Wild Man sans culottes
IT'S ASTONISHING how reluctant Durban girls are to take off their clothes. I discovered this while trying to perform a charitable service on behalf of the Wild Man from Zambia, a delegate to the Tourism Indaba who was mentioned in this column last Friday.
The Wild Man was somewhat down in the dumps. His pants kept falling down as he wandered about the Indaba as he had lost his belt while going through immigration at Lusaka airport.
His iron buckle kept bleeping the machine so the immigration officer told him to take the belt off. He forgot to claim it back. So there he was, continually losing his trousers at the Indaba and getting sharp looks from the security people.
Plus it was his 70th birthday. He was feeling lonely and folorn, a long way from the Wild Woman, up in Kafue national park.
Clearly there was only one way to cheer him up - engage a stripper. But it was short notice for professional strippers. So I found myself at a certain hostelry trying to recruit young ladies to cheer up an 85-year-old Abraham Lincoln lookalike from the Zambian bush.
It was a thankless task. Though most of them agreed it was a deserving case, none would come up with the goods. In vain did I argue that a 95-year-old bushwhacker posed no physical threat whatever, in spite of his smouldering good looks. They just weren't interested.
Durban girls have a puritanical streak, it seems, that I was not aware of. I'm sure it wasn't there in my younger days. This streak is intertwined, I'm sorry to say, with a certain coldness and lack of charity. Who could abandon a Zambian Wild Man to misery on his 105th birthday?
On top of it all, I feel I might have compromised my own reputation. People were giving me funny looks, as if I were some sort of procureur, not a person on a mission of mercy. I might have to stay away for a while. Charity is a thankless pursuit.
Meanwhile, good news. The Wild Man has perked up. We fashioned some braces for him out of fishing line and he now strums happily at them, singing Dixieland numbers.
Lavender memories
WHO REMEMBERS those days when a trip overseas meant a couple of weeks on a Union Castle liner? When sports teams would tour the Cape by Union Castle?
Launched at the Indaba at the weekend was a book, All Aboard!, by shipping writer David Hughes, in which he revisits those distant days of the lavender-hulled liners and – perhaps more importantly – tells us what is still available today in terms of sea cruises and cabins on cargo vessels.
There's also a bit of humour. Headed: "How not to end a cruise" is a photograph of the Oceanos sinking off the Transkei coast – an astonishing account of poor seamanship and cowardice yet where, amazingly, not a single life was lost.
Rip-off
I WONDER how many delegates to the Tourism Indaba have been ripped off by Durban's taxis?
Last Saturday a group of us took a metered taxi from a spot on the Berea to King's Park. It cost R58.
After the game we took a metered taxi (of a different company) back to exactly the same spot, following exactly the same route. It cost R98.
As the Americans say: Go figure!
The driver insisted his meter is set by the metro police and sealed. But he eventually settled for R60. Two Indaba delegates told me that the same night they had to beat down a taxi from R100 to R70.
Is this the way to encourage tourism? Somebody in authority should surely take a look at this.
Tailpiece
AN ENGLISHMAN, an Irishman and a Scotsman don't have tickets for the Commonwealth Games.
The Scotsman picks up a manhole cover , tucks it under his arm and goes up to the gate. "MacTavish, Scotland. Discus." In he walks.
The Englishman picks up a length of scaffolding and slings it over his shoulder. " Waddington-Smythe, England. Pole vault." In he goes.
The Irishman looks around and picks up a roll of barbed wire and tucks it under his arm.
"O'Malley, Northern Ireland. Fencing."
Last word
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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