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