The band kept playing
IT'S THE GREATEST party in Africa. It puts Hollywood to shame. Likewise the Lord Mayor's Ball in London. It makes the Oscar Awards ceremony look like a Quaker meeting. There's nothing else quite like it.
Massed violins sob in the background. Strobe lights play on the midriffs of lovely, near-naked ladies, while fat fellows in tuxedos guzzle sushi off their tummies.
The Dom Perignon is flowing. The Johnny Walker Blue Label is flowing. The air is thick with Cuban cigar smoke.
This is the essence of high society. Everyone who's anyone is there. Until you're on the guest list, you just haven't arrived.
Yes, it's the first of the Eskom "Fun Day" parties, the start of a glittering season at R5 million a pop.
And the band kept playing as the Titanic went down.
Dear Abby
THE SYNDICATED column of American agony aunt Abigail van Buren is always worth a squint. The following queries, sent in by a reader, are all of them addressed to "Dear Abby":
· A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle-aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid-20s. These two women go everywhere together and I've never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese?
· What can I do about all the sex, nudity, fowl language and violence on my VCR?
· I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much, I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying is his.
· I am a 23-year-old liberated woman who has been on the pill for two years. It's getting expensive and I think my boyfriend should share half the cost, but I don't know him well enough to discuss money with him.
· I've suspected that my husband has been fooling around, and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again.
· Our son writes that he is taking Judo. Why would a boy who was raised in a good Christian home turn against his own?
· I joined the Navy to see the world. I've seen it. Now how do I get out?
· My 40-year-old son has been paying a psychiatrist $50 an hour every week for two and a half years. He must be crazy.
· I was married to Bill for three months and I didn't know he drank until one night he came home sober.
· My mother is mean and short tempered. I think she is going through mental pause.
· You told some woman whose husband had lost all interest in sex to send him to a doctor. Well, my husband lost all interest in sex and he is a doctor. Now what do I do?
Rip van Richardson
DAVE Richardson, of Kloof, says it took him a year to read last Friday's Business Report.
The front page was dated Friday, July 6, 2012. When he flipped to the back to do the crossword, the page was dated Friday, July 6, 2013.
Well that can happen, Dave, when you get bogged down in these heavy financial pieces, especially if you close-read the share prices.
On the other hand, it might have something to do with the elusive Higgs Boson and Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Time travel?
SPEAKING of which, Robert Nicolai, of Howick, notes that the particle physicists who are so excited about the Higgs Boson are not 100 percent sure they've found it.
"Wow! It cost them only €23.5 billion to not be 100 percent convinced of how gravity doesn't work? For that invested capital they'd better discover how to make anti-gravity cars that don't need petrol, anti-gravity sports shoes that allow us to leap tall buildings and warp-powered time machines so we can travel back in time with winning lottery numbers to just before the draw.
"Or those scientists should maybe have just concentrated on getting girlfriends."
Tailpiece
Mick: "What's dat you got dere, Paddy?"
Paddy: "It's a thermos flask."
Mick: "What's dat?"
Paddy: "It keeps hot tings hot and cold tings cold.."
Mick: "What you got in dere?"
Paddy: "Two cups of coffee and a choc ice."
Last word
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.
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