Touch of wild garlic
DOES the vegetable patch impart a sexual frisson? Canadian poet Lorna Crozier believes so and describes it with great gusto in her risqué collection, The Sex Lives of Vegetables.
Crozier, who has achieved great distinction as a poet in her own country, was introduced to a Durban audience this week at the St Clement's soiree where a selection of her work was read by Pieter Scholtz and Margaret Logan. They also read excerpts from Frances Hodgson Burnett's children's classic The Secret Garden.
The contrast could hardly have been more complete – from the deeply affecting story of childhood development in a blighted Yorkshire country home around the turn of the 19th century to a romp through the veggie garden. Crozier tells it with wit and style – and a great deal of naughtiness.
In fact so much so that it's difficult to find one of her veggie poems that can be reproduced in a family newspaper. No, not the one about the carrots. Nor the peas. Okay, the artichokes then.
Artichokes never
take off their clothes.
They want seduction,
Melted butter, a touch
of wild garlic.
It went down a treat. That's St Clement's for you, variety without end. Crozier sounds a real character – Springtime In The Rockies.
Tweeters
BRITAIN'S shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, has an unusual name that induces mirth among the vulgar and has now become a feature of the Twittersphere.
Two years ago on his birthday he by mistake tweeted just "Ed Balls". Thousands of Twitter users began retweeting . They did it again a year later.
A few days ago Balls joined in the fun himself, tweeting: "Ok, ok … Because it would be rude not to..!RT@edballsmp: Ed Balls"
Er … yes, I also feel I'm missing something here. Maybe you have to sign up to Twitter.
Caxirola
BRAZIL has come up with its answer to the vuvuzela. The caxirola is a percussion instrument made of recycled plastic that produces a rattling sound.
It will be produced for the Confederations Cup competition next month, which will be a dress rehearsal for the 2014 World Cup.
Plastic rattles in the hands of thousands. Could they drown out the dreadful droning of the vuvuzelas? We have the ingredients here for a nightmare symphony.
We regret …
THINGS are tough in the magazine trade. A letter comes this way in which the editors of an American publication reject a would-be contribution.
"Thank you for your lovely and thoughtful submission to the magazine, which we are afraid we are going to have to decline for all sorts of reasons. The weather is dreary, our backs hurt, we have seen too many cats today and, as you know, cats are the reason why God invented handguns.
"There is a sweet incoherence and self-absorbtion in your piece that we find alluring but we have published too many of such pieces in recent years, mostly authored by the undersigned.
"Did we mention the moist melancholy of the weather, that our marriages are unkept and disgruntled, our children surly and crammed to the gills with a sense of entitlement that makes us wonder how they will ever make their way in the world?
"We spent far too much money recently on silly graphic design and now must slash the storytelling budget; our insurance bills have gone up precipitously, the women's baseball team has no rebounders, an aunt of ours needs a seventh new hip, the shimmer of hope that was the national zeitgeist looks to be nursing a whopper of a black eye and someone left the toilet roll thing empty again, without the slightest consideration for who pays for things like that.
"And there were wet towels on the floor. And the parakeet has a goitre. And the dog barfed up crayons. Please feel free to send us anything you feel would fit these pages and thank you for considering this magazine for your work. It's an honour."
Tough times indeed. Who would want to be running a magazine? (Unfortunately it is impossible to reproduce here the tearstains on the page).
Tailpiece
WHO WAS THE fattest knight at King Arthur's round table?
Sir Cumference. He had too much Pi.
Last word
Leave it to a girl to take the fun out of sex discrimination.
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