The Idler, Thursday, March 15, 2012

It's the singing grannies

RUSSIA has chosen a group of peasant grannies to represent the country in the Eurovision Song Contest in May. The Buranovskiye Babushki (Buranova Grannies) saw off some of Russia's leading pop stars at the recent qualifying contest.

They come from the remote Udmurtia region and perform in traditional peasant garb, singing in a mixture of English and Udmurtian, which is a language of the Finno-Ugric group.

I'm surprised they were chosen ahead of President Vladimir Putin, whose rendition of Blueberry Hill took the world by storm last year when he sang with a visiting American jazz group.

It's such a pity we don't qualify in geographic terms for the Eurovision contest. President JZ would be a shoo-in with Awuleth' mshini wami.

 

Momentous event

A NEW WORLD record in "mattress dominoes" has been established. Eight hundred and fifty people were strapped to mattresses in New Orleans, strategically positioned so that when one was pushed over it would fall on the next, pushing it over, so it would fall on the next one, pushing it over – etcetera etcetera – setting up the effect of a whole lot of falling dominoes.

A Guinness representative was on hand to record this momentous event and hand over a certificate.

The previous record in mattress dominoes had been 550, established in Kortemark, Belgium.

Mattress dominoes is surely is an event we ought to attract for the Moses Mabhida stadium. A full house is guaranteed.

Aiming too high

 

A BRAZILIAN tried to open a bank account using an identity document bearing the photograph of Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson.

Sergio Freire de Barros was arrested in Recife and charged with using false documents and forgery.

To use the photograph of a high profile Hollywood personality like Nicholson was going too far. De Barros would probably have got away with Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse.

 

 

Less hectic

TIGER Woods at one stage seriously thought about giving up his career as a professional golfer to join the US Navy's elite Seals special forces group. He apparently visited several naval bases in secret for courses in parachuting, unarmed combat, simulated urban warfare and marksmanship. He was already an accomplished diver.

Woods had a yearning for the military life, according to a book to be released by his former coach, Hank Haney, and wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, Earl, who had been a special forces combatant in Vietnam. He very nearly gave up golf while at the peak of his career.

When you think of what happened subsequently, life with the Seals – being parachuted into enemy territory, getting into gunfights and so forth – might have turned out a lot less hectic. At any rate, the unarmed combat courses might have helped limit the damage that night Elin went at him with the nine-iron.

Great truths

 

HERE are some great truths that little children have learned:

 

·         No matter how hard you try, you can't baptise cats.

·         When your Mum is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.

·         If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.

·         Never ask your three-year-old brother to hold a tomato.

·         You can't trust dogs to watch your food.

·         Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.

·         You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

·         Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.

·         The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.

 

Bumper sticker

"All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy."

Absolutely the last

 

IAN GIBSON Bard of Hillcrest, pens some lines which he says are absolutely the last he will write about Julius Malema.

 

The nation's in a state of suspense,

Has Malema a last line of defence?

Is it Tokyo and Winnie

To rescue the ninny,

And save him from becoming past-tense?

 

 

Tailpiece

"WOW, THAT'S some black eye! Where'd you get it?"

"My wife dropped her keys and said: 'What wrong with me?' It was only after I named six items that I realised the question was rhetorical."

Last word

 

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein

 

The Idler, Wednesday, March 14

Giving them the jitters

HUNDREDS of naked cyclists took to the streets of Peru's capital, Lima, the other day in protest against safety conditions on the roads. Many had slogans and artwork painted on their bare skin.

The convoy took over roads along an 11km route through the main thoroughfares of Lima. The protesters demand a dedicated cycle lane where they don't have to share with motor vehicles.

It must have been quite a spectacle. The ladies taking their push-bikes over the speed humps especially would be enough to give the municipal authorities the absolute jitters.

Perhaps this is the way to go for Cosatu next time they want to take to the streets in protest at e-tolling in Gauteng.

 

Windswept moustache

YOU NEVER know who you'll meet up with next. Seated beside me at a lunch table the other day was an affable cove with a windswept moustache, who I would have put in his mid-seventies.

He spoke with the gentle burr and distinctive vowels of the West Country of England. When I remarked on that, John Browett was surprised. He thought he'd lost his Devonshire accent during his many years with the Hong Kong police, where he ended up deputy commissioner.

But no. You can never completely lose the West Country accent.

Yew can 'ave 'er,

Oi don't want 'er,

'Er's too fat for Oi …

Then it was my turn to be surprised. John is actually 86. The windswept look of his moustache is because he's a skydiver. He'd recently returned from a skydiving competition in America. In California a few years ago, he and four other fellows set up a world record by free-falling in a formation, each of its members more than 80 years old.

What made him take up skydiving?

"Oh, I don't know. I didn't start until I was 67," he says. But he'd had a few jumps before that – long before because he was a paratrooper during World War II.

John now lives in Umkomaas, a hilly seaside town with long, swooping descents. I forgot to ask if he's taken up skateboarding.

 

POW swap

MORE on the cigarettes of yesteryear. John MacDonald, former industrial chemist at Union Whaling, on the Bluff, tells me he was introduced to smoking by a German prisoner-of-war.

It was in Scotland and he was all of eight years old. It was just after the war and he was visiting Culloden, the battlefield where Bonnie Prince Charlie was defeated in 1746. A German POW camp was nearby and out of curiosity he went up to the barbed wire to take a look.

A POW, who spoke pretty good English, asked if he had any sweets (which were strictly rationed). He had some and the German swapped them for four cigarettes.

At which point one of the guards spotted the transaction and started shouting an expression new to young John, but which he was later to learn means: "Go away!"

The cigarettes set John off. He became a dedicated smoker from the age of eight, right through his school and university days.

But there's a cheery sequel. John turns 75 next month. He also celebrates 50 years since he gave up smoking.

So there's hope for all gwaai addicts.

No go

 

Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.

 

 

Tailpiece

A COUPLE are watching the prize bulls being auctioned at an agricultural show. The auctioneer announces the first animal: "A fine specimen, this bull reproduced 60 times last year."
She nudges him in the ribs: "That's about five times a month."
The second bull comes up for sale: "Another fine specimen, this wonder reproduced 120 times last year."

She: "Hey, that's some 10 times a month. What do you say to that?"

The third bull comes up for sale, "And this extraordinary specimen reproduced no less than 365 times last year!"

She: "That's once a day, every day of the year! How about you?"

He: "Sure, once a day! Great! But ask the auctioneer if it was all with the same cow!"

Last word

There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey.

John Ruskin

 

 

The Idler, Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Change in our time

AN ITEM is doing the rounds describing things that will disappear in our lifetime. Headed for the scrapheap of history are:

·        The post office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. It is so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. E-mail and courier services have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

·        The cheque. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process cheques. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the cheque.

·        The newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition.

·        The book. You say you will never give up the physical book. I said the same about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home. The same will happen with books.

·        The landline telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it.

·        Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death, not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing.

·        Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. Prime time shows have degenerated to lower than the lowest common denominator.

·     Ownership. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." When you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. In this virtual world, you can access everything but will you actually own any of this stuff?

·        Privacy. That's gone. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cellphone.

 

Not quite true

YES, CHANGE is coming. But I would take issue with some of the above.

Although e-books are going to be a huge slice of the future market, not everyone is a computer geek. To scroll backward and forward on a computer screen is tiresome and disorientating. In fact this process is in ways a regression to the scrolling and unscrolling of the parchments that preceded books.

Much the same can be said of newspapers, which are digests tailored to the interests of their readers. It's very difficult to replicate this online.

You can't kill a cockroach with a kindle – you might kill the kindle. You can't roll up a kindle or a laptop to chase the dogs and cats off the furniture.

I say books and newspapers are highly unlikely to actually disappear.

And to think music will disappear because the recording industry is in a mess is simply bizarre.

 

Beer, fags

INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener notes in his latest grumpy newsletter that beer and fags are big business in South Africa.

"In the light of faintly hysterical and foolish waffle about South Africa and Nigeria fighting to be the continent's economic giant, it is useful to note that here on the southern tip we are gently and happily showing what matters most. The two largest listed companies on the JSE are now a cigarette manufacturer (BAT) and a brewer (SAB Miller).

"The days of mining and industrial behemoths dominating the Johannesburg boards are fading away in a haze of tobacco smoke and beer froth. Standard Bank, our largest financial sector share has a market cap just one third the size of SAB; and Sasol, that unique and outstanding all-South African energy business, is also just one third the size of BAT.

"I wonder if the medical sector is undervalued?"

Tailpiece

BEACH blonde in deckchair to fellow beach blonde in deckchair: "My fantasy is having two men at the same time. One cooking, one cleaning."

Last word

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

 

 

The Idler, Monday, March 12, 2012

Admirals by the dozen

 

I am the monarch of the sea,

The ruler of the Queen's navee,

Whose praises Britain loudly chants …

And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts,

His sisters and his cousins and his aunts …

 

IN OUR FORUM page last week an apparently authoritative letter-writer said the South African Navy, with its handful of craft, now has more than 60 admirals, one of whom told a parliamentary committee that submarines are necessary so we have the capacity to give the Americans a bloody nose.

 

Somebody please, please tell me this is not what it seems; it's got something to do with the launch of a Gilbert & Sullivan season.

 

While at anchor here I ride,

My bosom swells with pride,

And I snap my fingers at the foeman's taunts …

And so do his sisters and his cousins and his aunts,

His sisters and his cousins and his aunts ..

 

Astonishing flood

 

NOSTALGIA'S not what it used to be. Mention of the cigarettes issued to the troops during World War II has unleashed an astonishing flood of reminiscence about long-forgotten brands such as Springbok, Commando, Westminster 85, Viceroy, Gold Flake, Gold leaf, Venus, and Needle Point.

 

It seems dozens of readers pine for the days they smoked behind the bicycle sheds. Schoolboy naughtiness seems to have been a key ingredient.

 

One reader even recalls Woodbines, which were issued to the troops during World War I – thin cigarettes, about the thickness of a lemonade straw, which used about half the tobacco of a normal cigarette.

 

Some schoolboys seem to have been seasoned smokers. Stan Shawe, of Illovo Beach, grew up in the then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) where a packet of10 Star cost a penny.

"I got sixpence a week pocket money and that was enough to keep me in cigarettes for a week at least and I was at nine years of age a heavy smoker, at least 10 to 15 a day.

 

"I gave up smoking 60 years ago plus and have had no desire to resume."

 

That's the way, Stan. Cold turkey!

 

Speak up

 

IT ALL REMINDS reader Errol Brien of an incident at United Tobacco Company, where his father worked. The sales manager during the war years was a certain "Dolly" d'Almeida, a character of note.  The general manager was quite the opposite.

 

A very important customer was to pay them a visit. Dolly told the GM that as this customer was almost completely deaf, he was inclined to shout rather than to converse normally.

 

On arrival the VIP customer was intercepted by Dolly and given the same story about the GM and then taken in and introduced to him..

 

The staff then gathered outside the GM's office, and with great glee listened to the two men bellowing at each other until they were hoarse.

 

As I say, schoolboy naughtiness seems to go with smoking. Kattekwaad .

 

 

Moderation

 

MEANWHILE, Stephen Clark sends in a very old advertisement that proclaims: "More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette." It's astonishing in today's world, amusing.

 

But Stephen, who is a policeman, has a serious point to make as a third generation pipe smoker.

 

Smoking does have its dangers and pitfalls, he says (beyond filling and lighting a pipe while riding a motorcycle), but is it really dangerous to those around you? He can't smoke his pipe at an open cricket stadium yet drunken thugs can get into a fight and possibly injure his son sitting nearby.

People seem proud to drive over the legal alcohol limit. They have no qualms about getting completely hammered and misbehaving in front of their families.

 

"I have never attended a complaint of domestic violence attributed to tobacco smoking."

He says he can go to a restaurant and drink copiously, without being cautioned about driving his family home in that state.

 

"But dare I light one cigarette in the same restaurant outside the 'smoking' area and I will invoke the ire of patrons and staff. Which is the most immediate danger?

"I am not a rabid anti-drinker. I believe everything has its place in moderation."

 

Tailpiece

 

WHY DOESN'T Mexico have much of an Olympic team? Everyone who can run, jump and swim is already in the US.

 

Last word

 

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.

W. Somerset Maugham

 

Captain Cook, Friday, March 9, 2012

JOHN Plumtree needs to either take Bismarck du Plessis and his line-out jumpers to the Thunder Bar – I'm ready to loan the well-thumbed Ukranian phrase book – for a few evenings of chatter with the gals or he must take them to the Hu Flung Dung restaurant to talk to the waiters. It's one or the other. We can't continue this way with Bismarck making his calls in Ukrainian when his line-out jumpers understand nothing but Mandarin Chinese. There's no communication.

How else does one explain the complete and utter shambles of the Sharks line-outs where, to be sure, we had formidable opposition but our chaps are actually not novices? It was excruciating, there was a stage it seemed there was no advantage at all to having the throw-in.

But that problem was as nothing compared with the conceding of penalties. How can you hope to win a match when you concede nine penalties in the second half, against one by your opponents? Okay, some of the calls were a little marginal. But not nine of them. Some of the company at the La Bella Street Shelter for the Over-40s – where we were taking cover from the early drenching of tropical storm Irina – were a little scathing about referee Clive Lawrence. Some were unkind enough to suggest that – optometrist by trade that he is – it's time he went in for a check-up himself. But refereeing is a thankless task. And no referee gets it wrong nine times in 40 minutes. Let's hope there's been some attention over the past week to this clueless impetuousity.

Having said that, nil desperandum. In most parts we performed brilliantly, in fact could have wrapped up the game in the first half. There were some encouraging phases of running in bushpig mode - head down, legs pumping. We've now come from two tough away games with two bonus points, bloodied but unbowed. We're a team in fine fettle, with just a few nuts and bolts to be tightened. And we've a home game tomorrow. When a team clicks, it clicks. Tomorrow clickety-click!

Meanwhile, what a Six Nations thriller between Ireland and France. The French clawing their way back from 17-6 down at halftime to 17-all, the Irish in the end hanging on for the draw by the skin of their teeth, charging down a French attempted drop that would have sealed the game. The match was originally scheduled for three weeks ago but was postponed because the pitch was frozen solid. By last weekend tropical storm Irina seemed to have moved on to Stade de France because the second half was played in teeming rain. Valiant stuff on either side. This was rugby.

The result must surely enhance Wales's chance of a Grand Slam as they take on Italy tomorrow. Nobody deserves it more. Ireland-Scotland and England-France look to be humdingers. We're being spoiled.

It's the auld enemy tomorrow, Transvaal – er, the Lions. Clickety-click! See you in the Duikers! (I'll be the one with the Tattooed Lady).

CAPTAIN COOK

The Idler, Friday, March 9, 2012

Long-running love story

ALL CAN BE revealed. The tale of seduction and debauchery related at St Clement's this week by raconteur Spyker Koekemoer (aka Pat Smythe) did not involve a busty barmaid or any other such hottie, it was the story of his infatuation over many years with a 1961 Mercedes Benz, whose loving restoration he has now completed.

It was a complicated story involving a fellow named Diktak who keeps having to smash a front window to get back into his house - where the Klipdrift is – when the wind shuts the door with the Yale lock while he's watering the flowers out in the front garden late at night.

It went down a treat at this weekly gathering of aficionados of the arts, who also enjoy a glass or two of vino. Pat has developed an idiom all his own. A gifted mimic, he relates his stories in the form of letters to Oom Schalk Lourens, the narrator in the Herman Charles Bosman stories, set in the Marico district of the western Transvaal. He has the platteland accent to perfection.

Bosman wrote the Afrikaans idiom into English, producing some marvellous stories from the early to mid-19^th century. Pat now connects with that idiom. He travels the back roads of South Africa looking for material, picking up hitchhikers where he can and talking to them.

He and his lady are about to set out on an odyssey of over a month in the newly restored Merc. The material is sure to pour in.

 

Apartheid follies

PAT ALSO related the hilarious story, The Airline That Never Flew. This outlines one of apartheid's more spectacular follies, the international airport built at Bisho, in the Ciskei, 10 minutes' flying time from East London airport.

Ciskei International Airways (Marketing slogan: "The Ciskei's the limit!") bought two decrepit jet liners from a junkyard in America, which landed at Bisho but never took off again.

However the airport otherwise functioned for years. It had a manager and a full staff complement, drawing salaries. But unfortunately the building, which had state of the art glass walls, was systematically wrecked by billygoats that charged at their reflection in the glass.

All this is absolutely true. And if Pat should eventually run out of apartheid follies, post-apartheid follies are catching up fast.

Isicathamiya

ST CLEMENT'S takes a break next week. Then the following Monday there'll be an evening of isicathamiya music, which developed among migrant workers on the mines and elsewhere. Lively stuff.

Maybe I can be persuaded to perform the gumboot dance.

Mitt, Rick and Newt

WE'VE been rather ignoring the rivetting contest in America for the Republican nomination for the presidential election. Sometimes it's difficult for outsiders to fully grasp what is going on. Over to on-the-spot satirist Andy Borowitz:

"Moments after squeaking out a razor-thin victory in Super Tuesday's crucial Ohio primary, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was in an exuberant mood, telling supporters in Boston: 'I stand before you tonight as the man people hate slightly less than Rick Santorum.'

"Mr Romney said that he hoped to take the momentum of being marginally less despised than Mr Santorum all the way to the Republican convention in Tampa.

"'The voters of Ohio have said that they want the lesser of two evils,' he told the crowd, 'and I am lesser.'

"But in the Santorum camp, the former Pennsylvania senator showed no signs that he is ready to get out of the race: 'In states like Oklahoma and Tennessee, voters spoke loudly and clearly that they can't stand Mitt more than they detest me. That's what I call a recipe for success.'

"Meanwhile, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich vowed to stay in the race, noting that voters in his home state of Georgia hated both Messrs Romney and Santorum more than they loathed him.

"'This race isn't about winning or losing,' he said. 'This is about me standing in front of a microphone and listening to the sound of my own voice for as long as possible.'"

There we have it, a complex situation rendered intelligible.

Tailpiece

BOXING is a lot like ballet. Except, of course, there's no music, no choreography and the dancers punch each other. All in wrestling, however, is exactly like ballet …

Last word

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Stephen King

 

The Idler, Thursday, March 8, 2012

Tough guy's tears

THE EYES of Tsar Vladimir Putin streamed with tears this week as he acknowledged the cheers of the loyal Muscovites. But his handlers were quick to point out that the tears were caused by the icy winds.

It would not do for the Kremlin tough guy to come across as some kind of mimsy sentimentalist. This is the macho action man who rides horses bare-chested, pilots aeroplanes, scuba dives, darts whales and rides Harley-Davidsons.

Many, including European observers, are critical of the quality of the election that brought Putin a third term as president (having spent one term marking time as prime minister). They are probably right.

But when you think of what went before, Russia is surely moving, however haphazardly, in the right direction. Interviewed on British TV, the publisher of a liberal Russian newspaper was pragmatic. Let's see if Putin follows through with the reforms he's promised, he advised viewers.

Quite so. Not all that long ago, such a liberal individual would have been either in the work gangs of Siberia or he would have been liquidated, shot behind the ear in the Lubyanka prison. Let's acknowledge progress.

Anyone who can sing Blueberry Hill the way Putin did when an American jazz group visited Moscow has something going for him. Can you imagine anything of the kind from his ghastly predecessors (Gorbachev and Yeltsin excepted)? It's halting and it's uncertain, but it is progress.

Paper tree

KEN CRICHTON of Kloof, has launched into verse as the result of a garden incident. He says he was looking after a house for a friend recently and his girlfriend would walk the two cats in the garden every evening and pick bark from what she called a paper tree.

Then one night the tree fell down. It prompted the following:

She used to pick the poor tree's bark

'Til one night it fell down in the dark,

Setting off the house alarm,

Shattering the peace and calm.

So the moral of this tale

Which caused the perennial to wail:

Don't pick bark from a tree,

Just walk on by and leave it be.

 

More ciggie nostalgia

MORE nostalgia for the gwaai of yesteryear. Reader Peter Wallis, of Howick, says both his father and his uncle were heavy smokers of Springbok cigarettes, which came in boxes of 50 and were shorter than today's king-size but slightly thicker. The only oval cigarettes he could think of were Commando.

Ken Dubber, of Umbilo, says he grew up in the then Northern Rhodesia (today's Zambia) and for as long as he can remember his dad smoked C to C (Cape to Cairo). In his twenties he himself smoked C to C and Gold Leaf, which were from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and made from the finest Virginia tobacco, for which overseas buyers bid fiercely at the auctions.

From 1946 to the 1950s, C to C cost half-a-crown (25 cents) for 50.

Headmaster extraordinaire

MEANWHILE, reader Trevor Kroon identifies the Graaff Reinet headmaster who Chris Knaggs (as related last week) caught smoking, against the orders of his doctor and his wife. Herbie Arnott was a headmaster extraordinaire, says Trevor.

"Union High stands proud for the calibre of men and women that reflect the insight and labours of a multifaceted gentleman and scholar."

The Originals

A WELSH rugby club are planning to sell an antique New Zealand rugby jersey from their trophy cabinet, to keep afloat financially.

It dates from the first New Zealand tour of Britain in 1905, when the side were known not as the All Blacks but "The Originals". It has been valued at £10 000.

Tycroes Rugby Club, in Carmarthenshire, say it's like selling off the family silver but they have no option.

The jersey is in black and white, upper and lower, not unlike the pattern in today's Super Rugby.

It's a pity there's no pink, otherwise the Bulls might have been interested.

Maths tip

ALCOHOL and calculus don't mix. Never drink and derive.
 

Tailpiece

She: "There's trouble with the car. It's got water in the carburettor."
He: "Water in the carburettor? That's ridiculous."
She: "I tell you, the car's got water in the carburettor."
He: "You don't even know what a carburettor is. I'll check it out. Where is the car?"
She: "In the pool."

 

Last word

A DOOR is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. – Ogden Nash