St Clement's rides again
A RIGHT rollicking evening it was at St Clement's this week as Cape poet Geoffrey Haresnape read from his new collection, Where the Wind Wills (Echoing Green Press). Haresnape's poetry has a delightful quirkiness and wit. It's even better in a public reading.
Being close to the centenary, he read two poems on the sinking of the Titanic. One brings us the last moments of the bass violin player in the ship's band. The other describes a caged animal in the hold, named Nanook, being transferred to the New York zoo. He escapes after the impact and swims away.
He hauled out on a growler's shelf
To shelter in its lea:
Titanic sank before his eyes,
The ship that set him free ...
Yes, Nanook was a polar bear. Again the quirky twist. And Haresnape's account in rhyming couplets of the career of our own poet, Roy Campbell, was an absolute hoot.
At Oxford he embraced the bottle
(At first a little, then a lottle) …
Haresnape also read a couple of poems that were a little, er, naughty. The screeching of the ladies in response was absolutely frightful.
Rugby soiree
AND NEXT Monday the St Clement's get-together will be devoted – believe it or not - to rugby. Compere Pieter Scholtz will read a piece on rugby which he describes as "mainly smutty and lavatorial" (with a title which, I'm afraid, cannot be used in a respectable family newspaper).
Pieter hopes to attract current and past players, to add to the atmosphere. I'm not so sure about that. Rugby players are notoriously puritanical and likely to be offended by smut. But on with the show!
St Clements is next to St Thomas's Church in Musgrave Road. Monday's gathering starts early at 6pm – I think because rugby personality Brian van Zyl has agreed to recite Eskimo Nell, which is a very long poem indeed.
Two views
THERE are two ways of looking at mercenaries. One is to consider them cutthroat, freebooting near-criminals, possessed of a bloodlust coupled with an eagerness to loot and plunder. The other is to see them as a stabilising force in parts of the world that are convulsed by violence; where elected governments have slender control; where international peacekeeping is a failure; and where civilian populations are otherwise at the mercy of rapacious warlords.
My old colleague Al Venter, who stomped about some of the same parts of Africa as myself in days of yore, inclines to the latter viewpoint. He's been in South Africa in recent days (he lives in England) to launch the local edition of his new book, Gunship Ace (Protea), which is the mostly hair-raising life story of Neall Ellis, a South African helicopter pilot who has flown as a mercenary in various theatres in Africa, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At one stage Ellis and his crew of a Mig helicopter gunship were all that stopped Freetown (capital of Sierra Leone) being overrun by murderous rebels led by one Foday Kallay. They held them off just long enough for British special forces to move in and defeat the insurgency.
As Kallay's crowd had the habit of cutting pieces off captured enemies, roasting them then eating them while the victims watched, the people of Freetown also incline to the second viewpoint. Ellis is feted whenever he goes there.
Britain's chief of defence staff, General Sir David Richards, also inclines to that view. He wrote to Al: "Neall Ellis is a great man; I and everyone in Sierra Leone owe him very much."
Actually I met Ellis at a braai last year. He's a quiet, unassuming fellow, a listener rather than a talker. (No enemies were on the braai grid).
Nuptials ahead
IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, pens a few lines on the impending nuptials of President JZ.
The President is taking a fourth wife,
For most, one is enough in this life;
But I suppose monogamy
Could lead to monotony,
And bring about connubial strife.
Tailpiece
THE TRANSCRIPT follows of a radio conversation off the coast of Germany.
"SOS! SOS! We are sinking! SOS! SOS! We are sinking!"
"Zis iss ze German coastguard service. Vot iss you sinking about?"
Last word
Skiing consists of wearing $3 000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.
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