In vino veritas
MORE on the mysterious Count Nicholas Czardas, who claims he is an old boy of Chelmsford College, KwaZulu-Natal (which does not exist); also that he was simultaneously born in Spain, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Patagonia and India; and that he was once a member of the Junior National Party.
Reader Rob Boyd (a Maritzburg College old boy and therefore totally reliable) says when he was at Stellenbosch University in the late 1980s he knew the enigmatic count, who was based at the Hardy Rodenstock Institute in Somerset West.
"I seem to remember him at some of the Junior National Party functions which my whole residence attended – liberal or conservative - as it cost R1 a year and there were four cheese-and-wine evenings. So we all went along for the wine."
That explains part of it. For membership of R1 a year, and four cheese and wine parties for free, I'd join the Young Bolsheviks.
And does a pattern emerge here? I don't know what the Hardy Rodenstock Institute is, but Hardy Rodenstock the man is a sometimes controversial German connoisseur of wines of ancient vintage, as well as a dealer and distributor.
So the good count – full name Niklas László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós et Czardas – has something to do with wine. He possibly owes much of his inspiration to it, as expressed on his website..
Bingo! When he's on pinotage, he was born in Malaga, Spain, the same city as Picasso; when on riesling, he was born prematurely at a house party on a farm in Northern Rhodesia and was put, in a shoebox, into the warming drawer of an Aga stove. When on chardonnay, he was born during floods in Patagonia. And when on muscadel, he was born in the hill country of India during Diwali.
I think we've got your number, Count!
Odd silence
CONFIRMATION is received of the Japanese threat to Durban during World War II, as discussed last week. It comes from none other than the poet laureate of Hillcrest, Ian Gibson.
Writing this time in prose rather than verse, he says his father – a veteran of World War I, where he served with the Royal Scots Guards – ran a trading store between Mount Ayliff and Mount Frere, in the Eastern Cape.
When World War II broke out he was made a captain in the National Volunteer Reserve. In the early hours one morning, he was summoned to Durban by the military, setting out at 2am.
Months later he told his family what it had been about. A Japanese aircraft carrier had been spotted 180 miles off Durban, supported by a flotilla of other craft.
This ties in with what my late colleague Owen Coetzer once wrote about a Japanese carrier task force headed for Durban to attack the graving dock, but then being diverted to the Battle of Midway in the South Pacific.
"It was a nervy time." says Ian. It certainly must have been. It's odd that this aspect of the war on our doorstep should have remained unknown for so long.
Tailpiece
| IT'S THE Last Chance saloon and a young cowboy spots an elderly man at the bar who in his day had been the fastest gun in the West.
"Will that make me a better gunfighter?" |
Last word
Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
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