Winter of content...

CHRIS BENNETT has been basking in the winter sun.

WINTER always catches me out. I know we shouldn't call it winter, but the dry season sounds far too meteorological.

As usual, this year the first time I noticed the cool change was when the wind blew and the clouds raged across the sky, as if frustrated by their own lack of rain. People complained that we need the rain; but there is little point in that. The rain will fall when it is good and ready.

A trip to Nzimakwe showed the winter had arrived. The smoke haze was not just from the burning cane, but also from the burning home fires. Winter’s presence was to be seen in the well-wrapped denizens of this primitive and beautiful part of the province.

Various friends have seen whales, and the gannets were at it last weekend, so the elusive sardines may be on their way.

There appear to be many theories about what happened to the sardines; some say they have been fished out, which sounds a bit unlikely. Others say they don’t come close to our shores if the water is not the right temperature and yet others say it is all to do with climate change. Ja, well, no, fine.

This year I don’t doubt that most people will be obsessed with the football, which is understandable. I will follow it in the papers. Maybe.

One of the joys of winter, and there are many, is sitting in the sunshine of my kitchen to write. The sunlight is soft at this time of the year, travelling, as it does, through much more atmosphere. This means I, and some of my plants, can enjoy it without overheating.

In searching something in my favourite newspaper (the Telegraph) I came across the word rappelling. It is new to me; but then on finding out it has to do with climbing mountains I am not unduly surprised by that. It is described as being American English, a description which I thought carried just a mild hint of disdain. The participle used in this particular context meant sliding down ropes, either to scale a mountain, or in this case to board a ship from a helicopter.

It has a certain elegance, unlike much of the American English we fall into the appalling habit of using. A friend in Cape Town and I are on a crusade, doomed to failure, of course, to eliminate the ghastly word basis from daily use: as in use on a daily basis. For heaven’s sake!

The uneducated are very fond of stretching their sentences by using jargon and false extension, such as the one just mentioned. You’ll find a lot of it in the overstuffed world of bureaucracy.

I recently attended a birthday braai for a friend in the village, which was enjoyed by a lot of delightful people of a similar background and age to me. For a refreshing change jargon was conspicuous by its absence.

I’ll leave you with a good example of the fatuousness of this awful basis expression; it comes from a recent edition of the Jerusalem Post. The writer is Ann Goldberg, who should have known better; the Post is a highly regarded English language daily.

“The Romans, Ottomans, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Byzantines, right down to the British – all left their fingerprints on this town (Acre, Israel). Even today it is populated by an eclectic mixture of Jews, Christians and Muslims living, studying, working and trading together on a daily basis.”

On a what, Ms Goldberg?

If this good woman were to end the sentence at together it would have made perfect sense. After all trading, studying and working are daily activities.

I told you it was a losing battle, this crusade.