Shova-shova councillors
PEOPLE are saying all sorts of unkind and unfair things about our shova-shova councillors and their sudden craze for bicycles. They're saying it's all just a publicity stunt, those tubs of lard will dump the bike as they round the first corner, then jump into the waiting SUV.
They'll latch on to any fad for publicity's sake, the critics are saying. This time it's the carbon footprint thing. And their eagerness to buy more bicycles, in addition to those donated by Cop 17, simply confirms their instinct to spend ratepayers' money wherever and whenever they can.
They could not be more wrong. I have it on good authority from City Hall that Durban intends sending a team to next year's Tour de France. The critics will eat their words when they see councillors pedalling in a bunch up the steep inclines of the Berea every week, practising for the Pyrenees.
It's taken very seriously indeed. Motorcades are to be replaced by cyclecades. The metro police will have special bikes with balloon tyres, flashing blue lights and ear-splitting sirens to head the cyclecades through the city and to jump the red lights. What a spectacle.
There will be regular lunch-hour sprint training sessions at Moses Mabhida. Durban's carbon footprint will virtually disappear. A lean, mean and superfit team will emerge to challenge . Chris Froome and his lot when they set out from Yorkshire next year.
The cycling councillors – amashova-shova. Durban chalks up another first.
Catalinas
A WHILE ago we had occasion to discuss the Catalina flying boats that operated from St Lucia during World War II. More information comes in to show that things were indeed pretty hairy off our coast – more so than the authorities ever let on.
Roy Hannington sends in some documents and maps showing that no less than 117 Allied vessels were sunk by hostile submarines off the South African coast. Quite a number were off the Cape but when you get to the stretch between Port Elizabeth, Durban and Beira, it looks as if somebody has shaken the coarse pepper grinder over the map.
Erroll Edley says the Durban Wings Club has a photograph of the Italian freighter Timavu that was harried by Catalinas and run aground just north of St Lucia. Timavu had made the bad mistake of being in South African waters at the time Mussolini joined the war on Hitler's side.
And 93-year-old Enid Hodges confirms the story of the Catalina that crashed at St Lucia carrying a full payload of depth charges that have never been recovered.
She nursed the pilot, who had escaped but with severe burns, at Springfield Military Hospital. He had been rescued from the water, blowing his whistle for assistance, and he presented this whistle to Enid as a keepsake. It had his name and RAF service number engraved on it and today is in the possession of her grandson.
Sad to say, the pilot eventually succumbed to the burns. He died. How sad can it get?
Enid says the war ended just as she was about to be shipped to Burma. The war took up a lot of her generation's youth. She quotes the famous lines of Laurence Binyon:
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Yep, a heroic generation. One also recalls the lines of Wilfred Owen:
Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
In rooms of amber;
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our life's ember …
Another war
NO NAMES, no packdrill but a reader sends in a copy of a marriage certificate. Against "Type of marriage" is printed the word "Civil". But somebody has very neatly added the word "War".
Civil war? Oh dear, I guess things didn't work out too well.
Tailpiece
TWO old mates are freshwater fishing. They are slowly drinking beer. Bob says, softly and slowly so as not to disturb the fish: "You know, Joe, I think I'm gonna divorce Gladys. She hasn't spoken to me in two months."
Joe sips slowly and reflectively. Then he speaks in a low voice: "Think carefully about it, Bob. It's not every day you find a woman like that."
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Last word
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
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