The Idler, Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Alas, no

Harding

gold rush

ALL that glisters is not gold … bad luck for the folk of KwaMachi, near Harding, who thought they were on to a bonanza with the "shiny rocks" they were finding in a local quarry. But the assayers have found that it isn't gold.

Such disappointment, especially as gold has been found before in payable quantity elsewhere in this province. Up until the 1930s at least two small gold mines were operating in Zululand. The gold never ran out – but Britain went off the gold standard, prices plummeted and the mines were no longer economical.

One was on a farm where I spent school holidays. The stamp mill and the other machinery stood abandoned and folorn in a thicket in a gorge running down to the Ntsuze River. It's probably still there. A horizontal mineshaft blasted into the quartz of the hillside was home to hundreds of thousands of bats.

In the Ntsuze – a beautifully clear river fed from the Qudeni hills – small gold flecks were to be found on the sandbanks. But this was fool's gold – iron pyrites. Maddening really, so close to the real thing. All that glisters ,,,

The other mine was in the Nkandla forest. In the village pub  – that's Nkandla village, not JZ's pad elsewhere in Nkandla district – the bar counter was a huge, rough slab of quartz from the mine. On special occasions the barman would empty a bottle of scotch onto the quartz, each miner waiting at the end of a runnel for his share.

Yep, them wuz the days. The Zululand gold rush. One feels for those Harding folk.

 

Rabid bat

A MAN in New Hampshire, in the US, was working on his iPad when a rabid bat came out of the iPad case and bit him, according to Sky News.

Fortunately, 86-year-old Roy Syvertson had the savvy to know that bats don't usually hang out in iPad cases, nor do they gratuitously attack humans. This was abnormal behaviour.

The wildlife officers told him to get tested at hospital, and sure enough the bat had been rabid. But Syvertson is okay after immediate treatment.

What was a rabid bat doing in an iPad case? That's the mystery. Just as well it didn't have Syvertson's password. Rabid bats can do irresponsible things.

 

 

Rolling the rs

THERE'S a campaign in Japan to end dress codes that require women to wear high heels in the workplace. It was started by actress Yumi Ishikawa.

About 19 000 people have signed a petition and Ishikawa's tweets have gone viral, according to the BBC.

I'd no idea high heels could be such an issue.

It recalls the story of Prince Charles on one of his visits to this country. He stopped off for a bite of lunch in a Cape dorpie, where he was served by a waitress who read him the menu.

He said to her: "I love the way you roll your rs."

She said: "Ag thanks, Your Highness, it's these high heels what makes me do it."

Tailpiece

A SCOTSMAN goes to the clinic with a huge jar of urine for testing. When he comes back he's told there's no sign of illness.

He gets on his cellphone: "Tell yer Aunty Mary there's nothing wrong with you, her, me, Grandpa or the dog."

 

 

Last word

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. - Kurt Vonnegut