BOOM! It's varsity rugby
MY FIRST inkling of varsity rugby was when an explosion rattled the classroom windows at school one winter's afternoon in days of yore. Maritzburg were playing Durban in the inter-college at Jan Smuts stadium just down the road. The Durban students had blown up the Maritzburg mascot with something they'd cooked up in the chemistry lab.
Yes, there's something special about university rugby. Its flavour is recalled in a glossy booklet that's just come out to celebrate the rugby portion of the centenary of tertiary education in this province.
The Time Of Our Lives: 100 years of rugby at Natal University and UKZN has contributions by Springbok (and Natal) captains Tommy Bedford, Wynand Claassen and Gary Teichmann. Also Joel Stransky, who kicked the winning drop goal for the Boks in the 1995 World Cup. Plus Craig Jamieson, who skippered Natal to that first-ever Currie Cup victory at Loftus, in our centenary year. Plus many others.
It's not quite clear who organised this book (just as it never was quite clear who manufactured the explosives to demolish the Maritzburg mascot) but it's lavishly illustrated, a collector's item, and on sale for R130, the proceeds to go toward varsity rugby, which has had a welcome resurgence in recent years.
I understand some celebratory centenary matches will be played in August. The chemistry labs in Durban and Maritzburg must be getting busy.
Story in parts
READER Steve Ashworth recalls a time when the Nissan car company - then known as Datsun - used to distribute parts to Africa from a large warehouse in Toulouse, France.
As one shipment was being flown to Johannesburg, the aircraft encountered difficulties and the captain had to jettison some of his cargo over the Sahara.
"What's happening?" asked a bewildered young Bedouin as car parts crashed to the ground about he and his father.
"Son, people in our village will talk for generations to come of the day it rained Datsun cogs".
A-a-a-a-rgh!
Pacifist veteran
THE WORLD'S last known combat veteran of World War I has died in Australia, aged 110.
Claude "Chuckles" Choules, lied about his age to join the Royal Navy at the age of 15 and went on to serve in HMS Revenge.
He emigrated to Australia in the 1920s and served as a chief petty officer in the Royal Australian Navy until 1956.
What makes him extra unusual is that, having served in two world wars, Mr Choules became a pacifist and refused to join the Anzac Day commemoration parades.
After two world wars and 38 years in the service, I guess he had the right to decide.
Bosman
LAST week's piece on the Herman Charles Bosman revival at St Clements said nobody these days reads his original stories the way Patrick Mynhardt used to.
It seems I was wrong. Ria Hackland tells me Barbie Meyer, acclaimed actress and vocalist,"our very own home-grown beautiful blonde", has been telling Bosman stories to appreciative audiences on the lower South Coast for some time and has had rave reviews at the Grahamstown Festival.
That's nice to know. Do we go to Margate or does Barbie come to St Clements?
Officials say 'Neigh!'
THE BRITS are nutty about dogs but they draw the line at ponies. A man accompanied by a small white pony arrived at the railway station at Wrexham, in Wales, and tried to buy two tickets to Holyhead.
He was told the pony could not travel by train, at which he took it down to the platform in a lift, no doubt planning to board anyway.
Railway officials intervened, at which the man and the pony went away, leaving on the platform a couple of steaming mementoes.
No pony express in Wales, it seems.
Tailpiece
A PHARMACY stocks knowledge pills. One small pill and you're guaranteed a first in English literature. Or history, economics, psychology or whatever.
A student asks for a mathematics pill. The pharmacist produces a pill the size of a tennis ball.
"What's this?"
"Well maths always was a bit difficult to swallow."
Last word
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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