Things that go 'bouf'
A FEW WEEKS ago Spyker Koekemoer (aka Pat Smythe) entertained us at St Clements with the story, The Airline That Never Flew – an account of one of the bantustan follies.
A state of the art international airport was built outside Bisho, in the Ciskei (10 minutes' flying time from East London airport), and an ancient airliner bought in the US landed, never to take off again. Eventually it was towed to the coast where it is now a very unusual beach cottage.
Now it turns out that one of the airliner's engines is in a museum at Richmond. Malcolm Anderson tells me it's in the Atom museum (Anderson & Tilbury On Mountain), looking down on the exquisitely beautiful Byrne valley, outside Richmond. The museum is attached to the Minerva private nature reserve.
Malcolm and Chris Tilbury specialise in repairing old machinery and getting it into running order again. Both are members of the Natal Vintage Tractors and Machinery Club at nearby Baynesfield and are fascinated by "things that go bouf".
They have several thousand pieces on display, including a stationary engine that is in working order after having been buried in river mud for 40 years.
The Atom museum sounds a most interesting place. I'm sure Spyker would love to drop in. The only problem is, they'd probably take him for an early 19th century steam-driven thresher or something, and put him on permanent display- or they might grab the vintage Merc that he's just restored.
Byrne Settlers
THE BYRNE valley is, of course, where British settlers in Natal put down roots in the 1850s. One of the ships they arrived in was the Minerva.
The Byrne Settlers added a new strand to life in the colony. Unlike the ivory traders, gun-runners and general scallywags who had gathered in Durban, they were serious farmers and they got down to it with real application.
For anyone who grew up in Maritzburg or the surrounding Midlands, to read the names on the gravestones in the Byrne churchyard is like hearing a familiar rollcall – names you've known all your life.
On the brink
LAST week we recalled the occasion Jack Shepherd-Smith, my distant predecessor as Idler, almost caused a civil war when he wrote about a beauty competition in Ladysmith which nobody won.
Now a reader recalls the occasion the province was on the brink of wide-scale street rioting when Jack's immediate predecessor, Dennis Henshaw, wrote - and continued to write – that budgies can't talk.
Budgie-fanciers were incensed. They threatened to march on the Mercury building en masse, with their budgies. Can you imagine anything more terrifying? A sea of blue, green and yellow. Thousands of simultaneous chirrupings of "Pretty Boy!"
I do not possess the combative spirit of my Idler forebears. I concede that budgies do talk – though not as well as chameleons (which are better pets and companions anyway). As for Ladysmith, it's not true that the Miss Lucky Legs competition was won by the billiard table in the Royal Hotel. It was the grand piano in the town hall.
Anything for a quiet life.
Send 'em up!
THE FOLLOWING conversation was overheard on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency by aircraft flying from Europe to Dubai.
Iranian air defence site: "Unknown aircraft you are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself."
Aircraft: "This is a British aircraft. I am in Iraqi airspace."
Air defence site: "You are in Iranian airspace. If you do not depart our airspace we will launch interceptor aircraft!"
Aircraft: "This is a Royal Air Force GR4 Tornado fighter. Send 'em up, I'll wait!"
Air defence site: ... total silence.
Tailpiece
AN OLD GUY and his son have a one-mule farm in the Deep South of the United States. One day the son hits the lottery and wins $50 000. He rushes to tell his father the good news and hands him a $50 bill.
The father looks at the money for a moment then says: "Son, you know I've always been careful with what little money we had. I didn't spend it on whiskey or women. In fact, I couldn't even afford a licence to legally marry your Ma."
"Pa!" the son exclaims. "Do you know what that makes me?"
"Sure do," says the old guy fingering the $50 bill. "And a damn cheap one too."
Last word
If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.
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