A new sport has arrived
"I WAS IN a bar fight when it degenerated into an ice hockey match ..." the expression is often used to describe the nature of ice hockey where, at top speed, the players cannon into one another, swinging wildly with their sticks.
However, I now learn of another sport that makes ice hockey look like a Sunday school picnic: Canoe Polo. Until enlightened by a bird in a bar the other night, I had not been aware that there is such a sport. But apparently there is. And it's big worldwide.
They play it in swimming pools in canoes, throwing the ball about like in water polo but whacking each other with their paddles, trying to capsize and sink the opposition. Apparently it's like something between the Eton Wall Game and the Battle of Jutland.
There's even a South African national side in Canoe Polo, and it recently returned from a three-week tour of Europe where it had such success that our world ranking has now leaped to 18th from 117th.
You'd think the Ministry of Sport, or at least the Lotto, would find a bit of cash to support such a tour, but no – apart from some private sponsorship the Canoe Polo folk had to pay for themselves, and it was expensive.
I explained to this lady that they need to start lobbying now for their next tour. The competition for funding is fierce. The international youth rally against imperialism took R29 million from government and R40 million from the Lotto. This leaves a bit of a draught.
And new competition comes in from Cope, the political party, which has dramatically shown talent for throwing chairs and wrecking church halls. They will want government funding. The Canoe Polo folk will have to show they can be just as spectacular in the deep end.
But I'm sure we all wish them well. Who wouldn't want to whack an Austrian or a Frenchman with a paddle?
Art launch
A FEW WEEKS ago I mentioned meeting up with Cliffie Brown, once a prolific goalkicker for the Natal rugby side, who went on to play gridiron in the US and has now relaunched himself in Durban as an artist.
Who should I meet again in La Bella music pub/restaurant the other night but the same Cliffie, wearing a shirt so colourful you'd think he'd painted it himself. In the loft section upstairs was an exhibition of his work.
I bet Picasso didn't launch with a three-piece band and vocalist. Let the good times roll!
Haywire
READERS Andrew Dale and Brian Kennedy point out (quite correctly) that last week's piece on the Twelve Days of Christmas was haywire on the dates. The Twelve Days are not in the run-up to Christmas but run from Christmas Day to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.
Peccavi!
Inner peace
AT A TIME of hustle and bustle and Christmas rush, I pass on a formula for inner peace.
"A psychologist on the TV this morning said that the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started. So I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished and, before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of merlot, a bottle of shhhardonay, a bodle of Baileys, abutle of vocka, a pockage of Pringlies, the res of the Chesescke an a box a chocolets. Yu haf no idr ow gud I fel. Pleas sen dis orn to anyy yu fee ar in ned ov inr pece."
Try it. Does it work for you?
Night at home
LAST night I settled down to eat some ice cream with a DVD. I couldn't be bothered to wash a spoon.
Tailpiece
A WOMAN with her arms full of parcels realises her skirt is too tight to step up on to the bus. With difficulty she manoeuvres to unzip it a little way. It's still too tight so she unzips the whole way.
The bus arrives and she still can't step up. Then the man behind her picks her up and puts her on the bus.
"How dare you touch me like that?"
"Well, after you unzipped me I figured we were old friends."
Last word
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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