Sharks surprise package
CHRISTCHURCH here we come! Crusaders are top of the log? Is it worth the trip? Pshaw! The Sharks are here to surprise us, as they've been doing all season.
A week ago they surprised us with a lack-lustre display against the Stormers. At Kings Park last Saturday they surprised us with a tacklefest that jolted and held in check the Jaguares' superbly silky backline, a flow of attack that at times seemed to go on forever, yet got tackled out of it in the end.
'Twas highly entertaining stuff, worth braving the freezing weather. And we had a couple of great and successful bursts at their line as well.
Somehow, in spite of the fits and starts and bad luck and disappointments over the season, here we are in the quarterfinals.
A surprise in store for the Crusaders? Ole, ole, ole!
Money match
INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener notes in his latest grumpy newsletter that there's a considerable match between the amount of government money misspent and misappropriated and the funds that are needed to rescue the national infrastructure and institutions.
"Absent dishonesty and greed and after selling off assets that should not be owned by the state, there is undoubtedly sufficient wealth to run the country sensibly."
He says joke of the week was the headline that SAA is seeking an "equity partner".
"A greater misuse of these last two words would be difficult to find. The word equity implies that there could be a return on an investment. And the word partner implies that the investor should participate in running the operation.
"Assuredly neither is going to happen. What SAA is actually looking for is a Fairy Godmother with a full purse and a poor memory. What SAA needs is rapid euthanasia and letters to all taxpayers and other creditors thanking us for our support and regretting that we won't be seeing our money back ever."
More grammar
WE'VE of late been discussing questions of grammar, including "dangling prepositions".
Reader Sally Stretch gives us the ultimate example. It concerns the young boy who was told by his mother to go to bed, and she would come up and read him a story. "He said: 'I don't want the one about Australia'.
"When mother came up she brought ... the one about Australia.
"He said: 'What did you bring the book I didn't want to be read to out of about Down Under up for?'"
A-a-a-a-a-a-rgh!
Ethiopia
IAN Gibson, poet laureate of Hillcrest, notes that Julius Malema has got a ticking off from Azapo for his fulminations.
Malema's giving blacks a bad name,
As he plays his populist game;
Turning land redistribution
Into vicious retribution,
He's happy to set the nation aflame!
Ian also tells me he's been on a trip to Corsica and Britain, using Ethiopian Airways, "a very good airline".
"It reminded me that Ethiopia was never colonised. At the battle of Adwa in 1896 Menelik's barefooted warriors defeated the Italian army?
"Mussolini's retributive use of phosgene gas in 1935/36 remains one of history's horror stories."
Yes, and who came to the assistance of Emperor Haile Selassie, who claimed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba? Why, South Africa.
In Florida Road there's a gracious old double-storey that is today a restaurant. It used to have a high hedge around it.
Who lived behind that hedge during World War II? None other than Haile Selassie and his family. Smuts put them there after the Italians invaded Abyssinia (which is what they called Ethiopia in those days). No ordinary folk in Durban knew they were there.
Smuts also drove the Italians out of Abyssinia. One of the more striking photographs of World War II is of Haile Selassie marching triumphantly into Addis Ababa at the head of a column of South African troops.
We had a pretty good standing in Africa in those days. Such a pity the next lot blew it.
Tailpiece
A FARMER is milking his cow in the barn. It's going well, he has the rhythm. A fly is buzzing about. Then it alights and goes into the cow's ear.
Next it squirts out again into the milk bucket.
It went in one ear and out the udder.
Last word
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
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