Golden Isle, golden word…

CHRIS BENNETT has had a delightful encounter with a word.

SERENDIPITY is a lovely, happy word; unfortunately opportunities to use it are few and far between.

I am writing this on the 12^th of April, my 68^th birthday, which I have the honour of sharing with one Jacob Zuma. Whether or not that can be viewed as serendipity is unclear.

As you may know, the Persian word for Sri Lanka (think cricket) was Serendip, a word itself taken from the Sanskrit Swarna Dweep (Golden Island).

It was the redoubtable Horace Walpole, renowned politician and man of letters of 18^th century England, who first came up with the bright idea of making the name into a noun – serendipity, meaning the unexpected appearance of something pleasant while looking for something else.

Through the ages many scientists have had cause to be grateful for the good Earl (Walpole was the Earl of Orford) because of the times when their research has produced something good and quite unexpected.

To quote Wikipedia: The amount of contribution of serendipitous discoveries varies extensively among the several scientific disciplines. Pharmacology and chemistry are probably the fields where serendipity is more common.

A recent chain of events has brought the word sharply to the forefront of my mind. I was waiting by the side of the main road between Margate and Port Edward for the arrival of a flatbed truck to take my car for some attention. I was attended by a friend.

After a quite short time a car pulled up on the opposite side of the road, from which emerged a very disconsolate couple. They, or their car at least, had a flat tyre. We watched proceedings with some interest.

A short while later a flatbed truck arrived; but not the one we were waiting for. It was a behemoth, a gigantic, snorting, bull horned thing the size of a small ship. It carried on its huge flatbed a front-end loader with a back actor. At least I think that is what it was.

In no time the men serving its every need had chains loosened and the thing started it agonising descent. We watched in astonishment.

A while later still, the flatbed for my car arrived and I was delighted that such a potentially boring wait had been transformed into pure theatre. There arose the word serendipity in my mind.

A few days later I was in Cape Town, enjoying coffee with a friend. I asked him if he knew the email address of an old colleague I wished to contact. “Yes”, he replied. “It is serendipity@...”

I was taken aback.

The following day I took friends to lunch at one of my favourite seafood restaurants in the beautiful Gordon’s Bay. The restaurant, in a development called Harbour Island, overlooks the fishing boat fleet. As we sat eating soles and sipping Boschendal Blanc de Blanc, my eye caught the name, writ large, on the side of one of the gleaming white vessels.

It was, of course, Serendipity.

Sources used in this column are: Encyclopedia of Biography and Wikipedia.