Thunderheads

I read Thunderhead by Mary O’Hara as a kid and loved it. Horse ranching and racing in the hills of Wyoming near Laramie. The description of a thunderhead as a huge, solid-looking towering cloud formation always stayed with me. The horse was named after the cloud:

Thunderhead.jpg

And today I saw one over the Indian Ocean as I left work. It was away to the South East, reflecting the setting sun behind me.

 

~~~oo0oo~~~

A quarter century later I got to Wyoming on honeymoon; but further west, Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons.

The Learners Licence Learning Curve

Sat with Jess in the long queue at the Marianhill Drivers Test Centre.

20170410_093657.jpg

This time we had all the required ducks waddling in formation like Egyptian goslings (which are ducks, not true geese) and R150 later we had a booking for two days time: Jessie’s first attempt at her learners test!

She came out with a stiff upper lip but it was quivering and when in the car and driving out she dissolved and blubbed ‘I failed!’ – even though we had rehearsed how it didn’t matter, how the first attempt is often failed and how persevering was the main thing. She still didn’t like it and was NEVER going to try again.

But she will.

Duck! 18th April – 3 days’ time

Be warned – an asteroid as big as the Rock of Gibraltar will streak past Earth on Tuesday 18 April at an uncomfortably close distance, according to astronomers.

Although there is no possibility the asteroid will collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid this size, NASA said in a statement. Dubbed 2014-JO25 and roughly 650 metres across, the asteroid will come very close after having looped around the Sun. 2014-J025 will then continue on past Jupiter before heading back toward the centre of our Solar System. In Durban you need to duck at 8.17pm that night, and in Tshwane at around 8.21pm. Don’t forget.

~~oo0oo~~

As Good Books Go

Talking about ‘fuck’ – I read a wonderful book ‘Duzi Fever’ by an entertaining old bugger Rob Gouldie who did the 1955 Dusi. I once heard him give a hilarious talk at Kingfisher. He told a lo-ong story of hardship, paddling, dragging canoes, breaking boats, chopping one up and stuffing it into the other, lunch breaks and – eventually – settling down for the night in the darkness on their own after a long and stressful day – ‘we were at sewerage farm!’ That brought the house down, as usually one passes sewerage farm within an hour of the start!

Rob Gouldie has since shuffled off down his final rapid.

– straight-talking book –

Excerpts:

On portaging on the Duzi – “Negotiating barbed wire fences was a ball ache second to none . . . you had to pry open the strands so your partner could squeeze himself and the the canoe through without hooking his nuts“.

Winning the Dusi one year his partner “blew” and said “Rob, I’m fucked, can I just trail my paddle behind me and pretend I’m steering?”

He asked for leave from his job at a bank to do the Dusi and his manager refused. He writes: “I never knew how important I was as a junior clerk and felt quite proud that the bank would grind to a halt without my services”. Anyway he went AWOL, wrote a letter of resignation “should the shit hit the fan”. It did. He expressed great relief at no longer working for them.

On the race his partner “developed a severe chafe due to sand in his underpants” so he threw away his pants and underpants and “went Beau Brummel”. When they got to Umfula Trading Store the owner kicked him out. His wife was serving in the shop and Rob thinks the owner “was upset that she might be able to compare notes”. After Rob explained and his partner demonstrated, the owner took pity on his partner and gave him a roll of plaster “to wrap around the emaciated-looking Percy”.

In shooting a rapid: ” . . where we nearly saw our rings . . “

They were lying second one Dusi, 44mins behind the leaders who were “obviously cocksure of their lead, not knowing we had caught up to them and could almost smell their farts”.

On a trip down the Umkomaas he bought and drank way too many raspberry-flavoured milk drinks at a remote valley trading store, got bilious . . . and “hurled the most spectacular pink cat”. His mate caught the moment on film:

Trip Rob Gouldie Umko shoots pink cat

And on in that vein.
I thoroughly enjoyed it! My kind of book! I was delighted to read his full and free use of ‘English as she is spoken on riverbanks’ and determined not to censor Customary Paddling Language in the Umko 50 book. Someone proofreading suggested I use f___ or f__k instead of fuck. Not.

Or: Fuck That!

~~~oo0oo~~~

81 years of Matric

1938 – Dad – Maritzburg College, Pietermaritzburg.

Pieter Swanepoel 1938 matric
– Maritzburg College’s 150th -enary –

1972 – Me – Harrismith se Hoerskool, Vrystaat.

Science class - Elsie Campher watches me searching - Jean Roux on right
– looks like Elsie is chirping me as I pretend I might have done some homework –

1975 – Aitch at Muizenberg High – head girl!

– Mom Aitch was head girl as a Humphrey –

2016 – My Jessie – Wendon Academy, Westville, KwaZuluNatal.

20160307_072509
– eish! school! –

2019 – My Tommy – home schooling – did the GED course

– tutor Langelihle Dube and TomTom hard at work –

We went from steam power to cellphone power! Well actually, I spose the internal combustion engine was up and running when the ole man left matric . . .

~~~oo0oo~~~

Ken Gillings’ Hysterical Tours

Dear old Ken died too soon. His tours were hugely educational – and such fun. You had to listen carefully or you’d miss his wicked Sergeant-Major little asides and throw-away comments. And you had to stay up late in the pub after the day ended to hear his best ribald Sergeant-Major jokes. We should have recorded them all. Well, here’s one, anyway.

We walked the Fugitive’s Trail from Isandlwana to Fugitive’s Drift. Ken arranged for a local man to take us to the start and fetch us at the end in his taxi – a shiny new Toyota Quantum like this:

Toyota Quantum

On the way we stopped to look at something and Ken ordered us to hop out of the taxi. Then he paused, gave a slight grin and said:

“You could call that a ‘quantum leap.’“

~~oo0oo~~

Our traipse along the trail was not uneventful. Once again a bunch of pale people were out of their depth, just like in 1879. Also, our average age was way above that of the pommy soldiers, and we had no horses. Even though we weren’t being pursued by victorious Zulus, panting was heard and hearts fluttered. Some had to lie down a while.

We walked from the Isandlwana mountain to the Buffalo river at Fugitives Drift:

Fugitives Drift down in the valley on the left

We were a bit slower than the fleeing poms at the uMzinyathi (Buffalo) River crossing. Didn’t want to get our shoes wet:

Once again a bunch of bumbling Wit Ous cross the Buffalo at Fugitives Drift

After the tour I thanked Ken for a wonderful weekend and awarded him the Victoria Cross for his brave endeavours. Or rather, my Victoria Cross-on-Zulu-Shield, which I had earned by running a 21km half-marathon from Isandlwana to Rorke’s Drift years earlier.

– no blood was spilled in the earning of this medal – and only a mild amount of sweat –

~~oo0oo~~

Another Year Moertoe

or put more politely: ‘Bites The Dust’.

Woke up to breakfast in bed. The bacon was crispy:

20170401_071405.jpg

The card was mushy:

20170401_072932

Thank you Jessie love!!

Tom was first to wish me. That’s because he got home in the wee hours and woke me to open up for him, giving me a big “April Fool!” as I welcomed him home.

April Fool’s Day started before me! PROOF:

On this day in 1582, the Council of Trent called for France to switch from the Julian calendar. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognise that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes.

These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.

Historians have also linked April Fools’ Day to ancient festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises. There’s also speculation that April Fools’ Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.

England had a similar tradition and by the 18th century, April Fools’ Day had spread throughout Britain. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event.

Three Raptors

Three raptors soared over my valley yesterday:

Fish Eagle

Fish Eagle flying

Crowned Eagle

Crowned Eagle flying

African Goshawk

African Goshawk flying

My pic of the Crowned Eagle: (see why I used photos from the great sites I’ve listed below!?)

20170401_142641[1]

(find lovely bird pics at theflacks.co.za; africageographic.com; wilkinsonsworld.com – thank you!)

 

Pro-fanity

I am pro- profanity. I believe it’s good; I believe they are often descriptive, useful and helpful words.

Like fuck.

When given the old (erroneous) line that people who use swearwords have meagre vocabularies, great comedian George Carlin was indignant. He said “I know LOTS of words. I just happen to like fuck”.

George Carlin

I’m reading a change-your-lifestyle book by John Parkin called Fuck It – Do What You Love. Except he writes it f**k it. I think that’s pointless (he probly did it for commercial reasons. I can understand that. Unlike me, he actually sold a lot of books and if you want to sell on the American market you probably have to sugar-coat reality). Everyone knows f**k means fuck, even the youngsters whose eyes and ears people are ostensibly shielding. I dunno why the acceptance of one and shock-horror of the same thing. After all, f**k = fuck, for fuck’s sake.

– Duzi Fever, Rob Gouldie, self-published, undated, uncensored, great book –

While I was writing a book (Yes! Here it is Umko 50 Years) I read a number of books on river paddling. Most were written the usual way, but Rob Gouldie described his partner as ‘having a hip deformity causing him to walk like a windscreen wiper;’ he wrote how his exhausted partner nearing the finish of the Dusi Canoe Marathon asked his permission to rest saying, ‘I’m fucked! Can I trail my paddle so it looks like I’m steering?’ He also spoke about climbing through barbed wire fences ‘without hooking your nuts,’ and how Dusi runny guts had them ‘crapping through the eye of a needle.’ And I loved it. I thought that’s how one should write a book, just as you speak around the campfire. Don’t be fake; Don’t be faux-coy; Don’t be prissy. So I kept the “fucks” and the “foks” in my book uncensored. “Customary Paddling Language,” I called it when people objected and suggested I use asterisks. I declined. My book would have no f*cks, no f*ks. It would have the real fucks and foks.

I also believe (of course I’m biased!) that people who swear are on average more trust-worthy, so I think Granma Crews made a mistake in the early seventies in Apache Oklahoma when she didn’t buy a fridge from Stanley Wright. Stan could hardly say a sentence without saying “son of a bitch,” “sonbitch” or “sumbitch”. It was his “whatchacallit”. Some people say “Let’s load that baby up” where Stan would say “Let’s load that sumbitch up”. And he was on form the day Granma went to his shop. They had just about clinched the deal when he said his last sumbitch and Granma Crews decided she’d had enough, slammed the fridge door shut saying “Well you can keep the sumbitch!” and stalked out on Stan who was probably left wondering what he had possibly said to get that reaction! Goodness! He had never heard old Ma Crews speak like that before!

Lauren Martin writes in the link below that if you’re feeling down or doing something wrong, fucking good friends give it to you straight – they don’t water shit down! As for all you honest, trust-worthy people who don’t (often) swear: Start now. Increase gradually. I’m trying to. Update: Successfully . . .

*People Who Fucking Curse More Actually Make The Best Fucking Friends

~~~oo0oo~~~

Swearwords are good, descriptive, helpful words, and the criticism of them reminds me of the (equally ignorant) criticism of rap music. I did some reading on rap when Tommy first started getting into it. I must find that bit about the language rappers use. (to come . . . )

Ah, here it is: Back in 2011, New York-based data scientist and designer Matt Daniels thought of Shakespeare’s much-touted vast vocabulary and wondered how rap singers’ vocabularies compared. So he charted how many different words Shakespeare used in comparison to contemporary hip-hop artists. It turns out that a good handful of rappers use a greater vocabulary than Shakespeare did, for the same sized block of lyrics.

Daniels doesn’t draw the conclusion that today’s rappers are more creative and poetic than Shakespeare, but the implication hovers (and the Washington Post said it out loud – see link below).

If you’re wondering who has a bigger vocabulary — Shakespeare or rappers — here’s the quick answer in purely numerical terms. Rapper Aesop Rock used 7,392 unique words, and Wu-Tang Clan used 5,895 – against Shakespeare’s 5,170 unique words.

Daniels used a sample size of 35,000 words per artist. For the rappers, their first 35 000 words; for Shakespeare the first 5,000 words for these seven of his works: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, As You Like It, Winter’s Tale, and Troilus and Cressida. For author Herman Melville, he used the first 35,000 words of Moby Dick.

Now before old goats start leaping to Shakespeare’s defence (and reflect on Why The Fuck you’re doing that anyway!?), just Stop. Pause. Think. And admit that this info is surprising, and probably went against many oldies’ prejudices and SHOULD give them pause for thought. Rappers are our 21st century poets. You don’t have to like them, and today’s youth don’t have to like Willy Shakespeare.

Also see: Science proves it: Today’s rappers are more poetic than Shakespeare

~~~oo0oo~~~

The feature pic shows the old bank building in the main street in Apache, Oklahoma. Just behind it to the right is Stan’s fridge shop.

‘kinell!

Back when I was running around the country visiting SpecSavers stores and opening new ones, I found myself in the village of Waterval Boven in a hostelry with a lovely pub run by an Irishman. Waterval Boven is an amazing place – a rock-climbing mecca. I bought the book called something like “The Menu to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe” which listed all the climbs – dozens of them! This is not it, but similar:

Here are two of those climbs:

Waterval Boven.jpg
Waterval Boven falls

Isn’t that amazing!?

The publican and owner of the Shamrock Inn was a raconteur and a wit and a delight. Said his brother was famous on SABC radio (Paddy O’Byrne, I think?). Seeing me all on my own, he chatted to me, served me sherry and guiness, and taught me some Irish, of which I have never forgotten “‘kinell“.

As in ‘kinell! It’s short for Fucking Hell . . fuckin’ ‘ell . . ‘kinell.  A Pom might say ‘You don’t say!’ an American, ‘Beats me!’ – an Irishman will say ‘kinell!

His hostelry was special:

Waterval Boven Hotel.jpg

As is the whole village:

Waterval Boven village

So for one fun evening I had me own personal Irishman feed me guinness, old brown; and blarney; guinness, old brown; and blarney. Rinse and repeat. Marvelous evening.

~~oo0oo~~

Oh no! Chuck Berry Died!

JonDinDin Taylor promised (threatened?) to bring some Chuck Berry to a gathering to celebrate my ageing. I said that’ll keep the teenagers away.
I told him I’d seen Chuck live in concert in 1973 and that he was already over 40yrs old then. This prompted me go to wikipedia to see just how old he is.
He died yesterday aged 90!
Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as ‘Maybellene’ (1955), ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ (1956), ‘Rock and Roll Music’ (1957) and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive. Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.
Here he is playing in 1973:

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said: ‘While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country and western guitar licks onto a rhythm and blues chassis in his very first single, “Maybellene”.
Berry contributed three things to rock music: an irresistible swagger, a focus on the guitar riff as the primary melodic element and an emphasis on songwriting as storytelling. John Lennon said, “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” Ted Nugent said, “If you don’t know every Chuck Berry lick, you can’t play rock guitar.”
We’ll certainly play some Chuck Berry at our gathering. LOUD. Smoke the teenagers out!
~~oo0oo~~

Syd Sellars’ Success

Aitch loved Syd Sellars. They got on like a house on fire. She was doing marketing for the De Marigny & Lello group of optometrists in Durban, Ballito, Stanger, Scottburgh, etc and Syd did all her printing. They would put their creative heads together and design new logos, letterheads and adverts.

Years later I saw Syd again. He was shocked to hear of Trish’s passing. He would SO have liked to have shown her this:

After 30 years in the corporate world Syd is now doing what he loves best: Teaching children fine art – and it’s rewarding him mentally and financially! I LOVE success stories!

He also exhibits and sells his own art, while his wife Laura helps run the business, being the organiser for Syd the creative.

Isnt that a lovely story!?

Playing in the Snow

“Dad why are these people playing in the snow?” shouted my daughter Jessie.

This happened in 2014 but to tell the story I have to take you back to 1973:

On my way back home to South Africa from the ‘States, I flew from New York to London where I had arranged to meet a Harrismith friend Don Inglis, who was working in London for a year, so he knew the place. Turned out he had a rugby match (playing for some Saffer team against the London Irish**) so we scurried around Buck House circle and somewhere else where someone lived or died or married someone, and headed off to Wimbledon for the game in his little Austin something – with five rugby okes squeezed into it.

At the ground the players huddled in a cold shed to change and noticed they were a couple of boerkies short could I play? Sure, I said, but only half the first half, then I had to catch a tube to Heathrow. Thank goodness (it was sleeting outside) Don said ‘Rather don’t risk missing your flight’. So they ran out onto the mud with one blade of grass every ten yards without me and start puffing out steam and shoving some fat Irish blokes around.

Between scrums Don shouted out which tubes and buses I should catch and I left before the halftime whistle to head back to South Africa and home.

——-ooo000000——-

So forty years later (2014) daughter Jessie called out: “Dad why are these people playing in the snow?”
Playing what, Jess?
“I dunno, running around in the snow”. So I go and look: Rugby. London Wasps playing Northampton Saints. The pinkish poms don’t seem to notice there’s a blizzard swirling around their short-pants knees, but I see there’s a Wentzel playing and he’s probably feeling it.

So I explained to her the madness of Poms, and I explained how I hadn’t played rugby in the snow in London long ago. In Harrismith the u/11B’s played first thing Saturday mornings, so I had played on frosty white fields – kaalvoet nogal – but not in an actual blizzard.

My Jess looked at me as if I was stark staring mad. I think she was sorry she asked.

=======ooo000ooo=======

** London Irish? Old Wimbledonians (below)? I dunno. All Poms look the same to us Africans . . .

Old Wimbledonians rugby

——-ooo000ooo——-

boerkies – Saffers

Saffers – South Africans

kaalvoet nogal – barefoot

World War 2 – 94yr-old Dad reminisces

DRAFT – WORK IN PROGRESS

Dad was in the SA Signal Corps in the South Africa Defence Force (or the “Union Army”?). They fought in Egypt and Italy (in the 8th army – British). My military terminology will be found amateur and dodgy, but I’ll fix where I’m told to! Yes SIR!

Egypt

SA played the Kiwis at rugby – “Springboks against the All Blacks” on Gazeera Island in Cairo.

The stadium was full so the latecomers climbed up lampposts to see. British MP’s tut-tutted and ordered them down “This is just not on, chaps. Decorum and all that” but they refused to budge: “This is important, don’t you understand? It’s the Springboks against the All Blacks!” So the Pom cops waited till the end of the game then hauled the Saffers off to gaol for the night. A civvie Egyptian gaol!

(After that whenever they met Kiwis in pubs a scrum would form as soon as the blood/alcohol levels reached an appropriate level. In Venice they scrummed each other right into a canal!)

Abdin Palace, Cairo, the palace of King Farouk. Dad drove (Major?) ____ there in a ___.

Polish troops in charge of grub. Carcasses hanging in a tree. The Poles had chickens and ducks for themselves. Where from? the SA troops wondered.

Always tea and sugar, even if nothing else. A Pom must always have ‘is tea (or char? Years later ex-serviceman Cappie Joubert used to call out “Coop a char ‘na boon!” – cup of tea and a bun – at our Sunday school picnics).

In the desert kites would swoop down on your plate as you walked. They also saw vultures & crows.

Italy

He went up the east (Adriatic) coast while the other ‘prong’ went up the west coast and some went up the middle in the mountains (“they had the hardest time’).

Cassino on the West coast. Monte Cassino the monastery on the hill.

Monte Cassino

‘It was still intact and should have remained so but the Yanks could not leave well enough alone and bombed it to smithereens’.

Monte Cassino bombed

Dad salvaged a piece of mosaic from the ruins, but isn’t sure where it is now.

The nearby Pontine Marshes hosted mozzies, and malaria struck down many Yanks and Poms maybe because of their lower immunity?

Making their way up the east coast (Adriatic Coast) of Italy in 1944 they got to the village of Lanciano where they bedded down in an orange orchard. On the way to the temporary mess in a cowshed, they had to cross an earth road which had a ditch running on either side. A landmine exploded in the ditch, killing seven of their men and badly wounding one Anderson, leaving his limbs barely dangling and his ribs exposed, but somehow the wiry trooper survived.

Went to Rimini

Lake Como pictures by V Paggiola salvaged somewhere. Two paintings about a metre wide and 900mm high.

Lake Como, by V Paggiola

Up North to Fano, where a Spitfire came back from a bombing raid with a partially-released bomb dangling below it. It was told to push off and go drop the bloody bomb in the ocean. It flew off and waggled its wings to dislodge the bomb over the ocean, thought it had got rid of it but returned too soon and dropped the bomb on the camp kitchen, killing five men and badly injuring a bolshy new kid fresh out of SA, Ginger Tidkin, whose legs got burnt in the petrol fire stoves used to cook the big pots of food.

Found a small forward-cab (cab over engine) Ford truck with a very short wheelbase which became Sergeant Dad’s favourite vehicle of the whole war.

Dad's Ford Truck2 Italy 1945.jpg

It could go anywhere and cross the steepest ditches thanks to its high ground clearance and very short length.

In Venice. In the pubs. Drunk. Couldn’t find Ken Morrison when it was time to go, but knew he was probably off with some of his girlfriends. Weaved their way back down rough roads and mountain passes in a 3-ton Ford truck with hooped rings holding up a big dark green tarpaulin cover over the back. When they stopped a comatose Ken dropped down from above ! He had been sleeping up on the tarpaulin all along!

They took the Ford off on an unofficial jaunt to Austria once they knew they were due to be sent back to SA any day soon! At Klagenfurt they were stopped and told “No Further!” “No papers, no go”. Dad approached a Pommy Brigadier who listened to his sad tale of woe and said to the border guards “Why are you giving these Springboks a hard time? Let them through! Here, I’ll sign the papers for them.”

On they went to Graz and Wiener Nieustadt. Ken Morrison and Jimmy Jardine went along for the ride.

Rome

Their time was ending, the war was over and they were due to be sent back home. But they were having too much fun! They had all the money they needed and much freedom to do as they liked. They approached Bullshit Bill Hearn, a Pommy (?major), gave him a very sad story which tugged at his heart strings and asked him to keep them on. He signed them on to stay a while longer and bought them eight more months in Italy!

A Crock at the End

Turning into Jan Hofmeyr road today I saw the brightest rainbow I have seen in all my life, which is a long, long time. The picture is washed out – it was seriaas bright and richly-coloured – quite spectacular! The ‘shadow’ rainbow to the left (it was a double ‘bow) was as bright as a usual rainbow. Ah swear!

And it ended right in our garden!

20170310_174521.jpg

I hurried home and started digging where I had seen it hit the ground –

20160705_170359

Nothing. No pot.

It was a crock.

~~~oo0oo~~~