Decision, decisions ... zzzzz
IT'S DIFFICULT to fully grasp but Durban International Airport closes at the end of next month and flights will be landing at the new King Shaka, up the North Coast. Difficult to grasp because the process has taken more than 30 years.
The land at La Mercy was bought, levelled and drained all that time ago – then leased back to cane growers while the decision-makers dithered.
To actually move now seems abrupt, almost brutal. I hope they don't leave anything behind in the rush – like the radar system.
Meanwhile, they have to decide now what to do with the old airport site – and here we encounter an even longer drift in decision-making, one that goes back to the 1930s – almost 80 years.
In the '30s the government was considering giving Durban harbour a second entrance, dredging through the Umlaas cut and putting in the necessary breakwaters and so on. It would have increased the harbour's capacity exponentially.
But then came World War II and other priorities. Then a change in government and new priorities like separate counters in post offices; bantustans. Durban harbour was neglected.
Now a new use needs to be found for the airport site. One of the options is a dug-out container port. It's perfectly feasible. The airport site is below sea level.
But the authorities are all of a-dither. Stand by for another 30-years of dither. Stand by for consultants charging mega-bucks.
Yet here – free, gratis and for nothing – is a modest proposal:
· Dig out the container port.
· Link it to the main harbour.
· Dig the second harbour entrance, as envisioned in the 1930s.
This would have the benefits of:
· Creating another Rotterdam.
· Making a true island of the Bluff, whose residents have always wanted to secede from Durban.
· Setting up a wonderful tidal flow and greatly improving fishing in the bay.
· Reversing land encroachment over the past 100 years.
Let's do it now.
The dreaming spires
FOURTEEN male Oxford undergraduates have been suspended while the university investigates allegations that they drew up a "derogatory" list assessing the attributes of female freshers at Hertford College.
The 14 are members of the college's Penguin drinking club, described in news broadcasts as "notorious". Its initiation rite is said to include students performing a naked streak while smeared in goose fat and eating raw squid.
It all sounds terribly highbrow and suggests the continuity of Oxford tradition. Nothing much seems to have changed since Evelyn Waugh was there in the '30s.
I wonder, do the Twenty-one Squires of Bacchus still make merry on our Pietermaritzburg campus?
Eagle eye
A READER says a rugby commentator at Newlands last weekend described referee Mark Lawrence as an ophthalmologist. In fact, he points out, Lawrence is an optometrist, a person who measures eyesight and prescribes glasses. An ophthalmologist is a specialist medical doctor, an eye surgeon.
Yes, there's a difference. But at least there's nothing wrong with Lawrence's own eyesight, which cannot be said of some of the refs we've encountered this Super-14 season.
It recalls the story told by Denis Thatcher (husband of Margaret, the Iron Lady) from his days as a rugby referee.
"This bastard's blind!" exclaimed a player as he blew and awarded a scrum.
"What did you say?"
"You see? Deaf too!"
Marital squalls
AN ACCOUNT of perseverance in pursuit of love, from Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books):
Dallas Sherman of Cincinnati divorced his wife, Irene, after she intentionally wrecked two of the family cars after arguments with him. They were reconciled, however, and remarried. Unhappily, they were divorced again after another little contretemps in which Irene shot Dallas twice in the chest and once in the hand. She was placed on probation and he recovered. While trying to effect another reconciliation another family fracas erupted and poor Dallas was shot yet again. He recovered and succeeded in his reconciliation. The Shermans were married for the third time.
Tailpiece
A WELL-FED bishop is in full regalia at a rural railway station in England. He spots on the platform an admiral in full uniform. The two had been at school together and were very competitive. The bishop gets in the first thrust.
"Stationmaster, when is the next train to London?"
"Madam, in 10 minutes. But in your condition you really shouldn't travel."
Last word
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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