Please proceed…

CHRIS BENNETT faces life in New York.

PROCEDURE? Sticking knives into my living flesh? It might have been procedural to the surgeon and his delightful assistant, but to me it was an operation. A major operation; on my face, to boot. Very cheeky.

But I did appreciate the eminent gentleman's matter-of-fact, calm approach. He had done it before; doubtless hundreds of times. Less bother than a car service, I shouldn't wonder.

But for me? Well, I prostrated myself, fully clothed, on the table. He must have done this before, I thought, because he didn't tell me to relax.

I tried to hide my hands underneath me, knuckles as whited as the proverbial sepulchre.

I caught the steely glint of a hair-fine needle out of the corner of my eye. I could sense that he was caressing syringes. He didn't say, "This won't hurt"; he said, "I believe you write for the South Coast Fever".

At that point he struck; gently, it must be said. It hurt, of course. It was a local anaesthetic; much better than the imported one, I am told.

"No," I replied, through the remaining half of my face, "I write for the South Coast Herald. The one for grown ups".

I was in the hands, so to speak, of the good Doctor Singh, Dermatologist. My GP had recommended that a persistent small patch of the skin on my face might be a problem. I thought I had better get rid of it (the small patch, not the face; mind you…) before flying to the fleshpots of New York.

After what seemed like a small eternity of pulling, pushing and digging in this mute and reluctant flesh, the good man announced that he had finished. Almost.

At this point Celia entered theatre left. She was holding what appeared to be a tangled small bundle of fishing line. The by-now-weary corner of my eye caught yet more glinting. Eyes wide shut, I tried to imagine what Tolstoy would have made of all this; about ten pages I shouldn’t wonder.

The relaxed sensibility of these two skilled people went a long way to making the whole, dare I say procedure, quite endurable.

I rose from the awkward, narrow table on which I had lain like a specimen. Of what, don’t ask.

The doctor then declared he was not satisfied with the bandaging. A while later I had been swathed in a pressure bandage, what appeared to be several metres of sticky crepe wound around my head like a nun’s wimple. I left the medical centre bearing no little resemblance to the picture of Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol.

As a parting shot, the by now admirable Dr Singh said, “Try not to smile”. Not a lot of effort required there then.

Packing for my forthcoming adventure in the former colonies loomed rather large this week. For the rest of this month I shall be living in Brooklyn, close by Prospect Park.

I have been practising American. Interestingly, I find the word fall quite a lot more attractive that the rather pedantic autumn. It is a gentler, more descriptive word. I am told the fall is one of the most beautiful seasons in New York State.

By this time next week I shall know, all being well.

CB

14/10/11

552wds

Bank holiday…

CHRIS BENNETT laments the passing of banking.

WHAT with the bank on one hand and the dump on the other...

Banks have become odd institutions. I have been with the same bank for more than thirty five years, during which time a lot of what I might call the solid core of living, a good home, a practical car and the wherewithal to put food on the table and words on paper have, to a not insignificant degree, been helped by the interest and understanding of that bank.

Some years ago, when I was working in Johannesburg, I had a bank manager by the name of Ernie Arrow. He was not only a good manager, but a fine human being to whose guidance and advice I warmed. He encouraged me to buy my first house, in Jan Smuts Avenue, then a quiet, leafy drive linking Rosebank and Dunkeld; now a nightmare traffic jam.

Some years later, when I was transferred to Cape Town, he gave me a letter of introduction to a colleague, the manager of the bank’s branch in Sea Point. We got on well.

The relationships were underpinned by advice my father had given me: always get on well with your bank manager and your doctor. They are in the same business – helping people.

Well not any more they ain’t.

But, thanks to the delightful help of a long time pal at the bank, I soon found out why I was being treated rather shabbily. I am too old; so much for respecting the constitution.

Talking of dumps, (by which remark I am, of course, referring to my being dumped) I recently sold my house. I have moved to a smaller one. In the course of preparing the old house for the new owner I ended up with two huge piles of garden refuse; small tree trunks, branches, leaves, twigs and all that. It took two bakkie loads to cart the stuff to the municipal dump at Glenmore, wherein lies the following tale of woe.

Accompanied by two pairs of willing hands (and willing tongues for translation) I arrived at the gate to be told “No”.

Another good citizen with a bigger load of rubbish than mine, came over and asked if I had a phone. We called the number of the office of rubbish, or whatever name it is known by, and eventually were given leave to unload our gardens’ winter detritus.

We had at first been told the dump was full. A closer inspection confirmed this and I asked the good man who gave the appearance of being in charge how frequently the truck arrived to take the stuff away. “Every day”’ he said. I sighed inward relief that he had not used “On a daily basis”.

Looking at the number if tree trunks, branches and so on, I deduced it must be one helluva truck. It took about twenty minutes to unload the bakkie into an already groaning skip. What, I wonder, is the problem?

Turning to a less frustrating matter than banks and bossies, I noticed what appears to be the beginnings of a bridge appearing near the excellent Margate Pick ’n Pay.

If this is so the people behind the edifice are to be warmly congratulated.

It has always struck me as rather shameful that in a country, a democracy nog al, where the bulk of the population relies on what we laughingly call taxis and are most of the time pedestrians, that little thought is given to the plight of these good people. Given that most drivers exceed the speed limit, crossing a main road is not a walk in the park.

This new bridge, if such it be, will be warmly welcomed and it will make life a lot easier for a lot of people.

CB

7/10/11

620wds

Tales from the Vienna Wors …

CHRIS BENNETT encased in musings on the humble sausage.

SO, last Saturday was Heritage Day or National Braai Day; for some.

Here on this languid, lagoon festooned paradise of banana, sugar cane and nut growing enterprises, it rained. Not the superb display of a subtropical downpour, but a teasing segue of bright, if slate-grey, skies and wimpish little showers pointless enough to put out the fires and dirty the car.

In fairness I have to admit that in my small circle we had been practicing for some time.

At a previous braai I had served some of the most extraordinarily delicious bacon and chicken sausages from Mrs W’s little shop in the Shelly Centre. A friend brought along a packet of viennas.

Ja, well, no, fine.

The thing about viennas, or so I have always found on the rare occasion that I have been reduced to eating them, is that they need lots of eye-watering English mustard, otherwise they taste of nothing. But then there is no accounting for taste.

The Vienna sausage, which is German, was invented by a butcher from Frankfurt. In order to thoroughly confuse the consumer they are also called Frankfurters. This priceless gem of trivia I didn’t know until I investigated.

If you thought things could not get more trivial, I have to reveal that the sausage in this form has been around for some time.

My delving turned up the coronation of Maximillian II, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1564. His lofty nomenclature was something of a pretence; in reality he was king of Germany.

At this doubtless august event hot dogs were served. The portrait of His Imperial Majesty suggests he was very fond of them; his rotundity appears to be both imperial and majestic.

Curiously Wikipedia says that the hot dog dates from the 13^th century and cites this coronation as the first recorded use of the food. There is a discrepancy of 300 years here somewhere. However, if you cast your mind, as some can, back to about 1250, then it is feasible that the butchers of Frankfurt (the city in which Maximillian was chosen) used dog meat in their confections. And the sausages were served hot, so …

"The best thing a man can have, in my view, is health."

So wrote the ancient Greek philosopher and playwright Epicharmos of Kos about 500 BC. Kos is an island in the Aegean, not far from Rhodes, and is one of many beautiful Greek islands.

This worthy ancient wrote between thirty five and fifty comedies, one of which was called simply The Sausage. Sadly I have been unable to uncover any substantial stuffing for this spicy piece of information.

.

His saying, quoted above, was born out by his longevity. He lived, according to the scholars, until he was over 90.

I think Heritage Day is one of our most sensible celebrations. We look to our past, both in order to appreciate what we have now and in order, possibly, to learn something.

The obverse side of the Heritage Day coin, is celebrating our national (unofficial) sport: lighting a pyre and throwing pieces of dead sheep at it; or, for some of us, writhing and fainting coils of wors. In time honoured fashion we stand with a chop in one hand and a glass of somebody’s blanc de blanc in the other.

As only South Africans can, and especially those of us in this corner, we may gaze out to the shining sea and, contemplating the horizon, debate the future.

Such are the joys of the South Coast; long may Heritage Day last.

CB

30/9/11

600wds

A fly on the wall…

CHRIS BENNETT has been doing some planning.

IT’S been an interesting week, not least because the telephones are working again, thanks to Telkom’s serious efforts, encouraged I suspect by a little nudging from one or two lesser gods.

Not, unfortunately, sufficiently to let me avoid burning a not insignificant sum on arranging insurance, through my credit card, for a coming overseas trip. I had to do the whole thing by cellphone, that invaluable and iniquitously priced boon of the 21^st century.

The young man in the card’s call centre, who could not have been more polite and helpful, abided by the rules, and quite rightly. However (have you noticed, there is always a however) this meant that he had to read the entire document to me over the phone.

Of course, he couldn’t read; very few people can. By read I mean read out loud and interpret what is written in such a way that it is intelligible to the listener. He didn’t and it wasn’t. Which is hardly his fault.

Now why this poor chap should have to read to me, for what seemed like an hour, something that neither of us could understand, is a mystery. O magnum mysterium.

The thing was written in legalese, probably by a committee, which had more than likely argued for thirty months over the wording. I could have read it in black and white and still not have been very enlightened.

I felt sorry for the guy when he finally got to the end; either of the document or his tether. Which, I am not quite sure.

Reading is a highly specialised field of endeavour. I trained for three years before I could read my way out of a paper bag, let alone through a ten minute news bulleting. And yet this guy was required by the rules, or so he said, to do this onerous task.

Worse was to come. My call to the centre of the universe, or wherever it was, was made on the dubious share call system. My share of the call, which brought business to the credit card, was R81. That was about a quarter of the cost of the insurance.

But at least the coming family reunion is now organised.

I shall be flying via Doha in the Middle East, the city which is home to my favourite TV news service, Al Jazeera.

Several South Africans, including a South Coaster, work at Al Jazeera. They include Mike Hanna, whose father, Arthur, was my department head at the SABC a long time ago. The last time I saw Mike he was still at school.

Then there is the excellent Jane Dutton, one of the world’s great news anchors who first appeared in the early days of eTV, if I am not mistaken. And of course another of my heroes, Anand Naidoo, from Port Shepstone. Anand is a broadcaster of huge talent and experience. He is now based, for AJE, in New York.

Which is where the reunion of the remnants of the family will gather. My brother lives in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park. We have very similar tastes in literature, music and food, which should be alright in New York. He is a talented cook, which given that our parents were bakers and confectioners, is hardly surprising.

CB

23/9/11

580wds

The tangy airs of spring…

CHRIS BENNETT decides it is time to emerge from the duvet of winter.

SPRING has arrived with the punctuality of a

Swiss train, and with a similar, admirable lack of fuss.

I think it was on the morning of the first of this month that I sat in my reading chair looking through the french windows and marvelling at the delinquent cavorting of a pair of humpbacks, when I noticed that the huge fig that hangs languidly above my balcony was bursting with green shoots.

I suppose it is only natural to welcome the spring. I don’t know which of the many aspects of this lovely time of the year is my favourite; maybe it is the lengthening days, maybe the advent of the warm weather.

To me it carries a certain element of inspiration. I always find it easier to work on my column for this exalted newspaper when the weather is warm.

I have been following with some interest events surrounding the tarring of the road down to Gate Store from Palm Beach. This seemingly insurmountable task has now been in progress for the best part of ten years. It would have taken the Romans about a fortnight. But, to be fair, their labour practices were a tad questionable.

I remember asking a friend at some point in 2002 if the road would ever be surfaced. He said it had already been approved. The condescending nod of approval is one thing; the back breaking task of implementing the decision another. Rather familiar.

In the last week there has been a flurry of bustling activity.

I look forward to the finishing of the exercise, not least because I shall be able to follow the vagaries of the Gate United football team without having to subject the suspension of my little car to the corrugations and pit holes* of the present track.

One thing I do fear. Where the road enters a blind corner there is an all important store, Gate Store, which is a hub of village activity. It was here that the previous, delightful, councillor held court in her bakkie. She would listen to the pleas and woes of the people; a wonderful example of what is meant by democracy, literally taking the power to the people.

It is at this bend that I fear we shall see tragic events. I hope I am wrong, but given the driving style of most of the taxi drivers I encounter the corner presents little more than an adrenalin driven challenge. We shall see.

Talking of roads, I was happy to see the road marking teams hard at work over the past few weeks. Not so long ago this sort of undertaking was left until the start of the holidays.

Another glitch that caused a frisson last week was the alleged theft of copper cable from Telkom, which, on Radio 702 this week, Mr Malema told us is the electricity supplier, unless I heard wrongly.

Now urban legend is a wondrous thing. Within a few days of scores of us losing our landlines the drums were telling us that Telkom had no money for a new cable. What do they have money for, I wonder?

Some of my friends with business were understandably upset. There were prospects of a lot of men and women losing their jobs, thus depriving goodness knows how many dependants within the extended families of their food supply.

Fingers crossed, chaps.

* A pit hole is a pot hole about the size of a baby’s bath. It does offer one advantage; in a small car you can drive down one side, across the floor and up the other. Well, almost.

CB

16/9/11

Is nothing sacrosanct?

CHRIS BENNETT muses on a future without books.

I SUPPOSE it had to happen. I read this week about the latest development in the arcane world of the eBook.

The boffins have now added a soundtrack to the device, which monitors your reading speed and provides noises at the appropriate point. I kid you not.

A host of squiggly little reactions accosted what I am pleased to call my brain.

Noises off? Hasn’t someone, somewhere, missed the point?

There are good books and bad books. There are no pornographic books in my view and that of many others: only the eye of the beholder provide that.

And it is this very minds eye, this astonishing manufacturer of images, sounds, concepts; this interpreter of complex little symbols into vast stretches of its own imagination that has now been told it needs help. Really?

The whole point of reading is that, assuming the material is skilfully and lucidly written, the brain will use the words to interpret everything that is written. Should Jane Austen describe a scene in which there is a clap of thunder very few of us would need to actually hear the sound of thunder. If we did it would very likely destroy the continuity of our images and the line of the story. Reading is best done in silence.

In the days when I taught reading and writing for radio I particularly enjoyed the way in which my colleagues were slightly startled when I explained why, as a medium, radio was so superior to television. In essence, what I said was this:

The processes of reading the written word, hearing the spoken word and writing the words themselves are closely related. Radio is a refined form of reading, with one remarkable change to the process. Listening to the radio, be it music or speech, allows you to occupy your hands with something else, something familiar with which you are comfortable. You cannot do this reading a book.

It might be knitting in the case of a talented woman, or model building, cooking or any number of other activities in which the brain is able to concentrate on the radio and at the same time supervise repetitive tasks which bring pleasure. All the images conjured up by the words on the radio, be they news, talks or drama or sport, will be supplied effortlessly to the mind.

This is why the mind fundis of today tell us that radio is companionship, whereas television is distraction. Radio is interactive, and so is reading. In Britain radio listenership has grown in leaps and bounds over the past two decades. When I was a newsreader on the BBC World Service in the 1960s the chief announcer (I think the august post was held by John Snagge) rejoiced in the title Head of the Spoken Word. Dare I say that says everything.

The very idea of reading a book (and, by the way, I quite like the iPad and the Kindle) in which I hear the sounds of a waterfall, a train, cows bleating or sheep mooing would drive me nuts. Yes, I know cows moo and sheep bleat; I was just making sure you were paying attention.

I sometimes fear that the encouragement of reading among the cellphone obsessed, Internet enslaved yoof of today is a lost battle.

CB

9/9/11

The line is far from immaterial…

CHRIS BENNETT celebrates the arrival of spring, and possibly the trains.

I READ with interest an article in this newspaper a couple of weeks ago which dealt with a proposed railway service between Port Shepstone and Germiston.

There were two reasons for my interest; the liking I have always had for rail travel and the linking of the underrated and under utilised sometime harbour of Port Shepstone with Gauteng.

It has always seemed to me such a pity that rail travel in our country has, by and large, been abandoned. I accept that many aspects of the railway service for which the Indian sub-continent, the Americas and Europe are world famous leave a lot to be desired; but the fact remains that the governments of those noble lands have maintained that service in the interests of their people, interests which are not very visible in the workings of the South African government.

I am not sure which is the more desirable of the two termini; Germiston and Port Shepstone share a somewhat bald and unappealing aspect, but the service could be very useful.

The new, and largely unused, King Shaka Airport, which, when I travelled to it on the excellent bus service from Margate a few months ago, seems to be somewhere near the Mozambican border, is not a great help to the South Coast. Nor, come to that, is the Margate airport, a far more pleasant little facility, rumoured to be flying again ere long.

So let us await with anticipation the return of the railway to this part of the world.

Something else arriving shortly will be spring. It is possibly most people’s favourite season, possibly because it means the end of the cold(ish) weather and the arrival of flowers, bees and nestlings.

Spring is such a sensible word; it seems to convey much that we associate with the awakening of the seasons. In most cultures spring is considered the first season of the year.

The season is quite short lived in this fair land. Those lucky enough to live there, or lucky enough to get to the northern areas of the Cape can see the near-miracle of the blooming desert; those in the Highveld watch for the wonderful change from the dusty, parched brown of the wiry tree-dotted hills and mountains around Pretoria to the verdant splendour of imminent summer.

My local hostelry, the High Rock, will be celebrating the first day of spring - on the second day of spring – with an event we enjoy every year. The spring braai will be tomorrow, Friday evening, September 2 at about 6pm.

The landlord, Paul, and his delightful partner Belinda (one of those very pretty names of which we hear far too little these days) will be in charge of things and all the various necessities for a successful braai will be available.

I gather they are also arranging a fine spring evening.

CB

28/8/11

Reading under8ted…

CHRIS BENNETT muses on words.

A READER asked me what I meant in a recent column by “hat-tip to Dylan”. When one is obliged to credit a colleague or another writer, without getting too serious and academic, it is customary to say a hat-tip, from the old custom of tipping one’s hat in acknowledgement.

In this case I was referring to the twentieth century Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas. I had paraphrased this opening stanza:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

It is particularly poignant for those of more mature years; as Oscar Wilde said, “Youth is wasted on the young”.

Notwithstanding the turmoil on the shores of the ancient Mediterranean Sea, the crucible of our learning, young people and the culture of reading have been in the international spotlight again recently.

A study by the National Literacy Trust in England has revealed much about the sad business of getting children to read. It follows the publication of a major international league table last year that showed reading standards among children in Britain had slipped from 17th to 25th in the world.

The study has shown that one in six children are failing to read books, largely because they spend an increasing amount of time texting friends (what we call sms, a very clunky name), sending emails and searching Facebook and Twitter. The very names of the last two give me a twitch.

I admit to using Facebook, but often wonder why. I suppose that I enjoy reading what other people are up to, and, in any case, I spend a lot of time on my computer, researching and reading and Facebook takes very little of that time.

But back to the books.

The British survey also found that reading frequency declined sharply with age, with 14- to 16-year-olds being more than 10 times as likely to shun books altogether as those in primary education.

The British Secretary for Education, the erudite Michael Gove, commented that pupils should read 50 books a year, completing the equivalent of about a novel a week; the academic demands placed on English schoolchildren, he said, had been “too low for too long”.

I was rather taken aback to learn that modern teenagers, approaching whatever matric is called today read one or two books for the exams. One or two?

I seem to remember having to choose a Shakespeare (Hank Cinq), a Dickens (Great Expectations), the works of a poet (Gerard Manley Hopkins, Windhover and God’s Grandeur) and a string of others, most of which I have forgotten. It was instilled into the mewling litter of boys in my class that nothing was more important than reading, and to me it remains a fundamental truth to this day, did we but know it.

Although I concur with the idea that the standard of education in this country, at certain institutions, is possibly higher than that in Britain, I am alarmed by the lack of language skills in the young black people I know here on the South Coast.

There are, of course, quite a few admirable exceptions, one of whom works for the Herald and is both a gifted speaker and writer, but the bulk of our young people seem to have had little chance to understand why language, especially English, is so critically important.

They will find out all too soon, I fear.

CB

26/8/11

Of owls and pussycats…

CHRIS BENNETT reflects on the peculiarity of ageing.

MAY this year was, for me, as merry a month as you could wish.

I spent most of it in a Cape Town newly blessed with a world class transport system based on dedicated bus roads (and lanes).

I enjoyed time in a friend’s house on the mountain in Kalk Bay, just below Boyes Drive, overlooking the pretty fishing harbour and comfortably within walking distance of the Brass Bell, a restaurant and brassy, leathery old pub, the inside of which I saw a not inconsiderable amount.

From there I went to stay with a friend in Sea Point, close to the SABC building in which I worked for a few happy years about thirty years ago, during which I lived in the then enchanting Hout Bay.

But one outstanding memory of those sunshiney May weeks in Cape Town came in the form of an invitation from a pal of my friend. She is one of those in charge of a small retirement village called Nerina Gardens in the heart of Fishhoek, one of the many towns on the coast of the dramatic and beautiful False Bay.

I had never consciously visited a village of this sort before and it proved a revealing exercise. It made me think of age.

An article on the BBC website this week took me back to that day; the visit had triggered some interesting discussions about the elusive aspect of time that we call age.

Tony Blair, he of the People’s Princess fame (or should it be notoriety? we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt: he was, after all, a politician) when he was living at Ten Downing Street at the expense of the princess’s people, called attention to the fact that he felt no older then than he did as a young teenager, or words to that effect.

But then he wouldn’t; with a few exceptions we all feel like that. Age is as much a state of mind as anything, in my experience.

Written by Tom de Castella and Virginia Brown, the piece quoted one or two memorable comments including this from Leon Trotsky: "Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man."

The writers go on to say that behavioural thinkers believe that most people are incapable of imagining themselves getting old, one reason why people fail to invest sufficiently in a pension.

They added that it underlined the idea that humans distinguish between their present and future selves. "It's been shown that people's identification with themselves diminishes as they look into the future," says Daniel Read, professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School. "It comes down to not caring about ourselves in the future."

Talking to residents, many of whom were not much older than I, at Nerina Gardens, we found much in common; maybe because we had lived north of the Limpopo decades ago and had plenty about which to reminisce.

Although loneliness can be a tragedy for many, it seems to be becoming less of a problem as time goes by. This, of course, may be due to the fact that so many people are living longer; one’s friends die less often, if you see what I mean.

On the South Coast we form a large part of the community and have a lot to contribute. It has been my good fortune to write this column, making me feel gainfully employed and giving me pleasure at the same time. I was one of those blessed with the capacity for enjoying my work, work which stopped rather abruptly at the age of 53; I changed horses and took to writing. Writing beats working any day.

I enjoy living on the South Coast for many reasons, not the least of which is that I am among people of my own age; I also enjoy the knowledge that there are those older than I.

But not many.

CB

19/9/11

Roads and flounders…

CHRIS BENNETT dwells on the troubled days of one of the country’s most charming towns.

I WAS delighted to read Shona Aylward’s admirable front page story in last week’s South Coast Herald. It was a response to an article in a national paper describing Margate as, among other things, tacky. Frankly, this is not a bad description, albeit a bit unfair.

On several occasions during the almost eight years that I have had the privilege of writing this column I have written about Margate, a town of which I am very fond. 

The points under discussion in both the recent columns are similar: the town, please not a city, has suffered from an insidious neglect, a neglect for which local politicians are to a large extent accountable in that they are too slow to react, and seemingly to grasp, the urgency of major situations. 

I suspect that much of the problem of “vanishing Margate” lies at the door of the council in control when the highway, the R61, was built bypassing the town.

There can be few examples of towns which have successfully overcome the anaesthetising effect of a bypass, but they do exist and Margate should be one of them. The bypass was to the town’s advantage. 

I still support those who believe not building on/off ramps at Wartski Drive was an error of biblical proportions. 

Wartski Drive is the address of the CBD, the Margate Police Station, the Margate Hospital and other medical suites, the Hibiscus Centre, and the Margate Airport. And yet Wartski Drive has no on/off ramps. 

Instead there are ramps at Alford Road, a charming and once sleepy residential road of pleasant homes belonging to people who have worked hard to live in such bucolic surroundings. The ramps ensure that it is easy for visitors who want to get into Margate, with no effort, can get lost in Ramsgate instead. 

Some years ago I researched this for my column and called a gentleman in Pietermaritzburg whose lot it was to field questions from idiot journalists. He told me that to build at Wartski Drive would have been possible, but the Seaslopes and Wartski ramps would have been too close together. For whom, I wondered. 

A second major problem for this pretty little town is the traffic flow, the inconvenience and troublesomeness of which seems to have taken more than half a century to penetrate the fogged minds of our leaders.

One would not have thought that it was beyond the wit of man to solve this problem. As usual it is addressed rather than solved, and having been addressed it is promptly forgotten.       

Previously I have suggested that it might be worth looking at creating, for the seasonal holidays, a circular system of traffic flow. Why not have the north bound traffic on the highway and the south bound on Marine Drive from the Izotsha Road to Seaslopes Road? 

Of course there would be problems; not the least of which would be an outcry from the business community. But following last week’s excellent article even they may see the better of the two evils here is the route of survival.

Having garnered much well deserved praise for the wonderful, if a tad slow, job done with the town’s splendid fishing pier, a shining example of democracy working as it should, the local authorities would be well advised to solve these problems before it is too late. 

Margate should not be allowed to die.

CB

12/8/11 

The heart of the matter…

CHRIS BENNETT books his place for a little reading.

ONCE a month, along with millions of other South Africans, I attend to a small matter involving the affairs of the heart. My cardiological minder dispatches (well, maybe not personally) my medicinal needs to Port Edward, making life considerably easier for those of us who live in this neck of the woods.

Rather splendidly, the parcel is collected from the Port Edward Library, a fine and, I trust, thriving institution. It is also not a bad piece of architecture – to my eyes, anyway.

The hall, for such it is, in which the medicines are dispensed, is cavernous, and periodically does duty for other community functions such as people lying on the floor and waving their legs in the air. I think it is called aerobatics or something.

The man from the hospital in Port Shepstone, which, as most of us down here know, is just this side of Durban, brings in his potent patents and they are laid out on trestle tables neatly, sequentially and alphabetically.

Reigning supreme over this operation of compassion are the volunteers.

Volunteers are interesting people; selfless, patient and all sorts of other lovely things. Most of the time. The word, as I am sure you know, is derived from the Latin word voluntas, free will.

These three are sensibly aged women of fine aspect and they oversee what for me has become a most pleasant social occasion. I am not much of a one for social occasions, so those that last about four minutes and bring delight into my life, a life not totally devoid of other delights, are most welcome.

The library itself is a good place to visit; but then they usually are.

Over many thousands of years libraries have been one of the main fuses that drive the flower of human intellect (hat-tip to Dylan).

The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant library of the ancient world.

It functioned as a major centre of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323-283BC) or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II (283–246 BC).

It is said that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC Julius Caesar "accidentally" burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate an attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea. It would appear that the name Julius is not too propitious.

The library contained a walk, gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms. This model's influence may still be seen today in the layout of university campuses.

The library itself is known to have had an acquisitions department and a cataloguing department. A hall contained shelves for the collections of scrolls, as books were at this time on papyrus scrolls, from which we derive the term paper. It was rumoured that carved into the wall above the shelves, an inscription read, “The place of the cure of the soul”.

I was in the Port Edward library a while ago collecting my remedial lot. I was with a friend and I took him into the main room of the library to see something that had caught my eye some time ago.

It was a computer drawing of the proposed new intersection for access to Port Edward on what will eventually become the N2. It would appear, if I read the diagram correctly, that the off-ramps from the toll road will be built where the present road crosses the R61 to link Banners Rest and Port Edward south. There is a large hotel on the corner.

It is worthy of a look.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising…

CHRIS BENNETT finds himself recounting happy memories in the petrol hunt.

SERENDIPITY was lurking around my comings and goings last week, and provided a lighter side to the petrol excercise. On Monday a friend told me that there was unleaded petrol at Coastals.

Now this little establishment is one of my favourites; a sort of farming oasis hidden from the hurly-burly of the main road. I used to buy bird seed there when I had a garden full of birds.

Early in the morning, which at this time of the year means seven o’clock, as the sun rises at a quarter to seven, I toddled off to Coastals.

I am not too sure how to describe Coastals, but it reminds me of the small town of Brits, in what is now the Northwest Province.

In those days, forty years ago, there was a very big business called Dreiers, selling timber, hardware, small tractors, high quality china tea pots – I once saw some Arabia ware there – along side machetes, garden tools, paint and lawn mowers and what I believe are called plumbers’ requisites.

Dreiers followed business practises that were positively Victorian. After finding the tea pot, harrow or combined harvester you needed there was a series of ladies who courteously stamped the piece of paper you had just been given before you joined the queue to pay.

Buying a small tin of paint was an exercise in patience; or time consumption, whichever you prefer. It felt as though what should have taken one and a half minutes had taken most of the morning.

Earlier in my life I had encountered the Farmers’ Co-op in what was then Salisbury. It had the same charming, slightly surreal air to it. Outside the huge building, in beautifully wrought green and gold signs, were the names of the services offered. One contained the legend Grainbags, Hessian and Twine. I concluded that they must be the legal advisors to the farming fraternity.

Coastals is hidden away on the road to the delightfully named Bushy Vales, a name dating back, I suspect, to long before the days of bananas and sugar cane, both of which have their own allure when you don’t have to farm them.

The petrol and diesel pumps, of which there are three, spaced to allow tractors and trailers or big trucks to fill up, are attended by a sleepy fellow with a clipboard; he records the amount sold.

I said I would like to by three hundred rands of petrol. The young man said that they sold petrol in litres, which left me a bit confused; I said it was early in the morning.

Still a bit confused I went into the barn-like store to use the mini ATM, something of which I had never heard before.

The idea is that you put in your card in the usual fashion but instead of money the machine will give you a slip of paper, which I would exchange at the till; or at least I would have exchanged it had the till any money in it. But it didn’t; it was early in the morning. I could feel the temperature rising.

At this point a guardian angel appeared in the form of a lady who needed some piece of equipment, which she found and paid for. There was now money in the till and I thought my day was saved. It was then explained to me that I did not need cash for the transaction, the slip would stay in the till. Or something. Clearly I am easily confused.

I got my petrol and the proceeded to be sweetness and light.

It is nice to have a little old-fashionedness from time to time.

Spelling trouble…

CHRIS BENNETT reckons that the Internet is weaving spells we could do without.

I IMAGINE it is in the nature of the beast that most journalists of my acquaintance tend to spell out full words in their communications, be they email, sms or Facebook. Twitter is perhaps a different beast.

A British analyst, Charles Duncombe, has now revealed in the Telegraph an interesting, although sadly not surprising, aspect of website communication, something we have come to accept as easily as the cellphone.

Mr Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half. He also says that he is “shocked at the poor quality of written English.” Apparently the big problem for online firms isn't technology but finding staff who can spell.

It has surprised me on many occasions when I have spotted errors in the sub-editing of the online version of the Telegraph.

Of course one of the main reasons for this is the access young people have to the social websites and, more especially, to short messages, called, sensibly, texting in Britain. There is a danger somewhere here that the coded, truncated spelling used in texts will worm its way into the mainstream of English, if it hasn’t already done that.

The grandchildren of some of my friends tell me that they cannot use any kind of writing other than textspeak because they would be jeered at school.

"Often cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills," says Mr Duncombe.

Given that in Britain recently published figures show that internet sales are now running at £527m per week, I would have thought that alarm bells would be ringing in all corners of the English speaking world, which, of course, includes South Africa, where internet sales may be an emerging market, but a fast growing one.

Like me you have probably been the recipient of junk emails from other parts of Africa telling you that an enormous sum of money is waiting for you. The spelling in the email is a dead give-away.

Mr Duncombe tells of one applicant for a job he had advertised whose CV was entirely in textspeak, and largely incomprehensible.

His point is a good one, but I am not sure that we haven’t found ourselves shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Some months ago I was in Tshwane and came across a newly painted road marking which informed me SOTP. It took a moment or so for the penny to drop. The point of course is that the message simply does not get through as efficiently as the writer intended, if it gets through at all.

Signwriting used to be an art form; and in some cases it still is.

Last week, when I was still empowered by petrol, I drove to Port Edward. On the main road there are two entrances to Leisure Bay with clearly marked, professionally made signs; except one that howled at me “Leisure Veiw”.

It will, of course, all end in tears.

Crossed lines…

FROM time to time I rail on a bit in this column about the way in which our brother (and sista) leaders ignore those most in need.

How do you define need? In this country that is not easy. For the moment my concern is traffic; the needs of pedestrian traffic.

Once again the atmosphere of life on the South Coast shimmers and crackles with the sound of motor boats, fishermen, children and parents’ laughter (and sobs). A great time is had by all our visitors, thanks in no small part to the army of workers who clean, cook and generally make all the things on which a holiday coast relies, happen.

All the more reason why those in authority over us, especially our dear brother leaders, should be mindful of the needs of those workers.

In my journeys up and down the coast, sometimes as far afield as Durban, I am struck by the lack of simple amenities for pedestrians. The statistics tell us that more people (pedestrians) are killed on our roads each year than in other traffic incidents. And yet the authorities fail to build proper footpaths and footbridges.

Some time ago, in an incident involving a tipper truck, its driver, his passenger and the forces of nature, a pedestrian bridge was spectacularly demolished on the main road out of Port Shepstone to Umtentweni, right outside this august newspaper’s offices. No one was injured, the newspaper had a field day, and seemingly little effort has been made to replace the footbridge.

But it is not only the public sector which appears to ignore the needs of its clients. Look at big business.

A few years ago Pick ’n Pay, a supermarket chain that has reason to be grateful to a colossal number of South Africans (who, in turn have reason to reciprocate that gratitude) opened an excellent store in Margate, sited on the hill overlooking the town’s busiest taxi rank.

To get to the supermarket from the rank the people are required to cross one of the busiest, and by implication most dangerous, roads in Margate. The same people shop in droves at Pick ’n Pay because they are then saved the trouble of carrying that shopping great distances to the taxi rank.

I would have thought that Mr Ackerman and his marvellous team would have realised the value, in both terms of money and goodwill, of building a pedestrian bridge over that road. How much could it cost? And does that matter anyway?

Pedestrian bridges should surely be much more common; it is all very well for one section of the community to complain about poor delivery, with considerable justification, but how about a little thought for those risking their lives day after day crossing the R61 near Ramsgate/Margate.

Of course, we are not the only ones with pedestrian problems. This gem from Ceri Radford, a columnist in the Telegraph last week:

“A head teacher in South Wales has decided to build a footpath directly to the nearest McDonald’s, to prevent hundreds of pupils trudging along a dangerous dual carriageway every lunch time. I can see his point – safety above obesity concerns – but I would suggest an alternative. Instead of a footpath why not build an army-style assault course? A few tyre walls and a climbing net would burn off the Big Macs; a tunnel would limit the pupils’ circumference.”

I believe that would be being proactive.

CB

The staff of life…

FOR a long time now, at least 35 years, I have successfully dodged the making of a decent loaf.

A decent loaf can mean two things: either a lazy winter afternoon in the sun with a book and a ginger beer (or whatever takes your fancy), or it can mean clouds of bread flour everywhere.

I suppose my reticence is a shyness of cooking with yeast, or perhaps a fear of failure. All this is now a thing of the past, thanks to Pamela Shippel, who, for those of you who may not know, is the genius behind the charming Tea Rooms at Kirstenbosch Gardens, surely one of the most sublime places on earth to eat.

On a recent visit to Cape Town I lunched there with two friends; Mrs Shippel came over to join us for a while and signed the book I had just bought, My Way with Food, one of several highly successful books by Mrs Shippel on cookery. She wrote a delightful dedication.

I think my main appreciation for the book lies in the way the writer treats yeast and bread making; like some of my friends to this day, I had an irrational fear of making bread.

The first few attempts were to draw me into a web of mystery and disaster. When instructed to slap the dough onto a floured board, I obediently did so. The kitchen vanished; all was whiteness. Too much flour on the board.

I went into the bathroom to wash my hands and looking back at me from the mirror was what appeared to be Marley’s ghost. I washed my hands – almost of the whole thing – and did what I could with the whited spectre.

Back in the kitchen I prodded the dough; it bounced back, a soft and slightly warm substance of great tenderness and, seemingly, life.

It must have had life because at this point it knocked the bag holding the remaining kilogram of flour onto the stone floor. At last, stone grounded flour. Weeping seemed the only option, with, perhaps, a little light gnashing of teeth; I think I said, “Well, I never!”, but it may have been something with a little more bite.

I hoovered up the drift of flour – a lot, admittedly, had thankfully stayed in the bag - and returned to the dough, which was now sitting sulkily on the board; I swear I saw a disdainful eye.

I prodded it again and folded it over; I twisted it a bit and folded again and began to feel the restoration of my equilibrium. The feel of the dough was rather pleasing, if alarmingly sticky, so I carried on for a while.

Again following instructions, I plonked the dough into the bottom of a bowl, covered it with a damp tea-towel and left it sitting in a small corner, so to speak, of the bottom of the bowl.

Some considerable time later I removed the cloth and there was the dough; sitting in a small corner, so to speak, of the bottom of the bowl. I returned to the recipe. At this point I noticed a small blue sachet marked instant yeast next to the pages of the book. There ensued another bout of weeping.

Here ended the lesson.

My next attempt was aided and abetted by the adding of the yeast, the warming of the flour and the water, and the placing of the flour bag on the other side of the kitchen.

Vengeance and victory were mine. The bread rose, was knocked back; rose again; was baked, was cooled on a wire rack and was delicious.

Mrs Shippel had removed the mines from the field of wheat.

CB

8/7/11

Shakespeare, scooters and Mandarin…

CHRIS BENNETT found some surprising news this week…

A COUPLE of pals have recently acquired motor scooters; that is not surprising, or even interesting. What is, is that they are both around my age.

We tend to associate scooters and motor bikes with young people; this could change.

As you may have immediately surmised, they did this for reasons of economy; petrol has become unrealistically priced, and is likely to become more so.

Johan bought a large-wheel scooter and Fanie a small-wheel scooter. In my youth when I got my first scooter, with large wheels, the terms for those two types of motor bike were moped and scooter.

The two scooters with small wheels then dominating the market were the Lambretta and the Vespa both made in Italy, the home of the motor scooter. The Vespa, so named for the sound it emitted (vespa is the Italian for wasp), became the global image of a motor scooter, and is still highly popular today; but it comes at a price, a high price.

So my friends went Chinese, another indication of the way things have changed.

The Chinese presence in the world of motoring is still small in most countries – China would be an exception I would think.

That presence came to centre stage last week when the Chinese premier, Mr Wen Jiabao, made an official visit to Europe and Britain. In Britain he launched a new car, the MG Magnette, the first new MG in 16 years. The car is designed and built at the Longbridge factory near Birmingham, from parts manufactured in China by the company that owns the Longbridge factory and the MG marque. There is every chance that the car will be good.

Another thing that Mr Wen did was brought to my attention by a delightful Telegraph column by the Mayor of London, the delightful Boris Johnson. Mr Wen visited Shakespeare’s birth place, where he was given a private performance of Hamlet.

As Mr Johnson wrote, “It is, of course, a huge tribute to Mr Wen that he can follow Hamlet as Shakespeare wrote it, picking it all up off the bat in a way that most GCSE English students would struggle to imitate.”

He goes on to wonder if there is a UK politician who could go to Beijing and read the poetry of the Ming dynasty.

William Shakespeare was internationally known in his own lifetime, remarkable though that may sound. The first performance of Hamlet outside England was given in Indonesia in 1609; to save you the arithmetic, that was 402 years ago. According to Mr Johnson, who should know, in China Shakespeare is hailed as the greatest writer who ever lived.

This cooperation between two old societies reminded me of the relationship between the South Coast and its seasonal visitors, who are here this week and for a while to come. We provide the amenities and the accommodation, while they produce the wherewithal to enjoy them.

As I pointed out recently in this column it is good to see the fine new fishing pier in Margate.

Margate was the subject of an interesting section in last week’s Herald. It reprinted adverts and some history of the town half a century ago and made for fascinating reading.

CB