Rocket attack…

CHRIS BENNETT has been the happy recipient of a friend’s garden produce.

A FRIEND, whom I shall call Wendy for want of a better name, has a vegetable garden. As Wendy is a former farmer her garden, as you may imagine, is a delight to behold.

It is complete with a scarecrow (although its duties are more that of a scaremonkey) called, I think, Wurzel Gummidge; a good name for a scarecrow, I am sure you will agree.

Among the many herbs and vegetables that seem to thrive in Wendy’s garden, - not, I suspect, that they would dare do otherwise – are a fine example of one of my favourites, rocket.

I noticed that the rocket has taken off this year. I was presented with a large bunch when I visited the house last week, and started nibbling its peppery, lemony leaves in the car on the way home.

Herbs are a thing I have come to rather late in life, one of the reasons being, I suspect, that I had not encountered really fresh herbs until I came to live by the sea eight years ago. Many moons ago, when I lived in a flat in Hillbrow, I used to wander down past the old Landdrost Hotel, to Plintor, probably the best greengrocer I have ever encountered.

Not only were their fruits and vegetables tingling and shining in their freshness, but they were displayed in such a manner that the whole shop had the air of a jeweller’s to it. The aubergines glowed with deeply satisfying, almost midnight hues; fat leeks, clean as babies, snoozed in their beds of tissue. The shop floor was, of course, spotless.

Apples, oranges and strange furry fruits were in rows as straight as the chairs at a grand dinner; herbs were in bunches, looking for all the world like flower arrangements. Some were flower arrangements.

But I digress.

Wendy’s rocket is most certainly to be sniffed at. Like basil, another of my favourites, its scent springs from the leaves when they are lightly rubbed.

It is particularly delicious, in small quantities, mixed with mushrooms in an omelette. The sliced mushrooms should be simmered in a little butter and the rocket shaken into it at the end of the cooking.

I tried to find out a little more about this beautiful greenery, but it seems only to appear in my food books after about 1975. Its botanical name is Eruca vesicaria and it is a member of the cabbage family. We all have our faults.

Not that I have anything against cabbage. I like cabbage, but it has always been the buffoon of the English kitchen.

I was delighted to discover last week that a new book is on the shelves. Compiled by the erudite Jill Norman, the literary executor of Elizabeth David, it is called At Elizabeth David’s Table. It is a fine book and a great tribute to Mrs David’s skills as a writer, and especially as an essayist. It includes some of her pieces composed for The Spectator,

Sunday Times, Vogue and Petits Propos Culinaires.

As with so much of her writing it is the devotion to research, often involving much travel around post-war Europe with a friend (Mrs David never learnt to drive) that lends her work its great charm.

At Elizabeth David’s Table is available now and is, for the right person, a perfect Christmas present.

Passage booked…

CHRIS BENNETT starts gearing up for the Christmas book season.

UNDOUBTEDLY, by now you will have had a chance to visit Ramsgate Stationers in their beautiful new premises in the Southcoast Mall.

I say undoubtedly largely out of bias, or if you prefer, bibliomania.

Once a year we are exhorted by our leading educators, at least I think that is the term, to encourage children to read; although I am probably wrong, I can’t help thinking that is all that happens: we encourage children to read once a year.

The problem, as seems usually to be the case, lays not so much with the children as with the parents: so few people have the time, let alone the inclination, to read a book.

I recently finished a semi-autobiographical novel, the first fiction, if fiction it be, I’ve read in years. It was The Edwardians, by that gifted and extraordinary character, Vita Sackville-West. It was published in Tavistock Square, London, in 1931 by her friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf.

You may recall that VSW was the wife of the colourful diplomat Harold Nicolson. Their son Nigel is the Nicolson of the publishers Wiedenfeld and Nicolson.

As a child Sackville-West had grown up in another monumental house, Knole, an upbringing which more than qualified her to write this extraordinary book. Its subject is the manners and customs of the English aristocracy in the reign of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, from about 1902 until 1910, the Edwardian period of a century ago.

What drew me to the book was that in the first place it has been on my shelf for years and in the second place a dip into it revealed Vita’s exquisite use of English.

Not only is it beautiful to read and think about, but, of course, it emphasises her ability to marshal her thoughts; what we used to call lucidity and fluency.

Before I leave the subject of reading, I came across a BBC blog last week by the writer/broadcaster Sue Lawler. At least I think it was she; in the blog she wrote:

“I live with the tensions between the world out there I want to see, and even contemplate, and the inner world to which the book gives me access. It is the inner rewards of reading a book in a private and concentrated way that lead you into realms of your own imagination and thought that no other process offers. Something happens between the words and the brain that is unique to the moment and to your own sensibilities.”

I am increasingly of the belief that something similar will be said of the electronic reader before too long.

My friend Larry Routledge’s talk on his dramatic and rather alarming experiences in the Southern Ocean, given in Palm Beach last week, was well attended. It is a rare thing to listen to someone whose experiences are so far removed for the ordinary that they take on a life of their own.

The captain of the vessel used in most of the blocking activities aimed at the Japanese whalers, the Ady Gil, was Pete Bethune. The day of Larry’s talk there arrived in the post Bethune’s account of the episode Whale Warriors.

As whales are such an integral part of our lives on the South Coast I think the book would make a good Christmas present. A Hodder Moa book, it is published in New Zealand by Hachette of Auckland, and should soon be available at Ramsgate Stationers in the Southcoast Mall.

Feathered whales…

CHRIS BENNETT toys with birds of a feather.

WHEN I glanced from my seat at the bar in the local one day last week, I thought for a moment that a flock of splendid tropical rain forest birds had settled in the dining room.

It hadn’t, of course: it was the Red Hat Society gracing, in many ways, the dining room of the High Rock Pub (and Grill).

A pair (a brace, perhaps?) of these elegant fowls came into the bar and I asked them the obvious question.

That got me trawling the net back at my cottage. I was rather delighted by what I found.

It appears that the Red Hat Society, of which there are now something like 50 thousand members in 26 countries, meet regularly (please note that I did not write on a regular basis; it would have killed the prose, such as it is) in a place of their choosing.

What I found particularly engaging is that members of the society, who wear a red hat and a purple outfit to their lunches, gather for the simple pleasure of enjoying each other’s company. In this world of ours something so simple is at once engaging and charming.

The society was founded in the United States in 1998 by one Sue Ellen Cooper. Membership is restricted to women over 50, although recently a Pink Hat Society has emerged for those of slightly more tender years.

The society has a slight but interesting connection to South Africa.

Inspiration was drawn by Cooper from Jenny Joseph’s poem, Warning, the opening lines of which read:

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me”.

Jenny Joseph is an English poet. She was born in Birmingham, and studied English literature at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, before becoming a journalist. She worked for the Bedfordshire Times, the Oxford Mail and Drum Publications in Johannesburg.

Of course the members don’t sport just any old red hat. These confections are meant to delight, and to send a frisson through the chosen setting. The gorgeously decorated millinery displayed with such élan at the High Rock last week brought a joyous note of summer. Feathers fluttered and bobbed in the hats as their wearers chatted and chaffed their lunchtime away.

By the way, those readers with a bent for arithmetic will have realised that the collective membership of the world’s Red Hat Societies represents two and a half million years. Just thought I’d mention it.

While I am on the subject of the pub, the old beer garden, which was more like a back yard, has been transformed with the replacement of ugly concrete slotted fencing by a charming wooden fence and new beer garden furniture. To me it seemed a good effort on the part of the management and their stalwart, Ricardo.

The High Rock will be the venue for a presentation next Monday (29^th) by my friend Larry Routledge.

Larry was a member of the intrepid team that took on the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean last summer, which was seen worldwide on satellite television. He is not only a good engineer, but he is an experienced sailor and an excellent photographer.

Before the crew left for the Antarctic Larry was involved in the preparation in New Zealand of the extraordinary catamaran, the Adi Gil. It was eventually rammed by a whaler from the Land of the Rising Sun, and it was lost with much of Larry’s equipment. He and the other crew members were shaken but not stirred.

The presentation, at 6pm at the High Rock in Palm Beach, will be illustrated but Larry’s fine photography; an event worth attending.

The eyes have it…

CHRIS BENNETT finds that having your eyes done is not as bad as having your teeth done. Well, not quite.

OPTOMETRISTS are often very interesting people. They see a lot. On the face of it that may not seem very remarkable, but it is.

I visit my optometrist, with whom I have been a patient (if that is the word), for eight years, about once in two years. This time I had left it a little late, but then visiting the optometrist is about two rungs down the nervous scale from visiting the dentist.

Her rooms, surgery or maybe chambers, a word dripping with ominous implications, are bright and cheerful, and housed inside the warmth and comfort of the Shelly Centre. The inner room is also bright. In one corner sits the chair, brooding, like a spider waiting to pounce. Sundry large pieces of what appear to be modern interpretations of medieval equipment also lurk in the shadows.

Of course all this is in my head, but unfortunately so is everything else so that knowledge doesn’t help a bit.

The processes which are to determine the condition of my ageing eyes are thorough and delicately laced with a hint of menace.

Again, it’s in my head. I am fortunate in having good eyesight, and even more so in having someone to confirm that.

A number of other devices are used to test the resilience or otherwise of the windows to my soul. I see them as inventions of the Inquisition, but again I am wrong; aren’t I?

There is a quaint contraption that requires the victim to balance his chin on a sort of cradle; after a few reassuring words a short jet of air hits the eyeball with unnerving accuracy. And, of course, there are two eyes; so twice the unnerving.

And then there is the pièce de résistance. This contrivance of modern technology tells the optometrist a great deal. It, I think, photographs the eye; with a flash, in a flash. It is a bit like watching one those experiments men used to carry out on Christmas Island, an unfortunately named atoll in the Pacific.

I was able to describe the kaleidoscope of colours that I saw after this event (not Christmas Island) which told my friend Nataschka even more than she already knew of my eyes and their ways.

She pointed out that stress can affect the eyesight. Of that I have no doubt.

After all my misplaced nervousness I came away with a feeling of well-being, that all is as well with my precious sight as may be expected at this stage of my life.

One of the things I enjoy discussing with Nataschka is my colour blindness. She is not even remotely troubled by it because she understands the condition so thoroughly. The only other person with whom I can discuss this beautiful world with is my brother, Richard. We have identical colour vision.

And of course, when we are together the rest of the world is colour blind.

I was rather pleased, while watching a gorgeous gaggle of green pigeons, clowning around and falling about like parrots in my neighbour’s fig tree (their Afrikaans name is papagaaiduif), to see in Roberts Birds that the green pigeons are often seen as yellow or gold. I am glad to say that they look splendidly golden to me.

As I am so often waffling on about the importance of reading, I should add to it that the importance of having your eyes checked regularly cannot be over emphasised.

Paradise found…

CHRIS BENNETT was recently a guest at the Brenthurst Library, one of this country’s most outstanding collections.

I AM indebted to Mr Leo Preston of Uvongo for kindly sending me a photo copy of a short story by one of my favourite writers, the master of the short story, Somerset Maugham. The story is The Book-Bag, which I shall read on a wet afternoon. I seem to be still in the middle of a beautiful, tranquil sea of books.

Last week I found myself in what is possibly the closest to heaven I may get. I took two friends, both serious book collectors, to the Brenthurst Library, a striking building erected 25 years ago in the grounds of Brenthurst, a 45 hectare private estate in the centre of Parktown in Johannesburg.

The library houses an outstanding collection of books, paintings, drawings and correspondence relevant to the early development of this country, probably the most important such collection in private hands anywhere.

The atmosphere in the library is soft and relaxing, the lighting designed to be not too harsh, for books are sensitive to light, and the object of this immense exercise, begun around 1920 by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer was the preservation for future generations of the life of South Africa.

Often in this column I have said that we have only language, by which I mean that mankind has only his language by which he may communicate with others, especially those close to him.

The astonishing Brenthurst collection includes 28 000 books, which are essentially Africana; the largest collection in the world of the paintings of Thomas Baines; Baines’s notebooks; Livingstone’s complete correspondence and the original of all the publications relating to South African ornithology: that is the tip of the iceberg.

These precious papers are kept in beautifully bound boxes, made for the purpose in the library’s bindery and stored in the document room, which is kept cooler, drier and darker than the rest of the library.

The third in the Brenthurst series of books, the library’s chefs-d’œuvres, in which unpublished material from the library is made available in fine bindings limited to 1000 books, is now on sale. It draws on the remarkable works of the French explorer and ornithologist, Francois le Vaillant (1753-1824), which are housed in the safe keeping of the Brenthurst Library.

One of my friends, a physicist and botanist, was speechless when he was allowed to examine a work by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish scientist whose life was devoted to the naming of plants and animals in an ordered fashion, a system which is unlikely ever to change.

The bindery I found especially interesting. The resident binder, Alan Jeffrey, explained the workings of the bindery and the nature of his current undertaking: a box for the storage of rare documents. Not unlike the hundreds and hundreds of similar boxes in the document room, it is, as you may imagine, craftsmanship of the highest order. This particular piece, which cost several thousand rands, was destined for Hong Kong.

The bindery is primarily there to keep all the books and papers safe and sound and to bind new acquisitions. The pictures are tended by specialists in the appropriate field of art.

The morning was spent under the careful guidance of the librarian, Fylyppa Meyer, whose knowledge and charm encapsulate the objectives of the Brenthurst Library.

This enchanting day drew to a close with lunch at Moyo at the Zoo Lake, an unusual restaurant which specialises in food from across the African continent, food most appropriate for this occasion. The wine was Laborie.

Pushing the envelope…

CHRIS BENNETT took advantage of a recent trip to Pretoria to enrich his computer profile.

I WAS in the Shelly Centre a week or so ago and I saw a woman with a bird on her shoulder. Some people have chips, some people have birds.

As I walked behind her I thought of the many reasons why this good woman was wearing a piece of bolt-on ornithological fashion wear.

Obviously she liked the thing; furthermore, she must have liked it quite a lot as the two of them were deep in conversation.

I tried to lock in to the gist of the conversation, which seemed to be conducted in flawless Afrikaans. I didn’t get very far, which is probably a good thing because I am not a happy eavesdropper.

At this point the bird decided that it was a happy eavesdropper and proved the point by dropping a colourful assortment of eaves down the good woman’s back. It quite complemented her purple coat.

When we reached an intersection in the mall my new found companions, happy in their cloud of unknowing, went on their way, leaving me to wonder and surmise.

Quite shortly after this I realised what it was that the lady was actually wearing. It was an external hard drive. I knew this because I had bought one on a recent visit to Pretoria.

I consider myself to be reasonably computer literate. Mine has even taught me to type properly, although I still hanker after the good old days of the newsroom when all my colleagues and I typed in the time- honoured search and thump, three- or four-finger method, which was considered way above the level of the juniors and their search and peck two-fingered endeavours.

Unpacking the new toy, which has a memory large enough to store the entire collective experiences of mankind since about the time of the woolly mammoth, was, as it always is these days, a challenge in itself.

Having read all the little books that came with it, several of which almost made sense; having struggled a little to remove the plastic wrap from the thing’s velvet pyjamas (for travelling, of course), I was finally confronted with awesome reality itself; it was looking at me from the security and comfort of its little plastic cot.

I set about removing it. The sumptuous box in which all this paraphernalia arrived on my desk bore the legend Racing Inspired Design, complete with a chequered flag on the front of said box.

The extra-durable dampening outer shell, along with the racing inspired design, had left me full of admiration for its maker’s ingenuity. What did not leave me in admiration of their ingenuity was the fact that the thing was so beautifully fitted into its plastic cot that it could not, quite clearly, be removed.

Well that should save on wear and tear.

Having pondered such excesses as a kitchen knife, at which my very being flinched like a startled mustang, I finally turned the plastic container over and gave it a gentle thump. The device landed on my lap; it looked rather smug.

I eventually realised that this thing had become my computer’s clone, and it is an awful lot easier to cart around than the laptop. Fiendishly clever, that’s what these oriental chaps are.

Birds of a feather…

CHRIS BENNETT, holidaying in the North West, decides a few more semi-colons are needed in this world.

FISHERMEN, two, standing in a small boat at the water’s edge in front of the lawn that leads down to the lake at Hartbeespoort, present a tranquil sight in the early morning.

I am out at the table in the garden writing these lines for this week’s South Coast Herald; lines inspired, if that is the word, by the beauty of the place.

A thin strip of land a few meters wide marks the eastern limit of the small nature reserve and waterfowl sanctuary I have made my home for a week, and indeed shall for another week, through the kindness of an old friend who maintains a charming lodge at this solitary spot.

Last evening, while I was engrossed in South Africa’s rather splendid innings at Willowmore Park, I chanced to look up from the television and out of the French window into the golden light of the setting sun, reflected in the burnished, still surface of the water; a group of ostriches was walking close up against the fence, as if on eggs, with meticulous care and in complete, almost holy, silence.

The single elephant-like file of these gorgeous birds looked for all the world like some medieval pageant, the arrival of some splendid oriental queen, maybe. I had a glimpse of gilded panoplies, glittering banners and silver trumpets.

Summer has arrived in this painted, mountainous corner of the North West Province; the land, thirsty with drought, is smitten with the sun’s iron hand.

But the presence of the lake offers some respite from the heat, if only in the mind. And where else would there be, except in the mind?

Cattle egrets, necks folded neatly like paper clips, fly in a languid cloud, low over the water. There is a laziness to everything; it hangs in the air like a gentle mist, and reminds me that we on the South Coast do not have a monopoly of this dream-like state.

Like the drought-burnt plantations of home, the veld of this ancient, parched land is crackling brown, whorls of dust and splintered dry grass.

Nonetheless the place is, of course, a hive of activity. Hartbeespoort, unlike the South Coast I have come equally to love, does not rest; there is a season for all men, every weekend.

The bird calls are one of the piercing joys of the place. Supreme, of course, is the fish eagle, a fairly frequent visitor to my friend David Holt-Biddle’s column in this newspaper. Other voices are the Transvaal loerie (I cannot picture a Gauteng loerie); the ubiquitous glossy ibis in its shining finery (the la-de-da ha-de-da?), fukwe, the secretive rainbird sounding like an emptying wine bottle; and so the list goes on.

After my rather successful book sale last week some one asked me if I had read all my books. Of course not. The whole point about being a bibliophile is that a book has to be housed along with its custodian. The greatest pleasure I derived from selling the books was that they are going to very good homes, and so their future is assured; until the next gereration, that is.

I recently wrote in this column that I am involved in the planning of a very small library at my village near Munster. I shall try to keep the books interesting, but that which interests one mind, may bore another.

But I suppose I can always weed out the boring ones.

Library days…

Last weekend CHRIS BENNETT loaded up his car’s boot with books and set off for the journey to Gauteng.

BIBLIOPHILES are a rare breed. Collecting books is a very pleasing, to some of us, way of using time and spending money, and preferably not very much money.

Usually the love of books, in addition to what they contain, emerges in early life, the late teens or early twenties. I started collecting books, mostly reference works to do with language, in the 1970s when I was thirty something. I soon discovered the delights of TV Bulpin, a Cape writer who had a good nose for research, an abiding interest in the history of this country and a comfortable writing style.

It is interesting to note that the name of the company which owns the South Coast Herald is Caxton Press.

William Caxton (ca. 1420-1492) was one of the prime movers in the development of society, of learning and of teaching in the history of the world. He was in demand; in the times in which he lived he was one of the few who could read, and what is more he could write. It is said that he earned money as a letter writer for those unable to write, an occupation that must at once have been fraught with difficulty and awash with hilarity.

But it was his ingenuity as a printer that set the ball rolling and men’s minds free.

After learning the craft of printing at Bruges, in what is now Belgium, and Germany he returned to London and set up the first printing press at Westminster in 1476. The first English book he issued was Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

My journey up to Hartbeespoort last week was to sell some books (Caxton was England’s first bookseller) and to see friends. I stayed with an old friend, Mike Benn, at his beautiful lodge in Meerhof. Mike developed an interest in antiquarian books when I was his neighbour in that village.

As with my own taste in books, Mike’s interest leans towards the South

African writers of the end of the 19^th and the early 20^th centuries; he also has, on display in the reception area of the lodge and in some suites, an excellent collection of the sketches of Melton Prior, an English war artist who accompanied Kitchener and others, and a French war artist who was, as we would say today, embedded with the Boer forces.

Prior to leaving the South Coast I had been working on the idea of a small library for the residents of our village.

Libraries are wonderful institutions. Membership of one gives you access to many others, and so almost any book you might like to read, or better still want to read, is available.

With the need for much more work to encourage young people to read, it might be a good idea for more English teachers to use libraries wherever they can and pass on the reading habit to their charges.

Without language, and essentially English, there is no future for our children.

Driving me crazy…

CHRIS BENNETT has a week of contrasts.

LIFE has a delightful tendency to swing from the bizarre rituals involved in such undertakings as renewing a driving licence (which licenses me to drive) to the enchanting world of being at home and listening to the cathedrals of George Frederick Handel’s imagination (Dixit Dominus; Ombra mai fu; Lascia la spina) or those of the shimmering JS Bach: Erbarme dich from the St Matthew Passion; Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf preiset die Tage! from the soon-to-be-appropriate Christmas Oratorio.

Fairly obscure though these pieces of music may seem, they are among the most beautiful and stirring ever written and are well worth the trouble that may be involved in their finding.

At the other side of the pendulum’s swing is the renewal of the driving licence, an ostentatiously bureaucratic parade which has to be approached with a seriously awakened sense of humour.

The good folks who test the eyes and take the money are friendly and helpful; they are also very, very relaxed about their work, so relaxed in fact that I was reminded of the John Cleese (or was it Michael Palin?) joke about the parrot.

As a result this laid-back-nearly-flat approach to life the queuing involved is of a fairly weighty nature. However, if, like me, you are predisposed to watch the world go by and observe your fellow men (and women), then the load is lightened. The sense of humour comes into play as a medium of salvation.

One odd thing; the last time I applied for a licence renewal I had my photos taken by a lady with an automatic camera who had a stall in the little market behind the licensing office in Port Shepstone. She was sweet and helpful and cheap and cheerful. I went to her again this time, and again she took a good picture. I toddled back to the office only to have my pictures rejected because they weren’t from Jay’s Studio in town.

I have no idea, and I think I would rather not have any idea, why this should be so, but I wonder how many mouths the lady with camera fed and what she is doing now. Just wondering…

Returning to the pendulum, it seems to be when it is at rest, not that it is at rest very often, that I write this column. As I have pointed out before, a lot of my pottering about, cleaning and cooking and generally being domesticated and at peace with both the world and myself, is done to the sound of music.

The scientists tell us that those who read or do crosswords or soduko, are less likely to suffer from the ravages of senility. I think music must help too.

As I write this the CD I am playing has reached Handel’s splendid For unto us a child is born from Messiah. I find I can write more easily with such sounds ringing in my ears and soaring with my mind.

The only time when I don’t listen to music is when I am reading, which is often. The CD I have been listening to today is an Erato recording (Erato, France, 1995: The Glory of the Baroque; WE807).

Potting about…

CHRIS BENNETT is at the kitchen table…

RELATIVELY cool temperatures, along with their blustery cousin, the wind, which have been visited upon our coast for a week or two now, remind me of the old English expression about the month of March.

March is the herald of spring, and is said to, “come in like a lion and go out like a lamb”. Much the same can be said of September on the South Coast this year.

The departure of what we laughingly refer to as winter brings me to contemplating my pots; not the ones with plants but the ones with which I cook.

My culinary interests have never been far from the foreground in my life and when I was in my 20s a friend in Johannesburg, who, before her marriage, rejoiced in the name Miss Jean Brodie, introduced me to the writings of Elizabeth David (1913-1992).

That was in the early 1970s, and Mrs David was at her peak. She is now recognised as the one woman who did the most to restore the devastated state of English food after WWII.

Mrs David had spent the entire war, mostly working with the British administration in the Mediterranean, out of England. In Egypt she befriended Lawrence Durrell, Paddy Leigh Fermor and other literary luminaries, all of whom contributed to her beautiful writing style.

One of the great travel writers of the early 20^th century, Norman Douglas, writer, linguist, scientist and diplomat, had a great and lasting effect on her life, her writing, and of course her cooking. She met him before the war when she was living on a boat ( the Evelyn Hope) at Cap d’Antibes in the south of France. *

It was through the pages of French Provincial Cooking, probably her greatest achievement (it has now been in print for more than half a century) that I came across the advice to use good equipment in the kitchen.

I had learnt a lot, as most of us do, in my mother’s kitchen. She also liked good quality utensils, but it was Mrs David who persuaded me to use French Le Creuset saucepans and Sabatier or Swiss Victorinox knives, which have now served me well for more than 40 years.

The utensils in my kitchen are now getting old; the wooden-handled saucepan I use for making a cheese sauce, and nothing else, was made by another French company, Cousances, which was absorbed by Le Creuset during the last half of the last century. The saucepans are heavy; they are enamelled cast-iron and are remarkable to cook with. My favourite casserole is a glass one from Corning.

As I have a lot more time at home these days I am rediscovering the delights of slow cooking. When I rebuilt the kitchen last year I fitted a hob with a casserole plate. It makes an astonishing oxtail, and I do virtually nothing. The secret lies in the time. The whole production is spread over three days, but you don’t have to stand over it.

We live in an age in which everything is wanted and is wanted now. I find this sad; most things that are worth doing are worth doing well. This is likely to take time, which, if managed properly, is usually available.

* You will find an account of this episode in her biography, “Writing at the Kitchen Table”, by The Hon. Alice Clare Antonia Opportune Cooper Beevor, the granddaughter of Lady Diana Cooper. She writes, you will doubtless be pleased to learn, under the name Artemis Cooper, and is one of Britain’s most eminent biographers. Tanya Potts at Ramsgate Stationers tells me the book is out of print. Try your library and the second-hand bookshops; it is a fascinating read.

Spring buck …

CHRIS BENNETT has been absorbed by the budding season.

SPRING seems rather reluctant to get into its stride, although the wildlife in our corner of the world, blue duiker, bushbuck and dassies, seem to be aware of what is going on in the garden.

I recently acquired three rather handsome crotons, in pots, to fill in a gap in my hedge, such as it is.

They have now, after about a week, been given a free haircut by some twitchy-whiskered muzzle. It was a secret, black and midnight operation, so I haven’t a clue to the culprit’s identity, although accusing fingers have been pointed in the direction of bushbuck.

Not that I see them as a culprit. They are welcome in my garden, but I get a bit miffed when they decide that it’s also a salad bar.

I applied the reeking solution recommended by my helpful friend at the nursery, and spent most of Sunday trying to stop my hands smelling like a drain. Still, as long as it works …

The wind, which I suspect nobody likes, with the possible exception of the yachtsmen, has brought untidiness but no drought relief.

Spring this year, rough and tumble though it seems to be, has been a different experience from past springs. I have paid more attention, something I did not do much of at school; looking out of the window at the cows in the fields was more interesting than old man Wilson rabbiting on about the elegance of mathematics.

He had been my father’s maths teacher; we were also taught by the same English teacher, an Oxford or Cambridge blue, I have forgotten which, called “Knocker” Johnson. He was a boxing blue.

Dick Johnson, for such was his name, had an infectious passion for the English language, something sorely lacking in our modern culture in which language is seen as more of a hindrance than a joy.

He imbued in many of us (not all, because old Wilson had some admirers for his arcane and secret arts) a love of reading, which in turn leads to the permanent sense of exploration that accompanies one throughout life. Books, those dusty old irrelevancies of today’s world, are the key to many things.

History was another favourite at school, especially the complex doings of the English monarchs. This is another subject that seems to have faded away over the past thirty years or so, which is a pity. Understanding today might help us anticipate tomorrow, and understanding today comes from knowing about the past. A tricky subject in these times; it has always been a Cinderella, laden as it is with political baggage.

This year I seemed to notice so much more about the spring, especially as some of my own pocket garden was responding to the rising of the sap. The huge ficus outside my front door looked almost edible as it burst into a green and brilliant song of leaves.

St Francis may have had a few harsh things to say about reading and learning, but he was wrong. He was right, of course, in conversing with the birds.

I tend to talk to the few plants in my care, especially the saint paulias or African violets. They are cheerful little things that bask on a windowsill and need little attention.

Music in concrete…

CHRIS BENNETT peers at the pier.

WALKING along the promenade at Margate in pleasant sunshine, with majestic, rolling high seas surging through the bay one day last week gave a great sense of invigoration and freedom.

My companion was a friend visiting from Cape Town, or to be more accurate, Sea Point, where he enjoys walking along that lovely promenade. We were discussing my rather lamentable efforts at replacing my old late and lamented dog with a new; efforts, for the time being, doomed to failure.

Walks like this are particularly sweet when the conversation turns away from the personal and entangled mysteries of private life to its more poetic side.

On this walk there is a lot of architecture at which to look and, more important in my book, at which to react. I think it was Kenneth Clarke who described it this way: “Architecture is music frozen in time”.*

Some of the buildings along the promenade are very, very boring, but some, especially the more recent blocks have a distinct appeal to the eye, thus making the walk all the more rewarding.

But perhaps the real jewel in the crown will turn out to be the fishing pier, at the moment a work in progress.

You will recall that the pier, and a lot of the waterfront road, was almost destroyed in the huge storm of a few years ago.

Well, the work of restoration is moving forward, and may be finished in time for the Christmas season.

The muscular pillars on which the old structure had been built survived the storms of that terrible year. Now the architect in charge has added to their grandeur, not only in building so solid and sound an upper structure, but in grasping the huge energy which our seemingly changing weather unleashes on this beautiful pier.

The final result will be quite awesome, and a great blessing to the fisherman of the lower South Coast.

Another topic discussed, at a later date and over a delicious lunch at Mario and Marisa beautiful restaurant, was the debate I mentioned recently, the one about the press and its function, a debate that has stirred emotions in every corner of this country.

We are fortunate to have a wide variety of newspapers in KwaZulu-Natal, supplemented these days by the ease of access to some up-country papers on the Internet, although most of those in the Independent stable charge to read their publications on the ʼnet, which I think is a pity.

The group of us at the table included the retired head of a radio station (Leslie McKenzie was the last Head of Springbok Radio) and a current newspaper editor.

The lively discussion quickly became a unanimous opinion: that the loss of any measure of press freedom, and this newly proposed bill is simply censorship masquerading as “the public interest”, is a catastrophe for any democracy.

André Brink wrote recently, apropos the bill, “…the prime function of the word is to interrogate silence”.

Talk soon turned to the beautiful sight of the lagoon in the Mpenjati valley beneath us and the parched appearance of the grass on the hills. All eyes turned to the blue sea and the sky above it.

It must rain soon.

* The German philosopher, Friederich von Schelling (1759-1805), wrote, “Architecture in general is frozen music”.

Puppy dogs’ tales…

Animal carnival seemed to be the underlying theme of last week in CHRIS BENNETT’S busy life.

A COUPLE of weeks ago I opened my South Coast Herald and there staring back at me with a slightly wan smile, or it might have been irony, was what looked for all the world like the face of Maisie Wiggins, my Jack Russell/Dachshund/? miscellany.

MW, for so she was often known, was my inseparable companion for 15 years: she died in June last year, so the picture gave me quite a jolt.

Along with my friend Tegwyn, tireless marketer and inventor of the doggy tent, I went to the SPCA to appraise the candidate.

My brother had already pointed out that MW would find me, so I told him that she had and I was now on my way to an interview with her; MW would be doing the interviewing.

She had been moved to the boarding kennels the previous day, and was fetched for me by the South Coast’s doggies’ best friend, Alistair Sinclair.

As I saw her she wagged her tail and said, “Where have you been? You’re late!” I felt we may have something in common.

I have a friend staying for a few days, and so decided to wait until the coast was clear before bringing her in to the racy underworld of Greenhart Village. There are some highly dubious dogs here, but at least there are dogs; unlike their owners, of course, in the mouths of whom butter would not dare soften, let alone melt.

At the weekend my visitor and I decided to make an oxtail stew. The sealing of the meat and the frying of the onions, carrots and turnips was done on my viewing deck. This process, as you no doubt know, is best done outdoors.

I stirred and daydreamed away, the daydreams being largely about my impending companion and whether she would start her new life by digging up the rose tree.

I looked up from the pan and there, not three metres from my face, my eye caught a windhover, a yellow-billed kite.

Immediately I heard the words of one of my favourite poems*, “….daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding/

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding/

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing/

In his ecstasy!”

In its talons the bird carried a small rodent, undoubtedly by then an ex-rodent. Hovering above me in the buffeting wind, he skilfully (instinctively?) swung his legs forward and his neck down to feed on the prey: his magnificent wings adjusting to every bump and pocket in the air as if on autopilot.

As a backdrop to this, the most amazing sighting of a yellow-billed kite I have ever beheld, and those beautiful creatures are abundant in this part of the world, was the azure grandeur of the ocean and the ballet of a family of humpbacks. They were particularly boisterous that morning.

And they weren’t the only ones.

* The Windhover: Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Penguin Classics; London 1953 (1988 ed.)

High flying…

CHRIS BENNETT reflects on the first week of spring…

SAD was the day at the end of last week when Angela Kelly left the South Coast Herald.

Angela’s formative journalistic career has been at the Herald, which she served with dedication and dignity for the past five years. She is a journalist of great talent, and her sense of right, sense of humour and her common sense, should take her on a long and rewarding journey through life.

Angela has, as you will have read, joined the Independent Newspaper group, one of the world’s major media conglomerates, at their KwaZulu-Natal bureau in Durban. I don’t doubt I shall read her byline again before long.

One of the most endearing aspects of working for a good newspaper is the camaraderie and enthusiasm that exist in the newsroom, and not only the news room. But it is in the newsroom where the sparks fly, and where cool heads simply have to prevail.

I was disappointed recently to read of the appallingly rude and highly ill-judged behaviour of several of our public leaders on the lower South Coast: they attacked a Herald reporter and trainee editor verbally and almost physically, for simply doing his job.

Siyabnga Mnchunu, a young man of immaculate manners, considerable charm and a highly developed understanding of both written and spoken English was, for a time, a classic example of the old medieval trait of murdering the messenger. I don’t doubt you read the depressing story in last week’s Herald.

All this is brought sharply into focus with the current heated debate evolving in our country over how far the government should contain the press: the voice of the people.

Doubtless most of the proponents of this unsettling issue have every good reason to be able to hide behind the fulsome skirts of the administration. But it will weaken our democracy and water down the rich inheritance of which we are, rightly, so proud.

But enough of that.

Spring is here.

Something has eaten most of my beautiful sapphire bush. Most of its flowers are gone, relished by either monkeys or dassies. The bush may be consigned to history.

The huge fig tree that shades the balcony where most of the summer living is done is now in full bud and leaf, a delightful sight. The whales are still cavorting in the ocean, as you will have noticed, and there are still children on the beach. Beached children?

In this part of the world spring is short-lived, like the sapphire bush. Summer is never far behind and the South Coast will soon be in full swing again.

News of the flights from Margate to Lanseria is welcome news, especially for those of us headed for Hartbeespoort. The drive from the dam to OR Tambo takes the best part of two ours, so friends are far happiuer to meet the plane at the airport on the other side of the Skurweberg.

It’s a pricey business, as was to be expected, but when you are travelling alone the cost of the road trip, pleasant though it may be, adds up, what with the price of fuel, the tolls and the wear and tear on the car.

I would imagine the flight to East London will help those heading for the mother city. We have a very pretty airport and it is good to see it back in use again.

Paws for thought…

CHRIS BENNETT is in dog mode again.

RECENTLY I experienced another of those serendipitous moments that add sparkle to our lives. It was all to do with the search for my new dog. Or perhaps I should say my new dog’s search for me.

I seem to have been reading TIME magazine since birth, (my birth, not that of the magazine in about 1924) and each week I have always looked forward to it popping up in the letterbox. It is the only publication I do not read online.

The cover of the issue of August 16 this year depicted Bibi, a puggish dog with a whimsical expression of resignation and undying patience. Her balloon says, “Way to go, Einstein”, a comment obviously aimed at her owner. It is perhaps the most delightful cover I have ever seen on the magazine.

Not only was I seriously looking for a dog (f), not any dog but the dog, my sensitivities to Bibi’s delightful face were magnified by a recent visit to the Lower South Coast SPCA, my second in a few months.

I was lucky enough to meet Alistair Sinclair, the man who is top dog at the SPCA. Alistair is a devoted and passionate dog man who has many theories, born of a lifetime of trying to understand the mind of the dog.

My late canine friend, Maisie Wiggins, who died of old age in June last year, was a constant source of amusement, amazement and puzzlement to me.

If she did not approve of what I was doing, or about to do, a suitable reaction was adopted. A bath would bring on a balefully reproachful look, followed by her disappearance under some impossibly low piece of furniture, from which vantage she would growl, utterly unconvincingly.

She knew there was to be a walk on the beach before I. There would be a tail wagging frenzy and something approaching cartwheels on the bed. You should understand that she did not sleep in my bed; I slept in her bed. But then I would.

In order to build some sort of plan for retirement I have usually tried to buy a house when my work moved me around the country, as it periodically did. I have always bought a house suitable for Maisie Wiggins or her predecessors, whose names, believer you me, you don’t want to know. In other words I have always lived in a kennel.

Bibi is on the August 16 cover of the illustrious magazine because the lead article that week was about What Animals Think by Jeffrey Kluger. He tells us that new science has revealed that they are smarter than we realized.

Alistair Sinclair and I, I suspect, have known this for a long time.

My visit to the SPCA near the highway in Uvongo, was memorable. Alistair showed me all the kennels, the boarders, the strays, the puppies and the dogs people just did not want any more.

I should tell you the experience was a little more than somewhat harrowing.

This beautifully maintained and run facility (I hate the word, but can’t think of another) is to go on show this Saturday, August 28.

The Open Fun Day will be at the SPCA from 9.30am to 1.30pm, and should be a delight for all the family, especially the youngsters.

The organisation receives no help from the government, thankfully, and it is our SPCA and we should be more than happy to support it ourselves. A dog’s love is completely unconditional; a concept alien to about 99 percent of humanity.

We owe the good people who work, largely volunteers, for the Lower South Coast SPCA a great debt of gratitude.

Millicent was not there, by the way.

Booking your future…

CHRIS BENNETT has been reading about reading, again.

FOR a few years now there has been quietly raging, behind the scenes almost, a battle between paper, the mundane substance we make from trees or rags, and the innovations of modern technology.

I refer, of course, to the electronic reader, the acceptance and popularity of which has been growing rapidly, especially this year; although much more slowly than the cellphone when it was introduced less than two decades ago.

The latest devices for reading are the redesigned Kindle, made by the American book giant, Amazon.com, and the iPad made by Apple.

The iPad may cost more, but then it is also a computer and can be used to surf the net and do much more.

I am ambivalent about these two formats for reading; one thing I am not ambivalent about is reading. Few people read enough, largely I suspect because of some lurking fears that they might discover things they would rather not know about, like themselves, for instance. As some benighted soul said to me recently, “Reading is for school and kids”. Ja, well, no, fine.

I believe anything that encourages people, especially young people to read must be a good thing, and electronic reading is something that I have adapted to easily in the almost-two years I have been reading on the screen of an iPhone. Amazon has recently released a free app, Kindle for the iPhone, and the first book I bought was Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking. I would like to see other favourite authors of mine, particular those that I re-read year in and year out (ED is one), available, which they will doubtless be.

Amazon last week announced that it has sold more ebooks than hardbacks. Well hardbacks are not cheap, but there will always be people who like to feel the paper (I am one) and who like to keep the book if they have the space, an increasing problem these days.

Another thing about ebooks is that they are not very comfortable for sharing. For young readers this would be a big drawback; in fact it would be a big drawback for most readers, given that handing over your Kindle or iPad for a while is not the warmest of sensations.

I have also made use of Apple’s own iBooks, in the app called iBookstore. It is not, to my mind, as comfortable as Kindle, but it has some neat tricks. Most systems use bookmarks which are a great help: the book you are reading will open where you left off.

My guess is that there will always be a demand for books printed on paper, but I rather imagine that the quality of binding and the paper itself may improve, as the cost of making books becomes higher and higher, and book readers become, essentially, a niche market.

It is early days yet; but what I think will be the winner will be the agility of people’s minds, an agility the scientist tell us will last into old age if exercised by reading.

It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin, in his introduction to The Descent of Man (1871), wrote, “… in the first edition of the Origin of Species I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind.”

So there you have it. Run and Read.