Chanterelles, honey, orange, peach ...
IT'S ENCOURAGING to know that wine writing flourishes in the Nordic regions. Divers recently salvaged 168 bottles of champagne from a wreck in the Baltic Sea that was almost 200 years old. Experts and enthusiasts gathered at in Mariehamn, in Finland, to grab a glass of the ancient bubbly.
The vintage treasure included bottles of both Veuve Clicquot and the now defunct Juglar brands.
But there weren't too many bubbles. The champagne had lost its fizz. However this did not deter a Swedish wine connoisseur, who discovered in the Juglar "hints of chanterelles, honey, orange and peach" and in the Veuve Clicqot "linden blossoms and lime peels".
How inadequate one feels in the face of such prose. Some of us might have just described it as "flat champagne".
Space probe (1)
A GROUP of amateur space enthusiasts in Britain have completed their own successful space probe – and on a shoestring budget.
Steve Daniels, John Oates and Lester Haines made a three feet wingspan glider out of straws covered with paper. They fitted it with a camera, attached it to a helium balloon then launched it from Spain last month.
It soared an astonishing 23 miles above the ground, taking dozens of photographs before the helium balloon burst – as anticipated – in the thin atmosphere and the glider brought the camera safely back to earth 100 miles away from the launch site.
A remarkable feat and achieved without the billions poured into Nasa and other programmes. Steve, John and Lester need to be encouraged to make their next probe from the Bluff which, as we all know, is already a centre of inter-galactic activity.
Space probe (2)
HOWEVER, the British effort doesn't quite have the pizzaz of the activities in the mid-1960s of the Zambian National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, headed by one Edward Makuka Nkoloso.
Nkoloso (who was disowned by the Zambian government) then had the objective of reaching the moon before the Russians or Americans. He claimed to be training 12 astronauts including a "specially trained spacegirl, two cats (also specially trained) and a missionary", all of them ready for a mission to Mars.
The astronauts were spun around a tree in an oil drum and taught to walk on their hands, to equip them for getting around on the moon. Nkoloso also rolled them down a hillside in oil drums, to accustom them to the sensation of weightlessness.
Some said Nkoloso was nuts. Whatever, he seems to have faded from the scene. Perhaps, disgusted by lack of support from his government, he did secretly blast off for Mars. Maybe his missionary married him to the spacegirl. Who can tell?
Free, so free
AN ITEM of free verse has come this way, possibly inspired by a zol or two. There can be no mistaking the earthy South African authenticity of the lines.
The sun shone out of the heavens,
The birds they all were still,
And only the song of the koppies
And the donga's bark so shrill
Broke the silence and heat of the noonday,
While under the summer sun
Two little mosbolletjies wandered
And laughed in childish fun.
Still were the tall maasbankers
And even the wild konfyt
Slept in the shade of the voorslags
Although the hour was late.
Herds of beautiful voetsaks
Ate the succulent short green kloof;
While a couple of drunken disselbooms
Slept on the farmhouse roof.
Krantzes and veldskoens in hundreds
Scented the summer air,
The spruits were laden with berries,
Truly the world looked fair.
Over the gravelled naartjies
A lonely biltong ran,
I gazed at it all in wonder,
And murmured, "Ag, sies tog man!"
Tailpiece
| Two Irishmen are standing at the base of a flagpole, looking up. A blonde walks by and asks what they are doing.
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Last word
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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