Picture postcard days
HOW SNOW transforms the landscape. The most mundane locality becomes a Christmas card. We've had plenty of that in our pages over recent days.
My first experience of falling snow was in Matatiele, way back in the 60s, where we were snowed in for three days.
The town square was, of course, like a Christmas card, except these usually have snow-laden conifers. In Matat it was the fronds of the palm trees that held the snow, a frozen tracery – incongruous but magical nevertheless.
The farmers came into town on their tractors for supplies – no other vehicle could move. The licensing hours of the pubs seemed to have been suspended as people stood about roaring log fires.
Tall stories abounded. One fellow claimed to have spotted a large trout swimming in the snow, off-river. Another was training a dog team. "But when I say 'Mush!' they just sit down on their backsides in the snow!"
Late one night we heard about Jeremy's accident. His tractor had slid into the railings of the bridge over the frozen stream. Quite a mess. But Jeremy was OK, if a little unsteady on his feet (shock, you understand). The sergeant told us in the pub he'd insisted on them taking down a statement. "A drunk horse fell out of a willow tree on to me."
What the insurance company made of it, I don't know.
Yes, that was East Griqualand in days of yore. Last bastion of the Wild West. Always cold, often snowbound. Chills the body but not the soul.
The muse stirs
Across the wires the electric message came,
'He is no better, he is much the same …'
READER Ray Gorven wishes to challenge the 19th century Scottish poet, William McGonagall, for the title of the world's worst ever. He believes he qualifies because his bowling club president refuses to display his latest poetic effort behind the bar counter.
"I'd like your opinion please because I think I qualify for McGonagall's position."
Remember one thing, you stupid old bastard,
Don't drink too much beer then drive when you're plastered;
'Cos the cops are out there, they're concealed in a thicket,
Just waiting to give you a whacking great ticket.
It shows great promise, Ray. What you need to get into the first line is something like: "'Twas in the freezing winter of two thousand and eleven …" That's the McGonagall style. Then see if you can somewhere get in something like the couplet quoted above (referring to the illness of the Prince of Wales), which is not from McGonagall but from Alfred Austin. It's nevertheless a classic of the genre.
Austin succeeded Tennyson as Poet Laureate, appointed by Prime Minister Salisbury as a joke on the London literary establishment, for which he had great disdain.
So there's hope for us all. Keep banging away and your poem will end up being displayed in the pub, sure enough.
Sociology
SOME sociological notes: People born before 1946 were called the Silent Generation; those between 1946 and 1964 are Baby Boomers; those between 1965 and 1979 are Generation X; and those between 1980 and 2010 are Generation Y.
Y should I get a job? Y should I leave home and find my own place? Y should I get a car when I can borrow yours? Y should I clean my room?
Great pad
TIGER Woods seems to be adjusting to bachelor status. He's just bought a $60 million pad in Florida, looking out over the Atlantic, with everything that opens and shuts.
Included is a short-game practice course with sand traps etcetera, onto which he can also play a seven-iron shot from his second-storey studio.
But something is lacking. He needs to be able to sink the black on the snooker table while relaxing in the bathtub.
Tailpiece
MY WIFE and I were sitting at a table at her high school reunion, and she kept staring at a drunken man swigging his drink as he sat alone at a nearby table.
I asked: "Do you know him?"
"Yes," she sighed. "He's my old boyfriend. He took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear he hasn't been sober since."
"Good heavens!" I said, "Who could go on celebrating that long?"
And that's when the fight started.
Last word
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
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