Free at last!
SKY NEWS had some appealing footage of a large group of chimpanzees being released into the open air for the first time in their lives. It showed them venturing hesitantly through the open door of the building where they had been kept, looking with bafflement up at the sky they had never seen before then, as they slowly unwound, grabbing one another in hugs.
The 38 chimps had been taken from their mothers shortly after birth and kept in a research facility in Austria. They were rescued after the pharmaceutical company behind the research was sold.
It's a heart-warming story, yet disturbing also. How can intelligent animals – or any animals for that matter – be used virtually for a lifetime for pharmaceutical research purposes? Did they test their lipsticks on these chimps?
I liked the posted comment of a viewer: "The video reminds me of the Big Brother house, although the inhabitants on this video seem far more intelligent."
Lines in exile
AN EVOCATIVE poem comes this way, written by Michelle Frost, formerly of Bulawayo and then East London, who now lives in Scotland with her Scottish husband.
I wish you an African morning,
I wish you an Eden land.
Ivory grasses spread at your feet,
Thorn trees and copper sand.
Where the first cool moments of dawning
are scorched by the bright sun's birth,
and molten horizons miraged by the heat
quiver above the earth.
I wish you an African sunset,
I wish you a sky on fire.
A thousand red blood-glow horizon
of the day's passed funeral pyre.
Where the shredded clouds form a dark net
to catch the last bright blaze
of the mighty fleeing bronze-cast sun
As it sets in a scarlet haze.
I wish you an African midnight.
I wish you a heavenly sea.
To drown in a dark star ocean
And float on the tide back to me.
Where the foam of the waves is the starlight
that swirls through the endless skies.
To billow and crash without motion
And beach in a spray of fireflies.
Yep, Africa gets to you.
Naval battle
THE OBITUARY pages of the London Daily Telegraph make fascinating reading. A recent entry records the death at age 92 of Captain Douglas Stobie. He was in the last naval surface battle of World War II
"The 26th Destroyer Flotilla, which included Saumarez, Venus, Verulam, Vigilant and Virago, was stalking the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro in the Malacca Straits.
"Stobie was the torpedo officer in Saumarez which, as the attack developed, became the main target for Haguro's 8-inch guns.
"One shell punched through her forecastle and another took off her funnel-top. Splinters cut the wireless aerials, but the sides of the destroyer were so thin that they did not set off Haguro's biggest shells. (How's that for precarious living?)
"Stobie was on the starboard bridge wing when a 275lb shell exploded in the sea nearby, throwing up a vast sheet of water that drenched him ... As the water drained away, Stobie wiped his eyes to see Haguro crossing the prongs of his torpedo-aiming sight; all eight of his torpedoes were fired.
"Several other destroyers fired too, and at 01h15 three explosions split the darkness, while 'gold-coloured splashes' towered higher than Haguro's bridge ... a short while later the blazing wreck capsized. Stobie and several officers and men of the 26th Destroyer Flotilla received awards for their outstanding courage, coolness and skill during the action."
Stobie was born in Durban. Will they name a street after him? No.
Tailpiece
AN 82 YEAR-OLD man goes to the doctor for a physical check-up. A few days later the doctor meets him in the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm.
"You're really doing great, aren't you?" says the doctor.
"Just doing what you said, Doc: 'Get a hot mamma and be cheerful.'''
"I didn't say that. I said: 'You've got a heart murmur; be careful.'"
Last word
Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.
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