Pizza pie…

CHRIS BENNETT tries a slice of humble pie…

SCARCELY a Sunday goes by without the newspapers telling me something has to be done to eradicate poverty. This, clearly has nothing to do with the poor, nor with the alleviation of their unfortunate circumstances, if in fact those circumstances are unfortunate.

It has a great deal to do with the empty rhetoric with which our parliamentarians and councillors jump at any chance to show themselves in a good light. Not that there is much chance of that happening.

The poor, as somebody once said, you will have with you always. More recently, in fact last week in the Travel section of the Telegraph, a lady of some note was holidaying at her favourite place, Kerala, in south India. She made this telling observation: don’t confuse poverty with squalor.

I bought a pizza the other day; in fact I bought two (the plural, as I am sure you know, is pizze), from the newly opened parlour in Port Edward. It is where the Kentucky used to be.

The price, of course, was ludicrous. Interesting, isn’t it, that the convenience of these fast foods in the minds of our less fortunate brethren seems heavily to outweigh the cost. Fair enough.

I pondered the pizze.

The origins of this interesting food are lost in antiquity. However, certain erudite food historians, especially that eloquent Welshwoman Elizabeth David, have left us food for thought on the matter.

In her travels before and after World War II, Mrs David, who was fluent in French and German, spent considerable time studying the food of that part of the Mediterranean coast that embraces both France and Italy, the provinces of Provence (the first of the Roman conquests, the Provincia Romana) and Liguria, an ancient land more Greek than Roman. This area is called the Blue Hills, or Cote d’Azure.

The civilisation here, and hence the food, is very, very old. Each side of the border has its styles for what we now call pizza, but both are essentially the same ingredients.

Mrs David has this to say:

“About the pizza tribe a whole book could be written. In its genuine and original form a primitive dish of bread dough spread with tomatoes and mozarrella cheese, baked in a very hot oven, the Neapolitian Pizza is a beautiful thing to look at, and extremely substantial to eat; coarse food, to accompany copious glasses of rough wine.

“There are pizza made with mussels, with mushrooms, with ham; the Ligurian pizza closely resembles the Provencal pissaladiera, with onions, black olives and anchovies.”

So it was originally food for the poor and the not so poor. Would that it were so today.

The origins of the word were not very clear. Google suggested a relationship to the Greek pitta, but I have a doubt about that.

Whatever the case enjoy your pizza and remember the poor, who were probably eating pizza in Liguria five thousand years ago, and still are, only more of it, will always be here to eat pizza. As far as I can make out the squalid are not pizzafisti.

Elizabeth David: Italian Food; Macdonald, London 1966; page 132.

Macmillan Encyclopedia Vol 7: Macmillan, London 1984; page 258.

Crossed lines…

CHRIS BENNETT ponders how we talk to each other.

GLOBAL warming has been high on the discussion list along the South Coast these past few weeks. It seems, so far, to have been a fairly cold October down here, and what with the floods in India and poor old Samoa’s tsunami, who knows?

And now we see the great Copenhagen conference. The idea is for the world’s great minds to discuss global warming and its implications for humanity. I, for one, do not perceive the planet earth being under any kind of serious threat, but the human population certainly seems to be. Let’s hope that those attending the conference can talk to each other.

On several occasions in this column I have bemoaned the sorrowful standard of English taught, not only here, but all over South Africa. The burgeoning use of the awful sms-speak among the population is a disturbing trend. It has now found its way into emails, and doubtless newspapers will soon follow.

The problem lies in two things, as I see it. In the first place those who use sms-speak usually have nothing to say. If they have something to say they have a problem. Idea cannot be expressed through this contrived nonsense.

I recently read (about a week ago) a quote by an English writer, Raymond Tallis. I read it twice.

“The centuries of prattle, of air time and screen time, the miles of column inches, are a sickening misuse of the gift of life; of health and adequate nutrition, of freedom from oppression, of the access we now have to the world of knowledge and the arts. They are stolen from thought about, or discussion of, things that are truly important or worthwhile; fighting poverty, disease and the iniquities and injustice of the world; the profound joy afforded by literature and the arts; questions about the meaningful purpose of life.” *

Food for thought if ever I saw it.

Copenhagen will come and go. It will, in all probability, achieve nothing.

But we can do something, and that is to instil into our young the love for language, and at the risk of being pilloried (or worse) I mean the English language.

It is through this medium that the world communicates, and the fact Julius Malema could not find the hermaphrodite in his Zulu dictionary helps no one, least of all Mr Malema.

Should some of the money from the forthcoming football festival find its way into the library shelves of our schools and the legitimate pockets of our poorly paid English teachers, then the future will be a good one.

*Raymond Tallis is a writer and physician. His latest book is The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head (Atlantic Books). Tanya Potts at Ramsgate Stationers will know about it.

Piers' peers…

CHRIS BENNETT considers a line with hooks and sinkers.

A COUPLE of weeks ago, as I strolled along the promenade at the Strand in Somerset West, I stopped to admire the pier.

It is a completely different design from our rather elegant and shabby pier at Margate. The one in the Strand is long and straight. A couple of fishermen were casting their lines from the sea wall and I asked why the pier was closed. Apparently it had become dangerous. To whom, I asked. To children. I thought here we go again.

Children have no business being on a pier, unless there is a carnival at the end of it, in which case they can hang on to parental hands.

You will have noticed that in this depressing age of litigation-mania it is not possible to enter any premises whatsoever safe in the knowledge that if some prat drops a lavatory on your head from a dizzy height it will be your fault. If the garage man prangs your precious Bentley it is your fault, and so the litany drags on, interminable in its gloom.

My guess is that the pier at the Strand is about the same age, maybe even older, than the decaying molars of our once fine structure.

What I cannot understand is why these things have been allowed to happen. Not so long ago some of our councillors (it had to be more than one because everything is done by committee) assured the good people of Margate, and come to that the bad, that the pier would be rebuilt.

Not before the 2010 World Cup it won’t; and that is what we should have been aiming at five years ago.

The pier’s purpose seems to have been forgotten somewhere along the line. It was one of the great attractions, as piers usually are. There are those of us who can sit on the beach, and then there are those of us who enjoy the paraphernalia and patience that make a good fisherman. They could no sooner sit on the beach than, say, read a book.

Added to this many of the fishermen of Margate come from inland, especially during the quiet season. They fish for different reasons; some for sport, some for gain and some to feed their families.

That our council has not been able to grasp these simple facts is perhaps understandable; what is not so easy to see is why the work has not been done. Maybe the problem at the Strand is the same. Nobody knows how to build a pier any more. The operating memory has gone. Nobody has been trained.

Looking on the bright side of things, the council has been quite diligent of late in keeping most things in order. The verges are well kept, and, with some exceptions, the roads are good.

Talking of roads, I hear that the turnoff to Munster on the Ezinqoleni to Port Edward road, which was recently tarred, will have to be done again.

Now I wonder why?

Whale Runner…

CHRIS BENNETT has been watching the progress of a friend in New Zealand, former South Coaster, Larry Routledge.

EARLY one morning, after our return from three weeks of Cape beaches, vineyards and all the mundane things that go to make a fine holiday, I looked out from the stoep to see a humpback breaching.

Now there is little unusual about that in this part of the world, I’ll grant you. Except that I had just finished reading my friend Larry’s blog. Larry Routledge is a South African in New Zealand, with strong South Coast connections. He is the eldest son of Tegwyn Christie of Palm Beach.

Larry is one of those handy people who can make anything. The bigger, the better. He is working with a non-profit organisation whose aim in life is to put the Japanese whaling industry on a par with the dodo.

Larry’s blog can be seen at http://larryroutledge.blogtown.co.nz/2009/09/13/the-beginning/ .

Photos of one of the boats involved are shown, along with the story so far. The whole exercise will consist of three ships and a jetski. I can’t imagine what the jetski is for.

The crew will be operating in the deep blue bitterly cold waters of the Antarctic, a far cry from the lovely summer warmth Palm Beach.

For those of us who see whales almost everyday the idea of an activity so archaic as whaling is a bit difficult to swallow. The usual excuse put forward by the Japanese, and, I presume, the Icelanders, is research. But do we need to hunt and kill these immense mammals to learn more about them?

They communicate with each other through their exquisite whalesong, among other means. They play and frolic with their young of the coast of Margate and all the villages of this enchanted coast; and they do this year in and year out, as they migrate to and from their breeding grounds a little further to the north.

Young people like Larry Routledge, who is in frequent touch with friends on the coast through email, has made some interesting comments. Here is one of them:

“So the lads at the boatyard have been working flat out to finish the base coat and the first sections of the top coat were applied late on Friday. The finish will be matt black. There’s been an awful lot of work done on the hull and four more layers of Kevlar have been added for protection against the ice we’re likely to encounter down there. Final planning on the jetski ramp has been completed and the pieces are being made up. The prop shafts have been overhauled and were delivered on Thursday. These will be put in early next week once the painting has been completed. The rudder bits are on site too and will be put in after the shafts.

The jetski itself is getting the same matt black finish as the Earthrace and I have been doing that this week. That involves a whole lot of sanding and elbow grease but the result is looking promising. It gets its final coat on Monday and assembly on Tuesday.”

As far as I can make out the matt black is to help in deterring radar detection – stealth technology. A sort of Starfish Wars.

I wish them well and will occasionally add a note to the column about their progress. They will soon be in the news on a TV near you.

Heart and hearth...

CHRIS BENNETT returns from a month in the Fairest cape…

COMING home always seems to be the best part of a journey; to me, and I think to the majority of us.

I miss the ones that matter most: the Widow Christie and the bewitching Samantha; Leon, the diviner and his wife Karin, dog, fish and plant whisperer. There is nowhere quite like home.

Seeing so much of the coastline and the splendid ocean around Africa’s spectacular east and south coast made me very aware of how fortunate we are to live in this particular corner of the world. The weather is, usually, comfortable and the green valleys of banana and sugar reassuring, in that someone, somewhere is growing food. The dry scrubland of the Eastern Cape has its own beauty, but it is still dry scrubland.

Driving on the N2 from the Cape to Natal revealed some interesting road behaviour. By and large, all the drivers were courteous and considerate, which tended to increase my despair for our lot here on the South Coast.

The motorway from King William’s Town to East London is huge and wide; the planned N2 route from Southbroom to Mthatha, which is what the boffins have in mind as far as I can make out, makes even less sense when you see so little use of the route. Bypassing Mthatha would be a step in the right direction and cost a lot less. However, as we all seem to surmise, there are all sorts of wheels within wheels on this project.

Having travelled from the glorious vineyards of the Cape, the leafy lanes and avenues of the delicious Stellenbosch and up along the five hundred kilometres of the coast, with its magnificent barrier of rock all along the way, the Langkloof, there seems to be no great threat to mother earth. I can’t help wondering if the threat is not more to the human race than the planet. Everywhere things grow and thrive, except in the shanty towns sprawling across the land, with seemingly neither hope nor future.

The drive down to the Cape, via Kokstad, Matatiele, Elliot, Queenstown, Cradock and Graaf Reinet; Prince Alfred’s Pass, Knysna and the Wilderness, and finally the wonderful Sir Lowry’s Pass down into Somerset West, was pure pleasure. It may take a little longer and be a little further, but it is very beautiful – to my eyes anyway.

Coming home via the forlorn Grahamstown, nearing its last legs, King William’s Town, much changed since William IV expired and was followed on the throne by his niece, Victoria, and sleepy Gonubie, was a matter of travel rather than touring.

The sight of the rolling hills of sugar cane brought a bit of a lump to my throat as I neared Esinqoleni to turn right and take the peaceful little back road to Port Edward.

All was well at home, excepting that for the first time in forty-something years there was no wagging tail to greet us.

But that is another story.