Backwoodsman comes to town
SUCH drollery the other evening at the Street Shelter for the Over-40s. This fellow had come in from the backwoods of Assagay, wearing a pair of mountain hiking boots. Threading his way through the throng to discuss with me a point of Aristotelian as opposed to Kantian metaphysics – a subject of which they never tire at the Street Shelter – he took a short cut across a small patch of garden.
Except that the small patch of garden was in fact a pond with lilies floating on the surface. Splash! One mountain hiking boot absolutely sodden.
So he took it off, wrang the sock out and left it to dry on a spoke of the overhead umbrella. Very practical these backwoodsmen.
But a fellow looks silly sitting there with only one boot on. So he took off the other one as well. Then when nature called, off he padded to the gents'. There he was the object of some derision as he stood sans footwear.
"Hey man, I like your Nikes!" one of the punters remarked.
The humour can be biting at the Street Shelter for the Over-40s. You transgress the dress code at your peril.
Cricket woes
IN HIS LATEST grumpy newsletter, investment analyst Dr James Greener makes a connection between the shambles in education and our shambolic performance in the T20 cricket.
"The Proteas' ignominious departure from the T20 World Cup with not a single win in the second round of the tournament was disgraceful. It seems our cricket players are not very good at doing the division sums required for understanding run rate. Is cricket another victim of the crumbling school system?"
Who cares?
JAMES probably has a point. But does it really matter what happens in T20 cricket? Is it real cricket anyway? We won the test series and we're top of the world ratings, and that's what counts.
Test cricket is to one-day cricket as chess is to draughts. T20 rates somewhere with pocket billiards.
Canterbury tale
SECURITY staff searching people at a courthouse in Kent, England, seized and confiscated a tarantula.
It happened in Canterbury. The man with the tarantula was there to offer support to a friend who was appearing in court. Whether the tarantula was intended to play some sort of role in this support is not clear. At any rate it was put in a sealed container and returned to its owner after the case.
Why this crackdown on tarantulas? On the rare occasions I go to court, I always take a bagful of scorpions to offer the legal team a snack at teabreak.
Honeybee blues
THE BEES in the town of Ribeauville, in north-eastern France, have started producing blue honey. It's caused some consternation. Where could they be gathering this unnatural coloration?
Could it be from the hair salons frequented by the blue rinse brigade? Do the French have the equivalent of our "blue train" connoisseurs, who decant methylated spirits?
The beekeepers of Ribeauville have been abuzz. Quite apart from the mystery, nobody will buy blue honey. But they think they've discovered the source of the problem - a plant that recycles waste from a chocolate factory. The bees are believed to have been collecting sugary waste from the plant, which has a blue tinge.
There's surely a blues number in this:
Woke up this mornin'
An' I said to ma honey,
Babe, I'm feelin' so blue …
Griqua country
NOW WHY SHOULD Nasa want to scoop a soil sample from the Kimberley rugby field?
Oh sorry, my mistake. This photograph of a desolate stretch of sand and rocks is of the surface of Mars, where the Curiosity space rover is about to start digging.
The Kimberley ground – home of the Griquas – does in fact have some patches of green on it. Those are the devil thorns.
A tough theatre of rugby, as the Lions discovered last Saturday, latest in a string of casualties including ourselves.
But on Friday it's the greensward of King's Park. Remember the Alamo!
Tailpiece
EMILY-SUE falls off a ladder and breaks her leg. Billy-Bob calls for an ambulance.
Emergency control room operator: "Where do you live?"
"At 1132 Eucalyptus Drive."
"Can you spell that for me?"
A pause. Then: "How 'bout if I drag her over to Oak Street?"
Last word
Sanity is a madness put to good use.
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