Chris Bennett muses on a change of scenery.
STARTLED is a lovely word; I experienced the sensation the other day when I walked into an old fashioned barber's shop.
Music was playing; not music of which I am particularly fond, but music for all that. A crooner was weeping into the microphone about his lurv.
But the startling thing was that he was doing it through the medium of the vinyl long playing record.
As the barber of Sea Point buzzed his way around my somewhat hirsute features I mused about this antique contraption.
For contraption it certainly was, spindly and alarmingly vulnerable; rather reminiscent of a Ronald Searle cartoon.
Having been wired up to broadcasting my entire working life I sat mesmerised by the spinning black, crow black, sloe black*, shining disc, constant in its thirty three and one third revolutions per minute.
I thought about, of all things, copyright. In the days when all music seemed to come from an LP, there was little chance of copying the thing without anyone knowing.
These days, it seems to me, all is fair and fair game. That, of course, is arrant nonsense.
Copyright laws were the bane of our lives in the world of broadcasting. Every detail of a piece of music, composer, publisher, performer and duration had to be recoded in the book, along with the name of the record company and the record’s number: exactly the sort of thing for which I am most ill-equipped. However it served a useful purpose; those who should be paid were paid.
I recently came across an interesting comment on plagiarism by the English writer Christopher Howse.
“As every good cook knows, you have to get the recipe from somewhere. Whether it's from Elizabeth David or Hannah Glasse, be sure they had it from somewhere first.
That's the faculty teenagers lack when they copy over chunks of the internet into their homework. The crime is lack of discrimination. Magpies need a good eye for jewels, and plagiarists thrive best when the booty passes through the brain, not just the laptop.”
It is always very pleasing to me to read something as succinct and as well thought out as that comment. It also carries a sombre message; not, methinks, that many young people will take any notice
I am writing this in a friend’s flat in Sea Point. Yesterday we spent the day on the bus. Those South Coasters who are acquainted with Cape Town
The buses, some of them ‘bendy’ buses, are served by a newly built dedicated bus lane, which has stops at all the main points, at which there is an excellent station. The station is similar to a train station in that the platform is level with the floor of the bus, a great boon to those of us who are a little older and to the mums with prams. This service has elevated Cape Town
*From the Prologue to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.
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