Our world of words…

CHRIS BENNETT considers the voluptuous pleasures of words.

AS we approach the beginning of another academic year, eyes watering at the news that 98 percent of matric students (‘learners’ drive cars) passed their exams, I thought you might enjoy this little quote from the Telegraph obituary for Professor Fred Halliday, a Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics

His fluency in Arabic, Farsi, Russian and the major languages of Western Europe earned him widespread respect, and his expertise on the complexities of the Middle East and the Muslim world reached a substantial public audience.

As a veteran of academic conferences Halliday’s pointed but light-hearted advice to the organisers of such events in an article in 2007 evoked the peripatetic life of the successful academic in the injunction “not to foist oppressive, embarrassing or vexatious local practices on often tired, patient and stressed visitors, such as long boring 'high table’ dinners (Oxford, Cambridge), third-rate Indian restaurants (most other UK universities), ducks’ feet as main course (Beijing), Stetson hats (Texas), sheep’s eyes (Khartoum), fatty sheep’s tails (Ulan Bator), mastication sessions of narcotic qat (Sanaa, Aden), hypocritical pretence at avoidance of alcohol (most Arab universities), evening meal at 6pm with no alcohol (East Coast, US), evening meal at 11.30pm with too much alcohol (Barcelona, Madrid, Moscow, Berlin), ponderous, ugly and useless formal presents (Baghdad and many other places), long, vapid and self-regarding introductions by the chair (much of the world), pestering and importuning about own students who have failed to get into the London School of Economics (pretty much everywhere).”

An academic friend from Pretoria commented on the pass rate by saying “the proof of the matric pudding will be in the university eating. Let’s see their progress after six months”.

I attended a small and private memorial gathering in Port Edward last week, to mark the committal to the sea of the ashes of my friend of many years, Wendy Benn. It was a singular privilege to be with the family, who came from as far afield as Hartbeespoort and Durban, London and Newcastle (the one under the snow).

The obsequies were under the gentle guidance of John Pretorius of Port Edward, where Wendy had enjoyed holidays for most of her life. Afterwards he commented that he was in agreement with my steady, if occasionally harping, entreaties to encourage more people to read, especially young people. The now renowned 98 percent of last year’s matric students (learners drive cars) may care to note this somewhat feeble endeavour.

In his account of the life of the island of Rhodes during the early 1950s*, Lawrence Durrell recounted his experiences as the editor (and sensor) of a local Greek language newspaper. Largely for the enjoyment of my editor and her excellent chief sub, I took out this little piece from this beautifully written book. Durrell writes of the people who come into the editor’s office, “to consult me on a point of style or an infinitive that had somehow split in the heat of composition”.

In a later book, about Cyprus**, he writes of the abbey in the little town of Bellapaix, where he had bought a house: “The tower of the church took the tawny golden light softly upon its ancient face, so that the stonework looked as if it were made of the compressed petals of the rambler roses which bordered the walks”.

To all those on the South Coast who about to enter university, especially if they are studying English, one of the by products of which is usually a lifelong habit of reading and enjoying it, I salute you.

* Reflections on a Marine Venus; Lawrence Durrell; Faber and Faber, Lodon, 1953. My copy is a 2000 edition and the book is probably still in print.

** Bitter Lemons; Lawrence Durrell; Faber and Faber, London, 1957.

CB

Roman festival…

CHRIS BENNETT had a splendid Christmas week.

I SHOULD tell you about Miriam.

Miriam is a hadeda ibis who has taken up residence in the fig tree above my balcony.

She arrived about a month ago, amid much trumpeting. Miriam and her mate, Caesar, proceeded to build what I imagine Miriam, were she able, would call a nest. This rickety, precarious bundle of sticks and twigs sits uncertainly on a fork of one of the tree’s branches, looking rather like a ground plan of the Germiston railway junction.

Miriam eyed me, her eye like a sparkling piece of coal, with great suspicion.

Before long she was sitting on a clutch of eggs; how many I couldn’t, at that juncture, tell. During this broody period Caesar fetched and carried for her, occasionally relieving her patient sitting. He spent much of the day in the tree opposite, a milk wood, from whence he guarded his domain.

The sun’s early horizon glow, around a quarter past four, is the time for birds to wake up; and the rest of the world, in Miriam’s view, shall wake up too. No good deed, as they say, goes unpunished. A conversation followed between Miriam and her mate, sitting about ten centimetres apart, at a decibel level that would shatter a whisky glass, and likely create the need for one.

He left for work; she stayed.

At first this morning alarum was startling. I have never been so awake so quickly. Now I have grown accustomed to her voice, and I smile into my pillow.

One day I noticed a change in the patterns of the birds’ comings and goings. The nest had two nestlings.

I read somewhere once that birds are the remnants of dinosaur life on this planet. I can well believe it. Miriam’s two offspring gave a new dimension to the meaning of cute and ugly. We called them Romulus and Remus; Romulus hatched first.

Some three weeks later they had grown almost to Miriam’s size. They were soon likely to fly.

The idea reminded me of the story of the little boy who asked his father why the hadedas made such a racket on taking off. The reply was, “Because they are afraid of heights”.

Time passed, and a few days ago the youngsters made a discovery: vocal chords. It is taking quite a long time for the novelty to wear off. The early morning calls (never was there anything less like a dawn chorus) now have a distinctly competitive edge; there is a race to see who can shout the loudest. And the longest.

Now we have reached the big issue – flying school.

Romulus was the first out of the tree and took to the air as he should – to the manner born. Remus was slower, and as I write is still sitting, hunched and peeved, on the branch. At least he is out of the nest.

Yesterday I watched delighted as Caesar came home, stalked along the branch to an unsuspecting Remus and stuck his beak under Remus’s tail, tipping him off the branch. The ensuing acrobatics were spectacular; Remus furiously flapped everything that would flap and screamed at the top of his not inconsiderable voice. He fell to the branch below, hung on, and shook his feathers and his dignity and went, clearly, into a black sulk. Flight can’t be far behind.

I expect this feathered family will have a splendid 2011, as I hope you will.

CB

Changing the guard…

CHRIS BENNETT has been celebrating the reintroduction of one of the oldest business names in his part of the Lower South Coast.

QUITE a lot, actually. Take Gate Store for instance. I became familiar with the name over the past few years during my periodic visits to friends in Inzimakwe, the village in which Gate Store is a prominent landmark.

Heinrich Kaiser was an early German settler in the Munster area.

Sometime around 1918, after being released from internment during the First World War, Heinrich Kaiser opened a butchery and store on the road from what is now Palm Beach connecting to the main road from Port Edward to Ezinqoleni.

He called his business Sangweni Store; sangweni, I am told, is the Zulu word for ‘gate’, and before long that English name was in use and is still in use today.

I can only surmise that there would have been a gate at this point on the road, or track, perhaps dividing two farms or parts of farms. This was subsequently confirmed on my enquiries.

Before researching Desirée Joubert’s excellent little book Munster and its Pioneers, as well as the equally excellent memory of Rod Kinsey, better known to some, perhaps, as the Herald’s Motor Racing correspondent, I had rather blandly assumed that at some point there was a Mr. Gate.

I was delighted to find out how wrong I had been.

It is refreshing to find a business reverting to its earlier name, thus continuing the history of the venture for future generations. More common these days is the abolition of old names for more modern and fashionable ‘sound bite’ names, as was the case with the Munster Trading Post which, a few years ago, became the Spar supermarket.

The trading post had been so called for many years, and Mrs Joubert’s book contains a photograph of a railways bus standing outside the building in1925.

Gate Store performed an important service to the people living in and around that part of Inzimakwe.

In 1985 the little store was destroyed in a fire, but the presence of the name continued, as it had achieved some geographical identity.

The following year the land was acquired by the brothers Dave and Rod Kinsey, descendants of the Deeks family who were among the first settlers in the area before the turn of the 20^th century. The family has long been respected for its constructive role among the Zulu inhabitants of this area.

The Kinsey bothers built new and larger premises on the land. These were let to a storekeeper and renamed Brown’s Cash and Carry; but, it need hardly be said, the crossroad continued to be called Gate Store. Old habits either die hard or go on forever.

Today Rod Kinsey is an advisor to the Mpenjati Trust, the present owners of the site. In essence this means that the enterprise is held to benefit the people whose interests it serves.

Following recent renovations Rod suggested that the store revert to its earlier name of, a suggestion which was eagerly accepted by the trustees.

The people, of course, still refer to both the store and its crossroad as Gate Store, so the renaming is all the more appropriate and practical.

The road from Inzimakwe to Palm Beach is currently undergoing major reconstruction and in the New Year it will be tarred, making life a lot easier for the inhabitants of this village.

I am grateful to Rod Kinsey and Michael Nkosikathi Diya for their help in writing this piece.

CB

Speaking of which…

CHRIS BENNETT reflects on an aspect of his career as a broadcaster; in a manner of speaking.

A MOVIE due to be released soon will be of interest to anyone with a liking for history; essentially British history, but so many other countries are intertwined with that history that the movie will have great relevance to most people.

It is called The King’s Speech. It tells of the battle of the shy and retiring Duke of York with his heavy stammer, a difficulty he overcame only with hard work and great perseverance; this enabled him to conduct with flair his role as king when his brother, Edward VIII (after whom Port Edward was named), abdicated in 1936. To me the movie is interesting because of the emphasis it puts on the importance of speech, whether in public or in private.

In this country we have a ruling elite that can scarcely express itself, something that is to the detriment of the running of the country and to its future.

“It is a contradiction of an age in which communication is more important than ever that exact, clear, crisp public speech is so rare.

“So many opportunities are missed. So many important things go unsaid, or badly said. Lionel Logue, who was an Australian, was part of a culture that saw good speech as a form of democratic emancipation. He helped a king, but he believed in good speech for all. Logue was part of an “elocution movement” that encouraged people to learn literature by heart and recite it clearly. He regarded speech defects as one of “the evils of civilisation” because they so compromised people’s capacity to play their full part in modern life.

“He was right, and he is still right.”

So wrote the English commentator Charles Moore in his recent Daily Telegraph review of the forthcoming movie The King’s Speech.

Mr Moore was writing about today; Mr Logue helped the then King George VI in the 1930s, hence the neatness of the last line of the quote.

The burden on our teaching profession, who themselves rarely are able to speak good English, the principle medium of communication in this country whether one likes it or not, is immense. It is not easy to explain to young people why speech is so important when the teachers themselves do not know.

Seldom do we hear the words lucidity, fluency and clarity used these days in connection with the way people speak; and it is hardly surprising.

In England today the standard of speech is recognised as having fallen to its lowest level; some blame education, others blame parents, and yet others blame the self-consciousness of English youngsters debilitated by that county’s weird class structure and its subsequent linguistic divisions. Remember My Fair Lady?

This sorry state was not so noticeable in the years that I attended school in England, although the looming Mr Walton and the rather ascetic Mr Kidger, our French and German masters, frequently pointed out that French boys and German boys took a pride in the proper use of their respective languages, and in many cases each other’s languages.

I have a good friend who visits me from time to time here in Palm Beach who speaks beautiful English, with scarcely a trace of accent, French par excellence and excellent German. She lives in The Hague and is a

Dutchwoman. I need hardly add that she lives a fulfilled and happy life.

We should be offering such to our coming generations.