Celebrities everywhere
NATIONAL key points, Bollywood celebrities … you haven't really cut a dash until you've landed at Waterkloof air force base then been taken at high speed to Sun City with an escort of blue-lighters with sirens shrieking.
Can people not see that this week's events are setting an international trend? That very soon every celeb on the international stage will be insisting on the same thing - Waterkloof to Sun City, top speed, all the noise, all the bling.
We'll have Hollywood here, Pinewood, the Russian oligarchs. This is the new growth industry, it's putting South Africa on the world map. Forget buckets and spades, the celebrity tourism business is where it's at.
Why stop at the air force? What's wrong with cheek-to-cheek on the quarterdeck of one of the new frigates down in Simonstown, the violins of the ship's band sobbing in the background? Why not a cosy jaunt up the coast in a submarine, with disco?
We've got to have romance, we've got have atmosphere. We've got to pullt the celebs. Bollywood is only a start. Let's have David Beckham firing the noon gun in Cape Town. Then South Africa will have truly arrived.
To get anywhere in this world, you have to think big.
New species
THE TOURISM Indaba approaches and so does travel writer David Hughes who has been putting in time before the mast on a voyage from Australia aboard Queen Mary2.
He tells me it was about a month ago off Port Louis, Mauritius, when an item appeared in the daily passenger events programme announcing that two very rare birds were on board, having been blown off course. They were "dodants" – a new species developed by the British Natural History Museum by infusing DNA from a dodo skeleton with a strain of pigeon.
It caused great excitement and passengers were queuing and clamouring for viewing tickets when the intercom reminded them that it was April 1.
As the dodo said: "A life on the ocean wave …" It's tough being a travel writer.
Robbing the rich
THE ETHOS of Robin Hood lives on. Corey Donaldson, an Australian who has lived in America for 20 years, told a court in Wyoming that he robbed a bank of $140 000 (R1 120 000) so that he could distribute the money to people made homeless by bank repossessions.
"I came up with the idea that since the banks had been bailed out, and the people had not, I was going to confiscate money from US Bank in Jackson, Wyoming, and redistribute it to the poor and homeless in America and that's what I did."
He was handed the money after threatening to blow up the bank with explosives he said had been planted about it in the snow.
The case continues. The Wyoming police are still looking for Little John, Will Scarlet, Alan-a-Dale and Friar Tuck.
Side dish
GLORIA Chubb, a retired nurse in Indiana, in the US, was cooking a can of green beans when she discovered it contained a side dish – a toad, simmering nicely.
It was, of course, a complete mix-up on the part of the food manufacturer. The toad should have been with the instant mashed potatoes – toad in the hole.
Gloria says she was "physically sick" after the experience. But don't these nurses have stomachs of cast iron? A bedpan in one hand, a cheese sandwich in the other – that's how it used to be.
Mess duty
THE ABOVE recalls a fellow I once knew who had been an officer in the British army. He was on duty in the mess one evening when he called the customary: "Any complaints?"
"Yes sir," said one of the men. "I've got a caterpillar in my salad."
Sure enough. This officer fellow was boggling at it, not knowing what to do, when the sergeant-major came to his rescue: "Well, don't wave it around, son! Everyone will want one!"
Tailpiece
AN ENGLISHMAN, an Irishman, a Scotsman, a priest, a nun, a rabbi, a Pole and Van der Merwe walk into a bar.
Barman: "What's this? Some kind of joke?"
Last word
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
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