Late-night hi-jinks
OH BOY, a late night beckons as the Sharks take on the Pumas, er Jaguares, at home in Buenos Aires. And this is a tough 'un.
The Jaguares have been going from strength to strength. Our guys have been moving from brilliance to silly buggers and back to brilliance, all in the same game.
Last week against Waikato Chiefs it was mainly brilliance. Let's have 80 minutes of it this time. Okay, 79 and a half minutes, let's be reasonable.
This one is going to be a grinder. If our pack can turn it on the way they did last week, we're on our way. If our defence stick to their guns the way they have all season – and especially last week – it will be telling.
But these are tough hombres. We have to take it to them.
The late night is a concern. When the damsels of the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties have been drinking vino and strumming their knickers in anticipation for hours on end, anything can happen.
We hope for the best. We stand by in hope of a sedate fashioning of catapults from knicker elastic for the traditional celebratory feu de joie in which the streetlights are shot out.
'Erewego, 'erewego, 'erewego!
Monster
IS THERE or isn't there a Loch Ness Monster? It's baffled the fundis for decades. Photographs show odd things breaking the water surface; odd ripples. Nothing definitive.
Go to Urqurhart Castle on the edge of the loch and view the dark, deep waters between the hills. It's spooky. If there's such a thing as a monster anywhere, this is the place for it to be.
Among theories, one is that it's a surviving plesiosaur that survived the extinction of the rest of its kind around 66 million years ago.
But why can't Nessie just be a species of freshwater dolphin – you get them all over the world? Why not an otter or something of the sort?
Anyway, scientists are determined to find out. According to Sky News, they're planning to take water samples from the loch so they can carry out tests on the tiny fragments of DNA left behind by skin, feathers, scales and urine to find out what species live in there.
Professor Neil Gemmell, of the University of Otago, in New Zealand, is among the scientists taking part. He's not convinced of the existence of a monster
"What we'll get is a really nice survey of the biodiversity of Loch Ness."
He'd better watch what he says. If the monster doesn't get him, the Scottish tourist authorities will.
Brilliant Bryson
AT LAST I've got round to reading Bill Bryson's monumental yet hugely entertaining book, At Home: A short history of private life (Swan). It's 632 pages of densely assembled fact and analysis on England's and North America's transition from the semi-mediaeval 18th century to the present.
This is quality scholarship, yet presented in such a readable, entertaining and humorous way that it is very much a downhill marathon. Bryson – an American living in England - has brought us much in this vein before but At Home is surely an apogee.
He takes us on a conducted tour of his home, an old former rectory in Norfolk, exploring on the way the industrial revolution, architectural styles, agricultural and horticultural innovation, disease, epidemics, crude medicine – with frequent flips also into prehistory. Then at last into recognisable modernity – Charles Darwin, even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (whose personal lifestyles were anything but proletarian).
Bryson's descriptions of the wretched poverty of 18th and 19th century England are vivid and disturbing; he also brings us the rigid class divide.
One reflects that conditions in England then were considerably worse than in South Africa today, where another generation has chaotically urbanised. They got through it in a relatively short time, considering. Maybe there's hope in this for us.
Tailpiece
A Mexican is being hypnotised by a stage magician in his home town.
"You're in the desert," says the hypnotist. "It's very hot and you want a drink."
The Mexican pants and licks his lips.
"Now you're at the North Pole. It's below freezing."
The Mexican shivers.
"Now you're in the US. You have a good job, a nice house, health care …"
The Mexican opens one eye: "You wake me up, Senor, and I break your arms!"
Last word
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
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