The buds of spring
Spring is sprung, da grass is riz
I wonder where da boidies is?
Da boids is on da wing, or so I've hoid.
But dat's absoid,
Da wings is on da boid.
YES, it's the first day of spring and the damsels are dropping out of the rafters in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties.
And we wonder yet again who the author was of The Bronx Spring, quoted above. Some attribute it to Damon Runyan, some to ee cummings, some to Ogden Nash.
Some believe Spike Milligan wrote it – he often used the lines - but it predated him by many years. It seems to have actually evolved in America in stages, not all versions as heavily Brooklyn accented. It's anonymous.
Another springtime ditty is attributed to Ogden Nash:
Spring has newly sprung,
The hills are full of grass,
And along comes a billy-goat
Sliding on his overcoat
Down the summer pass.
A pause just before "overcoat" is important. Attributed but not proven. Another anonymous ditty of spring.
Meanwhile Gilbert and Sullivan:
The flowers that bloom in the spring,
Tra la,
Breathe promise of merry sunshine -
As we merrily dance and we sing,
Tra la,
We welcome the hope that they bring,
Tra la.
Of a summer of roses and wine.
The Street Shelter these days is no place for the fainthearted.
Supermarket?
TV FOOTAGE showed British Prime Minister Theresa May leaving Downing Street in a Rolls, heading for Checkers for a meeting with her cabinet on the detail of leaving the EU.
Checkers? Does the British cabinet meet in supermarkets these days?
Oh, Chequers of course, the prime minister's official country residence. Silly me!
Media clamp-down
NAMIBIA is to introduce a media regulatory body to curb "irresponsible reporting". We all know what that means.
The Nats sought the very same thing for 20 or 30 years at least. John Vorster was especially vocal about it. But in the end nothing happened. The present lot also seem to flirt with the idea, but they would probably be stymied by the constitution.
Namibia inherited particularly spirited, robust and diverse newspapers, writing in Afrikaans, German and English. I was there quite a bit during the transition from the mandated territory of South-West Africa to today's Namibia
Among its newspapers were Die Suid-Wes Afrikaner, a Bloedsap publication edited by a delightful man named Angel Engelbrecht. It consisted mainly of rambling tirades against anything to do with the National Party, which of course was running SWA.
Then there was the Windhoek Observer, edited by one Hannes Smith. Hannes was the only man I have known who literally tore at his hair when he got excited, which was much of the time.
He often ran whimsical front page pieces such as the wife of the administrator-general snorting into her brandy and coke when she spotted him at a cocktail party. Everything was over the top.
Smith's finest hour was perhaps when PW Botha (then minister of defence and Cape leader of the Nats) came to Windhoek to open the National Party's congress.
He took a leaf out of Verwoerd's book. Verwoerd, then editor of the Transvaler, had ignored the royal visit of 1947, save for a paragraph on the front page recording that a traffic jam had been caused in Johannesburg due to the presence of "foreign guests".
Smith's front page coverage of the event was a paragraph recording that "no traffic jam was caused in Windhoek by the arrival of a guest speaker from the Cape."
It would be a great pity if this kind of vibrancy were to be curbed.
Dodos
LILIAN Develing, of Hillcrest, confirms yesterday's mention of Durban Natural History Museum having a skeleton of the extinct dodo, as well as a stuffed specimen of the bird. (She's also tipped off Sky News, who said the only complete skeleton of a dodo is in Poet Louis, Mauritius).
There might also be one in Maritzburg. I recall as a kid seeing a stuffed dodo in a glass case in the Natal Museum. But I suppose it might have been the Durban one, on loan.
Tailpiece
"CAN you give me a lift?"
"Sure. You look great! The world's your oyster! Go for it!"
Last word
A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love. - Friedrich Nietzsche
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