Giving them the jitters
HUNDREDS of naked cyclists took to the streets of Peru's capital, Lima, the other day in protest against safety conditions on the roads. Many had slogans and artwork painted on their bare skin.
The convoy took over roads along an 11km route through the main thoroughfares of Lima. The protesters demand a dedicated cycle lane where they don't have to share with motor vehicles.
It must have been quite a spectacle. The ladies taking their push-bikes over the speed humps especially would be enough to give the municipal authorities the absolute jitters.
Perhaps this is the way to go for Cosatu next time they want to take to the streets in protest at e-tolling in Gauteng.
Windswept moustache
YOU NEVER know who you'll meet up with next. Seated beside me at a lunch table the other day was an affable cove with a windswept moustache, who I would have put in his mid-seventies.
He spoke with the gentle burr and distinctive vowels of the West Country of England. When I remarked on that, John Browett was surprised. He thought he'd lost his Devonshire accent during his many years with the Hong Kong police, where he ended up deputy commissioner.
But no. You can never completely lose the West Country accent.
Yew can 'ave 'er,
Oi don't want 'er,
'Er's too fat for Oi …
Then it was my turn to be surprised. John is actually 86. The windswept look of his moustache is because he's a skydiver. He'd recently returned from a skydiving competition in America. In California a few years ago, he and four other fellows set up a world record by free-falling in a formation, each of its members more than 80 years old.
What made him take up skydiving?
"Oh, I don't know. I didn't start until I was 67," he says. But he'd had a few jumps before that – long before because he was a paratrooper during World War II.
John now lives in Umkomaas, a hilly seaside town with long, swooping descents. I forgot to ask if he's taken up skateboarding.
POW swap
MORE on the cigarettes of yesteryear. John MacDonald, former industrial chemist at Union Whaling, on the Bluff, tells me he was introduced to smoking by a German prisoner-of-war.
It was in Scotland and he was all of eight years old. It was just after the war and he was visiting Culloden, the battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated in 1746. A German POW camp was nearby and out of curiosity he went up to the barbed wire to take a look.
A POW, who spoke pretty good English, asked if he had any sweets (which were strictly rationed). He had some and the German swapped them for four cigarettes.
At which point one of the guards spotted the transaction and started shouting an expression new to young John, but which he was later to learn means: "Go away!"
The cigarettes set John off. He became a dedicated smoker from the age of eight, right through his school and university days.
But there's a cheery sequel. John turns 75 next month. He also celebrates 50 years since he gave up smoking.
So there's hope for all gwaai addicts.
No go
Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.
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Tailpiece
A COUPLE are watching the prize bulls being auctioned at an agricultural show. The auctioneer announces the first animal: "A fine specimen, this bull reproduced 60 times last year."
She nudges him in the ribs: "That's about five times a month."
The second bull comes up for sale: "Another fine specimen, this wonder reproduced 120 times last year."
She: "Hey, that's some 10 times a month. What do you say to that?"
The third bull comes up for sale, "And this extraordinary specimen reproduced no less than 365 times last year!"
She: "That's once a day, every day of the year! How about you?"
He: "Sure, once a day! Great! But ask the auctioneer if it was all with the same cow!"
Last word
There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
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