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 

The heart of the matter…

CHRIS BENNETT books his place for a little reading.

ONCE a month, along with millions of other South Africans, I attend to a small matter involving the affairs of the heart. My cardiological minder dispatches (well, maybe not personally) my medicinal needs to Port Edward, making life considerably easier for those of us who live in this neck of the woods.

Rather splendidly, the parcel is collected from the Port Edward Library, a fine and, I trust, thriving institution. It is also not a bad piece of architecture – to my eyes, anyway.

The hall, for such it is, in which the medicines are dispensed, is cavernous, and periodically does duty for other community functions such as people lying on the floor and waving their legs in the air. I think it is called aerobatics or something.

The man from the hospital in Port Shepstone, which, as most of us down here know, is just this side of Durban, brings in his potent patents and they are laid out on trestle tables neatly, sequentially and alphabetically.

Reigning supreme over this operation of compassion are the volunteers.

Volunteers are interesting people; selfless, patient and all sorts of other lovely things. Most of the time. The word, as I am sure you know, is derived from the Latin word voluntas, free will.

These three are sensibly aged women of fine aspect and they oversee what for me has become a most pleasant social occasion. I am not much of a one for social occasions, so those that last about four minutes and bring delight into my life, a life not totally devoid of other delights, are most welcome.

The library itself is a good place to visit; but then they usually are.

Over many thousands of years libraries have been one of the main fuses that drive the flower of human intellect (hat-tip to Dylan).

The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant library of the ancient world.

It functioned as a major centre of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323-283BC) or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II (283–246 BC).

It is said that during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC Julius Caesar "accidentally" burned the library down when he set fire to his own ships to frustrate an attempt to limit his ability to communicate by sea. It would appear that the name Julius is not too propitious.

The library contained a walk, gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms. This model's influence may still be seen today in the layout of university campuses.

The library itself is known to have had an acquisitions department and a cataloguing department. A hall contained shelves for the collections of scrolls, as books were at this time on papyrus scrolls, from which we derive the term paper. It was rumoured that carved into the wall above the shelves, an inscription read, “The place of the cure of the soul”.

I was in the Port Edward library a while ago collecting my remedial lot. I was with a friend and I took him into the main room of the library to see something that had caught my eye some time ago.

It was a computer drawing of the proposed new intersection for access to Port Edward on what will eventually become the N2. It would appear, if I read the diagram correctly, that the off-ramps from the toll road will be built where the present road crosses the R61 to link Banners Rest and Port Edward south. There is a large hotel on the corner.

It is worthy of a look.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising…

CHRIS BENNETT finds himself recounting happy memories in the petrol hunt.

SERENDIPITY was lurking around my comings and goings last week, and provided a lighter side to the petrol excercise. On Monday a friend told me that there was unleaded petrol at Coastals.

Now this little establishment is one of my favourites; a sort of farming oasis hidden from the hurly-burly of the main road. I used to buy bird seed there when I had a garden full of birds.

Early in the morning, which at this time of the year means seven o’clock, as the sun rises at a quarter to seven, I toddled off to Coastals.

I am not too sure how to describe Coastals, but it reminds me of the small town of Brits, in what is now the Northwest Province.

In those days, forty years ago, there was a very big business called Dreiers, selling timber, hardware, small tractors, high quality china tea pots – I once saw some Arabia ware there – along side machetes, garden tools, paint and lawn mowers and what I believe are called plumbers’ requisites.

Dreiers followed business practises that were positively Victorian. After finding the tea pot, harrow or combined harvester you needed there was a series of ladies who courteously stamped the piece of paper you had just been given before you joined the queue to pay.

Buying a small tin of paint was an exercise in patience; or time consumption, whichever you prefer. It felt as though what should have taken one and a half minutes had taken most of the morning.

Earlier in my life I had encountered the Farmers’ Co-op in what was then Salisbury. It had the same charming, slightly surreal air to it. Outside the huge building, in beautifully wrought green and gold signs, were the names of the services offered. One contained the legend Grainbags, Hessian and Twine. I concluded that they must be the legal advisors to the farming fraternity.

Coastals is hidden away on the road to the delightfully named Bushy Vales, a name dating back, I suspect, to long before the days of bananas and sugar cane, both of which have their own allure when you don’t have to farm them.

The petrol and diesel pumps, of which there are three, spaced to allow tractors and trailers or big trucks to fill up, are attended by a sleepy fellow with a clipboard; he records the amount sold.

I said I would like to by three hundred rands of petrol. The young man said that they sold petrol in litres, which left me a bit confused; I said it was early in the morning.

Still a bit confused I went into the barn-like store to use the mini ATM, something of which I had never heard before.

The idea is that you put in your card in the usual fashion but instead of money the machine will give you a slip of paper, which I would exchange at the till; or at least I would have exchanged it had the till any money in it. But it didn’t; it was early in the morning. I could feel the temperature rising.

At this point a guardian angel appeared in the form of a lady who needed some piece of equipment, which she found and paid for. There was now money in the till and I thought my day was saved. It was then explained to me that I did not need cash for the transaction, the slip would stay in the till. Or something. Clearly I am easily confused.

I got my petrol and the proceeded to be sweetness and light.

It is nice to have a little old-fashionedness from time to time.

Spelling trouble…

CHRIS BENNETT reckons that the Internet is weaving spells we could do without.

I IMAGINE it is in the nature of the beast that most journalists of my acquaintance tend to spell out full words in their communications, be they email, sms or Facebook. Twitter is perhaps a different beast.

A British analyst, Charles Duncombe, has now revealed in the Telegraph an interesting, although sadly not surprising, aspect of website communication, something we have come to accept as easily as the cellphone.

Mr Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half. He also says that he is “shocked at the poor quality of written English.” Apparently the big problem for online firms isn't technology but finding staff who can spell.

It has surprised me on many occasions when I have spotted errors in the sub-editing of the online version of the Telegraph.

Of course one of the main reasons for this is the access young people have to the social websites and, more especially, to short messages, called, sensibly, texting in Britain. There is a danger somewhere here that the coded, truncated spelling used in texts will worm its way into the mainstream of English, if it hasn’t already done that.

The grandchildren of some of my friends tell me that they cannot use any kind of writing other than textspeak because they would be jeered at school.

"Often cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills," says Mr Duncombe.

Given that in Britain recently published figures show that internet sales are now running at £527m per week, I would have thought that alarm bells would be ringing in all corners of the English speaking world, which, of course, includes South Africa, where internet sales may be an emerging market, but a fast growing one.

Like me you have probably been the recipient of junk emails from other parts of Africa telling you that an enormous sum of money is waiting for you. The spelling in the email is a dead give-away.

Mr Duncombe tells of one applicant for a job he had advertised whose CV was entirely in textspeak, and largely incomprehensible.

His point is a good one, but I am not sure that we haven’t found ourselves shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Some months ago I was in Tshwane and came across a newly painted road marking which informed me SOTP. It took a moment or so for the penny to drop. The point of course is that the message simply does not get through as efficiently as the writer intended, if it gets through at all.

Signwriting used to be an art form; and in some cases it still is.

Last week, when I was still empowered by petrol, I drove to Port Edward. On the main road there are two entrances to Leisure Bay with clearly marked, professionally made signs; except one that howled at me “Leisure Veiw”.

It will, of course, all end in tears.

Crossed lines…

FROM time to time I rail on a bit in this column about the way in which our brother (and sista) leaders ignore those most in need.

How do you define need? In this country that is not easy. For the moment my concern is traffic; the needs of pedestrian traffic.

Once again the atmosphere of life on the South Coast shimmers and crackles with the sound of motor boats, fishermen, children and parents’ laughter (and sobs). A great time is had by all our visitors, thanks in no small part to the army of workers who clean, cook and generally make all the things on which a holiday coast relies, happen.

All the more reason why those in authority over us, especially our dear brother leaders, should be mindful of the needs of those workers.

In my journeys up and down the coast, sometimes as far afield as Durban, I am struck by the lack of simple amenities for pedestrians. The statistics tell us that more people (pedestrians) are killed on our roads each year than in other traffic incidents. And yet the authorities fail to build proper footpaths and footbridges.

Some time ago, in an incident involving a tipper truck, its driver, his passenger and the forces of nature, a pedestrian bridge was spectacularly demolished on the main road out of Port Shepstone to Umtentweni, right outside this august newspaper’s offices. No one was injured, the newspaper had a field day, and seemingly little effort has been made to replace the footbridge.

But it is not only the public sector which appears to ignore the needs of its clients. Look at big business.

A few years ago Pick ’n Pay, a supermarket chain that has reason to be grateful to a colossal number of South Africans (who, in turn have reason to reciprocate that gratitude) opened an excellent store in Margate, sited on the hill overlooking the town’s busiest taxi rank.

To get to the supermarket from the rank the people are required to cross one of the busiest, and by implication most dangerous, roads in Margate. The same people shop in droves at Pick ’n Pay because they are then saved the trouble of carrying that shopping great distances to the taxi rank.

I would have thought that Mr Ackerman and his marvellous team would have realised the value, in both terms of money and goodwill, of building a pedestrian bridge over that road. How much could it cost? And does that matter anyway?

Pedestrian bridges should surely be much more common; it is all very well for one section of the community to complain about poor delivery, with considerable justification, but how about a little thought for those risking their lives day after day crossing the R61 near Ramsgate/Margate.

Of course, we are not the only ones with pedestrian problems. This gem from Ceri Radford, a columnist in the Telegraph last week:

“A head teacher in South Wales has decided to build a footpath directly to the nearest McDonald’s, to prevent hundreds of pupils trudging along a dangerous dual carriageway every lunch time. I can see his point – safety above obesity concerns – but I would suggest an alternative. Instead of a footpath why not build an army-style assault course? A few tyre walls and a climbing net would burn off the Big Macs; a tunnel would limit the pupils’ circumference.”

I believe that would be being proactive.

CB