Hard Times…

CHRIS BENNETT found quite a surprise in a recent edition of this newspaper.

AMONG the many excellent essays written for the South Coast Herald over recent years, the one on reflections of the Margate of the very early seventies was, for me, a particular gem.

I was about thirty in 1970 and at the height of what, essentially, has been a very enjoyable and rewarding career as a journalist, mostly in radio and newspapers, but with the occasional dip into the delightful shallows of the magazine world and even an adventurous jump into the deep end of the murky waters of television.

Lea Jacobs in her lovely piece captured the fragile atmosphere of the time. Both the politically curious nature of our world in those days and the more complex and disturbing indication of the relatively low cost of living, were most revealing.

I used to glibly dismiss such comparisons as rather silly, even childish. No more.

Jacobs’s article reflected some interesting prices, as they usually do, but only on examining her research did I realise the weightiness of the point she was making, albeit more in jest than anger. The car prices seemed like a joke.

Around 1974 I was living in what was then a charming suburb of Johannesburg called Troyville. What connection it had with the ancient Greeks or the lovely Helen, I never found out.

I often walked down to the bottom of the hill and Commissioner Street where the SABC studios were situated, as they had been since the heady days of the likes of René Caprara and Gladys Dixon; who, indeed?

On the way down to the studios I passed a large motor firm (Barlow Motors?), with spanking new showrooms with shining widows displaying, usually parked on carpeting with a sort of funereal reverence, new cars from BMC. Or it may even have metamorphosed by then into the disastrous British Leyland, arguably the biggest failure in industrial history, comparable only with the Comrade Petrushka Ivanova People’s Tractor Parts Factory in Irkutsk in the glorious USSR.

But I digress; one can in a column because it helps with centimetres.

One morning I pressed my youthful thirty-something nose into the plate glass and sighed, looking with ill-concealed longing at a bright red Mini. It was so, so beautiful; and so, so much money as to beyond my wildest moments of sobriety. It cost R1 900. New; out of the box, licensed and ready to go.

I fled, of course.

My salary in those days was about R234, from which there were things like rent, food, wine, laundry, wine, clothes and so on to provide, not to mention the pension (eventually screwed up) and medical aid (ditto); and don’t even think about the wine.

When I see the fiscal rape of my country today I harbour no anger, but rather a lot of sorrow and not a little shame.

Reading Lea’s column made me realise that things really were cheaper then. Nowadays we can afford little, and when I went into town the other day I noticed they had repossessed my bank.

Rumours that the new one will be in the shape of a pagoda are, I am told, completely unfounded and a scurrilous lie.

Well, they would be, wouldn’t they?

A fishy tail…

CHRIS BENNETT was, like many, saddened by the departure of the sardine shoals.

A RATHER stormy week, what with the August winds and one thing and another.

A walk on the beach does certainly clear the mind, especially when the mind has been a bit preoccupied with a poorly friend.

We had been discussing the recent ‘season’, and what a bit of a flop it had been. The visitors seemed to be fewer and the sardines yet fewer. There was once small flurry of activity in the beach opposite my house.

It lasted most of the morning and we, my visitors and I, watched the diving birds, failing like Kamikaze squadrons, and the shimmering of the barely concealed little fishes just beneath the waves.

There seems to be some controversy around the story of these tiny creatures.

Firstly, though, it is useful to remember that they are called sardines and pilchards. Both names are in use on the labels of tins.

The preservation of sardines was long the domain of the Portuguese, and the theory has it that their’s were the best because of the salt used to keep them. The Portuguese were one of the early providers of bay salt (as opposed to sea-salt) to England, where the salt curing of fish, or smoke curing in the case of those delicious kippers (if ever you are in Scotland try Arbroath Smokeys), acquired great importance in the time before refrigeration.

Bay salt, of which Maldon in Essex produces surely the finest, is evaporated by the warmth of the sun in large pans on the shoreline. Sea salt is evaporated by artificial heat.

On my map of the England of 886, much of which would have been according to the Venerable Bede, our first historian, writer and cartographer, and the patron of all writers and historians, Maldon was on the map (literally) when the Danes arrived to knock a little sense into the heads of the locals. They, and maybe even the Romans, had used Maldon salt. You can get it at Pick ’n Pay.

Bede’s most important, and famous work, which this remarkable man finished in about 731, was “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People”, but I am sure you knew that.

Back to the sardines.

Although the Portuguese are the most closely associated with this delicious and healthy food, it does seem that the chaps on the Mediterranean Island of Sardinia may have a small stake in the claim for originality. And so do the French, of course. Well, they would, wouldn’t they now?

The French insist that the delicacy of their sardines comes from the exceptional beauty and fineness of the olive oil used in the cannin process. Before canning was invented the Atlantic Port of nantes became quite famous for its jars of preserved sardines.

My vote goes to the Sardinians because on their products, pressed and salted mullet roe, was at the feast celebrating the crowing of King James II. That was in 1685.

So, let’s hope that next years June yields a bit more than gannets for our entertainment.

Now I must go and feed the birds.

Keeping the balls in the air…

CHRIS BENNETT has spent a few weeks visiting the halt and the lame.

ABOUT a month ago I was a daily visitor to the Margate Netcare Hospital. On one occasion I needed the loo and found one opposite a certain Dr Swallow's rooms (the name is my invention, though crossword fanatics might crack the code).

A burly young man was in the process of locking the door to the lavatory for men, so I asked him for the key. He rather pompously in formed me that these facilities were for the use of Dr Swallow's patients only.

Now there are times when I am the very cream at the top of the milk of human kindness; and there are times when I curdle, and would cheerfully kick young men who show no respect to their elders in the tennis balls, my liege. This was what you might call a ‘Hank Cinq’ moment.

My gripe, for a gripe it is, notwithstanding my deep admiration for this admirable institution and its similarly admirable staff, is with the image projected. The image not so much as the surliness of youth, as of a hospital that does not care, its core function I would have thought.

I asked to see the manager/administrator/steeringperson to register my dismay. He was a young man, a patient man and a man of some common sense. He appreciated my point; I emphasised that I was more concerned with what the hospital was doing to its own image than anything else, hospitals being what they are these days; understaffed and over worked as few other institutions are.

In a month of visiting this hospital regularly I have encountered the most refreshing, and reassuring, courtesy from the women who man the registration desk, a task which would make Job weep, to the medics – noble to a man, the nursing staff, whose humour and wit, especially on the surgical ward, are hugely appreciated, and the friendly cleaners and sorters out of problems.

I cannot remember when I last encountered such a buoyant and pleasant team of people.

I do, however, and indeed I would, wouldn’t I, have a little footnote to add to this paean of praise, praise richly deserved.

I have reached the conclusion that there must be an angel in charge of the new building operation at the hospital, the busy construction of more suites. The angel is in all probability, I suspect, a saint in waiting: the Blessed Alphaeus Hinge. This young saint has been put to work as an apprentice, and at his canonisation will become St Alphaeus Hinge, Patron Saint of Door Slammers. He excels in his work, believe you me.

In case you were wondering, you may recall the scene with the French ambassador in Henry V. He conveys the Dauphin’s message and gift of treasure for the youthful Henry, both of which were insulting. The young king turns to his uncle, the Earl of Exeter and asks, “What treasure, uncle?”, to which Exeter replies, “Tennis balls, my liege”.

A bit obscure I admit, but I thought you might enjoy it anyway.

Clerks in unholy orders…

CHRIS BENNETT has been reflecting on the glittering displays of rubbish in our streets these days.

I SAW a lumbering 4x4 in town the other day. It gleamed black and shiny, fat with dark windows and thumping great chrome roll bars, seemingly designed more to intimidate the onlooker than protect the occupants.

It sported, for want of a better word, the number plate NPS 1. This made me think that it was the runabout of the mayor of this pretty and popular coastline.

Now don't get me wrong(ly). I am against neither conspicuously bad taste nor conspicuous number plates; but "Times", to quote the other Dylan, "they are a-changin'". Fast.

Would you not think that during an increasingly vicious cycle of economic woes, and a spiralling food price index, not to mention an ever louder people’s cry against corruption, a less obvious form of self aggrandisement on the part of the clerks and their cronies would be a good thing?

The following gem by Peter van der Merwe was in the M&G last week:

“Then let’s talk about our esteemed minister of communications, Siphiwe Nyanda. The man clearly likes his bling. How much does Mr Nyanda like his bling? Oh, you have no idea. No sooner was the ink dry on his new employment contract than his mind turned to the biggest challenge he could find in his portfolio: how to pillage the electorate most effectively.

“His response was mundane only in its lack of imagination: he purchased not one, but TWO BMW 750i sedans for the trifling sum of R2.2 million. One for his office in Cape Town and one for his office in Pretoria.”

I later read that a minister in the cabinet (and we have more ministers than most of the population have had hot dinners) explained that no rules were broken in the purchase of these excesses. Really? That is what most members of parliament in London said. Then, surely, it is time to change the rules.

The cry by various bigwigs that the disturbances in Gauteng are the work of the “criminal element”, whatever that may be, was at best pathetic and at worst embarrassing. The delivery of services for the past decade has been little short of appalling. People, especially people who vote are not stupid; misguided, sometimes, but not stupid. There is no problem with service delivery; it is the management of that delivery that is the probem.

As regular readers of this column know, I am a frequent visitor to Nzimakwe, where I have quite a few more readers. My brother, who recently visited the area (he is a human rights specialist) was moved to observe of Thongasi and Nzimakwe, “There seems quite a lot still to be done”. I refrained from comment.

Our president, Mr Zuma (I presume he is still the president; he seems to have been seen and never heard of again), has commendably come down hard, verbally, on corruption.

Surely the clerks of menial and slightly more than menial status should operate with a car pool of Citi Golfs, Polos and Yarises, preferably white (the racially sensitive should note that the reason for this choice of colour is that it reflects the heat of the sun and avoids the need for expensive air-conditioning).

Wigs of the slightly larger variety might have a couple of Corollas or Elantras at their disposal; but no Mercs, no Beemers, no Audis, no Volvos or other types of material excess (echoes of the French revolution?) which might lead to the inflammation of the passions of the starving voters.

Just a thought in passing, you understand.