The more things change …
FOR THOSE of us long enough in the tooth to remember, the current debate about the constitution and the role of the courts induces a depressing sense of déjà vu.
Back in the 50s the Nats were talking about "the dead hand of the past". "Die Volk het gepraat!" they would say. ("The people have spoken"). Who were these judges to stand in the way of the apartheid programme?
They went on to pack the Appellate Division (equivalent of today's Constitutional Court) with stooges; and to similarly pack the Senate so that they would have the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament.
I know things are not quite that simple today, but the sentiments seem identical.
Seeing spots
SALLY Stretch (who in days of yore lectured me in Afrikaans/Nederlands) draws attention to a headline on Page 6 of last Friday's Mercury: "Rare leopards spotted".
"I thought all leopards were spotted!" she says.
Well, not entirely all. Some have fluorescent polka dots interspersed with zig-zag stripes. Their habitat is the clubs and discos and they look great under strobe lights.
Toppies calling
IN THE GATHERING gloom of Sunday evening as tropical storm Irina decanted over Durban, suddenly I heard the call of toppies (bulbuls). Sure enough, there they were swooping about in the downpour as if hunting insects.
Were the flying ants out, or were these toppies just clowning about, as they love to do, possibly stir crazy after being confined to their roosts for so long? I couldn't spot a single flying ant.
Then later, as darkness fell, a solitary flying ant fluttered about an outside light.
You can't fool those toppies.
Tugela Basin
READER Rosemary Turner was interested and disturbed by last week's piece in this column about the hydro-electric potential of the Tugela Basin.
"This became even more relevant when I read in The Mercury the following day an article by Tristan Taylor, saying our government has planned expenditure of R300 billion on nuclear reactors.
"If the results of the research of the Tugela Basin are filed away somewhere, surely this should be brought to light again?"
Rosemary says this could possibly become the subject of a petition.
Yes. We do, of course, have these Tugela Basin mass rallies in telephone booths.
Naked Taffies
INDEED to goodness … hundreds of naked swimmers took to the sea on a beach in Wales last June. Now it turns out the Midsummer Skinny Dip at Rhossili raised more than £25 000 for charity.
Organiser Alison Powell has been named as Wales's most creative fund-raiser.
The Midsummer Skinny Dip saw 414 take to the sea - 150 more than the previous mass skinny dip world record.
To quote Ms Powell: "There was something absolutely surreal about being on a beach with 400 naked bodies. It's not a sight you see very often."
Fortunately not.
Male logic
HERE'S an essay in male logic.
A wife asks her husband: "Could you please go shopping for me and buy one carton of milk and, if they have eggs, get six."
The husband returns with six cartons of milk.
She: "Why did you buy six cartons of milk?"
He: "They had eggs."
Well, so what? He did what she asked. I don't see the point of this at all.
Mid-life crisis
AN extract from a marriage counselling casebook:
"After being married for 19 years, I took a careful look at my wife one day and said: 'Darling, 19 years ago we had a cheap apartment, a cheap car, we slept on a sofa bed and watched a 10-inch black and white TV. But I got to sleep every night with a hot 21-year-old girl. Now I have a big home, a posh car, a nice big bed and plasma screen TV. But I'm sleeping with a 40-year-old woman. It seems you're not holding up your side of things.'
"She told me to go out and find a hot 21-year-old gal and she would make sure I would once again be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, sleeping on a sofa bed and watching a 10-inch black and white TV.
"Aren't older women great, the way they solve your mid-life crisis?"
Tailpiece
Seamus: "Paddy, what for are ya talkin into an envelope?"
Paddy: "I'm sendin' a voicemail, ya thick sod!"
Last word
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
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