Theresa May's
Pretoria
roots
THE Brexit crisis in Britain takes another turn. Who knew that Prime Minister Theresa May grew up in Pretoria?
A video clip is doing the rounds on the internet, showing May giving a Brexit briefing from that lectern she sets up outside No 10 Downing Street.
She's getting "gatvol" of all the talking, to and fro, about Brexit and getting nowhere, she says. She would rather be sitting on an island with a martini in her hand.
Gatvol? Yes, she's speaking fluent Afrikaans. Pretty pungent Afrikaans too, more like what you'd hear late at night in an army sergeants' mess or perhaps in an ill-tempered third division rugby match
She eventually bids everyone a vivid and highly idiomatic "Get lost!" – still in Afrikaans – turns on her heel and stomps off inside through the front door of No 10.
This from a vicar's daughter? I say!
Great dubbing. Very amusing. And about the most sensible thing to emerge from the Brexit debate so far.
PRINCE William, Duke of Cambridge, was flying medical rescue helicopters not too long ago. Now, it seems, he's launched into environmental rescue.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, he interviewed 92-year-old Sir David Attenborough, veteran environmentalist and broadcaster.
Sir David told Davos delegates that people have never been more "out of touch" with the natural world than they are today. Yet the planet's survival depended on people being at one with nature.
"We can wreck it with ease, we can wreck it without even noticing."
A pity Donald Trump could not be at Davos, being busy with the federal government shut-down and his Great Wall of Mexico, having withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord.
But at least the future King and Head of the Commonwealth appears to be onside. As he told the Davos delegates, after interviewing Sir David, responsibility for rescuing the planet from the wreckers will probably happen "on our watch."
It's encouraging – but the wreckers are already here and some of them are in high places. It could be a noisy and acrimonious watch.
AN 84-year-old man in Boston, in the US, is known as the "octopus whisperer' for the affection he induces in a giant Pacific octopus in the New England Aquarium where he works as a volunteer.
Wilson Menashi drops an arm into the water and Freya the octopus immediately latches on some of her 2 240 suction cups to gently taste, smell and gather information about her friend and the seafood treats he is bearing, according to Huffington Post.
"She's just contacting me and she's saying: 'You come to me,'" Menashi says of her.
Freya is three years old, weighs18kg and her 4m arms – eight of them – have the strength to crush and kill sharks and other enemies.
Yet this gentle, affectionate relationship with Menashi. Remarkable
As it happens, we also have octopus whisperers here in Durban. That's the best way to describe the fellows in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties who are given to whispering sweet nothings to the local damsels, who respond in exploratory mode with an alacrity and intensity such that you'd swear they have eight arms, not just two. You can't argue with nature.
Tailpiece
WHAT sleeps at the bottom of the ocean?
Jack the Kipper.
Last word
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
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