Commemorations
THERE have been some remarkable commemorations in recent days. President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima, in Japan – the first sitting American president to visit the city where the first atom bomb ever was dropped in 1945.
He made possibly the most powerful speech of his time in office – subdued, sincere, absolutely free of cliché or hyperbole and focused on the point that humanity simply cannot allow this to happen again.
Then there was commemoration at Rosyth, Scotland, of the Battle of Jutland, the great naval encounter of World War I.
They still argue about who won. The Germans sank more ships but their fleet took refuge in port, not to emerge again, leaving the Brits with mastery of the seas.
But at the commemoration were German as well as British schoolchildren. The strong message was that Jutland will not - cannot - happen again.
Maybe, in spite of all the horror, we are inching away from the precipice.
Hippos
LAST week we mused on the wanderings of hippos – whether circus hippos in Spain or local hippos at St Lucia that stroll through the town at night.
Reader Doug McGarr reminds us of the story of Huberta the Hippo, who spent three years wandering 1 600km from 1925 to 1928, from St Lucia, to Umhlanga to Durban to East London, in the Eastern Cape.
She was obviously headed for Zeekoeivlei, in Cape Town (rough translation: Sea Cow or Hippo Lake) and was at first named Hubert by The Mercury and other papers. It was only when some villainous hunters from King William's Town shot her that it was discovered she was female.
The hunters were fined 25 quid, which was quite a lot of money in those days, and Huberta's carcass was sent to London to be stuffed, then she was sent back to stand in the King William's Town museum.
But I'm sure we'd all rather she'd made it to Zeekoeivlei.
The bats – known as "grey-headed flying foxes" have overrun Batemans Bay, in New South Wales, and when they're not flying they're dangling from every available tree or clothesline. People are prisoners in their own homes, according to Sky News.
Flying Foxes are a protected species, so there's not much the townsfolk can do but hope they'll move on.
Do they have a belfry in Batemans Bay? Maybe these bats can be enticed inside. Or maybe the belfry is already occupied by Aussie batsmen.
F for fox
A PUZZLE comes this way. You are required to count every "f" in the following text:
"Finished files are the result of years of scientific years study combined with the experience of years …"
You get three? Wrong, there are six.
Apparently the human brain cannot process "of" as containing an "f".
Foxy stuff.
BBC announcer
DOES anyone know anything of Barbara MacFadyean, or her daughter, Arabella?
Barbara was a BBC announcer who broadcast regularly to Germany after World War II. But she emigrated to South Africa in 1955. It's not known whether she worked for the SABC but she did marry here and made a trip to Europe in 1957, along with Arabella.
An elderly German man who worked with reader John Murphy in Italy during the 1970s and 1980s is now eager to trace Barbara or her descendants, presuming the family is still in South Africa.
"Is there any possibility that some of your readers might remember Barbara MacFadyean or her daughter Arabella so that my German colleague could resolve the mystery of his schoolboy heroine?"
John would be grateful for any response.
Lexophilia
READER Clive Raath sends in some items of lexophilia:
• How does Moses make tea? Hebrews it.
• Venison for dinner again? Oh deer!
• A cartoonist was found dead in his home. Details are sketchy.
• I used to be a banker, but then I lost interest.
• Haunted French pancakes give me the crêpes.
• England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.
• I tried to catch some fog, but I mist.
A-a-a-a-rgh!
Tailpiece
THIS fellow goes into a bookshop. A woman is behind the counter.
"Do you keep stationery?"
"No, usually I wiggle a bit."
Last word
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
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