Zostan! Dammit!
"DO MNIE! Zostan! Noga! Siad! Aport!" My Irish terrier wagged his tail in polite puzzlement as I issued these Polish dog commands ("Come here! Stay! Heel! Sit! Fetch!"). But when I said: "Sah!" he took off in a whirlwind search for rats, cats, moles and monkeys and, in the absence of these inside the stately hovel, started shredding the telephone directory.
The experiment was prompted by the experience of staff at the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals centre in Oldham, England, who took into custody a collie which they at first thought was deaf because he did not respond to commands.
But then they discovered he came from a Polish family and did not "speak" English. They got hold of a phrasebook and, over four months, got him to respond to the commands mentioned above.
This is interesting. I wonder how he would have responded to the command: "Sah!" which is not entirely English – it's also Zulu and is possibly international in the canine vocabulary?
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In our multi-lingual society do we have a problem of communicating with dogs, the way they seem to have in the European Union?
I would say not. As the British soldier remarked during the Boer War: "Every dog in South Africa is called Voetsak – and when you call him he runs away."
On the trail
THE SCORELINE beneath the cricket Test ball-by-ball TV commentary always describes the side batting second in the first innings as "trailing" by so many runs.
"Behind" by so many runs would surely be a better description. If you're behind by 300 runs in the second innings, you might well be trailing. When – as last Friday – you're less than 50 runs behind in the first, with only one wicket down, you're hardly trailing, you're catching up fast.
Ladies' lament
A FEMALE reader sends in this lament for the festive season splurge:
'Twas the month after Christmas
and all through the house,
Nothing would fit me,
not even a blouse.
The cookies I'd nibbled,
the chocolate I'd taste
and the holiday parties
had gone to my waist.
When I got on the scales
there arose such a number!
When I walked to the store
(less a walk than a lumber),
I'd remember the marvellous meals I'd prepared;
The gravies and sauces and beef nicely rared,
The wine and the rum balls, the bread and the cheese
And the way I'd never said, "No thank you, please."
As I dressed myself in my husband's old shirt
And prepared once again to do battle with dirt...
I said to myself, as I only can,
"You can't spend a winter, disguised as a man!"
So, away with the last of the sour cream dip.
Get rid of the fruit cake, every cracker and chip.
Every last bit of food that I like must be banished
Till all the additional ounces have vanished.
I won't have a cookie, not even a lick.
I'll want only to chew on a celery stick.
I won't have hot biscuits, or corn bread, or pie.
I'll munch on a carrot and quietly cry.
I'm hungry, I'm lonesome, and life is a bore...
But isn't that what January is for?
Unable to giggle, no longer a riot.
Happy New Year to all, and to all a good diet.
Yep, that's the thing about chocolate – sweet on the nerves but hell on the curves!
Tax breaks?
IAN GIBSON, bard of Hillcrest, sends in a few lines on President Zuma's harem:
Our President, what a man is he!
To bounce three wives upon his knee;
To add one more
Is his aim for sure,
Plainly, monogamy should be tax-free.
No First Lady
MEANWHILE, the presidency has given an absolutely commonsense response to agonising in certain quarters as to which of President Zuma's wives is "First Lady"?
There is no such thing as a "first lady", the presidency said. The constitution makes no provision for it.
Quite so. The term "first lady" is an invention of the American media during the Kennedy presidency, when they so longed to make Jacqueline queen of JFK's Camelot. "First Lady" was the nearest they could get to it.
Tailpiece
OUTSIDE of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Last word
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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