The Idler, Werdnesday, April 20, 2011

Times of nail-biting tension

SLEEPLESS nights are my lot. I toss and turn in an agony of suspense. The fruit bats outside with their ping! ping! ping! seem to share my anxiety.

Who has been chosen to design and make Kate Middleton's wedding gown?

Is it really Sophie Cranston – who operates between Chelsea and Spain – as tipped by the usually very accurate Huffington Post, in the United States?

Is it Sarah Burton, who is the favourite of the bookies in England?

Or – a portentous burst of orchestral music here – has Kate designed and made the thing herself? Is it, as the London Daily Mail speculates, an ivory satin and lace number with a pearl button detail and a 3m train, drawn from the fashions of the Renaissance period?

Does it indeed – here a quaver from a solitary violin – already hang in a closet in Clarence House?

The suspense is unbearable. The entire world is surely on edge.

When is the Big Day again? I hope it doesn't clash with rugby. I need to know about that wedding gown.

Big Nanny knows

TRADITIONAL school games such as conkers and leapfrog are dying out in Britain because over-protective teachers have irrational fears about health and safety, a survey suggests.

Researchers found that conkers – a game in which kids try to shatter the opponent's chestnut, held on a string - have been banned from nearly one sixth of playgrounds for fear that they could cause injury or trigger a nut allergy - even though chestnuts are not actually nuts.

British Bulldog – what we used to call Red Rover or Open Gates - has been banned from more than a quarter of playgrounds and even innocuous games such as leapfrog and marbles are going the same way. Chasing games, such as tag, have been stopped in many schools.

The trend has been attributed to a rise in bureaucracy and red tape in schools and an increase in the number of parents who sue. Education experts have accused over-zealous teachers of ruining childhoods.

It's a paradox of the nanny state. Healthy horseplay is prohibited; so is appropriate physical chastisement. But the nannies can do nothing about the drugs, knives – even guns – that are infiltrating playgrounds.

The nuts contradiction four paragraphs back is an appropriate metaphor.

 

Obama's lean year

PRESIDENT Barack Obama's income has slumped. He and Michelle made $1.8 million last year, tax returns show, mostly through sale of his books. This is a drop from $2.6 m the year before and $5.5m the year before that.

His salary as president is $395 000.

Obama should come out here. The remuneration and deals on the side as manager of one of our smaller municipalities would be much more lucrative.

Vrystaat!

A FARMER in Devon, England, has dyed his flock of sheep bright orange to counter stock theft. John Heard runs his 250 black-faced ewes on a remote part of Dartmoor, where rustling has become a serious problem.

Since dying his ewes, there have been no more thefts.

Heard should now take things further by setting up a deal with the Free State Rugby Union. The wool could be processed directly into Free State rugby jersies and socks, eliminating all kinds of expensive middlemen.

Where we are

 

A COUPLET describes the evolutionary process that has us where we are today, in the thrall of beauty, passion and all the rest.

 

Amoebas at the start were not complex,

But then they tore themselves apart and started sex.

 

One wish

 

VAN DER MERWE meets a fairy who grants him one wish.

 

Van: "I want to live forever."

Fairy: "Sorry. That's one wish I can't grant."

Van: "Fine. I want to die after the Proteas win the Cricket World Cup."

Fairy: "Oh, you crafty bastard!"

Boer means food

 

PIETER Aarsen, of Westville, pens some lines relating to a contemporary song.

 

Kill the "boer" and be aware,

You then see the shelves be bare.

Resulting in a desperate need

For all the mouths you want to feed.

Stop this cry for all that hate,

So as to avoid that dreadful fate.

 

 

Tailpiece

 

MY NEIGHBOURS came hammering on my front door at 2am. Can you believe it? How inconsiderate can you get?

 

But luckily they didn't wake me. I was still up, practising my bagpipes.

 

Last word

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.

Ronald Reagan

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Tuesday, April 19

Anger, disappointment, temper

THREEQUARTERS of women suffer from "changing room rage" while they are out shopping, according to a survey in Britain. Cramped, cluttered and exposed fitting rooms can make trying on clothes such a traumatic experience that it manifests itself in feelings of anger, disappointment and bouts of bad temper.

When asked about their emotional state after visiting a high street changing room, 58 percent of women said they felt disappointed and 48 percent said they were frustrated

Major complaints include curtains which do not shut properly, long queues and a lack of space.

Adult behaviour psychologist Susan Quilliam says: "Beautiful clothes will always make a woman feel more beautiful and therefore more positive about her appearance, more confident in herself and more optimistic in general. But if the shopping experience itself is negative, the whole event can be utterly destructive.

"Instead of boosting our self-esteem, it saps it; instead of making us feel good about ourselves and our lives, it brings up frustration, irritation and anger."

This is, of course, vitally important research. We look forward now to research into the male side of changing room rage – measured as husbands scan their credit card records. But it's predictable in advance - frustration, irritation, anger ... disappointment and bouts of bad temper.

Yet, as we all know, when a gal's feeling down she must buy herself a new hat.

Iron laws of life

READER Eric Hodgson tabulates some of the laws that govern our lives as surely as does the law of gravity:

·          Von Fumble's Law - When you wish to unlock a door but have only one hand free, the keys are always in the opposite pocket.

·          Yale Law of Destiny - A door will snap shut only when you have left the keys inside.

·          Law of Ichiban - When your hands are covered with oil, grease or glue, your nose will start to itch.

·          Insurance So Sorry Law - Your insurance will cover everything but what has happened.

·          Destiny Awaits Law - When things seem easy, it's because you haven't followed all the instructions.

·          Law of Gravitas - If you keep your cool when everyone else is losing his, you probably have not realised the seriousness of the problem.

·          Principle of Dingaling - When you run to answer the telephone, you
will pick up in time to hear the other party hang up.

·          Law of Wasteland - If there are only two programs on TV that are worth your time, they're on simultaneously.

·          Law of Pi-Eyed - The cost is always higher than one budgets for; it's exactly 3.14 times higher, hence Pi.

·          Law of Campbell Scoop, Children's Edition - The probability that one will spill food on his/her clothes is directly proportional to the need to be clean.

·          Law of Campbell Scoop, Adult Edition - The probability that one will spill food on one's clothes is directly proportional to price of the clothes.

·          The Donking Principle - Wind velocity increases in proportion to cost of hairdo.

·          Theory of Absolute Certainty – Don't take life too seriously because you won't come out alive anyway.

Deadball line

VAN DER MERWE is a fervent Bulls supporter and his wife wears a Bulls supporter T-shirt.

But he hates it when she wears it to bed. It means no scoring.

 

Numbers game

I was very young when I learned to count. It was odd at first, even then.

 

Sparks fly

 

A READER who calls himself Hughbythesea notes last Friday's report about the bakkie that ploughed into an electricity sub-station in New Germany, then a carport. The driver was afterwards treated for shock.

 

"I'm not surprised," says Hughbythesea. "It must have been an electrifying experience!"

Just gotta write

 

IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, breaks his vow not to write any more about Julius Malema.

 

Is Julius a spoilt party ninny,

Molly-coddled by Jacob and mothered by Winnie?

Surrounded by spooks

With threatening looks;

The future looks creepy to me.

 

 

Tailpiece

TWO Irishmen find a mirror in the road. One picks it up and says: "Blow me, I know dis face but I can't put a name to it."

The other takes it and says: "You daft bastard, it's me!"

 

Last word

 

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

Galileo Galilei

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Monday, April 18, 2011

Political insult evolves

EVERYTHING evolves and changes, even the symbolism of insult. Many years ago now, when tensions were running high on the Sino-Soviet border, a battalion of Chinese troops marched smartly up, halted and stared across the short stretch of nomansland at their Soviet adversaries.

Then they did an about-turn and, in unison, dropped their trousers and bent over. Done in military drill-time it must have been an astonishing and impressive spectacle. Take that, revisionist, collaborationist, pseudo-imperialist pigs!

But when they did it again next day, the Soviets were ready. They held up posters with the portrait of Chairman Mao.

This threw the Chinese into utter confusion. How could they moon the Great Leader? Some pulled up their trousers, some turned around, some broke ranks and ran away; some stayed steadfastly in moon mode, unwittingly insulting their own leader.

It was the end of that particular phase of border confrontation. And today mooning is generally considered humorous, if a little coarse.

What are we to make of events in Johannesburg last week when ANC Youth League supporters at Julius Malema's hate speech trial are said to have urinated at a female lawyer associated with Malema's accusers?

It seems reasonable to presume they were not so much registering disapproval of the legal profession in general as of the female advocate's clients. Has urination become the new mode of political statement?

The mind boggles. In Brussels there's a famous little statue engaged steadily in the same action as the Johannesburg Youth Leaguers. Have we evolved to a political phase of Mannikin Pis?

Nongoma parallel

SOMEHOW it recalls an incident in Zululand. A friend spent a gap year working for the post office in Nongoma (In those days gap years didn't have anything like the dash and style they have today).

He was serving at the counter one morning when a client came in with a pet bushbaby on his shoulder. Then, without warning, the bushbaby jumped, clung to the brass bars of the grille and widdled on the stamps, which in those days were kept on the counter in a big book.

Whether the bushbaby disapproved of my friend or the postal services in general – or whether he was making a political statement – is not clear. But postal services in Nongoma broke down for a time because word gets around and nobody was buying or licking stamps.

It's not known if the bushbaby had any political affiliation.

Musical evening

 

IT NEVER rains but it pours. Last week I was at a piano recital at varsity where London-based Renee Reznek gave an absolutely thrilling rendition of selections from Leos Janacek, Claude Debussy, Giles Swayne, Olivier Messiaen, David Earl and Hendrik Hofmeyr.

 

Old Roses (by Earl) was especially poignant because it was composed as a tribute to Renee's parents, Dr Koffie and Rose Reznek. (Readers will perhaps recall last year's series of wartime photographs by Koffie Reznek, published in this newspaper). Old Roses fully captures the atmosphere of Maritzburg, where they lived, a place of gardens and the serene passage of time.

 

Afterwards I repaired to a hostelry where, over a glass of wine, I pondered the genius that produces great musical compositions; and the genius that translates them into actual sound and emotion.

 

There I was joined by a friend who is involved in stage musicals. He was in expansive mode and launched into snatches from Porgy and Bess, West Side Story, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.

 

Broulliards to My Old Man's a Dustman ... music, music, music!

 

 

Tailpiece

A GOLFER slices his ball off the first tee and watches it  disappear through the open window of a house. He takes another ball out of his bag and plays on.

On the eighth hole, a police officer walks up to him and says: "Did you hit a golf ball through a window back there?"

"Yes I did."

"Well,it knocked a lamp over, scaring the dog, which raced out of the house onto the highway. A driver rammed into a brick wall to avoid the dog, sending three people to hospital. And it's all because you sliced the ball."

"Oh my goodness! Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes there is. Try keeping your head down and close up your stance a bit."

Last word

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Eugene McCarthy

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Friday, April 15, 2011

Naked in the night

VARIOUS people have been in contact, recalling escapades in Zululand. Wordsworth, the hack whose columns on the vagaries of the English language once graced the pages of this newspaper, has in recent weeks been sending in accounts of what is happening in Dubai.

By a process of triangulation the memory has been jogged and I am now able to bring you an account concerning both Wordsworth and Zululand.

Wordsworth and his lady were overnighting at the old Mtunzini hotel (the same one, you will recall, where a circuit court judge was able to climb in again through the ground floor window to re-invade a Women's Institute cocktail party from which he had been evicted for telling blue jokes).

They met salubrious company in the bar and eventually retired to bed. Lady Wordsworth was already stacking zeds. Wordsworth always sleeps au naturel. He lingered at the open window to savour the luxuriant Zululand night, with its cricket chirpings and fruit bat pingings, and smoke a reflective last cigarette.

He leaned out to savour more deeply. Then he slid all the way out. Thump! He was in a flower bed. Stark naked.

Now the circuit court judge had managed to climb back in without any trouble. But the ground is uneven. Wordsworth's ground floor bedroom window was too high above the ground for that. Try as he might, he couldn't scramble in.

He called to his lady. The response was a steady snoring. He threw pebbles through the open window. Steady snoring. He shouted. He threw large rocks. Steady snoring.

In desperation, Wordsworth reconnoitred. The hotel's front door was locked. Then he was caught in a beam of torchlight. It was the Zulu night watchman, who was not at all impressed to find a naked man trying to get into his hotel.

Using his best Fanagalo, Wordsworth tried to explain what had happened; that he needed to get back to Lady Wordsworth.

This really jolted the night watchman. Here was a naked man demanding to be let in to find a woman. He was absolutely outraged. He menaced Wordsworth with his knobkierie and told him to get back wherever he came from – fast!

At which the manager was aroused by the racket. He recognised Wordsworth and let him in, falling about laughing. Lady Wordsworth was still snoring. Wordsworth himself missed breakfast next day.

These things happen in Zululand.

Back at school

"INTOMBI yakithi upatha ukhamba ..." The girl from our place is carrying a beer pot. I think I've correctly remembered the opening lines of my Zulu reader at school. That was back in the fifties when learning a vernacular language was not the in-thing it is today. But we did it all the same.

National Education Minister Blade Nzimande is spot-on if he believes people should learn a vernacular language as a step toward better mutual understanding. You can't fully understand a man, know where he's coming from, unless you speak his language.

But Comrade Blade is totally up the creek surely when he says vernacular language proficiency should be the condition of being awarded university degrees. Vernacular languages can have no relevance in the fields of engineering, nuclear physics, philosophy or whatever. They should be taught at school level because it's in day-to-day life that mutual understanding is required.

Of course, Nzimande's plan ain't gonna happen. The Bill of Rights would probably stymie it, not to mention the logistics in an education system that is already staggering.

But why this fixation with vernacular languages? Nowhere else in Africa is there a similar fixation. The Nigerians know that to understand one another – they have scores of different languages – and to link with the outside world, they need English. Elsewhere it's French and Portuguese. The vernacular languages are not an issue.

This is surely a perverse boomeranging from the Verwoerdian era when there was such emphasis on the vernacular languages. Somewhere in the cosmos there must be a seraphic Verwoerdian smile. The Bantu learned well.

 

 

 

Tailpiece

MY MATE'S missus left him last Thursday. She said she was going out for a pint of milk and never came back. I asked how he was coping and he said: "Not bad, I've been using that powdered stuff."

Last word

 

I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

Richard Feynman

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Thursday, April 14, 2011

One for the legal eagles NOW HERE'S what you would call an unusual case, related at an awards dinner, in the United States, of the Association for Forensic Science.

 

The medical examiner viewed the body of one Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr Opus had jumped from the top of a 10-storey building, intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect.   As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.   The room on the ninth floor, from which the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window, striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill  "A" but kills "B", one is guilty of the murder of "B." Confronted, the old man and his wife both said they thought the shotgun was not loaded. The old man said he often threatened his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. The killing of Mr Opus appeared to have been an accident. But a witness saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks before. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support. He loaded the gun expecting his father to shoot his mother. He was therefore guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger.   Then it turned out the son was in fact Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the 10-storey building. He had murdered himself. The case was closed as a suicide. There's one for the legal eagles.

Better than peat

NEWS from the Celtic Tiger. The Irish have solved their fuel problems. They've imported 50 million tons of sand from the Arabs and they're going to drill for their own oil.

 

 

Spin

MORE news from the US. Judy Wallman, a genealogy researcher in southern California, put in some work on her own family tree. She discovered that Remus Reid, who was hanged for horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889, was not just part of her family tree, he was also the great-great-uncle of Senator Harry Reid.

The only known photograph of Remus shows him standing on the gallows in Montana Territory. The back of the photograph is inscribed: "Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889."

Judy recently e-mailed Senator Harry Reid for information about their great-great uncle. She got this biographical sketch from his staff: "Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honour when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."


Now that's spin, worthy of a political Shane Warne. Maybe some of our politicos should second staff from Senator Reid.

 

Tailpiece

 

A census enumerator in Ireland knocks at the door, which is opened by an old woman.

Enumerator:"Are you Mrs Murphy?"

Old woman: "Yes I am."

Enumerator: "I am from the Census and need to ask you a few questions."

Old woman: "What is this all about?"

Enumerator: "We want to know how many people there are in the country."

Old woman: "Why ask me? I have not the faintest idea."

She closes the door.

 

Last word

 

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

A A Milne

 

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idl;er, Wednesday, April 13

The bonny, bonny lassies ...

 

Wi' a hundred pipers, an' a', an' a',

We'll up an' gie them a blaw, a blaw.

Wi' a hundred pipers, an' a', an' a',

Oh, our sodger lads looked braw ...

 

 

IT'S THAT time of year again when the skirl of the bagpipes sounds in the hills of the Midlands; when the lassies are dancing the Highland Fling, the laddies the Argyll Broadswords; when the men of the local regiments are walking the weight (carrying an enormous stone), tossing the caber and heaving at the tug-o'-war.

 

It's that time of year again when I can wear my trusty glengarry without attracting hoots of derision, the way it happens at King's Park.

 

Yes, it's the annual Fort Nottingham Highland Gathering and Games (sponsored by Bells whisky) on Saturday. There will be the craft stalls, the beer gardens, the food stalls, the pubs, the art exhibitions, the beer tents and, er, the liquor outlets.

 

There will be a tea garden, but that is likely to be crowded out by the men of the Natal Carbineers, the Natal Mounted Rifles and the Durban Light Infantry.

 

There will be the haggis ceremony:

 

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!

 

I wonder if the fellow delivering the address will be able to belch into the microphone as loud as he did last year?

 

But this year there will be a difference. The South African Highlander Strongman title will be decided. Participants from all over the country will be there, performing feats of strength to surpass even caber tossing and weight-walking. These fellows apparently do things like see how high in the air they can throw a blacksmith's anvil.

 

And the winner will go to Edinburgh later in the year to compete in the World Highlander Strongman competition. Will it be Makhathini of Maritzburgh?

 

Also, the musical arrangements are slightly different. There will be the usual massed pipes and drums, of course. But there will also be a group known as Haggis & Bong, an ensemble who mix jazz and guitar with pipes and drums.

 

Haggis & Bong manage quite a noise on their own. But at some stage they will join the massed pipes and drums for a "jam session", as we in the music industry call it. It will make Splashy Fen sound like light chamber music.

 

The jam session, I understand, is sponsored by the Fort Nottingham sheep farmers' association. Every jackal in the district will be driven out of its lair and will be hightailing it for Van Reenen's Pass and the Free State.

 

I spoke to the Patron of the Games, the Maclaine of Lochbuie (I kid you not, that's his title, he's a genuine clan chieftain) - known to those of us who played cricket with him over the years as Drambuie. He tells me these will be the most spectacular and colourful games yet, the lassies the most bonny. KZN's best talent will be on display. Things will go with a zing.

 

"We cater for all tastes. For the more sedate we have a tea garden serving scones. For the hairy-chested we have bars and beer tents. There's music, there's colour. There's the sweat and grunt stuff. It's a great get-together."

 

Gie that man a Bells!

 

Scots technicians

DURING a time when I used to wander about Africa a bit, I encountered a whisky in the small Angolan seaport of Lobito.

The label was a very creditable crib of the Bells one. The small print read: "Distilled in Lobito under the direction of two Scottish technicians."

One imagined an unfrocked Presbyterian parson and the third engineer of a tramp steamer (who had missed his ship's sailing by falling asleep in a brothel) sitting in some dingy backroom distilling cane spirit – there was plenty of sugarcane grown in the district – and carefully blending it with black tea to get the colour.

This stuff was hooligan juice, appalling. I shudder at the recollection.

Gie that man a real Bells!

Tailpiece

DEFINITION of the Highland Fling: The queue outside the toilets at Fort Nottingham.

Last word

It's guid to be merry and wise,
It's guid to be honest and true,
It's guid to support Caledonia's cause,
And bide by the buff and the blue!
- Robert Burns