Bucket of water
LAST week's item on the possibility of a dog throwing a bucket of water over a couple entwined in a marathon kiss induced distressing flash-backs for a senior editorial colleague.
Bruce Page shared digs on the Berea in his distant bachelor days. Also in the digs were Max, a large black mongrel, and Sam, a border collie. Max and Sam were always scrapping.
Next door lived a psychologist with his wife and lovely young daughter.
Bruce was under the shower one morning when there was a commotion outside. The dogs were fighting again. Tucking a towel round his waist, he went out to separate them.
Just then the girl next door looked over the garden wall and said: "I'll get a bucket of water." She then disappeared.
Bruce's attempts to pull the dogs apart resulted only in his towel falling away. At this point the girl re-appeared with a bucket of water, shrieked and threw it all over him.
"A day or two later I passed her and her dad in the street, and she looked away awkwardly as I greeted them. Her father, very amused, remarked: 'Obviously my daughter doesn't recognise you with your clothes on.'"
Bruce has been under therapy ever since.
Flying ranger
THE FLYING environmentalist has been grounded … for the moment anyway. Paul Dutton, formerly of the Natal Parks Board then of its equivalent in Mozambique (he is now a private consultant), has been flying the skies of southern Africa for 45 years, using his Piper Cub, Spirit of the Wilderness, to get to otherwise inaccessible places, to conduct game counts or to take photographs. He has had to land on and take off from beaches and all sorts of rough and ready spots. He has had his share of bumps and grinds.
Then, inexplicably, he got caught in a crosswind while landing at the strip at Ballito, near where he now lives at Salt Rock, and pranged her pretty badly. SoW is being repaired and refitted in Johannesburg and will have a brand new engine.
I first met Paul in Lourenco Marques (as it was then still known). Not too long afterwards came the coup in Lisbon and the political hand-over to Frelimo in Mozambique. Next thing Paul was arrested and banged up in the infamous Machava Prison (it has a skull and crossbones over the main entrance gate), suspected of being a South African/CIA agent because of his aerial photography.
It was all nonsense of course and he was released to complete his contract. But a nasty episode all the same.
I've flown with Paul in SoW. It's like being in an airborne ricksha. Great fun! He's now thinking of selling her, saying 45 years is about enough. But others in the Bateleurs – an organisation of airborne conservationists – are urging him to think again.
Flying doctor
BEFORE Paul owned SoW, she belonged to Harold Stevens, a colourful American missionary doctor who was based at Enseleni, near Lake Sibaya.
Stevens was in the habit of circling in the aircraft and talking to people on the ground through a megaphone. He would also drop messages wrapped around stones.
He was known to put the plane down in the most outlandish places, both landing and take-off being supreme acts of faith as they skimmed the treetops, the angels and archangels being explicitly invoked.
After all these years in the bundu, it's difficult to imagine SoW being used anywhere else.
Secret biker
A TORY councillor in England has been exposed as leading a double life. Jim Mason, who sits on the Tewkesbury Council and is a former mayor, also belongs to a biker gang known as the Outlaws.
The Outlaws wear Nazi insignia. Motto: "God forgives, Outlaws don't!" They are in a murderously vicious turf war with the Hell's Angels and have been involved in all kinds of other criminal activity.
It rather reminds me of Durban. No, sorry. Here it's the in-laws who lead a double life and land all the contracts.
Tailpiece
DEFINITION of a thingy:
Female: Any part under a car's bonnet.
Male: The strap fastener on a woman's bra.
Last word
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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