Between 28 and 30 September 1987, the central and southern part of Natal were ravaged by floods that were amongst the most devastating to have occurred in South Africa. The main cause was an intense “cut-off” low pressure system off-shore which co-incided with a Spring high tide. Destruction of property was catastrophic, nearly 400 people died and about 50 000 were left homeless. Damage to agriculture, communications, infrastructure and property amounted to R400 million (report: De Villiers et al, 1994).
The Mgeni and Mvoti rivers had flood duration periods of up to 24 hours and this caused dramatic erosion. In the Mgeni the island near the mouth was totally removed and scour of generally about 2m took place. In the Mvoti the river channel, normally 35m, widened to about 900m. Large quantities of sediment were deposited over the flood plain. Many bridges were washed away. The greatest disruption to humans was caused by the destruction of the Mdloti and Tugela river bridges on the N2 highway (report: Badenhorst et al. 1989).
Right! Katie Patterson. She sent me a parcel one Christmas with this jersey in it. Around 1990 I think. The jersey’s way older’n you!
Yeah, you showed me a picture of her.
Oh. Well, here she is again:
She has a lovely smile, just like Gogo Mary, says the boy. Knows just how to say the right things at times, my boy (and the very wrong things at other times!!).
When did you go to America?
1973. I was seventeen.
How did you get there?
I flew.
You flew! In what?
A jet plane.
They had jet planes back then?
Yeah, I didn’t swim. I think the first commercial jet flew in the late fifties.
Oh.
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wikipedia: The first purpose-built jet airliner was the British de Havilland Comet which entered service in 1952.
So we have no electricity and its getting dark and the kids are all over me, outraged!
Dad! There’s no electricity!
Yes, I say, I can see that.
Why!? they ask.
Uh, mumble mumble, payment mumble, I mumble.
Soon I have to confess: I paid late and we got cut off. Now there’s a re-connection fee I have to pay and a delay. I’m thinking fridge, freezer, supper tonight but they have far more urgent and greater disasters and catastrophes in mind:
“THERE’S NO WIFI!!” they scream in unison.
Now they’re ganging up on me. “In unison” and “Jess-&-Tom” is not usually a linked phrase.
Well, I’m walking to the shops, I say, thinking charcoal, firelighter, matches, candles. Do you need anything? Their voices go up two octaves as they shout as one:
“AIRTIME!!” They’re a tight-knit team! Wish I’d done this earlier!
Lasted four days. It was cool. Very instructive. Gas cooker and candles. Cleared out the fridge and deep freeze. AND – they survived!
~~oo0oo~~
Shuffle/Mumble: I had actually paid on the due date, but had ignored this little instruction: “The amount of Rx is due immediately, the rest can be paid on the due date.”
. . woulda thunk this!? If you’d asked me, I would have rated the likelihood of this happening would be as remote as me falling preggers, but . . . life.
I’m working in a catholic monastery.
Allan Marais moved our St Mary’s optometric clinic into Marianhill Monastery when ‘the province’ said they no longer needed our free service. Anyone smell a rat? Can a juicy tender be somewhere in the mix?
‘Yes, we know you were free, but we no longer need you, even though you were doing a great job and the people loved the free service’ – right!
So here we are! Halleluja, Three Hail Marys, Bless you, and all that. Every two or three months I drive through those pearly gates you see in the above picture when I do my voluntary eyeball-checking stint!
We’re in the bottom left. Fannon building, I think
He is busy recording, cataloguing and preserving KwaZulu Natal history, bless him! Here he is, dressed and kitted out for action. KwaZulu Memories Man!
Did I mention he’s a Natal Cousin of mine?
~~~oo0oo~~~
Natal Cousin – distant relative claimed if said person is famous or doing well
I don’t do DIY. I was going to say except for our wedding, but on reflection, I also did that the way I do everything: Stand back and watch as others do it all, encouraging and applauding while trying to save money.
So Andre Hawarden did the invites:
What I did do was buy the booze and fill Mike Lello’s Isuzu Trooper and trailer with it and drive it out to Barry and Lyn’s farm Game Valley Estates at the foot of the well-known Hella Hella kop on the Friday. Lots of rain, muddy roads, the four wheel drive was needed. It had been a wet summer following the huge September 1987 flood.
Like most bachelors when they do fall, I headed off cheerfully to meet my fate, all my own advice forgotten, marching singing to the gallows!
I always sing ‘The robots change when I go thru, the clouds dissolve and the skies turn blue, and EVERYBODY loves me baby – – – what’s the matter with you!?‘
And the clouds did dissolve . . It got Sunny. Then Hot. Then Scorching, Humid and Sultry. It felt like all the rain of the big flood was trying to get back up into the clouds as steam.
And when I say ‘BUSH’ – Lyn and Barry’s beautiful game farm Game Valley Estates is truly in the bush that they have preserved, but their home has all the amenities one needs and they laid on even more for the occasion. So don’t think we roughed it; we had everything we needed as, with Aitch, they arranged everything – flowers, cake, tent, table n chairs, accommodation, food, spitbraai, animals to braai – the works!
Barry’s big old 4X4 Ford F150 gave people a tug up slippery Hella Hella Pass so they could get to their lodgings at the nearby Qunu Falls Lodge. The Brauers, the du Plessis, the Reeds, the Schoemans, the Stoutes, the Stewarts. The Hills live nearby. Family stayed in the concrete A-frame lodge on the farm.
The sauna was pitched on the lawn under the Hella Hella mountain.
The Porters were linked up to ESKOM but just because ESKOM has arrived does not mean that when you throw a switch with a flourish that anything will happen. And so it was on our wedding day that ESKOM wasfeeling a bit off that day and we were without krag, power, lights and fridges.
Enter David Hurle Hill !! He roared off to his farm Melrose a hundred km away in his bakkie and fetched a huge diesel generator on a trailer. David is a Drrrillerr and will drill you a borehole. In fact his company motto is ‘On The Hole Our Work Is Boring.’ He linked up and threw a switch with a flourish. And nothing happened.
She was not wekking, as David Hurle Hill would say.
Enter Enea Spaggiari !! All the way from Italy via Kenya and Petit outside Benoni. He climbed up onto and over and under the trailer and fiddled with wires and threw a switch with a flourish and Let There Be Light! Music! and Cold Beers! That’s Italian vernuf for ya! Or competenza, as they would say.
Iona coaches her daughter: Make all the big decisions, but make him think he made them . . . Aitch: Ha Ha I already do that . . .
– plotting –
Then the usual stuff, the ominous music from Jaws: Tun Tun Ta Da!;Tun Tun Ta Da! What? Oh, the wedding march. The father of the bride looks like he’s having having second thoughts; Guys are thinking hm hm hm who’d a thunk this day would arrive?; Ladies are smiling – they seem to enjoy weddings; Aitch saying – ‘Honour? OK; – Obey? Are you mad!?’ and so on. The usual kak.
Then the cake, made by Lyn’s talented friend with two beautiful frogs – probly a strongylopus and an arthtroleptis. In the heat they keeled over. We should have got a pic, but something like this, just green frogs in white dress and black tuxedo – and not from alcohol – from heat fatigue:
– frog cake –
Then The Lies! You just can’t trust some people. Ten years prior to this I had done a very good job being his best man and if he had paid attention he’d have learned something. Like, to stick to the flattering truth and not tell scurrilous alternative truths that nobody wants to hear. At least nobody called the object of your attentions wants to hear them . . .
That speech was followed by The Truth!plain and unvarnished. By me:
At last, we could change into shorts and relax and party. Some in the background (We saw you Jeff!) had cleverly not changed out of their shorts throughout.
Later came The Getaway:
Which took a while, handicapped as we were. We wore getaway kit appropriate for our intrepid honeymoon. We were headed for Deepest Darkest America.
~~~oo0oo~~~
On the Monday friend Allie Peter flew over Hella Hella in a helicopter and took pics of Rapid No.5&6 looking downstream and then back upstream:
– pinnacle rock is hiding –
~~~oo0oo~~~
Twenty Five Years Later – 28 Feb 2013 – I wrote to friends:
Crazy, innit! 25yrs ago today Aitch and I got hitched down in the Hella Hella valley in a fun DIY game farm wedding. She made it to 23yrs of married bliss (OK, she might have had something to say at this point . . ) and one month short of 26yrs together. We celebrated that 25yrs-together milestone in August 2010.
Thinking of all you good peeps that made our wedding so memorable – that’s the bachelor days before, the day itself, and the 25yrs since!
Cheers!
Lotsa love – Pete – and now Jessica & Tommy!
BTW, Lyn and Barry Porter of Hella Hella also died in 2011: Lyn in January – also breast cancer; Barry in April – hospital infection; And then Aitch in July.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Dave Hill: I remember it well – I ‘nipped’ home to fetch my generator when the power went off.
Pete Stoute:Remember the week-end like yesterday! Struggling up the other side of Hella Hella to the Qunu Falls hotel in the mud and rain – Dave Hill saving the day with a BIG generator.Will have an extra glass of vino this evening – great mates and good times.
Sheila Swanepoel:Those pics are great. What a wonderful record of a very special day. I remember the incredible heat and how you, Pierre and Pete sneaked off and changed into shorts straight after the ceremony. And how the phone kept ringing in the middle of the ceremony in the house. Linda was flower girl, Robbie was so proud of his brand new red “tight”
. . and Jeff kept putting off going to change, saying that he was charge of the antelope on the spit – he dithered for so long that there was no time to change and that pleased him no end. Bess & I sneaked down to the pool for a kaalgat swim and found Iona had beaten us to it!
Steve Reed: Will always remember the weekend; a great occasion. I think it was thanks to Mike and Yvonne in the 4×4 that we traveled safely back through the mud to our lodgings. Fond memories – raising a glass tonight to all of you!
I remember Brauer chasing a tight deadline speech writing – wise.
Pete Brauer:Damn. Been holding my breath during this stroll thru memory lane hoping that no-one noticed at the time or that no-one would still remember that poor last-minute effort.
Terry Brauer: Steve nothing has changed! PB has his own website called lastminute.com
Steve Reed:Speech was excellent. Not many can compose a wedding speech while putting on a tie with the other hand. Besides, Swannie probably tasked Brauer with the job as he was getting dressed himself.
Terry Brauer:Yip Brauer remains an orator of note and Swanepoel continues to notify me he is coming to stay usually on the day when he lands in Pretoria – 😀 Those old dogs ain’t gonna learn new tricks but love them both! T
Pete Swanie:I had prepared well in advance.
Brauer procrastinated and ignored my two rules: Keep it short; and NO LIES.
Pete Brauer:If I stuck to the latter rule the first would have fallen into place quite easily.
Tanza Crouch: Thinking of you, Aitch, Tommy and Jessy at this time. My spider days at Hella Hella are very special to me and Aitch, Barry and Lyn were very special people.
~~~oo0oo~~~
The old paper album has been scrapped, but here it is in pixels:
Excuse me! You with the paintbrush! Camera coming through!
I was posting our wedding pics when I saw one we’d taken of our photographer Keith and his assistant. Being in 1988 there would have been a few other cameras there like the one that took a pic of him holding his large-format Hasselblad-like beauty and his first cold beer on that blistering hot day.
Nowadays you can almost guarantee every guest has a camera and a video camera in their pocket! Quite a challenge for the guy being paid:“Um, please stand aside, I’m trying to get a picture of the bride”. So are we! comes the answer from all the other guests.
Coincidentally wikipedia featured the top pic today, so I got to thinking of the poor portrait painters of yore. Used to being the main man around and very important, here he was probably asked “Won’t you paint a backdrop for me old chap? Any old thing will do. I’m taking portrait daguerrotypes, what!” But, but . .
“That’s all, we won’t be needing you after that.”
I bet the early photographers made people stand way longer than actually needed so they wouldn’t feel short-changed after being used to sit for days for their portrait.
I think paintings often outshine daguerrotypes:
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Feature pic Interior with Portraits by Thomas Le Clear 1865, features siblings posing for a photograph in an artist’s studio. The painting has been read as representing the tension between its medium and the emergent medium of photography.
It’s bullshit. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t finished. He wasn’t even close to wrapping up all the things he still planned to do – even after doing so much.
Damn! Too soon.
– Ernie & John Oliver could run events! – Ernie causing mayhem at Bernie Garcin’s wedding – Ernie at my 40th at KCC, chaperoned by The Rhino, his good friend Joan –
– Ernie at his pulpit – ‘what’s the question?’ (when you asked for a Hansa) –
A very special human being.
Ernie’s wake will be held in Ernie’s Pub in Kingfisher Canoe Club on the banks of the Umgeni River in Durban. You KNOW you have led a really wonderful life when you’re going to be saluted in a pub named after you while you were still in your prime by your mates!
Ernest Alder – 17/08/1942 – 21/01/2018
~~~oo0oo~~~
Also, that I know of:
He was involved in the Caister old age home while his Mom was there;
He owned a holiday home on a game farm up north, adjoining Mkhuze.
It is with a heavy heart that I write of the passing of Ernie Alder! There are very few truly selfless individuals, those that give of their time beyond what could ever be expected without seeking reward or adulation! Ernie you will, for me, always be synonymous with KCC and there will never be a time, driving in to the car park, that I do not look for your vehicle, your welcoming smile or your loudhailer! Rest in peace my friend, you did so much to assist me in my time as chairman and for the numerous chairs before and those that came after. Your legacy will forever be intertwined with the history of KCC and you will be sorely missed at the club and along the many riverbanks and boat pounds across the country!
A gentleman, a gentle man! We will miss you – Elvis Kingfisher
~~~oo0oo~~~
– I managed to see him in hospital before he waai’d –
I think people should write down their stories. In particular I thought Charles Mason should write his as he has paddled one particular crazy-ass canoe marathon every summer for fifty years in a row! Insanity like that should be noted and recorded for posterity. Psychologists should be looking into it.
I mean he won the Dusi twice, paddled one Berg – and coined the now well-known law “Anyone Doing The Berg More Than Once Is Certifiable”; Charles started, then won, the very first Umko river canoe marathon; He paddled all the other river races and multi-day marathons, sailed to Seychelles and wrecked the yacht on the beach, got a 1st-class degree, married a lovely lady and raised two sons. And some other stuff. But notably, amazingly and astonishingly, he made the Umkomaas River Canoe Marathon – the most feared of all South Africa’s river races – his own.
Here he is doing what some paddlers call ‘Taming the Umko.’ He’s in front wearing the yellow helmet:
…
Ah! There it is, a pale yellow helmet:
So I said ‘Listen, you should write your story. Your kids may not read it but your grandkids will.’ So Charles said/asked ‘Ja?’ in that quizzical, half-serious half-amused way of his and suggested we meet for tea at Rosie’s Tearoom. Which made me think it was actually now quite urgent that his story get written. Charles Mason thinking ‘meet for a drink’ meant ‘meet at Rosie’s Tearoom’ got me worried. He was obviously getting old. The project had taken on some real urgency.
At Rosie’s doiley-covered tea table his very first sentence was ‘You Know Peter, this is Quite Opportune. Next Year is the Fiftieth Umko,’ and promptly turned the focus away from himself and on to the iconic race which he had been instrumental in reconnoitering, starting, winning, keeping going and participating in. Did I mention every single one of them for fifty one years IN-A-ROW? He broke his boat and walked out in one of them, so fifty finishes in fifty one starts.
So the book title changed from Charlie Mason Fuckin WildWater Endurance SuperHero to ‘UMKO 50 years‘ and he became the font of Umko knowledge and wisdom and proofreader extraordinaire. So although I am responsible for all mistakes, I didn’t really know what I was doing, so we should actually blame him. Except we can’t – he didn’t get to proofread everything. Damn.
So we wrote a book, me and Charlie. Charles in longhand! On paper made from gumtrees by both Sappi and Mondi. He made a copy typist out of me. No wonder I made some mistakes. I took typing as a matric subject in Apache Oklahoma in 1973 and peaked at a blistering nineteen words a minute with ten mistakes. Also, while Charles has done fifty, and ten other okes have done over thirty, with 42 and 39 finishes being the next craziest after Charles, this half of the author-duo had done one. ONE. One Umko. So I did need some help in knowing what I was on about.
In my defence, I wrote the bloody thing cos it NEEDED DOING. Somebody had to do this! Anyway, between Charles and I we’ve done 51 Umkos and experience like that is not to be sneezed at. Also, I think Chas may be just a teeny bit envious of my 100% finish record. Started one, finished one. Whereas he’s down at 98.15% – 53 out of 54.
The way we did it was to ask all paddlers who have ever paddled the Umko to send in their stories. Then we asked them again. And again. The emptiness of my inbox was deafening. An American paddling scribe – and paddling scribes are, in Charlie’s own description of rarity, As Rare As Rocking Horse Shit – wrote ‘paddlers are notoriously lax at recording their adventures.’ Correct. Bill Barron used to say ‘ka-rreck.’
So I had to go out like a roving reporter and fetch the stories that were not being sent in.
With Paul Chalupsky it was coffee in Durban North. After a wary start and quite a few questions, the floodgates opened. Five hours later I left with notes scribbled in my notebook, on the till slip, and on my phone. When I wrote him seeking clarity I got the usual ‘I’m not-so-email’ response. Thank goodness his new wife jumped in and sent clarifications and some lovely new tales.
With Herve de Rauville it was two quarts of beer and two bottles of quota red wine from his estate in the winelands. He’s not anti-quotas, our Herve. Seven hours later we had done the Umko plenty times with much steering back away from the inevitable topic if you’re talking to SA paddlers: The Dusi!
I nailed down Pete Peacock by going to PMB and meeting him at Owen Hemingway’s Pope’s Canoe Centre. Owen himself was a fountain of info and scandal! At that stage I was relieved to meet a paddler with verbal diarrhoea, instead of the communicative constipation I had been experiencing! While I pumped him for Umko info he sold me a boat. A beautiful orange plastic Fluid Detox. I must paddle it one day.
Like many, Kenny Reynolds agreed absolutely that he would write. Every time I saw him at KCC he would FOR SURE be sending me some stories. Soon. But it was only when I was with him scribbling in longhand that I got any scandal. Same with Ballie Roets and Tony Botes. I had to go to Crusaders – the drinking club with a canoeing problem – clubhouse for their tales. It looked like a bowling club. No?
I began to think this was a multi-year project for a patient, persistent saint, of which I am none of the above. Then a breakthrough! Some ancient pre-rinderpest okes had been forced to learn email from being in Australia. So Robbie Stewart and Rory Lynsky sent stirring tales. Their endeavours were re-doubled when a Viking character entered the fray and goaded them into having to defend their honour. Now we were cooking thanks to Rowan Rasmussen! Ally Maynard had to set the record straight, Porky Paul got his secretary to write, Rob Bourne-Lange had Leslye fire off his missives. Geoff Caruth was slow, but he has written a lot about the Umko over many years, so I could plunder his early writings, scanning the old Umko programs, then editing the OCR errors, then copy and paste.
Now the accusations started flying thick and fast. Especially thick. Everyone was the hero of their story and the furious howls of ‘That’s MY story you’re telling!‘ got the creative juices flowing. The introduction now needed the caution ‘Please take all the stories with a hefty pinch of iodised cerebos.’ The reason for the hyperbole, of course, is the river itself. The palpable fear before a race causes great excitement and nervousness – and garrulous relief afterwards. Charles summed it up pithily many years ago with another famous truth: ‘There’s No Better Laxative Than A Full Umkomaas!‘
– rapid No.5&6 – looking downstream left and back upstream right – Allie Peter in a helicopter 1987 –
Kingfisher heavies contributed aplenty. From the outset the project had the backing of the club. Travis Wilkinson, Terry Drummond and Ross Poacher helped out. Rob Davey actually saw that the idea became a reality. We all spoke and wrote; Rob brought the money in. Ernie Alder didn’t say no, but fokol forthcame until I met him at Circus Circus for a lengthy meal when his floodgates opened. He was no typist, our Ernie.
Rumblings from behind the boerewors curtain erupted and colourful lava spewed forth once Bruce Clarke, Brian Longley, Meyer Steyn and Colin Wilson started lying singing. These interlopers regard the Umko as their own and some Umkos there have actually been more Vaalies than modest, well-behaved paddlers! We may in fact need to look at the Donald Trump solution to keeping them out with a wall at van Reenen. Spoiling a good story with the truth is not their style. Swims which had been Natal-long became epic swims lasting ‘months underwater,’ and even this was topped by ‘eons holding my breath.’ Nicknames are a big thing in the hinterland, so I liked that and tried to get nicknames for as many paddlers as I could. Hopefully a few guys were annoyed at seeing their worst, most forgettable name in print. I decided from the outset not to censor any submissions. Customary Paddling Language was used as spoken, but even I chose not to put some unsavoury nicknames in the book!
I wanted recognition for the ladies who have quietly and without fuss done what us okes did. Much serious shaking of male heads kept the ladies out for years, in the sure knowledge that no woman could – and then, OK, should – ever do a race as challenging as ‘our Umko’ and anyway, out of the kindness of our hearts we shouldn’t let them into our remote valley. For their own good. Also, how would they possibly handle having to sleep in the big marquee with all the guys? By telling better fart jokes than the guys, it turned out. As far as I could tell, Colleen Whitton was the first lady to paddle in an Umko and Marlene Boshoff and sis Jenny were the first to finish one without a male in the boat. They were followed in random order by Antje Manfroni, Patricia Stannard, Lorna Oliver, Debbie Whitton-Germiquet, Diana Rietz. What’s more they wrote good stories and sent them in on time and electronically. Thanks ladies!
The breakthrough with the ladies came via Hugh Raw. His terrific MCP stories (he wrote of paddling with TWO ladies and making them carry the boat) needed responding to and challenging. And the ladies did just that.
PROCESS
Back and forth, checking and re-checking. Re-writing causes layout headaches, all well handled by Rob Davey and Jon Ivins, paddler, photographer and book putter-together-er. All the while badgering okes to send in their stories, with mixed success. To their credit every one of the paddlers I phoned cheerfully agreed to send their tale. Then they didn’t. Amazingly, some okes can win the race multiple times but writing a story defeats them. If I had a story about them, especially if controversial, I would send that to them and that often elicited a response, but not always. At least Robbie Herreveld was a great help with the results. He kept records and helped us complete the list of winners.
AT LAST!
The proofs arrived! We checked through half-size black-and-white proofs then the full-size, full-colour proofs:
Then the books themselves arrived, happy day! Just in time for the race, where Rob Davey handed them out to paddlers in 2016’s goodie bags! They were pretty well received, I thought, warts and all!
– Nigel Briggs also wrote for the book – he wrote a book of his own on That Other Race –
The UMKO 50 years – The Story Of A River Race And The People Who Made It Happen can be read here. Don’t tell me of any errors, thank you! Actually, do. We’ll build your bulldust into UMKO 60 years.
He was with the Eighth Army who landed in Italy in 1943 and worked their way up the East coast, the Adriatic Coast. The more famous battle was up the West Coast, the Mediterranean coast, so the advance up the East coast was called “The Forgotten War”.
Here he is, 94 in the shade, telling soldier adventure tales. They had roared off in a Jeep looking for the Yanks. Then he goes on to talk about breeding pigeons. Like Darwin!
After pigeons he started moaning about his tenants, so I cut him off!
The 8th Army continued fighting along the Adriatic coast; sadly this created the need for cemeteries at Ancona 1029 burials, Castiglione South African, 502 burials; Montecchio 582 burials; Gradara 1191 burials; Coriano Ridge 939 burials; Rimini Gurkha 618 burials; Cesena 775 burials; Medola 145 burials; Forli 1234 burials plus a cremation memorial for nearly 800 Indian servicemen; Ravenna 955 burials; Villanova 955 burials; Villanova Canadian cemetery 212 burials; Faenza 1152 burials; Santerno Valley 287 burials; Bologna 184 burials; Argente Gap 625 burials; Padua 513 burials.
Fighting along the Adriatic section of Italy was quite intensive and continuous from Bari in the south to Milan in the north. The CWGC estimate that the Commonwealth lost nearly 50,000 dead in Italy during World War II most of whom lie buried in 37 war cemeteries, and over 4000 soldiers whose graves are not known but remembered by name on the Cassino memorials. Almost 1500 Indian servicemen, whose remains were cremated, are remembered on three memorials in various cemeteries.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the 8th Army had a difficult time fighting the Germans over very difficult terrain along the Eastern Adriatic coast of Italy.
The Mediterranean side of Italy was extensively reported on. Maybe it was because the American 5th Army proved to be more attractive to the news editors – or they had better PR?! More journalists? They certainly had more money.
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The Canadians also fought on the Adriatic coast and have documented it here.
So I’m watching Lungelo eat his pasta at Lupa restaurant. He’s battling and I’m debating whether I should help. He changes hands and wrestles with the knife and fork. Our waitron spots it and glides up discreetly and hands him a spoon, at which Tommy notices and roars with laughter, whips out his camera and videos Lungelo’s struggle while gleefully commenting that his mate is “having a nigger moment” battling to eat white man’s food.
Talk about discreet! Not!
Lil bastid. No doubt he’ll share the video with all their social media mates.
Tom then showed Lungelo how to wrangle pasta, just as Rita his Italian mentor had taught him. Luckily Lungelo has broad shoulders, knows Tom well, and – – – was chosen for SA schools 7’s rugby! That’ll boost anyone’s self-confidence, so he knows he’s good.
It’s our annual Mom’s Birthday Night Out. Sixth of January. Six cream sodas, a huge main course and dessert later they’re groaning and the stories are dwindling.
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As usual they ordered too much, so needed doggy bags. Lots of posing as we walked home. Dad! Take a pic. Take another one! Wait, let’s do this. Let’s do that. Jeeeesh!
=======ooo000ooo=======
This is terrible parenting. I took Jess and friend to the same restaurant the next night for Mom’s Bday night treat and because they behaved I didn’t get a single picture!!
Their big breakout was they decided they wouldn’t have cooldrink, thanks, they’re young ladies now. They’d have a cocktail. Ordered ‘chocolate martinis’ – !!?
Yuck.
They barely finished them. ‘The chocolate tasted funny’ – Hello-o!?
Straight after posting this I got a gotcha! email from Janet in Maun: Ha! Now I’ve got you! Stop procrastinating and VISIT!
So I have booked to go to Botswana in March after years of procrastinating. That is, Janet’s friend Bronwyn arranged a great price and booked. The 14th of March.
YES! Can’t wait!
~~oo0oo~~
Later: And what a trip it was! See here and here and here.
Niels Bohr said anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. Richard Feynman said no-one understands quantum theory. But quantum theory makes possible lasers, computers, transistors, GPS, cellphones, MRI machines and all the wonders of the information age. Without quantum theory much of modern science would not exist.
So I have tried to understand it better. Ken Gillings gave me a slight insight into the mysteries of quantum physics on one of our hysterical tours here. And I think having a teenage son has given me a better grip on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Which says “If you know where it is then you don’t know what it’s doing; And if you know what it’s doing then you don’t know where it is.”
What would we do without batteries? I just put new ordinary AAAs in our TV remotes.
The latest kind, of course, are lithium-ion and they’re amazing, but expensive, contain a flammable liquid and can be dangerous. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery showed us that. Researchers have even come up with lithium-ion batteries with built-in fire extinguishers now! The battery has a chemical called triphenyl phosphate, a flame retardant. If the battery’s temperature rises above 150 degrees C, the plastic fibres melt, the chemical is released and it prevents the battery from catching fire.
A new battery prototype known as “all-solid-state” – no liquids – has the potential to store more energy while maintaining high safety and reliability levels. It’s based on sodium, a cheaper non-flammable alternative to lithium.
Many other technologies are being tested, and according to each one’s marketing department they are going to charge your phone or your car in seconds, last forever, boost your love life and cost nothing. Don’t laugh, some of that will come true.
The first battery may have been made in Baghdad, Iraq back around 200 BCE. At least that’s the guess about what an earthernware jar with an iron rod surrounded by a copper sleeve may have been.
The first known battery was made by Alessandro Volta in Italy after Luigi Galvani noticed that metal and frogs’ legs could produce a current. Gotta love those Italian names, don’t they just galvanise you and produce a voltage across your brain cells?!
Volta put a stack of zinc and copper plates with salt water-soaked cloth between them and invented the voltaic pile in 1800 – a battery about equivalent to today’s AA. Not as portable but.
Improvements followed and in 1859 the precursor to the familiar lead-acid rechargeable battery was invented by Frenchman Gaston Plante. This was a big boost to horseless carriages! Earlier, between 1832 and 1839, Scot Robert Anderson had invented the first crude electric carriage, powered by non-rechargeable primary cells. Studebaker Automobile Company made the first mass-produced electric vehicles in America in 1902. Plante’s rechargeable battery would have been a big help to them.
In 1954, Americans Gerald Pearson, Calvin Fuller and Daryl Chapin invented the first solar battery, converting the sun’s energy to electricity using silicon.
Other things being used experimentally to convert energy into battery power are plants, dewdrops, air, your skin, your movement and your urine. Check it out – 37 different ideas for batteries!
Time will tell which ones will make it to market. I hope its not that last one!
