Tree fellas…

CHRIS BENNETT was lost in admiration as a dead milkwood of huge proportions was removed from in front of his home.

IN the village in which I live, surrounded by the most noble and glorious milkwood trees, which daily remind me of the first time I heard the actor Richard Burton reading the prologue to Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood*, winter means the already laborious task of keeping the village clean of woodland (and human) detritis is an even greater task. And it is well done.

One of the most dangerous of these tasks is the felling of the dead milkwoods.

It was engrossing to watch from the elevated view of my terrace, and look down on the workers and their foreman as the skilfully used ladders and ropes, thick as a man’s wrist, to secure and delicately counterbalance, like the counterpoint in a Bach fugue, the distribution of the weight of the sawn branches.

First the finer and smaller branches are cut off by a worker using a machete. This is relatively quick; then starts the more serious business. Someone has perilously to sit on a major branch while chopping it off. The trick, it seems, is to sit on the trunk side of the cut, otherwise…

It is now that the geometric ballet of the ropes comes into play, giving the whole operation the air of a spectacular trapeze display in a circus: as the branch, probably weighing as much as two or three men, falls from the tree it is immediately suspended by the ropes, seemingly weightless. Finally it is lowered safely to the ground, under the watchful, nervous, narrowed eyes of the workers. There is a lot of relieved tension.

Then there is the demolition of the colossal trunk to be dealt with. This involves a chain saw, whose screaming bite gnaws the affrighted air. The brave soul wielding this appalling machine needs nerves of steel, the eye of a hawk and, preferably a third arm. Another leg might be useful too, as he straddles the saddle like-forks of the now limbless trunk.

I imagine that a similar undertaking in the last century would be a cause for great celebration. A few of us managed to secure stumps big enough to grow peaty plants in and soften the all too evident concrete around our cottages.

All this cleansing and maintenance of the village is a pleasant reminder of how conscious of our surroundings we have become. Of course there is nothing new in this. Here’s a quote from Plato (428 BC to 348 BC): “…don’t put too many people in one place, don’t impose more on the physical environment than it can bear, make the maximum use of resources like water and replant trees if you cut them down.”

The other milkwood I mentioned, Under Milk Wood, was a play written for radio (of course some prat made a movie of it) written in 1954 by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. It was written for his friend, the outstanding actor of his day, Richard Burton, whose meliflous, slightly gravelly voice, swaying gently on occasion into a Welsh lilt, was the perfect medium for this near-perfect poetry.

I’ll leave you with the opening sentence, spoken by the narrator, Burton:

To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack*, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.

* The sloe berry, the flavouring of gin, is coal black.

* Dylan Thomas, 'Under Milk Wood', The Definitive Edition (Dent: 1995.)

Booking your future…

CHRIS BENNETT has been reading about reading, again.

FOR a few years now there has been quietly raging, behind the scenes almost, a battle between paper, the mundane substance we make from trees or rags, and the innovations of modern technology.

I refer, of course, to the electronic reader, the acceptance and popularity of which has been growing rapidly, especially this year; although much more slowly than the cellphone when it was introduced less than two decades ago.

The latest devices for reading are the redesigned Kindle, made by the American book giant, Amazon.com, and the iPad made by Apple.

The iPad may cost more, but then it is also a computer and can be used to surf the net and do much more.

I am ambivalent about these two formats for reading; one thing I am not ambivalent about is reading. Few people read enough, largely I suspect because of some lurking fears that they might discover things they would rather not know about, like themselves, for instance. As some benighted soul said to me recently, “Reading is for school and kids”. Ja, well, no, fine.

I believe anything that encourages people, especially young people to read must be a good thing, and electronic reading is something that I have adapted to easily in the almost-two years I have been reading on the screen of an iPhone. Amazon has recently released a free app, Kindle for the iPhone, and the first book I bought was Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking. I would like to see other favourite authors of mine, particular those that I re-read year in and year out (ED is one), available, which they will doubtless be.

Amazon last week announced that it has sold more ebooks than hardbacks. Well hardbacks are not cheap, but there will always be people who like to feel the paper (I am one) and who like to keep the book if they have the space, an increasing problem these days.

Another thing about ebooks is that they are not very comfortable for sharing. For young readers this would be a big drawback; in fact it would be a big drawback for most readers, given that handing over your Kindle or iPad for a while is not the warmest of sensations.

I have also made use of Apple’s own iBooks, in the app called iBookstore. It is not, to my mind, as comfortable as Kindle, but it has some neat tricks. Most systems use bookmarks which are a great help: the book you are reading will open where you left off.

My guess is that there will always be a demand for books printed on paper, but I rather imagine that the quality of binding and the paper itself may improve, as the cost of making books becomes higher and higher, and book readers become, essentially, a niche market.

It is early days yet; but what I think will be the winner will be the agility of people’s minds, an agility the scientist tell us will last into old age if exercised by reading.

It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin, in his introduction to The Descent of Man (1871), wrote, “… in the first edition of the Origin of Species I distinctly stated that great weight must be attributed to the inherited effects of use and disuse, with respect both to the body and mind.”

So there you have it. Run and Read.

As the worm turns…

CHRIS BENNETT has been mulling over things canine.

SOME months ago, while staying with friends in Cape Town, I was introduced to a collection of African violets, which one of my friends had nurtured for many years. I had seen them many times before, but had never noticed them.

This time was, for reasons I shall doubtless never know, different.

When the time came to leave and start out on the long drive home my friend pressed into my hands an old plastic ice-cream box. It contained three small plastic plant pots, which, in turn, contained three small (but not plastic) plants. They were African violets.

It has always been a tendency of mine to give names to anything with which I develop a good working relationship, be it a person (who usually comes already supplied with a name), my car (Mildred), my last dog (Maisie Wiggins) or three A. violets (Elizabeth, Margaret and Rose).

Having been assured that they would not mind travelling 1 800 kilometres in the back of a small blue car, I set off.

That was April. Now, in July and on the cusp of spring, more or less given that in this climate it is difficult to tell, they sit smiling on my kitchen windowsill, where I work. I work in the kitchen, not on the windowsill.

The plants were given to me by a friend who had known the late MW for a considerable time. When MW died in June last year I thought there would be no more dogs; my friend suggested talking to the A. violets, but their reaction times leave something to be desired. Six weeks is a long time for a yes or no.

Then other things began to happen. I was thinking more and more of the next dog. I hadn’t the faintest idea what it would be or from whence it would come, but I was sure that when the time and circumstances were right, the dog would find me.

Contemplating the circumstances I realised that a fair amount of fence mending, literally, would be in order to contain the newcomer. Having had the fences mended on my behalf I then realised that my cottage has no lawn. Little girl dogs like to wee on lawn. And who am I to argue?

My cottage has, or at that stage, had, more than its share of hideous concrete. The fence mender, again on my behalf, attacked the concrete, which seemed to be about fifty centimetres thick, with gusto, while I repaired to the local pub to watch the football. I never watch football but it beats watching your yard being wrecked. And there is beer.

When the dust settled I prevailed on the charming tenant of my former home and had removed (on my behalf) a large chunk of his LM lawn; he was remarkably understanding. The sods were transported, in the boot of the aforesaid small blue car, to my cottage where they were welcomed by a ready made bed containing lots of compost and something with worm eggs in it. The mind wriggles.

The lawn looked lovely and had softened the aspect of my cottage. But something seemed to be missing. So I planted a tall iceberg rose in the middle, for the convenience of any gentlemen callers who might visit my new dog.

All I need now is the dog; and that, in the fullness of time, will happen.

A Fisherman’s Tail…

CHRIS BENNETT was delighted by the rather late arrival of the infamous sardines.

SUDDENLY there were sardines, when we had almost given up on them – again.

The first I heard about it was when I read a report in the Mail & Guardian last week. One of the many advantages of reading online is that most e-newspapers are updated every hour or so. Margate leapt into life and there was a great treat, and feast, for the many visitors lingering around after the football had run out of oomph. Later reports of the shoals’ landing at St Michaels and, much further north, Virginia, added to the excitement.

Sardines are always with us, in tins; and, furthermore, there is a great deal to be said for them and their larger friends the pilchards. They all belong to the herring family, of which my favourite is the Arbroath Smoky, a kipper cured in the right sort of smoke in Arbroath, Scotland. Perhaps I should add that I was born and brought up in the aromatic town of Grimsby, once the biggest fishing port in the world: but no longer, as the people have fished out their own food stock.

It is the herring family that provides those of us who have been on the receiving end of heart surgery with so much hope, in the form of the important Omega three oils. Just as a useless aside, did you know that Omega is a Greek letter of the alphabet, and that it is one of the two O letters in Greek? The other is Omicron, in other words Big O and Little O. I told you it was useless information.

Consequently I am grateful for a lifelong liking for canned pilchards and sardines.

Most sources say that the oldest tradition of canning sardines, which always brings to mind the JohnSteinbeck novel, Cannery Row, arose in the beautiful and dramatic northern French province of Brittany, which gave its name to the ancient tribes from whom I, and indeed many of us, descend.

“Sardine fishing and canning is a traditional industry in Britanny, where most French canneries remain. The area is known as the place where sardine canning was invented. Douarnenez was the world's leading sardine exporter in the 19th century. The sardines are fried, dried, and then canned (this traditional process is labelled "préparées à l'ancienne"), whereas in most other countries processing consists of steam cooking after canning.” Those are the words of Alan Davidson, a British diplomat, writing in an article for a delightful publication called Petit Propos Culinaires in 1979.

What I did find especially interesting in my researches into the life of this enigmatic creature is that Morocco is the sardine capital of the world. Not so long ago, the little fish represent more than 62% of the country’s fish catch and accountedor 91% of raw material usage in the domestic canning industry. Some 600,000 tonnes of fresh sardines were processed each year by the industry. Morocco is the largest canned sardine exporter in the world and the leading supplier of sardines to the European market.

We here on the South Coast are especially fortunate in having this annual migration come so close to our shores. The sardines bring in their wake a host of other delights, including the dolphins and the whales, although these last come here for the breeding conditions anyway.

Finally this week, a French news report, on the excellent English language website France24.com, says the French have taken up cricket! Is nothing sacred, I ask myself.

Sources: Wikipedia and An Omelette and a Glass of Wine; Elizabeth David:

Glittering days…

Spring is in the air, writes Chris Bennett

A PARADE of glittering days during the past two weeks or so has entranced our world; warm sunshine and a sparkling ocean made a towering backdrop to a winter of great content.

Maybe I am getting more observant with time, but I have never seen so many whales and dolphins during the precious seven years that I have lived here. Either that or the memory’s going…

My front door, a pair of French windows, faces the ocean, the first thing I see on leaving the cottage. To my left is my neighbour’s roof; his house is a little lower than mine in this somewhat tumble-down village of distinctly Mediterranean aspect; I say good morning to George.

George is usually on the roof, with Gwladys (she thinks she is Welsh) not more than a metre away.

George is a professional basking case; he likes to lie in the warm winter sun all day, his tummy stretched down the pitch of the roof and his chin resting on the rounded apex, giving him a commanding view of the skies above, in which hang kites and other undesirables. George’s beady nose twitches and relishes the smells that waft around it, and his fine whiskers are waved about, rather like a conductor’s baton. Occasionally he will rise to a passing fly, like a fish; providing, of course, it doesn’t involve too much effort. An eye periodically opens. George is doing sentry duty.

Gwladys is far more concerned with life inside the roof, where this little family of dassies have made their home for many years. My human neighbours are rare birds, and seldom visit their cottage. They both ignore me; and quite rightly, too.

George is king of the world, George I Hyrax.

From my armchair, and old wooden Morris chair of immense comfort, I watch the dolphins and whales, and, of course, the ships, making their world out of the magnificence of the waves. Gannets abound, but most of the sardines seem to be in tins.

These are the days that will have entranced people from all over the world during the football festival. A better advertisement for the South Coast could hardly be imagined, and the spending of time and money on its amenities must have brought some benefit.

In the year since my dog, Maisie Wiggins, died of old age I have reflected a lot on her role in my life. She was with me for 15 years; her lifetime. I am now in need of another, but I will not be in a hurry. If the dog can’t hold a decent conversation then there is not much point.

I paid a visit with a friend to the SPCA in Margate, a very doggy friendly place but not so hot when it comes to people. Understandably they are most concerned about who gives a home to those deserving waifs.

It was a profoundly depressing experience, although not the first time I have visited such kennels. The resounding chorus of howls of hounds of all sorts was disconcerting, but the lingering memory was of the occupant of the last kennel in the row. She sat with her back to the wire and her long tail poking out into the walkway, wagging for all it was worth. All you could see was the blurred tail; that is an intelligent dog.

But nothing spoke to me. The excellent Cyril came to my cottage to see if I was a suitable human for a dog to live with; apparently I am.

Print it…

CHRIS BENNETT was jolted to thinking about the written word.

I HAVE recently bought a printer. Now there may be nothing out of the ordinary about this, but I can’t help wondering why the Steve Jobs of this world have not yet got their heads around the idea of a laptop that prints.

I mean, we haven’t really come all that far from the typewriter, when you come to think of it.

Sadly, I seldom write letters these days, although I may develop a reasonable relationship with the printer and return to that gentle art. The trouble with printers is that they are too big and too impersonal.

I bought the smallest I could find and still struggled to get the box through the front door. We are still glaring at each other, the printer and I, but relations are warming.

Lawrence Durrell tells a lovely story about a printer’s devil, one of his assistants, which I gather were called bears in Greece, where the Greek-speaking writer lived on the Island of Rhodes from 1945, as part of the British administration. This odd term, bear, came about, apparently, because of their tendency to walk back and forth like bears in a cage “picking up and examining type, which are part and parcel of the handsetters work”.*

After WWII, when Durrell was editor of Chronos**, one of the bears was a young man called Christ, a common enough name for Greek boys. He came from a large family which he had to support on his meagre salary.

During a momentary crisis when the news was delayed, and Durrell found himself short of material, Christ pulled out a sheet of loose galley, the paper used to take a first impression, a galley proof, from the frame that holds the metal type, the galley. Printing a newspaper until quite recently was a hot, noisy and dirty operation. Mind you, it still is.

In no time he had written a column on his rather sad circumstances, which the paper’s Greek editor read to Durrell. “Print it!” said Durrell, “and tell him I want four a week.” The young bear was at first aghast and then overcome with joy. “Christ had entered the most impoverished aristocracy in the world”. *

This past few weeks has seen a flurry of articles in papers all over the English speaking world discussing the demise of newsprint, the coarse paper on which newspapers are customarily printed. Triggered, I suspect, by the arrival of the iPad, a device which is completely beyond my comprehension. I mean, what’s it for?

Anyway, as one writer wrote, a publication isn't the dead trees it's printed on, nor will it be the screen it's displayed on. The reading and writing of newspapers are cultural activities that inspire much of society’s interaction, whether it be on the scale of the South Coast Herald, which has been nobly fulfilling this worthy task for more that seventy years, or on the scale of the Citizen, a national daily, which has been reaching a wide cross section of the population through the medium of the country’s first language, English, for almost half that time.

These fine newspapers are institutions which can never be replaced by any amount of technology, no matter how spectacular.

It is interesting to note that the philosopher Plato (BC427-347) wrote, “Don’t put too many people in one place, don’t impose more on the physical environment than it can bear, make the maximum use of resources like water and replant trees if you cut them down.”

For the human race it has taken a long time for the Platonic penny to drop.

All being well, I’ll be back in next week’s newspaper.

* Reflections on a Marine Venus; Lawrence Durrell: Faber and Faber, London, 1953. ISBN 0-571-20170-9

**The newspaper is still in print.

Dawn’s palest light…

CHRIS BENNETT celebrates THE LONGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR.

ONCE more the longest night of the year is behind us. On Tuesday morning, June 22^nd, I rose as the sun emerged reluctantly through the twisted foliage of the milkwood trees and cast its pale lemony rays in pretty moving patterns on my bedroom wall. The sky was the sort of blue that I imagine one would see in the Aegean, and the air was crisp and sharp.

There is often a quality to our weather here on the lower South Coast that is perhaps as much to do with the noble sound of the sea as it is with the pale morning sunlight.

Even on still mornings, the breakers hurl themselves to smithereens on the rocks below my cottage, roaring and sighing, soughing and swishing around the pools and crevices. The sounds of the sea are as huge as the whales performing their tomfoolery not far offshore.

Such was this Tuesday morning, and I was delighted, for to me the 22^nd of June marks the return of the sun on its journey back to our canefields and banana groves. Its warmth beckons and grows almost by the day.

Along the ridges and smoke-laced valleys of Nzimakwe, the winter timelessness still holds its charm: nothing changes, and nothing will. Why should it?

If you are visiting our part of the world make a point of going down to the beach as the sun comes up. Go with friends so that the beauty is all the more enjoyed and the experience shared. Marina Beach, Trafalgar, Palm Beach and so on south are ideal places to see the day begin, but not alone.

It is unforgettable experiences of this kind that make our part of the world so extraordinary for those who will open their eyes to see it. For those who can’t I feel sad; for those who won’t, then I am sure Boksburg beckons.

Two visiting young British students called in (with father, of course) to the local pub, the High Rock, this week. Fiona Glazebrook is doing her last year in sociology and her friend Sarah Statham graduated in cinematography this year, a degree that could prove of some use in this digital and image-obsessed world.

Refreshingly they are not here just for the football; they are here to see the sea. They are at university in Leeds, in north central England, and as I write they are exploring the coast, the Wild Coast; visiting Port St John’s and Coffee Bay. Memories, I suspect, are in the making. A cinematographer’s eye would rejoice in such spectacular sights.

If we are lucky we shall see many more visitors in this part of the world before the football fever is quite over. Those already here for the matches would do well, should their intellects be keen enough, to look around at this glorious country. The cost maybe high, but true economy is attained by judging an article (or an experience) on its merits, not on its cost. This, like football, takes considerable knowledge and quite a few well-honed skills.