Can't say – top secret!
IN BRITAIN, MI5 - the sister secret service organisation to James Bond's MI6 - is advertising to put together a "health and safety" team.
Quite what this entails is not clear. The advertisement on the MI5 website is cryptic: "We can't show you the buildings. We can't talk about the people you'll work with. We can't tell you much about the job. We can't give you the exact locations. We can't mention the kind of technology involved. Is it still a risk worth taking?"
MI5 handles Britain's internal security. MI6 gets involved in foreign adventures. As we all know, MI6 agents sleep with blonde Russian spies, drive fast cars with fancy gizmos, get picked up by ladies in casinos and have to consort with sinister tattooed women with names like Octopussy.
If MI5 needs a health and safety team, MI6 the more so. But it's all top secret.
In Swaziland in the early years of the independence, they had an MI6 man seconded to help the new government with security. He was a highly sociable fellow, not averse to a pint of beer. People would phone him up.
"Is that the secret service?"
Deadpan: "I can't tell you."
Poignant lines
'TWAS an occasion of great poignancy as we gathered at St Clement's for an extraordinary session during what is a recess of this otherwise weekly soiree. Poignancy because we were there to honour Don Shaw, who died a matter of weeks after reading his entries – scholtzim, as they are now known - that made the Top Ten in the annual St Clement's Hundred-Word Short Story Competition.
Don, a man of great mischief and merriment, was a former Commodore of Point Yacht Club. His hundred-worders were often written as verse. Here is one, just published by Horus Publications under the title Le Petit Dejeuner 3.
We made love
At the top of a hill
With spreading treetops below
And eagles soaring above.
We made love in a mountain stream
The warmth of our bodies together
And icy waters between.
We made love
In the heat of day
And cool of the night
In the wind, sun and rain.
We made love
In a train
On a journey between
Yesterday's memories and tomorrow's dreams.
We made love
In a fantasy world
And knew the pain
That true tenderness brings.
We made love
Stolen that's true
But now our secret's out
Will it ever happen again?
Compere Pieter Scholtz also read out one of Don's scholtzim that was not included in the publication.
Does it really matter
What happens
When you're gone
And you're not there to see?
You'll be a speck of dust
A tiny grain of sand
On a beach or endless desert
But you won't be there to see.
If all your life you've strived
For comfort and for wealth
To leave behind for others
That you won't be there to see.
Think again
For where's your pleasure
In their pleasure
If you're not there to see.
Spend it on you and yours
and the pleasure will be now
not at some future time
you won't be there to see.
A premonition? Certainly profound. The man will be sadly missed.
Pigeon post
AN EXHAUSTED racing pigeon landed on the deck of Royal Navy frigate HMS Somerset, 480km out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean.
Did she have strapped to her leg a message warning of the approach of the Spanish Armada? No, she hadn't been flying about quite that long. A ring on her leg revealed that she belongs to Gil Hartshorn, of Cleveland, in the English Midlands, who had released her in France a few days earlier for a cross-channel race.
The pigeon will be returned to him, hale and hearty, when the frigate returns to port.
When will that be? It depends whether the Spaniards are around.
Tailpiece
"Mum, why are wedding dresses white?"
"My boy, it's to show everyone the bride is pure."
"Dad, why are wedding dresses white?"
"My boy, all kitchen appliances come in white."
The husband is in intensive care and the prognosis is not good.
Last word
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
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