milieu of the bushveld and the rural dorps? Or has he shifted attention to the Berea?

 

Watch this space!

 

 

Schoolboy smoking

 

REMINISCENCES of schoolboy smoking continue to come in.

 

Bill Hobbs, of Pinetown, was at school in Johannesburg in the 40s, where the favourite fag was Viceroy – if you could afford it. Most of the time they made do with Polikanski – oval in shape.

 

"In the 50s I was onto Springboks which cost 2/6 (25 cents) for 50. These spluttered and crackled if you held one near your ear, a bit like a dynamite fuse. Later came something milder, Max: "Men of the World Smoke Max".

 

"As a boy, collecting cigarette cards was a huge craze. There was a card to be found in a box of just about every brand on the market. There were series such as 'Fauna and Flora', 'Speed through the Ages'  and so on. The idea was to make swaps so you had one of each in the series so you could fill the album that the tobacco company supplied. These would be worth a mint today."

 

Meanwhile, how many schoolboys have caught their headmaster smoking? Chris Knaggs, of North Beach, was at school in Graaff Reinet, in the Karoo, in the late 60s. He and a friend were having a cigarette sitting on a warm, encased water pipe in what he calls the "donkey room" about 5am, when in walked the headmaster and himself lit up a cigarette.

 

"We were stunned and as he walked around he saw us and said: 'Damn! If you buggers tell my wife about this, I'll ring your bloody necks! Carry on, but please go down to the first terrace in case someone else sees us."

 

It turned out his doctor had just ordered him to give up smoking and his wife had threatened all sorts of mayhem if he didn't.

 

 

Think twice!

WHEN you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to your youth - think of algebra!

Ju-ju's next move?

AN ENTIRE village in France is for sale for the equivalent of R3.8 million, according to this news item. The hamlet of Courbefy has 19 buildings including houses and a village hall, a swimming pool, stables and tennis courts.

The village, in the Limousin region, stands deserted since a slump in farming.

It sounds just the place for Comrade Julius and his friends to set up a government in exile.

 

Tailpiece

AN AUSTRALIAN ventriloquist is in New Zealand. He sees a villager on his veranda patting his dog. He figures he'll have a little fun.

Ventriloquist:"'G'day, mind if I talk to your dog?"

Kiwi: "The dog doesn't talk, you stupid Aussie."

Ventriloquist: "Hello dog, how's it going mate?"

Dog: "Yeah, doin' all right."

The Kiwi is shocked.

Ventriloquist: "Is this your owner?"

Dog: "Yep."

Ventriloquist: "How does he treat you?"

Dog: "Yeah, real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food and takes me to the lake once a week to play."

The Kiwi is shaken.

Ventriloquist: "Mind if I talk to your horse?"

Kiwi: "Uh, the horse doesn't talk either ...I think."

Ventriloquist: "Hey horse, how's it going?"

Horse: "Cool."

The Kiwi is dumbfounded.

Ventriloquist:"'Is this your owner?"

Horse: "Yep."

Ventriloquist:" How does he treat you?"

Horse: "Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly, brushes me down often and keeps me in the shed to protect me from the elements.''

The Kiwi is totally amazed.

Ventriloquist: "Mind if I talk to your sheep?"

Kiwi (in a rising panic): "That sheep's a bloody liar!"

 

Last word

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

The Idler, Thursday, March 1, 2012

Crayfish that glow in the dark

SO WE'RE to move from a programme of coal-fired electricity generation (by-products: smog/soot, greenhouse gases, hydrogen sulphide and acid rain) to a truly massive R300 billion programme of nuclear electricity generation by plants strung along the coast (by-product: crayfish that glow in the dark).

Does anyone remember the Tugela Basin? That natural feature here in KwaZulu-Natal that scientists and economists and engineers spent decades researching, coming to the conclusion that it has the hydro-electric potential to support several really large cities?

Unless those scientists, economists and engineers were smoking doob over all those years, the Tugela and its tributaries have the potential to meet most of South Africa's energy needs, if not all.

And then there are the Inga dams on the Congo River, that are also supposed to feed hydro-electric power into the South African energy grid. And there's the river system of the Eastern Cape, which the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry had planned to connect to the Tugela system in a canalisation and aqueduct programme that would have created mass employment for decades.

Could there be any more "green" way of producing energy than hydro-electric?

The research has been done. It's all there in the exhaustive studies and reports of the old Natal Town and Regional Planning Commission, which employed some of the best minds over a range of disciplines.

Now here's a depressing thought. It's a pound to a pinch of nannygoat manure (as they say in the classics) that the fellows driving the coal-fired and nuclear options have never even heard of the Tugela Basin and its hydro-electric potential.

Cigarette cards

DISCUSSION in recent days of Springbok and C to C cigarettes brings back memories to reader Frank van Vloten of schooldays during World War II when he and his friends would collect and swap the cards enclosed in the larger cigarette packs.

"I used to badger my sisters' troopie boyfriends for cards, if they happened to smoke; and by the end of the war those of us who had collected seriously had built up a good pile of very educational cards on various subjects which we then stuck into handsome albums with very informative write-ups, produced specially by the tobacco companies and sent to us on receipt of a "tickey" postal order (threepence, the equivalent of two-and-a-half cents today).

"The subjects were: South African animals and wildlife; South African flora; works of art (international); South African artillery and weaponry; and no doubt one or two others that other readers would remember. We were sorry when it was all discontinued at the end of the war. They were popular references and I for one learnt a lot in general from them."

Prehistoric plants

RUSSIAN scientists have managed to grow a plant from prehistoric seeds hidden 30 000 or so years ago by squirrels that built burrows in the permafrost of east Siberia. Sylene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regrown in this way and is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

The scientists say permafrost studies search for the ancient genetic pool of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth's surface. It might even be possible to find tissue of vanished animal species, such as the woolly mammoth, and regrow them.

It sounds a little alarming. How long before Hollywood cottons on? The Woolly Mammoth from the Black Lagoon.

Wordplay

SOME groaners:

·         "We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.

·         "It's made the grass wet," said Tom after due consideration.

·         "I don't think I want to eat eggs this morning," he waffled.

·         "Keep in step," Dick said archly.

·         "But there is no bathroom," said Harry uncannily.

Tailpiece

A CHURCH has regular seminars for husbands. Guiseppe's 50th wedding anniversary is approaching and the parish priest asks him to share his thoughts on enduring love and marriage. "Wella, I've-a tried to treat her nice-a, spenda da money on her, but besta of all is, I taka her to Italy for the 25th anniversary." The priest:"Guiseppe, you're an inspiration to all the husbands here. Please tell us what you're planning for your wife for your 50th anniversary." "I gonna go fetch her."

 

 

Last word

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson

 

The Idler, Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The samba sparks off riots

DANCING is a desperate business. As crowds waited in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to hear which samba school would be named winner of a carnival contest, a man jumped over security gates surrounding the judges, grabbed their results – and tore them up as he ran away.

The incident led to riots and the police having to be called in.

The culprit is believed to be a member of Imperio de Casa Verde Samba School, which did not look set to be placed in one of the top spots.

Members of the La Bella Street Shelter For The Over-40s Samba School are shocked and shaken by the news. It undermines the whole ethos of the samba. It's enough to make them seriously consider going back to the foxtrot.

Camel factor

 

A READER who calls himself Jim D reflects on reminiscences this week about cigarette brands, including C to C (Cape to Cairo) that were issued to the troops during World War II.

 

"I am not sure that all World War II troops remember C to C with much affection. My late father, who served in the Kenya Regiment, recalled that the tobacco used was regarded with suspicion and that C to C was widely held to stand for "Camel to Consumer".

 

 

Smokes in quad

 

MEANWHILE, the mention of Merchiston boys smoking on the train to Zululand reminds reader Don Nicholson of a story told him by his uncle, Neil Chapman, who was a teacher at the school at its old premises in Prince Alfred Street.

 

"Some boys were caught smoking in the 1950s.The headmaster didn't give them six of the best. He told them to carry a table and chairs to the quadrangle. He then placed a packet of Springbok cigarettes and a box of matches on the table and told the offending boys to smoke every cigarette in the packet.

 

"The boys turned green and were very unwell once the cigarettes were finished. They were not caught smoking again."

 

Yes, that happened just a few years before I was at Merchiston. The story passed into school legend.

 

 

 

Squiffy recall

 

IT SEEMS my recollection of Springbok cigarettes being oval in shape is definitely squiffy. David Arnold, of Pietermaritzburg, is the second reader to say they were round. The oval cigarette he remembers was called Diploma.

 

I don't remember Diploma. But I do remember oval-shaped Venus, twopence for eight on the steam train to Kranskop.

Lowering the bar

THE WORLD record for shortness just keeps shrinking. At 54.6 cm (or 21.5 inches for those of us who still think that way), Chandra Bahadur Dangi, of Nepal, has snatched the title of The World's Shortest Man from Filipino Junrey Balawing (who is 5.3 cm taller).

Dangi, who is 72 and lives as a weaver in a remote valley in south-west Nepal, is also 2cm shorter than the late Gul Mohammed, of India, who had been the shortest man ever measured.

Craig Glenday, of the Guinness Book of World Records, says he's astonished that the shortness record keeps getting broken.

Maybe Guinness should take it a bit further – start a short men's basketball league or something. It could be a hit, a short-ass version of the Harlem Globetrotters.

 

Recommended Stories

Top Gear

 

IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, pens some lines on the Top Gear show coming to Durban.

 

It's what many ratepayers fear,

This jamboree called Top Gear;

Some millions of ratepayers' rands

Watered into Mabhida's sands

To join the billions wasted yesteryear.

Tailpiece

AN AUSSIE walks into a pub and takes a seat next to a very attractive girl. He gives her a quick glance then casually looks at his watch. She: "Is your date running late?"   He: "No, I just got this state-of the-art watch, and I was testing it." "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?" "It uses alpha waves to talk to me telepathically." "What's it telling you now?" "It says you're not wearing any panties." She giggles: "Well it must be broken because I am wearing panties"   He looks at the watch, taps it and exclaims: "Damn! The thing's running an hour fast!"

 

The Idler, Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Disgraceful, deplorable …

IT'S DISGRACEFUL and deplorable that people should have disrupted the address by President JZ in the Good Hope Centre in Cape Town, brawling and throwing chairs about. It's totally unacceptable. Yet it's happened before.

I saw Prime Minister Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, being pelted with teargas and firecrackers in the Pietermaritzburg City Hall. Earlier in the day, he'd had to come into the city on a side road because people had put barricades on the main road from Durban.

His lunch at the city hall had been disturbed by students slow-marching in with a Union Jack-draped coffin bearing a placard: "Freedom"; at which a massive free-for-all broke out.

Then the continued heckling and brawling that evening, punctuated by firecrackers and the lobbing of teargas manufactured in the university laboratories.

Absolutely disgraceful behaviour!

Then two powerful jets of water into the crowd from windows high above the balconies. Somebody had deployed the city hall's firehoses.

Then Verwoerd's car being rocked by the crowd as he was eventually driven off. This was absolutely reprehensible behaviour. This was, after all, the prime minister of the country. Unacceptable! Unforgivable! Disgraceful! Deplorable!

Actually, I knew the people who set off the fire hoses. One was a schoolmate from Zululand. The other a master at school. They shared a police cell that night and … ha, ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee! Hoo, hoo, hoo!

Oh dear!

Too much Spanish   SOME complaints by package tourists to Thomas Cook Holidays:   ·        The local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts. ·        It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during siesta time. It should be banned. ·        On my holiday to Goa, in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all. ·        No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled. ·        We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as  they all speak Spanish. ·        There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners now live abroad. ·        My fiance and I booked a twin-bedded room, but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant.

Survey flops   THE UNITED Nations conducted a world-wide survey. The question asked was: "Could you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"   But the survey was a failure:   ·        In eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant. ·        In western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant. ·        In Somalia and Sudan they didn't know what "food" meant. ·        In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant. ·        In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant. ·        In South America they didn't know what "please" meant. ·        In the US they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant. ·        In Canada they hung up when they realised they were speaking to a call centre in India. Science notes A TOP PHYSICIST has offered to eat his boxer shorts on live television if it turns out that experiments at the Cern  Cern laboratory, in Switzerland, have correctly measured neutrino particles travelling faster than the speed of light – which contradicts Albert Einstein and would stand current physics theory on its head. However, it seems increasingly unlikely that Dr Jim Al Khalili, of Sussex University, will entertain viewers in this way. It seems there might have been a faulty connection between a GPS unit and a computer at Cern,  affecting accurate measurement of the neutrinos' speed. ·         It's good for physics and Einstein's reputation but not great for TV viewership. It's not often we get to see a ·         noted physicist eating his boxer shorts.

Tailpiece

Little Nancy is digging in the garden when a neighbour looks over the fence and says: "What are you doing?"

Little Nancy: "I'm burying my goldfish."

The neighbour laughs: "That's a big hole for a goldfish, isn't it?"

"That's because it's inside your cat!"

 

 

Last word

 

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe