Here comes a hootnanny!
A HOOTNANNY is taking shape in Maritzburg. This is the name given by the folk of the Blue Grass country in Kentucky, and other such places, to a really good party, a razzle-dazzle. A hootnanny is much the same thing as a humdinger.
This particular hootnanny will be at the Wanderers Club, weekend after next. It is intended as a get-together of people who lived in Maritzburg in the 60s and 70s, and the theme will be Twiggy's Pie Cart, which was the centre of culture in the capital in those days.
Twiggy's Pie Cart was a diner on wheels that opened in the Market Square every evening and stayed open until the early hours of the morning. It served such specialities as Cowboy With A Hat On, Jigambuz' and Tokoloshe, all of them smothered in a fiery sauce known as "hotters".
It was presided over by the owner, John Humphrey "Twiggy" Branch, his assistant, Sam Naidoo, and a head waiter named Goorian. It was the only place open late at night. Judges and advocates would rub shoulders after bar dinners with students and mechanics. The place swirled with revelry, peppered by the Cockney repartee of Twiggy.
All kinds of extraordinary things happened at Twiggy's because the clientele were always well-oiled. I recall one evening a contest in throwing potatoes over the city hall, underhand, using the spuds that were in plentiful supply waiting for the market auction next day.
Once, before World War II, a Richmond man named Bull Marwick towed the pie cart up Church Street with his farm truck, his pals in the back tossing handfuls of burning hay into it, watching Twiggy and Sam douse the flames with the coffee urn.
Most disgraceful. Very funny.
I saw a fellow we called Rayford Reginald actually drive his car full tilt into the pie cart early one morning when they told him he was too late, they were closed. He did give them fair warning but Sam just laughed.
The pie cart leaped into the air on impact. The car crumpled. And two waiters washing up behind got buried in broken crockery.
Then Rayford Reginald chased Goorian up Church Street, shouting: "Come and fight like a man!"
Yes, this will be a hootnanny. I wouldn't miss it for anything. I hope Rayford Reginald will be there.
Ode to the fat cats
HUGH Lee, of Eshowe, a former member of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature, has penned some verse in lamentation over the fat cat kleptocracy that has developed and the greed of civil servants who have abandoned their ethic.
Fat cats like the taste of butter on their bread
As long as the lean provide the cream, they said.
It's not the car you think you deserve to drive, my friend
But your incompetence to do your tasks which drives us round the bend.
It's not your expensive designer suit that makes you a man
Rather extol the virtue in humility of our gentle bushman clan.
What's needed is to give half the bureaucrats the boot
And reward only deserving workers with the saving loot.
But, alas, the three little words are out of fashion
"You are fired", my friend, you show no passion
For the work you agreed to do for the good of mankind,
Protecting, feeding teaching, nursing, once a loving-bind
Have, unfortunately, been forfeited my morals of mice
As when the cat's away some begin to even steal the rice.
Protect them at all costs seems to be the way,
No matter if our economics don't survive the day.
We say, pay well the ones that give us loyal work
But spare us from these that unashamedly learn to shirk.
We need to better spread that dwindling butter
To save our country from going down the beggar's gutter.
Tailpiece
AN ELDERLY farmer surprises a bunch of nubile young wenches skinny-dipping in his pond. They make for the deep part and shout at him to go away.
"I won't. This is my pond."
"Go away, you old pervert! We're not getting out until you leave."
"And I'm not going until I've fed the alligator!
Last word
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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