The Idler, Thursday, May 26, 2016

Irish aircraft carrier

WAS this the Irish Fleet Air Arm? Folk were wondering as a huge Boeing 767 floated down an estuary on a barge and headed for the open sea.

But it was a commercial venture. The Boeing has been decommissioned and was loaded on to the barge from Shannon airport, in County Clare. It was taken along the coast to Enniscrone, in County Sligo, where it is to be converted into a kind of B&B.

There it will be part of a resort that already offers tourist accomodation in old buses, taxis and a train.

Is this a unique project? Not quite. We already have a B&B establishment in an old airliner that has been placed at a spot on the coast in the Eastern Cape.

This is a relic of the glory days of the bantustans. The Ciskei government built a splendid new airport outside at its capital, Bisho -  which was more or less a suburb of King William's Town - at vast expense, courtesy of the South African taxpayer.

The new airport was ultra-modern, with walls of glass mirrors. It was 10 minutes' flying time from the airport at East London.

Only two airliners ever landed there – bought by the Ciskei government to set up its own airline – and they never took off again. Things began to run down at Bisho airport. They gave up pumping the aircraft tyres. The billygoats charged at their reflection in the glass mirror walls, smashing them and ruining the general appearance.

Eventually a businessman bought one of the aircraft – which had been the luxury private jet of the Rolling Stones rock group – and had it hauled through the streets of King William's Town (minus the wings which were temporarily detached) to its current spot on the coast where it is a B&B.

People often accuse the current government of being reckless with taxpayers' cash. The former regime were no slouches at it either.

Masks

A WOMAN in Texas has become an internet sensation after buying a Chewbacca mask (of the grotesque Star Wars character), filming herself wearing it - screeching with laughter - in a parking lot, then putting the video on Facebook.

Within 24 hours Candace Payne was viewed by 72 million people, according to Sky News.

We're not told whether she drove off, still wearing the mask. That could have been sensational.

I once knew a fellow who used to put on a very realistic baboon mask before getting behind the wheel of his car. The reaction of other road-users as he pulled in beside them at the traffic lights was interesting. Some abandoned their cars and ran. Others pulled off with wheelspin.

He once tried the mask while staying at a hotel, inducing hysterics in the lady who brought the early morning coffee. Next the hotel proprietor was in his bedroom with a shotgun.

This fellow was from Swaziland, a place that abounds in eccentricity.

 

Careful now

STUDENTS at the University of East Anglia, in England, have been told not to throw their mortarboards in the air after graduating. It had become a tradition to do this after the graduation ceremony, a photographer standing by to capture the moment.

The university authorities say a number of graduates have been injured in the past by falling mortarboards. Last year a girl had her face gashed.

But they've arranged with the photographer to digitally add mortarboards in the air to the photograph, the graduates miming the action of throwing.

Hoo boy, life can be dangerous. Have the authorities at the University of East Anglia taken the appropriate steps to protect students from the danger of dropping a tome of Das Kapital or War and Peace on the toes in the university library?

 

 

Local content

 

IAN Gibson, poet laureate of Hillcrest, reflects on the SABC ruling that in future, music broadcast will be 90% locally composed.

 

Music is such a universal thing,

Nice to have classics and/or some swing;

But now we have quotas,

Without reference to voters.

Quotas! Quotas! don't make us all sing.

 

Tailpiece

A POLITICIAN goes into a doctor's rooms with a frog on his head.

Doctor: "I say, what's this?"

Frog: "Dunno, Doc. It started as a wart on my backside."

 

Last word

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. - Emma Goldman