The Idler, Monday, March 20, 2017

Great day for the Irish

Wit a shillelagh at me arm and a twinkle in me oi … What a day

for Ireland at Lansdowne Road. They've run out of Guinness in

Dublin. What testimony to grit and determination, 15 men

playing the 80 minutes. England were never in the game.

And what a let-down for England. They'd already won the Six

Nations and the Calcutta Cup (England and Scotland). At stake

on Saturday were the Grand Slam (five out of five in the Six

Nations), the Triple Crown (beating the other three home

unions) and setting a new world record for consecutive Test

victories.

'Twas not to be. The Irish were simply determined, the way

they were to stop the All Blacks in their roll of 18 consecutive

Test wins.

It illustrates yet again how the fortunes of rugby can ebb and

flow. Also how the weight of success and expectations can

become an albatross.

The Sharks? We so nearly followed England. Okay, we had

virtually a new team on the field, for various reasons, but what

haphazard play. How the fortunes of rugby can ebb and flow.

Smoke signals

TODAY we shift the focus to Zululand. In recent weeks readers

have been sharing various bizarre experiences on the Wild

Coast – a leg of mutton dropped from an aeroplane, bonfire

acrobatics on the beaches – but today we take a look at Lake

Bhangazi, at Cape Vidal.

Lake Bhangazi lies behind the dunes, an idyllic spot. My old

mate Monty English and some other fellows had a rustic

cottage on the shores of the lake, which they used as a base for

skiboat fishing in the sea.

It was the marlin season. They were there to catch some

monsters. They arrived in the evening and opened up the

cottage. They lit the gas deepfreeze to hold the couta they

were going to catch next day while they hunted marlin. They lit

the gas fridge to keep the beer cold.

Then they partied the way you do on a fishing expedition.

Everyone had a big roll of cash with him because the marlin

season meant using a lot of petrol on the skiboats. The only

place to fetch it from was St Lucia, and these were the days

before petrol cards and credit cards and cash machines.

Then they went to bed, each fellow draping his trousers – with

roll of cash – at the end of his bed.

At first light next day they were on the beach, launching then

heading for the horizon. They were after the marlin.

Then, later in the day, they noticed something strange – a pillar

of smoke on the landward horizon. What could this be?

Somebody was burning something. But so what? They

addressed themselves to catching a marlin.

But when they landed that evening they discovered what had

caused the mysterious smoke. The flame powering the deep

freeze had blown out. But the gas supply kept coming. Being

slightly heavier than air, it covered the floor of the cottage,

then started to increase in depth.

Then it reached the level of the flame still burning in the fridge

and – BOOM! – the entire place blew up, including the rolls of

cash at the end of each bedstead.

It was the shortest marlin fishing season in history. Luckily, in

those days you still left your car keys in the ignition.

Morse code

BACK to the Wild Coast. It was evening and a fishing party were

relaxing with cold beers on some high ground near the Leper

Colony.

A small coaster was passing northward, very close in, catching

the counter-current. Her navigation lights shone bright in the

fading twilight. It was an enchanting scene.

One of the party had been in the merchant navy. He knew

morse code.

Speak them," one of the party said.

At which this fellow picked up a fishing torch and began

flashing a message.

At which every light on the ship went out, she turned hard to

starboard and headed for the horizon, full steam ahead.

"What did you say?"

"Heave to or we open fire!"

Yes, the rhythmic beauty of our coastline belies its constant

tensions and dramas.

Tailpiece

THIS cowboy dude rode into town dressed in brown

paper. The sheriff arrested him for rustling.

Last word

When they discover the centre of the universe, a lot

of people will be disappointed to discover they are

not it.

Bernard Bailey

The Idler, Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Great day for the Irish

Wit a shillelagh at me arm and a twinkle in me oi … What a day for Ireland at Lansdowne Road. They've run out of Guinness in Dublin. What testimony to grit and determination, 15 men playing the 80 minutes. England were never in the game.

And what a let-down for England. They'd already won the Six Nations and the Calcutta Cup (England and Scotland). At stake on Saturday were the Grand Slam (five out of five in the Six Nations), the Triple Crown (beating the other three home unions) and setting a new world record for consecutive Test victories.

'Twas not to be. The Irish were simply determined, the way they were to stop the All Blacks in their roll of 18 consecutive Test wins.

It illustrates yet again how the fortunes of rugby can ebb and flow. Also how the weight of success and expectations can become an albatross.

The Sharks? We so nearly followed England. Okay, we had virtually a new team on the field, for various reasons, but what haphazard play. How the fortunes of rugby can ebb and flow.

 

Smoke signals

TODAY we shift the focus to Zululand. In recent weeks readers have been sharing various bizarre experiences on the Wild Coast – a leg of mutton dropped from an aeroplane, bonfire acrobatics on the beaches – but today we take a look at Lake Bhangazi, at Cape Vidal.

Lake Bhangazi lies behind the dunes, an idyllic spot. My old mate Monty English and some other fellows had a rustic cottage on the shores of the lake, which they used as a base for skiboat fishing in the sea.

It was the marlin season. They were there to catch some monsters. They arrived in the evening and opened up the cottage. They lit the gas deepfreeze to hold the couta they were going to catch next day while they hunted marlin. They lit the gas fridge to keep the beer cold.

Then they partied the way you do on a fishing expedition. Everyone had a big roll of cash with him because the marlin season meant using a lot of petrol on the skiboats. The only place to fetch it from was St Lucia, and these were the days before petrol cards and credit cards and cash machines.

Then they went to bed, each fellow draping his trousers – with roll of cash – at the end of his bed.

At first light next day they were on the beach, launching then heading for the horizon. They were after the marlin.

Then, later in the day, they noticed something strange – a pillar of smoke on the landward horizon. What could this be? Somebody was burning something. But so what? They addressed themselves to catching a marlin.

But when they landed that evening they discovered what had caused the mysterious smoke. The flame powering the deep freeze had blown out. But the gas supply kept coming. Being slightly heavier than air, it covered the floor of the cottage, then started to increase in depth.

Then it reached the level of the flame still burning in the fridge and – BOOM! – the entire place blew up, including the rolls of cash at the end of each bedstead.

It was the shortest marlin fishing season in history. Luckily, in those days you still left your car keys in the ignition.

Morse code

BACK to the Wild Coast. It was evening and a fishing party were relaxing with cold beers on some high ground near the Leper Colony.

A small coaster was passing northward, very close in, catching the counter-current. Her navigation lights shone bright in the fading twilight. It was an enchanting scene.

One of the party had been in the merchant navy. He knew morse code.

Speak them," one of the party said.

At which this fellow picked up a fishing torch and began flashing a message.

At which every light on the ship went out, she turned hard to starboard and headed for the horizon, full steam ahead.

"What did you say?"

"Heave to or we open fire!"

Yes, the rhythmic beauty of our coastline belies its constant tensions and dramas.

 

Tailpiece

 

THIS cowboy dude rode into town dressed in brown paper. The sheriff arrested him for rustling.

 

Last word

 

When they discover the centre of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.

Bernard Bailey

 

The Idler, Friday, March 17, 2017

A new television genre is born

SCENE-stealing is what it's all about. A fellow by name of Professor Robert Kelly was talking live about very serious stuff to the BBC. They were in his home in Busan, South Korea, where he's at the local university, and they were talking about the ousting of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye.

Then a little kid in a yellow jumper came dancing into the room behind him. As an amused but embarrassed prof tried to shoosh the kid away with his arm, an even smaller one scooted into the room in a baby walker.

Then the prof's wife was there, trying to duck away from the camera lens and shooshing the kids out.

For a few minutes the whole world forgot about President Park Geun-Hye and rolled about laughing.

Scene-stealing is what it's called. Those kids are naturals. It went viral on the internet.

Do we have here a new TV format - home interviews? The dog chasing the cat through the sitting room? The bath overflowing, the toast burning? The husband interrupting his wife's discourse on her art or literature by appearing with a towel round his waist, shouting: "Oi! Where's my jockstrap?"

It amplifies the production. A new TV genre is born.

Fairy Koffdrop

IN DAYS of yore, scene-stealing was a feature of the Christmas pantomimes every year in Maritzburg.

No panto would be complete without a fellow strolling onstage at some point, wearing overalls and with a bucket and mop.

He would look to the audience with wide-eyed astonishment, shout "Hau!" then scoot off into the wings.

It brought the house down every time. The first time it was an accident. Then it became part of the script.

There was also the Fairy Koffdrop. He would appear whatever the pantomime was.

It could be a tense moment in Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Snow White or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The lights would drop, there'd be a bang and a flash and the Fairy Koffdrop would skitter onstage under a spotlight, a tubby little fellow with a moustache, in fairy outfit and with wings and wand.

"I am the Fairy Koffdrop," he would declare in a high falsetto. "And even though my part is small - Cinderella shall go to the ball!"

Then bang/flash again, the lights would come up and he was gone.

Scene-stealers both of them. They're making a come-back.

Dummy duty

WHO will be in charge of the dummies at Kings Park tomorrow?

This is no reflection on the youthfulness of our backline, where the "ou man" of the centre pairing is Andre Esterhuizen at the venerable age of 23. I speak of course of the dummy pass with which our threequarters have to bamboozle the EP Kings.

A young side, the skipper out through injury. It spells: "Pas Op!" The Kings might be bottom-loggers, the Sharks might have been on a roll last week, but rugby is a game of surprises especially when you make a lot of changes. Take nothing for granted.

This one has to be buttoned up. Come on fellers, let's show some juvenile delinquency.

Cossack dancing in the Duikers' afterwards!

Mensa invitational

THE Washington Post annual Mensa Invitational invites readers to take any word in the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and to supply a new definition.

Here are some of the winners :

Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money from the start.

Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting lucky.

Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when running late.

Decafalon : the grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Glibido : All talk and no action.

Beelzebug : Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Caterpallor: The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

Tailpiece

THEY met at the local bean restaurant. It was instant inflatulation.

Last word

Not a shred of evidence exists in favour of the idea that life is serious.

Brendan Gill

The Idler, Thursday, March 16, 2017

The Games, booze-ups and breweries

WE'VE lost out on the Commonwealth Games. If we really couldn't afford it, perhaps it's a mixed blessing. But we surely weren't going to be suckered the way Fifa and the rest of the bloodsuckers did with the Football World Cup? This is, after all, the Commonwealth, not a bunch of schmoozers..

The full reasons are not entirely clear. Could it be that other happenings in this country made the Games organisers apprehensive? The reputation for being unable to organise a booze-up in a brewery? The social grants debacle? News gets around.

Investment analyst Dr James Greener tells us in his latest grumpy newsletter that, Bathabile Dlamini  landed a sucker punch on Parliament and the Constitutional Court.

"The point to keep in mind when trying to make sense of the Social Grants payments debacle is that the privately-owned Cash Paymaster Services is the only game in town. They have grown up alongside the huge increase in beneficiary numbers and are alone in having the institutional memory and in-place capacity needed to tackle this mammoth monthly task.

"They are not going to share that with any competitor – even Sassa itself. Minister Bathabile Dlamini and the top people in her ministry clearly have known this for some time. Indeed, they appear to have been comfortable with it. They did nothing until way too late to seek alternatives, and even that was very half-hearted.

"She sucker-punched everyone including Parliament and the Constitutional Court into believing there was an alternative to the reviled CPS and that her department was on top of a change-over. But it was simply not true and so with just days until the next grant distribution date there is absolutely no alternative. And there probably won't be for a very long time."

Makes ya think!

 

More breweries

FORMER England rugby coach Clive Woodward says we can rest assured that the Irish are hatching a plot to spoil England's run of success when they meet at Lansdowne Road this weekend.

Now reader Dave Bramble lets us in on the secret plot.

"The Poms can't stand the smell of Guinness. So what happens, when they are playing Ireland in Dublin the Guinness brewery produces extra and the smell drifts over the city and it puts them off entirely.

"Add to that the odour from the crowds present (I mean the Guinness odour) and the Poms have very little chance."

Dave's quite right about the smell of Guinness that drifts over Dublin. But I've always found it strangely invigorating.

 

Riders

BRAVEHEART rides again. It was probably inevitable that Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon would call for another independence referendum, given the turmoil in British politics over Brexit. It's quite possible that the same turmoil will re-ignite problems in Northern Ireland.

How did the Brits get into this mess? Blame it on the Bullingdon Club. This is a drinking and dining club of Oxonians such as former prime minister David Cameron and current foreign secretary Boris Johnson.

The Bullingdon fellows specialise in wrecking the restaurants they visit, afterwards snootily paying for the damage by cheque. But it seems they've turned their attention from restaurants to international institutions like the EU and ancient political entities like the UK. (And this time they won't be able to just pay by cheque).

Meanwhile, GCHQ – the techno-whizz end of British security – has warned the Brits to expect a deluge of computer hacking and social media disinformation from Moscow in the delicate times ahead.

A weakened Europe, a weakened Britain – Vlad the Impaler rides again.

Bursting

A MAN who police and border officials described as "bursting out of his pants" was taken aside at JFK international airport, New York, for investigation last week after he arrived from the Dominican Republic.

"His pants appeared to be rather snug," the officials said.

It turned out he had about 5kg of cocaine in packets taped to his legs, with a street value of $165 000 (R2.1 million) .

That's a great coincidence. At King Shaka international the other day I saw a girl who was just about bursting out of her blouse. I'm sure she was smuggling watermelons.

 

Tailpiece

MARRIED women are heavier than single women. Single women come home, see what's in the fridge and go to bed. Married women come home, see what's in bed and go to the fridge.

Last word

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Timothy Leary

 

 

The Idler, Friday, March 17, 2017

A new television genre is born

SCENE-stealing is what it's all about. A fellow by name of Professor Robert Kelly was talking live about very serious stuff to the BBC. They were in his home in Busan, South Korea, where he's at the local university, and they were talking about the ousting of South Korean President Park Geun-Hye.

Then a little kid in a yellow jumper came dancing into the room behind him. As an amused but embarrassed prof tried to shoosh the kid away with his arm, an even smaller one scooted into the room in a baby walker.

Then the prof's wife was there, trying to duck away from the camera lens and shooshing the kids out.

For a few minutes the whole world forgot about President Park Geun-Hye and rolled about laughing.

Scene-stealing is what it's called. Those kids are naturals. It went viral on the internet.

Do we have here a new TV format - home interviews? The dog chasing the cat through the sitting room? The bath overflowing, the toast burning? The husband interrupting his wife's discourse on her art or literature by appearing with a towel round his waist, shouting: "Oi! Where's my jockstrap?"

It amplifies the production. A new TV genre is born.

Fairy Koffdrop

IN DAYS of yore, scene-stealing was a feature of the Christmas pantomimes every year in Maritzburg.

No panto would be complete without a fellow strolling onstage at some point, wearing overalls and with a bucket and mop.

He would look to the audience with wide-eyed astonishment, shout "Hau!" then scoot off into the wings.

It brought the house down every time. The first time it was an accident. Then it became part of the script.

There was also the Fairy Koffdrop. He would appear whatever the pantomime was.

It could be a tense moment in Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin, Snow White or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The lights would drop, there'd be a bang and a flash and the Fairy Koffdrop would skitter onstage under a spotlight, a tubby little fellow with a moustache, in fairy outfit and with wings and wand.

"I am the Fairy Koffdrop," he would declare in a high falsetto. "And even though my part is small - Cinderella shall go to the ball!"

Then bang/flash again, the lights would come up and he was gone.

Scene-stealers both of them. They're making a come-back.

Dummy duty

WHO will be in charge of the dummies at Kings Park tomorrow?

This is no reflection on the youthfulness of our backline, where the "ou man" of the centre pairing is Andre Esterhuizen at the venerable age of 23. I speak of course of the dummy pass with which our threequarters have to bamboozle the EP Kings.

A young side, the skipper out through injury. It spells: "Pas Op!" The Kings might be bottom-loggers, the Sharks might have been on a roll last week, but rugby is a game of surprises especially when you make a lot of changes. Take nothing for granted.

This one has to be buttoned up. Come on fellers, let's show some juvenile delinquency.

Cossack dancing in the Duikers' afterwards!

Mensa invitational

THE Washington Post annual Mensa Invitational invites readers to take any word in the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter, and to supply a new definition.

Here are some of the winners :

Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money from the start.

Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting lucky.

Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when running late.

Decafalon : the grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Glibido : All talk and no action.

Beelzebug : Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Caterpallor: The colour you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

Tailpiece

THEY met at the local bean restaurant. It was instant inflatulation.

Last word

Not a shred of evidence exists in favour of the idea that life is serious.

Brendan Gill

The Idler, Thursday, March 16, 2017

These terrifying memes of the internet

A HIDEOUS affliction has struck Florida, in the US. Women have taken to standing on cars in Miami, twerking – shaking their bottoms.

One woman was seen twerking on top of a car driving westbound on the MacArthur Causeway one evening. It was captured on video and posted on Twitter.

This seems to have spread the craze. Next a woman jumped on a police car at South Beach (Miami, that is) and began twerking to the appreciation of a crowd of hundreds. But an officer hustled her off the car. That incident too was videoed.

Then next day yet another woman was twerking on a car roof in Miami. This too was captured for social media.

These things spread on the internet like an epidemic. I think they call it a meme. At the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties the other evening, the car park was a squirming mass of buxom damsels twerking on the car roofs, shaking their bottoms with great abandon.

These memes are getting out of hand. Seldom has a medicinal scotch been so necessary.

So encouraging

IT'S most encouraging to hear the responsible words of  sports minister Fikile Mbalula. We just couldn't afford the Commonwealth Games … we could risk bankrupting the country … yes, we were a bit rash with the Football World Cup, but then we had Fifa and Sepp Blatter hovering over us … but that was 2010, this is 2017 …. we've learned our lesson …

Presumably this newfound  sense of fiscal prudence and responsibility means the trillion rand nuclear energy deal with Russia is definitely off the table.

The posse

THE addiction to social media knows no limits. A man in Ohio, in the US, was wanted on a string of charges, according to the Huffington Post. But the sheriff's men had only his previous address.

So the Butler County sheriff posted some pictures of him on Facebook, asking if anyone knew his whereabouts.

Next the wanted man himself - one Andrew Dale Marcum - responded on Facebook with the words: ""I ain't tripping half of them don't even know me."

The sheriff's posse weren't exactly sure what that statement meant, but now they had a fix on him.

Sheriff Richard K Jones then tweeted Marcum a photo of a jail cell, telling him: "We've got your room ready."

Marcum then turned himself in.

All this is very much 21st century and digital. But one does hanker for the olden times, where the posse would have headed him off at the pass.

Book award

HEY, here's some good news. My former colleague the much-loved Pixie Emslie has won an award for Best Published Book of 2016.

His Precious Diamond, which I recall reviewing last year, is a romantic novel set in the Western Cape, in which Pixie turns from her rather gritty former settings of the world of mining to every gal's dream - a hunk of a man and the sobbbing of a thousand violins in the winelands.

Great stuff! The award is by the South African Writers' Circle and it was made in Hillcrest last weekend.

Drink pink

HOUSEHOLDERS in the Canadian town of Onoway, in Alberta, were astonished to find bright pink water coming out of their taps.

The authorities say it was caused by a faulty valve that allowed potassium permanganate to get into the water supply.

Potassium permanganate is part of the purifying process, used to remove from the water iron and the smell of rotten eggs.

Pink chemicals, rotten eggs – one imagines they drink a lot of whiskey in Onoway, Alberta. Canadian Club - neat.

Iron laws

SOME iron laws of commonsense:

If you dance with a grizzly bear, you' better let him lead.

Never accept a drink from a urologist.

When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.

Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

In any organisation there is one person who knows what is going on. That person must be fired.

Them that has, gets.

You can't fall off the floor.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

Variables won't; constants aren't.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

Tailpiece

WHEN they handed out chins, I thought they said "gins" I called: "Give me a double!"

Last word

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Lester B. Pearson

The Idler, Wednesday, March 15, 2017

The Games, booze-ups and breweries

WE'VE lost out on the Commonwealth Games. If we really couldn't afford it, perhaps it's a mixed blessing. But we surely weren't going to be suckered the way Fifa and the rest of the bloodsuckers did with the Football World Cup? This is, after all, the Commonwealth, not a bunch of schmoozers..

The full reasons are not entirely clear. Could it be that other happenings in this country made the Games organisers apprehensive? The reputation for being unable to organise a booze-up in a brewery? The social grants debacle? News gets around.

Investment analyst Dr James Greener tells us in his latest grumpy newsletter that, Bathabile Dlamini  landed a sucker punch on Parliament and the Constitutional Court.

"The point to keep in mind when trying to make sense of the Social Grants payments debacle is that the privately-owned Cash Paymaster Services is the only game in town. They have grown up alongside the huge increase in beneficiary numbers and are alone in having the institutional memory and in-place capacity needed to tackle this mammoth monthly task.

"They are not going to share that with any competitor – even Sassa itself. Minister Bathabile Dlamini and the top people in her ministry clearly have known this for some time. Indeed, they appear to have been comfortable with it. They did nothing until way too late to seek alternatives, and even that was very half-hearted.

"She sucker-punched everyone including Parliament and the Constitutional Court into believing there was an alternative to the reviled CPS and that her department was on top of a change-over. But it was simply not true and so with just days until the next grant distribution date there is absolutely no alternative. And there probably won't be for a very long time."

Makes ya think!

 

More breweries

FORMER England rugby coach Clive Woodward says we can rest assured that the Irish are hatching a plot to spoil England's run of success when they meet at Lansdowne Road this weekend.

Now reader Dave Bramble lets us in on the secret plot.

"The Poms can't stand the smell of Guinness. So what happens, when they are playing Ireland in Dublin the Guinness brewery produces extra and the smell drifts over the city and it puts them off entirely.

"Add to that the odour from the crowds present (I mean the Guinness odour) and the Poms have very little chance."

Dave's quite right about the smell of Guinness that drifts over Dublin. But I've always found it strangely invigorating.

 

Riders

BRAVEHEART rides again. It was probably inevitable that Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon would call for another independence referendum, given the turmoil in British politics over Brexit. It's quite possible that the same turmoil will re-ignite problems in Northern Ireland.

How did the Brits get into this mess? Blame it on the Bullingdon Club. This is a drinking and dining club of Oxonians such as former prime minister David Cameron and current foreign secretary Boris Johnson.

The Bullingdon fellows specialise in wrecking the restaurants they visit, afterwards snootily paying for the damage by cheque. But it seems they've turned their attention from restaurants to international institutions like the EU and ancient political entities like the UK. (And this time they won't be able to just pay by cheque).

Meanwhile, GCHQ – the techno-whizz end of British security – has warned the Brits to expect a deluge of computer hacking and social media disinformation from Moscow in the delicate times ahead.

A weakened Europe, a weakened Britain – Vlad the Impaler rides again.

Bursting

A MAN who police and border officials described as "bursting out of his pants" was taken aside at JFK international airport, New York, for investigation last week after he arrived from the Dominican Republic.

"His pants appeared to be rather snug," the officials said.

It turned out he had about 5kg of cocaine in packets taped to his legs, with a street value of $165 000 (R2.1 million) .

That's a great coincidence. At King Shaka international the other day I saw a girl who was just about bursting out of her blouse. I'm sure she was smuggling watermelons.

 

Tailpiece

MARRIED women are heavier than single women. Single women come home, see what's in the fridge and go to bed. Married women come home, see what's in bed and go to the fridge.

Last word

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Timothy Leary

 

 

The Idler, Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Romantic Wild Coast bonfire

BONFIRES on the beach at Mbotyi … these have long been a tradition at this idyllic spot on the Wild Coast, that has featured in this column of late. The biggest bonfire by far was in 1929, lit by Jack Barber, storekeeper at Mbotyi River Mouth, to greet his lady love.

I am steered in this direction – the romantic story of Sally and Jack – by reader Peter Williams.

Jack Barber was the Robinson Crusoe of Mbotyi. He played football for Scotland and was wounded fighting in the trenches in France in World War I. Convalescing in a military hospital, he was nursed back to health by Sally Barnes, a volunteer nurse from Boston, Massachusetts.

He came to South Africa after the war and found himself running the store at Mbotyi. He and Sally wrote regularly. He popped the question by mail. She accepted and came out from America by ship. Jack calculated when her ship from Cape Town to Durban would be off the Wild Coast, and he built a massive bonfire to welcome her on a headland just south of  Mbotyi called Sharks Point.

Sally arrived at Mbotyi in due course, by oxwagon. She became a popular figure in the local community and used to ride her horse on the beach every morning. The path through the bush that she took from the store to the beach is known to this day as Sally's Alley. The store is no more but Sally's Ally now runs to the Mbotyi River Lodge.

A charming tale, you will agree.

Spectacular bonfire

ANOTHER bonfire was on the beach at Mbotyi, many years later. It was a big bonfire made of driftwood. A schoolboy who had gymnastics colours from Michaelhouse started doing perfect somersaults over the fire. His name was Andrew Zaloumis and today he is head honcho at iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

Watching was a red-haired desperado from our fishing party, named Ginger Dick. He had imbibed a few ales during the afternoon to guard against sunburn. "I'll show these Michaelhouse kids," growled Ginger (a Hiltonian) and he rushed at the bonfire and performed his own somersault.

He was nowhere near as graceful as Zaloumis. In fact he dived headlong into the fire, fortunately at such velocity that he went straight through, knocking aside burning logs and coals in a shower of sparks. Not as graceful but certainly more spectacular. Astonishingly, the ginger locks and the ginger eyebrows were badly singed, but that was the worst of it.

Another charming tale from an idyllic spot.

 

Yet another fire

MIAMI defence attorney Stephen Guttierez was winding up his case that his client – charged with arson – did not set his own car on fire to claim insurance, it spontaneously combusted.

As he warmed to his theme, Guttierez detected warmth elsewhere. To his horror he realised that his pants were also spontaneously combusting.

He rushed abruptly out of the courtroom to seek the water closet, his backside aflame.

The combustion was caused by a battery-powered e-cigarette contraption in his pocket, according to the Miami Herald.

He returned, the flames doused, and continued his argument. But Guttierez got nowhere. His client was found guilty of arson.

What jury could give credence to such an attorney? They've all heard the playground chant: "Liar, liar, your pants are on fire!"

Like a seal

SOCIAL media has been a-Twitter with footage of Aussie actress Nicole Kidman "clapping like a seal" at last month's Oscars ceremony.

How does a seal clap? Well it's a sort of elbows-in motion, the hands symetrically held before the body – if seals had elbows and hands. But I'm sure you know what I mean.

Why was Nicole clapping in this strange way? So persistent was the social media trend that she felt constrained to reply.

It was because she was wearing a large diamond ring, she said. She didn't want it to fly off or get damaged. So she was clapping very carefully, combining enthusiasm with restraint.

A-a-a-ah. Let nobody suggest Twitter and the rest of social media can be somewhat naff. Why, Donald Trump uses it regularly.

 

 

Tailpiece

THE jet age defined: Breakfast in Rome, lunch in Paris, dinner in London, bags in Singapore.

 

Last word

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

Evan Esar