Idler Thursday

Isipingo

takes a

knock

THIS is most distressing. It rudely shakes my faith in Isipingo as a centre of culture, good taste and good manners. As a sometime patron of the Island Hotel, in the middle of Isipingo lagoon – a place of cultured conviviality – I find it difficult to believe.

According to Post, our weekly sister newspaper, a most unseemly brawl broke out on Isipingo Beach on New Year's Day. Loutish fellows were using obscene language, fighting and threatening people with broken bottles. They were all of them hopelessly drunk.

Also, an "aunty" was seen to remove her knickers and show off her wares, adding to the turmoil. She denies it, saying she was merely removing sand that had been thrown at her. But the incident was videoed and has gone viral on social media. Can Isipingo's reputation ever recover?

As I say, distressing. Isipingo's world standing as a centre of the arts and culture is under threat. And what is terribly unfair is that the culprits are almost certainly from elsewhere.

Don't blame the Bluff. I suspect that this was an invasion of hooligans from the Berea, who spend the year suppressing their instincts under a veneer of good manners then cut loose at New Year.

Shocking, shameful! And Isipingo gets the blame.

 

EARLIER this week we discussed a case of mistaken identity in Maritzburg where a fellow kept cutting off a police car that was trying to overtake him, then flicked a stompie at the copper as he drew level – under the impression it was one of his pals.

It reminds reader Sally Stretch – a pillar of the arts soiree at St Clement's – of an incident of mistaken identity in England.

Her friend drove a white Rover. The cops in England also drove white Rovers. He was driving home from the pub one night, very mellow, when to his dismay he saw a police roadblock ahead. There was no escaping it. He stopped. A cop ordered him to get out of the car. He obliged.

Then suddenly there was a terrible crash on the opposite carriageway. The cops all rushed across to attend to it. Barely able to believe his luck, this fellow got into the Rover and drove off home.

Early next morning there was a knocking at his door. Bleary-eyed, he opened up. Two coppers were on the doorstep.

"Sir, do you own a white Rover, registration No. xxxxx"

He replied that he did.

"Where is the vehicle now?"

"In my garage"

"May we see it?"

"Certainly."

He took the cops to the garage and opened the door. There, indeed, stood a white Rover. With a blue light on the roof…

 

AND another case of mistaken identity, also in England. I was working in Essex on the Barking and Dagenham Advertiser (read in every quarter of the globe) and late at night was giving a colleague a lift home in my green Austin A40.

Suddenly a white Rover cut me off, forcing me just about into the kerb. Another screeched to a halt just behind. We were surrounded by coppers.

"Show me ID!"

I produced my press card.

"Press? Bloody 'ell!"

Then they were off again, quick as they'd arrived.

Some fellows in a green Austin A40 had just heaved a brick through a jeweller's window a couple of blocks away and helped themselves.

 

Tailpiece

WHAT goes zzub, zzub?

A bee flying backwards.

Last word

Against logic there is no armour like ignorance.

Laurence J Peter