Eyes down for a full tummy…

CHRIS BENNETT has been the object of ground zero observation.

DURING a routine visit to a Pretoria hospital I have been staying with family at the much-maligned Hartbeespoort Dam, a few kilometres to the west of the capital. I know the place well; I lived here for 27 years.

Just across a narrow lane from my friend’s garden is a beautiful wildlife sanctuary. The signature sound in my friend’s garden is the cry of the fish eagle.

The garden is an oasis of plants indigenous to that spectacular and seemingly timeless range of mountains, the Magaliesberg. My friend, a geologist and botanist, owns a wholesale indigenous nursery on the northern, frost-free slopes of the range that takes its elegant Afrikaans name from that of the great leader of the baTswana people of the 19^th century, Mohale.

My friends’ garden (his wife has green fingers and wellies to match) at their home on the lakeside is a living advertisement for the nursery; testimony to the huge range of beautiful flowers, shrubs and trees native to that parched swathe of South Africa which survive happily without water from man’s interfering hand.

The knowledge of the immense blessing of such flora has spread, and more and more people building houses, and indeed housing complexes in the area, have turned to him to design and plant gardens that are at once stunningly attractive, vibrantly interesting and drought resistant. The delightful and celebrated artist Norman Catherine is one of my friend’s many seekers after this philosophical dreamscape.

This practical and calming approach to conserving our precious water is an example to all of South Africa – including those with homes in less salubrious surrounds.

But what has occupied much of my time while I wait for some wondrous being to make a pacemaker especially for me (for we are in love with me, my heart and I) has been sitting on my friends’ stoep watching the ostriches on the other side of the game fence. The more one looks at ostriches, the more ridiculous they become. Wouldn’t the late Alexander McQueen have loved those eyelashes, huge and voluptuous, like the fans of potentates’ concubines?

They strut, and with legs like that you can strut as nothing has ever before strutted, their huge, bulbous bodies all a-bustle with ill-kempt and dishevelled feathers; feathers the size of small bedcovers, a use which some early bright spark probably discovered.

Those legs, of course, are pure dinosaur. Evidence not-so-recently released tells us that the birds are very likely living descendents of those bizarre creatures which dominated life on earth for 64 million years. Not a bad tenure, considering we have been here for only a few seconds in comparison.

They graze, ostriches; they scratch about with their quacky bills, demurely fluttering those preposterous eyelashes, like Lillian Gish coming out of a swoon. They peck, pick and sometimes choose their way through the rich grasses of the summer veld, their flat and ancient heads millimetres from the ground, but with one advantage over the other game.

Near where my friend lives the ostriches are not anxious about whether the grass on the other side of the game fence is greener or not; they poke their tiny heads and scrawny, long and winding necks through the littlest of holes and find out. Maybe they feel protected from the predators (not that there any in the reserve, but even with ostriches, it is the thought that counts) by having their heads safely on the other side of the fence.

To be surrounded as I am by nature in its primitive and majestic glory, be it the plants of eons or feathered dinosaurs, is a privilege in the proper sense of the word and one that gives red blood to my sense of gratitude.

On getting carried away...

CHRIS BENNETT has been indulging in the ancient art of travel.

THERE are fewer pastimes that I find more engaging than driving my car. It is a small, economical car, quite powerful enough and, for me, ideally suited to long distance travel.

I do not like flying any more. When I was young the thrill of an airport and the prospect of being fussed and comforted by charming air hostesses for twelve or eighteen hours were sparkling in their attraction.

Not any more. The aircrews of today are just that, crews. And who can blame them? The world is awash with nutters trying to blow them out of the sky; a prospect designed to cool any flush of hospitality or compassion. And, what is more, it seems to be getting worse.

For those of us lucky enough to live on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast the drive to the airport is a bit of a pain. Given that the new airport will something in the order of another hour further away I thank providence for my love of long distance driving.

Last week I left home at 4.30am and headed for Hartbeespoort, to see friends and family. The drive was spectacular. I prefer to drive alone; I cannot hold a conversation and drive a car; and I prefer not to listen to music. I think about the car and its remarkable manifestation of man’s skills and ingenuity. I have even been known to talk to it, but the less said about that the better.

The number of gigantic haulage trucks on the road served to remind me of how we have allowed our railways to sink to what must be about the lowest level in the world. They’re all but non-existent.

The trucks also reminded me of the apparent steadiness of our economy, a steadiness untouched, or so it would appear, by the antics of those in high office.

Johannesburg, as I’m sure you know, is trying to come to terms with the fact that it was napping some years ago. The middle class, car owning segment of the population burgeoned, but nobody did anything about the roads. The penny seems to have dropped.

For a year or two now there has been the most extraordinary programme of road building and road rebuilding.

Unfortunately this means that movement around the city’s perimeter requires a lot of patience, time and, preferably, a flask of tea and some sandwiches. But my friends tell me the results will be worthit, and I am sure they will.

Getting out to Hartbeespoort on a road that has not been enlarged since the 1950s is a seriously unnerving experience. The little road is built for travel at about 60km/h and everybody (well nearly everybody) does about 110km/h. I can’t help wondering what the rush is for. Yet more impatience, I suppose, or maybe everybody, like the March Hare, is late again.

It was rather reminiscent of home, still the best place to be.

A sad tail…

CHRIS BENNETT recently had an interesting experience…

GERARD Hoffnung was a German born English writer, composer and cartoonist who flourished in the period after the Second World War.

His theme was usually musical, but his wit and humour and his sense of timing won him a great following, especially on the wireless. His cartoons were, almost without Exception, and his composing abilities were respected. They were also eccentric. He composed an orchestral work dedicated to the American President Hoover, which had parts scored for three vacuum cleaners and a number of other electrical household appliances.

But perhaps his most famous story was that of the bricklayer.

I was sharply reminded of this form of humour last week.

A friend had taken my car to the shops, accompanied by a visitor from Cape Town.

After a short while they returned. It was about two o’clock and so an afternoon nap was indicated. Two hours later the nap ended with a bang and a crash. My car was no longer in its carport.

The car had, almost sneakily, edged very slowly backwards; it was not in gear and the handbrake had been applied too lightly.

After two hours of tardy creep the car reached the point in the driveway where the angle of dangle increases very sharply. Friends have said it’s a bit like reversing down a mine shaft. The car needed little further encouragement, gathered speed and shot down the driveway. The wheels were locked straight so the path of the car didn’t change one iota.

At the bottom of the driveway I have a sliding electric gate, kept in a state of genteel shabbiness, like the whole of the outside of my garden in order to give the impression of poverty. Which, as it happens, is an accurate impression.

The gate was closed. By now the car had gained such velocity that it met the gate in what can only be called a resounding embrace; the gate embraced the rear end of my car and wrapped it neatly in galvanised steel bars, as one would wrap a slab of butter in grease-proof paper.

At this point the car’s progress was slowed somewhat and the gate fell off. The car continued on course for the other side of the road. On arrival it bounced into a ditch and hit a tree.

I was awakened by what sounded like something one might hear in the middle of an Afghan desert or a crowded Baghdad market.

I cautiously approached the bottom of the driveway and there was the car, its nose pointing snootily in the air.

The insurance company was, understandably, rather disbelieving and my friend at Margate Panel Beaters, the worthy Jochun, just looked at the damage and sighed. The car appeared have had its back window cleaned by someone wielding a front-end loader. Also its back lights. In fact its back everything.

Nothing daunted, Jochun said this was not as bad as it looked and would be fixed.

The insurance company is still scratching its collective head. The moral of the story is always leave the car in gear.

My friend Fanie fixed the gate. All’s well that ends well.

Hear, hear!

CHRIS BENNETT finds life in the sound of the sea…

I HAVE now been living a life free from radio or television for some weeks; an interesting experience.

I have always had great difficulties with paying attention to television. Radio, on the other hand can be a source of delight. The listener’s imagination is imperative in creating the bond required to understand what is being said or read.

Television, by its nature, is exclusive; it makes no allowances for the viewer and allows him no role, which is to say that the medium is completely passive as far as the viewer is concerned, and thus at once hypnotic and soporific. I have friends who like nothing better after a hard day’s work than to slump (note that) in front of the TV and forget their trials and tribulations. Within three minutes they are asleep.

Television is a series of images, all of which are either photographed by a twentysomething with a Steadycam, or one of those things the news people carry on their shoulders like grenade launchers: which, of course, they are - in a sense. I prefer to read a news story in print and shape my own interpretation of things, which, essentially, is what radio allows you to do.

Because radio is a listening medium, much of the process involved in interpretation is very similar to that used by the brain to interpret the printed word. It is another form of reading in which the listener creates images based on ideas he perceives. For this reason, reading into a microphone calls for much training and hard work to achieve anything approaching proficiency. The majority of people cannot read out loud. If the listener loses track for one second the whole story goes out of the window.

It is my belief that TV as we know it today will eventually be little more than a medium for disseminating sporting events. Documentaries are now too expensive to make and nobody wants to sponsor them; news is becoming the prerogative of the Internet and advertising seems to be taking over all our cellphones.

The growth in popularity of electronic readers such as the iPhone, the Sony eReader and Amazon’s Kindle speak for themselves. By and large people like reading very much.

As one who spent his working life in radio journalism I find the fading of the light in what that great TV critic, Clive James, called the Chrystal Bucket a welcome prospect.

We have a radio station here in our midst on the South Coast, although it seems to be Radio Sunny Sheppie more than anything. Let us give them time to settle in and hear what happens. The first time round the management of Radio Sunny South made a pig’s ear of it, sad to say.

There was a saying many years ago in radio circles (you can name almost any country) which is still true today. It ran thus: How do you make a small fortune? Take a large fortune and open a radio station.

And that’s all for this week. Tune in again next Thursday…

CB

22/1/10

Crying foul…

CHRIS BENNETT has been looking at the ticket buying process for the coming Soccer Beano.

I HAVE recently had a request for help from two young friends keen on seeing one of the great football matches to be played as part of our country’s involvement in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Nothing startling there, one would have thought.

Before me is an Official Ticket Application Form. It is a 16-page A4 sized glossy brochure, the cost of which cannot have been inconsiderable, as it was doubtless distributed around the globe.

The ‘fine print’ at the end of this brochure takes up two pages of, well, fine print. I haven’t managed to trawl through it all yet, and doubtless never will, but it strikes me as being a bit over the top for the local people. It is not so much that they cannot read and write as that they should not be expected to cope with bureaucratic claptrap at this level.

The little blocks provided for the personal information of each applicant (you are required to apply to be included in a draw for a ticket, but there is no guarantee you’ll get one) are small and require a good level of careful printing. I, for one, would be a bit hard pressed to do this.

What I cannot understand is why was this whole ticket business has not been approached from an African perspective? We are dealing here with people who are passionate about soccer but whose daily existence is a battle for food and, in some cases, water. These folk do not operate at the email address/credit card level of life. Surely something simpler could have been devised. I wonder how many will simply give up and watch the game on TV.

This elaborate brochure is introduced on page two with a few words of welcome from the eminent gentlemen at the top of the gigantic FIFA pile, Jérôme Valcke, the FIFA Secretary General, and Danny Jordaan, the Local Organising Committee CEO.

The blurb between these two messages, headed South Africa welcomes the World, is a puzzlement. After the first sentence comes this string of words, “Between the 11^th June and the 11^th July 2010, 32 national football teams will participate in this match festival of football in their bid 10 venues culminating in the Final on the 11^th July 2010 at the Soccer city Stadium in Johannesburg, where the World Champions will be crowned in front of a crowd of over 80 000 spectators.”

Pardon ?

This makes no sense whatever. I am surprised, to say the least, that someone, somewhere along the production line of this extravagant document didn’t bother to call in a proof reader to put an eye over things. All the time, effort and money that must have gone into what, at first glance, looks like a professional job, have been dashed on the rocks of slapdash and careless work.

It is devoutly to be wished that this attitude is not allowed to creep in to other aspects of what will, surely, be the most spectacular and the most expensive (especially to the host) sporting event on this continent since the gladiator tournaments in North Africa some 2 000 years ago.

CB

5/2/10

It’s all a cover-up…

CHRIS BENNETT was given some domestic advice by a colleague.

I HAVE discovered more delights of domesticated living. The other day I had to change the duvet cover; not a difficult task, one would have thought.

I soon found out that it requires the skills of a contortionist and the direction finding abilities of a carrier pigeon.

That morning I had had a call from my friend J, and she said, when told of my duvet ambitions, “Oh, it is easy. You just turn it inside out.”

Ha! if you will pardon the expression. She did not explain that first of all you have to get the cover to be laundered off the duvet. This is rather like skinning a whale using a wooden spoon. The duvet reeled, writhed and fainted in coils, sticking out all the little sharp points of its goosedown (or maybe it was eiderdown) feathers, in an attempt to thwart me.

It was about now that I seemed to lose the plot. In frustration I gave the whole thing a mighty shake and the cover shot across the room and lay crumpled at the foot of the wardrobe door like a discarded snakeskin. However I had forgotten that the duvet had a hole in it; my bedroom looked like the Cairngorms after a blizzard.

I fetched the hoover. All I need now, I thought, is a pinny and a feather duster and I shall be set for life.

And then round two started: putting the clean cover on the now clearly enraged duvet.

I looked at the duvet. It seemed to be square shaped and so I recalled J’s words about turning the cover inside out. I put both arms into the duvet cover.

This was, without doubt, a serious mistake. Not only was I unable to find any corners (I thought for a moment that the wretched thing had suddenly become circular), but I soon found myself with outstretched and uplifted arms, as if praising some deity.

At this point gravity interfered and the whole cover fluttered gracefully to the floor, completely embracing me in its magnanimity. I must have looked as though I was wearing a burka with ducks on it.

I tried again, as one should.

This time the direction finding was better and I seized the two corners with a cry of “Aha!” and I turned the cover inside out.

I was now beginning to feel like one of those scientists who do everything from behind about a metre of solid glass, using frightening prosthetic limbs of soughts.

Unfortunately I then realised that I hadn’t straightened out the duvet, and so, refusing to let go of the corners, I attempted it with my hands inside the cover. This was a bit like threading a needle with boxing gloves on.

Patience triumphed and I was finally rewarded with a duvet in a lovely clean cover; which was inside out.

I went to bed.

CB

29/1/10

Don’t bet on this one…

I SEE from last week’s edition of the Herald that two South Coast pubs have applied for a casino licence. This has echoes of Gilbert and Sullivan, John Cleese and that which is too awful to contemplate.

There can be only one motivation for the licensee of these merry premises – making money. And I have nothing against that.

However, there are other factors to be considered, and it would be only the greediest of men that would not consider them.

In the case of one pub it is at the gate of a secure village, occupied most of the year by retired folk of reasonable intent, and in the season by their children and grand children, presumably of similar intent, and such has been the case for half a century. What these good people would make of a casino on their doorstep is one thing; what the casino would make of their lives is altogether another.

Casinos, by their nature, attract a colourful crowd. There are the habitual gamblers, who can afford the money and have nothing better to do; there are the drinkers, who probably can’t afford the money but the drinking and gaming takes their mind off that; and then there are the shadowy figures, the lurkers, to whom many of the first two categories fall prey. At least that is my theory and I am sticking to it.

Among these are the beggars, the thieves and the ladies in short, tight skirts, which soon become shorter and tighter.

Now to envisage the car park and its little green sward dotted, if not swarming, given the walking proximity of Nzimakwe, with those whose presence is clearly undesirable, is not such a pleasant prospect.

Of course, none of these things may come to pass, but the insensitivity involved has already the makings of a disaster. The very idea is not a good one.

The pub of which I speak is there for the convenience of those who own it, namely the shareholders of the company that in turn owns the village. It is a service, not a gold mine. Wouldn’t you have thought that common sense and courtesy would have suggested a by-your-leave?

The pub will probably never make much money, but then that was not the intention. Some things in life do not have a price attached, for the simple reason that they are not for sale.

On another tack I see there is an election coming up. This has been clearly demonstrated by the council, which, clearly tired of filling up pot holes every five minutes, has begun the rebuilding of the roads in Palm Beach.

A bouquet (hogwart will do) for the council and a bonus (they are very fashionable) for the chaps actually doing the heavy lifting. Those of us who have the privilege of living in this pretty village are very grateful – if maybe a tad cynical. Our population swells from about 400 to 4000 during the season and so there will be a lot of happy campers and holiday home owners around this season.

Little things…

I DON’T know who it was that first came up with the hideous word ‘relocating’ to mean ‘moving house’, but I imagine it was an American. The yanks have a tendency to prefer more syllables; it makes them feel better educated I imagine.

Now that I am, almost, settled in my new home I find visiting the old one, which is being mothballed, rather pleasant. There are many things I miss: the space, the view, even the pool, although this summer has had all to short a stay.

Looking around at the start of this adventure I saw that much was to be done. More to the point much was to be done away with. This became an eminence grise, a dull presence somewhere at the back of the mind. Some people, in fact many of us I suspect, are reluctant to throw anything away. You never know when you might need it, etc.

So I began with the books destined for the South Coast Hospice, whose bookshop is gradually being stocked with some treasures. It was at about this time that the problems started. I picked an elegantly printed, slim volume of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The inner voice said, reproachfully, you are not really going to throw that away, are you? It was as though I was throwing away my dog.

I took hold of myself and put the book in the box. And then took it out again, rather like Oscar Wilde I think it was, who spent a whole morning putting in a comma and the whole afternoon taking it out again.

Eventually about ten boxes were full. I learnt many years ago that whisky cases are a good shape and easy to carry, and the average book or two weighs something similar to a bottle of whisky. Of course if you can’t find any whisky cases you can always buy a full one and drink the contents. This is guaranteed to make the choosing of the doomed books even more difficult.

The cookery books, a small but interesting collection, were a different matter altogether. I had a special built in bookcase for this old friend, some of whom, like Elizabeth David, MFK Fisher, Richard Olney and Jane Grigson I read over and over again.

When it came to my beloved encyclopaedia the harsh light of reality was somewhat startling.

I bought my Macmillan encyclopaedia at about the time I bought my two-volume Shorter Oxford. They both came from Exclusive Books in Hill brow in the 1970s. There is no problem with the dictionary, but the 22 volumes of the Macmillan caused some alarm.

Who, in this day and age, would want such a thing? Pupils at school and students at college have nowhere to put such a thing and wouldn’t know how to use it anyway. All has been swept away by the ubiquitous Google.

I am one of those whose delight is looking something up in the book, only to be distracted by something far more interesting. Did you know, for instance, that Charles Darwin married a highly competent pianist, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the potter? I soon forgot what it was I was looking up, but it might have been ‘dassie’.

I have a little family of these delightful creatures living in my neighbour’s roof. They look so complete and fussy. They are a nice replacement for my other little family at the house, the francolins. There are six of them who climb the hill every morning and ever evening to eat the seed I put out under the Norfolk pine. Father francolin is called, obviously, Benjamin. When the six of them are eating they are as neat as pins, hunched like seamstresses over their diligence.

CB

15/1/10