The Idler, Friday, February 3, 2012

Watering holes of Durban

AN ENTERTAINING piece comes this way on the watering holes of Durban in days of yore – among them the Cookie Look, Father's Moustache, the Bull Ring, the White House, the Cockney Pride, the Cat's Whiskers, the Kit-Kat Bar, the Tudor Rose and the Los Angeles.

Plus, of course, the Smugglers' Inn, in Point Road, much frequented by the ladies of the night. Plus Saturday afternoon jazz at the Caister. Not to forget the gay Indian barman at the Balmoral, named Blondie.

Yep, them were the days!

It's doing the rounds on the internet and it's written by a fellow named David Baird under the title Watering holes of my youth. Nobody seems to know who David is but he says the nightspots are the reason he took so long getting his straightforward degree. Elsewhere he tells us he was in Durban between 1967 and 1993. Twenty-six years does seem rather a long time to take over a degree, but I suppose if you're pub-crawling along the beachfront every night it does take time.

 

Of Maritzburg

THE ABOVE has caused a flurry of interest, not least in Maritzburg which has also had some interesting watering holes  – the Black Horse, where a bayonet on the wall fitted exactly into a groove on the bar counter where a drunken sergeant from Fort Napier transfixed an officer (He was shot at dawn next day – a most drastic cure for a hangover); the First and Last ("The FL boys are happy and the FL boys are free …"); and the Market Inn, patronised by the famous hobo Tickey Sherry.

And there was the Rawdon's Run. This began at the Imperial, in town, and stopped off at Crossways, at Hilton. It was supposed to then go on to Rawdon's, at Nottingham Road, but nobody ever got further than Crossways.

At Crossways it was that a local desperado named Ginger Dick blasted the dartboard with a shotgun. (What made this incident unusual was that Ginger was manager of the place at the time).

Yep, them were the days!

Of elsewhere

AND, OF COURSE, there were the rural spots – the Royal in Kokstad, built in the 19^th century by Yankee Woods, a black American who had jumped ship at East London and befriended Adam Kok. Woods went on to make a fortune on the Witwatersrand, hobnobbing with the randlords and owning racehorses. Then he lost it all and ended up doorman at the hotel he once owned.

Still in East Griqualand, there's the Swartberg bar where local farmer Graham Strachan also blasted the dartboard with a shotgun – then used the second barrel on the blue light outside the police station down the road.

There's the Royal in Lusikisiki, Pondoland, where they still talk about the egg and tomato fracas of the sixties the way Americans talk about the Gunfight at OK Corral.

And what about Stan's Bar at Babanango, Zululand, festooned with ladies' knickers and bras?

Of course, all this is purely hearsay. I've never set foot in any of these places.

Referendum

DETAILS come this way of the referendum question to be put to Scottish voters on whether they favour independence from the United Kingdom.

The question: "Y'up firrit?"

Voters will have to place a cross beside one of three responses: "Aye"; "Naw"; and "Mibbe's aye, mibbe's naw".

Tailpiece

I WENT bass fishing the other day but after a while I ran out of bait. Then I saw a puffadder with a dead lizard in its mouth. Lizards are good bait for bass. Knowing the snake couldn't bite me with the lizard in its mouth, I grabbed it behind the head, took the lizard and put it in my bait bucket. Now the dilemma was how to release the snake without getting bitten. So I grabbed my bottle of Klipdrift and poured a little brandy into its mouth. Its eyes rolled back, and it went limp. I then released it without incident and carried on fishing, using the lizard as bait. Next I felt a nudge against my foot. I looked down and there was that same snake with two more lizards in its mouth. Life is good in Africa .

Last word

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

George Orwell