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