This decimal lunacy
LAST week we discussed a formulation on distance walked by golfers in a year as against alcohol consumed by them in a year, arriving at a figure of miles per gallon, using the old imperial measures.
It prompts sometime correspondent Barrie (with an "ie") into doing some calculations.
When he left school in 1952, he says, petrol cost one shilling and sixpence a gallon (the equivalent of 15 cents).
There are 4.54 litres in a gallon.
"So people were running their cars on petrol costing 3.3 cents a litre. Makes you think, doesn't it?"
It does indeed, Barrie. In fact I've campaigned for years against the lunacy of decimal currency and metricated measures.
In the days before decimals you could get a mixed grill on the beachfront for three shillings and sixpence (35 cents). You could take a girl out to dinner for a pound (R2).
I rest my case.
Ants
A YORKSHIREMAN doused a nest of ants with petrol and threw a match on it. But the flames that engulfed the ants' nest in his garden in Bramley, South Yorkshire, soon also engulfed a hedge and then his house. The fire brigade had to put it out.
In a similar incident, firefighters were called to a house fire in Bridgend, South Wales, where a householder tried to kill a spider by squirting it with an aerosol can, then setting fire to it.
And not too long ago something very similar happened in America where a fellow converted an aerosol can into a blowtorch, also to kill a spider. He totally burned down the house.
When will these folk ever learn? The only safe way to deal with an ants' nest or a spider is to throw a grenade at it, then dive into a slit trench.
Leg gully
THE campaign for re-introduction of the leg gully field placing in cricket slowly gathers pace.
Former league cricketers Chris Taylor and Tom Lambert are both of them puzzled by the way skippers no longer place a leg gully to take the sharp catches that present themselves off in-swinger seamers.
But Chris now tells me the Indian cricketers seem to have caught on.
"I'm interested to see the Indian cricketers have been reading your column. Yesterday their opening
attack included a leg gully to Robson. I wonder if the Poms took note of this."
Bumf professionals
INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener laments that businesses now have to hire people to ensure that they don't slip up on the growing number of bureaucratic forms that have to be completed.
"One of the more dismal developments of the week is the news that compliance is now a recognised profession. There is now such a large and odiferous pile of regulation and legislation that businesses are obliged to hire people to ensure they don't forget to tick one box, certify one ID or confirm one place of residence.
"Bureaucrats promise each other that one day they will create the perfect rule which, when complied with perfectly, will reveal everything about everybody and from that information they will be able to save everyone from everything.
"However, events both deliberate and accidental will forever appear unannounced and ill-timed to demolish even the most careful formed strategy and plan. All any enterprise can do is rely on vigilance, honesty and integrity throughout its workforce, customers and suppliers.
"A room full of signed and compliant documents will never be proof against frauds, losses and simple mishaps, nor is it much help against the South African mantra: 'It was not me. I was not there'."
Internet urge
IT'S astonishing, this compulsion to post items on the internet. You'd think that after a successful jailbreak you would lie low.
But no. Thirteen Brazilian prisoners who dug a tunnel from their prison cell in Rio Verde, in the state of Goias, filmed their escape on a mobile phone. The first thing they did was post pictures of their escape online.
Two of them have already been re-arrested. Hey, but they made it on the social media.
Poser
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "Would a pun about a Mexican long-haired chihuahua puppy qualify as a short shaggy dog story?"
Tailpiece
Who has eight guns and terrorises the ocean?
Billy the Squid.
Last word
The phrase "action speaks louder than words," is most easily proven by a swift kick to the genitals.
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