MENTION last week of goings-on in Namibia – including the antics of the unforgettable Hannes "Mal" Smith (also known as Smitty) editor of the Windhoek Advertiser – brought back memories for reader Chris Knaggs,
"I spent six years in Namibia, from 1984 to 1990, and what a great country it is.
"I met Hannes and what a character, truly. The Advertiser was an extremely entertaining newspaper and brutally graphic too."
Last week's piece revolved round a fellow who, a bit tanked up, came to a police roadblock. He slid over to the passenger's seat and placed a puppy behind the wheel in the driver's seat – then fought the case in court, saying the police did not find him at the wheel.
Chris says he had a slightly different experience. He'd been celebrating being given a company car (the way they celebrate everything in Namibia) when the police pulled him up.
"They said: 'Move over, you idiot!' and drove me home."
Yes, that sounds like Namibia.
MORE on the above-mentioned Mal Smith, who had a head of wiry hair at which he was constantly tearing in excitement.
Every year the South-West Africa administration would hold a cocktail party to which all the Windhoek notables were invited. (This was in the days South Africa was still administering the territory as a League of Nations mandate). The invitation list included newspaper editors – though pointedly not Smitty.
In response he ran a front page editorial: "The administrator-general's wife snorted on her brandy and coke. The chief justice's wife choked on her biltong. The attorney-general's wife wet her pants. You could have heard a pin drop. Suddenly they realised Mal Smith was there."
Yes, Namibia was/is the last frontier of the Wild West.
LAST week's mention of squirrels snatching chocolate bars in Toronto, Canada, reminds reader Maureen Elysee of an experience in the US when staying in a hotel cabin in the woods of Yosemite.
"I woke to the sound of ' someone ' in my room. If I stayed perfectly quiet maybe they would not kill me.
"Eventually I sneaked my arm out to a large bottle of juice next go my bed and sat up with a great shout, brandishing the bottle - only to frighten the wits out of some squirrels stealing a bag of sugared walnuts."
It's a jungle out there, Maureen.
HISTORICAL HUMOUR …
The Reverend William Archibald Spooner was a highly-regarded scholar and warden of New College at England's great Oxford University. Believe it or not, it was a mere slip of the tongue that started thisdignified British clergyman on the road to eternal renown.
One day in a chapel, when announcing the name of a hymn, Spooner intended to say "Conquering Kings Their Titles Take." But what came out was "Kinquering Kongs Their Titles Take."Although the members of the congregation probably maintained their composure, no doubt with considerable difficulty, from then on Spooner was a marked man.
There is evidence, too, that Spooner went along with the joke and contributed some sterling examples of his own making. By about 1900, the word spoonerism had entered the language.When Spooner died in 1930 at the age of eighty-six, The New York Times allotted his obituary nearly a full column crammed with choice examples of the literary curiosity bearing his name.
At the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, said the Times, he was credited with calling for "three cheers for our queer old dean."
On a visit to the British fleet at Portsmouth, he was quoted as asking to go out and see the "cattleships and bruisers."
A student once noted that he had been rebuked by the warden for "fighting liars in the quadrangle," and an entire class was scolded severely for "hissing my mystery lectures."
"Those girls are sin twisters."
"I was hocked and shorrified."
"We each had tee martoonies."
"She joins this club over my bed doddy."
"He rode off on his well-boiled icicle."
"Mardon me, padam, you're occupewing the wrong pie; let me sew you to another sheet."
(Source: The Old Farmer's Almanac)
I just discovered my age group! I am a Seenager. (Senior teenager)
I have everything that I wanted as a teenager, only 50-60 years later.
I don't have to go to school or work.
I get an allowance every month.
I have my own pad.
I don't have a curfew.
I have a driver's license and my own car.
I have ID that gets me into bars and the wine store. I like the wine store best.
The people I hang around with are not scared of getting pregnant, they aren't scared of anything, they have been blessed to live this long, why be scared?
And I don't have acne.
Life is Good! Also, you will feel much more intelligent after reading this, if you are a Seenager.
Brains of older people are slow because they know so much. People do not decline mentally with age, it just takes them longer to recall facts because they have more information in their brains.
Scientists believe this also makes you hard of hearing as it puts pressure on your inner ear.
Also, older people often go to another room to get something and when they get there, they stand there wondering what they came for. It is NOT a memory problem, it is nature's way of making older people do more exercise.
SO THERE!!
I have more friends I should send this to, but right now I can't remember their names.
So, please forward.
An online broadcast of a US network from the floor of the House of Representatives has been bizarrely interrupted by the Russian news site RT.
The C-SPAN website was replaced by RT for about 10 minutes, said a spokesman for the US network devoted to public affairs.
The problem was likely a routing issue, since RT is one of the networks that C-SPAN regularly monitors, he said.
There was no suggestion of hacking.
READER Barbara Johnston says somebody was looking last year, through this column, for contact details for one Arabella Trollipe. Barbara knew Arabella – they met at Teyateyaneng, in Lesotho – but she thought she too had lost contact.
But now she finds she had Arabella's e-mail address all along. So if that person is still looking for Arabella Trollipe, she can help.
Tailpiece
THIS fellow goes into the office of a theatrical agent and announces himself as a bird imitator.
"Bird imitators are 10 a penny. It's hardly worth putting you on my books."
"Well, here's my card in case you change your mind."
Then he drops his trousers, lays an egg and flies out of the window.
Last word
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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