– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
Home Creatures –
He was dead:
He was found in Jessie’s room:
On the deck; On the scullery sink:
On the patio. Jess said “Dad what’s that?” as we got home late one night (brown water snake):
Away creatures – All at Nambiti game reserve near Ladysmith:
Janet Humphrey got this magic pic of a young Giant Eagle Owl and a Paradise Flycatcher in her old garden on the banks of the Tamalakhane river in the suburbs of Maun in Botswana.
——-ooo000ooo——-
BTW – Owl wisdom? Not so much
Owls are “eyes and ears on wings”. That brain cavity above is about the size of a large peanut. Two-thirds of the owl brain is devoted to sight and hearing. Of the one-third that is left, about 75% of it is devoted to hard-wired instinct and lower functions. That leaves a tiny little sliver for learning which is mostly taken up by remembering good hunting grounds and hunting strategies that work.
Owls are not social creatures like parrots or crows, so they don’t need a lot of cerebral cortex. Think of them as the sharks of the sky. Very good at what they do (hunt, see, hear and reproduce). Mediocre at everything else. (Thanks Mercedes R. Lackey on quora.com).
Geoffey Widdison, also a quoran, asks why we associate owls with intelligence and wisdom and decides “the most likely reason is that they have large depressions around their eyes (which, ironically, are apparently there to direct sound more than to help vision), and that makes them look ‘intelligent and deliberative’ to humans. In other words, not only are we judging by appearance, we’re judging another species on something that has no connection to the quality we attribute to it. (We’re ‘anthropomorphising’).
Which suggests that, while owls aren’t especially bright, neither are we”.
——-ooo000ooo——-
Here he is a few months later in a neighbour’s garden:
The telephone pole just outside my fence recently got a new cable – a fibre optic cable.
Soon I’ll be able to waste my time more efficiently!
Then I noticed a bird popping in and out of the hole in the pole right on top. A violet-backed starling (old plum-coloured). Beautiful dimorphic male and female.
(thanks for pic, nobby clarke)
Couldn’t have been much of a nest in rainy weather, but there it was.
I watched them for a week, but then we got more rain and I don’t see them anymore so I guess they learned this pole is better suited to the ‘net than the nest.
First puppy. That was TC whose name didn’t signify much but we couldn’t think of another and settled on TC which teasingly was for “Terrible Canine” or “Terrific Canine”. Maybe the character from the TV show Magnum P.I influenced the name too. She was born on Melrose Farm of Mouse the Jack Russell by that he-man and character Stan the dark Staffie and was a gift from Dave and Goldie Hill, new parents of Tatum at the time. This was December 1988.
Stan with Goldie; Mouse with Tatum:
TC with her siblings before weaning:
We still lived in a flat but were moving into a house soon. Flat life suited TC:
But so did the great outdoors:
And even though three younger new arrivals outgrew her . . .
She outlasted two of them and remained Top Dog:
Her big friend and sparring partner was Tess the bull terrier from next door. Great mates they were, but occasionally when we near they’d go at each other with much snarling and hound-dog insults.
Once I held Tess high overhead with TC attached to her leg in a firm bite, both growling furiously, then dumped them in the deep end of the pool before they would quit their nonsense!
TC lived to fifteen, outliving Matt and Bogart. She is buried at 7 River Drive Westville on the banks of the Mkombaan river under a kanniedood tree, the paperbark commiphora (was Commiphora harveyi). She just got old and tired and slower and thin, and died quietly in her basket one evening.
~~~oo0oo~~~
My old man has very little interest in his own birthday and has maybe remembered about 10% of my birthdays, and those with the old lady’s prodding. He also has remembered ZERO percent of my kids’ birthdays (they’re both 11 December, he’s 15 December).
So for his latest birthday I was away out of cellphone comms with Jessie at a game reserve. Then I needed to phone Tom and went to where I found signal and did so. I had remembered the old man’s birthday so for the old lady’s sake, I phoned. It was the day after the actual date.
“I’m most upset and disappointed with you. You forgot!” he says as she hands him the phone (he’s joking of course).
So I said “Hell, I remembered 93 of them. I thought to hell with the 94th.”
He thought that was hilarious.
She passed her matric, so got to choose her holiday. A Safari, Dad! And I want you to come along.
Well, wasn’t Dad pleased!
We went to Nambiti outside Ladysmith, KwaZulu Natal. To Springbok Lodge. Jess loved the accommodation and the food and the big beasts.
There were also wonderful little beasts and blommy cheese.
Then this! The best sighting: I had been polite about birding all along – it was Jessies’s trip and she wanted big furry smelly creatures. Also we had Poms on board. But when a quail flushed and Tascha drove on saying ‘Common Quail,’ I said ‘Whoa! Let’s have a look, please.’ Luckily it obligingly came out of the grass and back onto the track where we could see it was special. I got a reasonable picture, but Tascha got a better one with a better camera. Here it is: A Harlequin Quail!
The food was really special, the chefs and servers took great pride in their work; The chalet was comfy; Jess and our Ranger/Guide Tascha the Pom, took to each other and so Jess loved the drives.
Here the two of them watch three male lions threatening to attack hippos in a dam. The hippos were having none of it, so there was a standoff. Lots of bared teeth in the distance. Threats, splashes and bad language.
On the other end of the scale I watched a tiny green mantid nymph (half the size of a matchstick) rock and sway, trying to look like a leaf, then dart forward on his four legs – holding his boxing gloves up in front of his nose; no wings yet; then he’d sway and mimic a leaf in a breeze. Amazing feisty little fella was stalking ants and challenging them to a duel, it seemed. I stared in awesome wonder and clean forgot to take a picture!
Well done, Jess! And thanks for sharing a lovely celebratory trip, my star!
~~~oo0oo~~~
blommy cheese – small flowers
Gail & Sean Robinson invited us along to join them and friends Len and Ann on their Salt Rock getaway. Brave souls! They probly thought “Let’s ask Pete, Jess and Tom”. They got Pete, Jess, Tom, Lungelo, Ryan and Andile!!
Luckily the boys slotted in smoothly, eating, sleeping and fishing like Vaalies-by-die-see. And even getting a bit of exercise walking to Tiffany’s centre a few km’s away when they ran out of bait.
The girls did much the same except for the exercise and fishing parts. They did swim, and they rescued tiny toadlets from the pool – so the birds could eat them.
Whatta lovely weekend, with the weather doing all its things: Rain, wind, sun, quiet and cool. Everything but hot. Wonderful.
I walked to Chaka’s Rock a kilometre or so South where we had enjoyed our first by-die-see as Vrystaters in 1963! It has changed somewhat!
see: https://vrystaatconfessions.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/chakas-rock-1963/
On Saturday, January 18, 2014, I wrote reasonably:
Subject: A PBH solution for the PHBrauers of the world
I’ve been very worried about people driving Audis into school walls, but I feel a bit better now, as a Pretoria Boys High (PBH) boykie has put his mind to a solution for the big Audi / Brauer problem and here’s what he has come up with:
Google is not the only company that thinks auto-piloted cars are the future. Tesla has estimated that their time frame for having automated cars on the road is ‘within the next 3 years.’ So Elon Musk says we could be seeing cars running on auto-pilot as soon as 2016.
And none too soon!! This way we could have inebriation AND safety . . among certain elderly drivers.
~~oo0oo~~
Steve Reed wrote enquiringly:
Regarding Audis getting driven into school walls, I need to be updated in this regard.
~~oo0oo~~
Brauer quickly jumped in and wrote defensively:
Would you like an accurate version or will you settle for Koos’ ‘Clive Nel’-ified version?
~~oo0oo~~
I calmly wrote the simple truth:
All I’m saying is,
The ingredients were:
– Golf;
– Beer;
– an Audi sedan;
– a school wall.
The results were:
– Damage to two of the above (the elderly greying culprit / suspect escaped largely unharmed due to being limp at point of impact).
– Lo-ong boring tales of walls ambushing unsuspecting cars in the depths of Gramadoelas suburb in Tswanie at the dead of night; * yawn *
~~oo0oo~~
Culprit / Suspect Brauer wrote:
Total distortion of facts. ‘Twasn’t beer. . . . whiskey, mate.
~~oo0oo~~
I fretted:
That’s a worrying development. I get worried when people start drinking stuff that slides down easily and stinks less when belched up. I feel that beer and red wine allow your companions to know more about your drinking habits, and give earlier warnings about ‘when’s enough’. Just by looking at his white flokati rug one night Mike Lello knew a lot about Milk Stout and the Rainbow Club.
~~oo0oo~~
Interloper Bruce Soutar now jumps in with his tuppence worth:
At the RAINBOW Jazz Club in the Pinetown taxi rank they serve their beers in ‘quart’ bottles (750ml). One special and memorable night The African Jazz Pioneers were playing, and Swanepoel ordered a Castle. He noticed the guys next door were drinking Black Label and saw theirs was 5,5% alcohol while Castle was only 5%, so he ordered a Black Label next. Then he saw some okes drinking Milk Stout and noticed that was 6% alcohol so he smoothly oozed over to Milk Stout and then stuck with it. All the while the African Jazz Pioneers were playing their seductive swinging special jazz. Many, many milk stouts later we decided to gate crash Mike Lello for a ‘last drink’ on the way home.
They were sitting down to supper when we staggered in. Pete S was feeling hungry, sat in Mike’s chair and polished off his supper. Then had an urge to burp? . . . but did not quite make the toilet bowl. Hence the flocked–up-carti rug.
~~oo0oo~~
Public Service Notice: This hugely exaggerated story is to be taken with a large pinch of salt. But as interesting aside, you can see what it MIGHT have looked like under a microscope.
~~oo0oo~~
I objected:
TMI !! As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted: Self-driving cars for the elderly – that’s what we need.
~~oo0oo~~
Trader Horn spoke of a fellow down-and-out in the Joburg doss house – a traveller who “made good money but couldn’t stand prosperity,” Whenever he made a commission, he’d go out, spend lavishly and get boisterously inebriated.
My TomTom has a problem with prosperity. Jess will hoard her pocket money but Tom must spend his with urgency. But how lucky am I that his idea of a splurge is to take his Monday pocket money and walk to the shops and return with a thick steak, fresh herbs and rocket, a brick of butter and coarse salt? He’ll hurry home with his loot, cook up a storm and sit down and eat it happily. He may not finish it and he definitely won’t eat our supper after that, but he’s as happy as larry.
This time it was pasta with a freshly-made herb and tomato sauce.
~~~oo0oo~~~
. . and then ignoring it.
I couldn’t believe they wanted R40 000! Forty Thousand! NO WAY!
So I sought advice from someone who really knows cars.
Hi Alan
My VW kombi is a 2005 1,9TDi T5 8-seater – 166 000km.
Repairs needed:
Clutch (R12 800); Brakes (R3 000); Driveshaft (R10 100)
Sliding door not opening; plus 165 000 km service.
I have been quoted R40 537 for the above by Alpine Motors VW.
As a trade-in on a second-hand vehicle (around R250k) they offer me R30 000.
I think I’m ready for a double cab bakkie now. Needn’t be 4X4.
Please tell me what you think. Thanks a lot. Cheers. Pete
(this was in 2012)
~~~oo0oo~~~
Hi Pete.
My value for your kombi: R105 000 less 15 for high kms = 90. Less repairs. So worst case scenario on a trade-in = R50 000.
So their R30 000 offer is taking a chance. You don’t need to give it away, these kombis are very sought-after.
If Alpine sells you another they will do the repairs for half that. Tell them to work a deal and you want 70 as-is on another Kombi. If not, rather keep it and fix it yourself as the repairs it needs are all wear and tear being the driveshaft, clutch and brakes – not unusual at this mileage.
My advice:
Fix it. That is the cheaper way round. This is not so expensive in comparison to other cars.
Regards, Alan
~~~oo0oo~~~
So: Did I take his advice and spend R40k to get exactly what I wanted?
No, I spent R140k and got a bakkie. Which I didn’t really want. And which I still have and I still don’t really want.
One day I hope to live and learn.
Subject: I’m rich
Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016
I’m rich. I have an early Willie Bester, complete with crushed Mainstay Cane spirits bottle top and torn-off piece of an Omo packet, framed in cheap SA pine, painted with pink primer.
Read this from Smithsonian Libraries and weep:
Contemporary African art from the Jean Pigozzi collection / foreword by Mark Gibourne; [day of sale, June 24, 1999]. London: Sotheby’s, 1999. 132pp., 57 lots. illus. (color).
The 1999 Sotheby’s auction of works from the Jean Pigozzi collection was the first major sale of modern African art by a top auction house.
Remarkably, all the works sold. Most fetched more than the estimated prices. Realized prices ranged from £2,000 to £7,000. The top price was a Willie Bester mixed media work going for £10,000 (pre-sale estimate, £4,000-£6,000). Not bad. The sale was billed as a benefit for Unicef and to establish the Jean Pigozzi Prize for Contemporary African Art.
Confession: When Aitch bought it in Kaapstad one early holiday while we were rich and child-free, I raised my eyebrows and thought Hmmm . . .
~~~oo0oo~~~
Sent: Thursday, 17 November 2016
Subject: Willie Bester art
Aitch’s Willie Bester artwork is looking even better – again. One was sold at an auction of David Bowie’s African art collection. Admittedly there’s a “David Bowie factor” which one art dealer reckoned added 50% to the prices.
~~oo0oo~~
She’d have done this if she was still around, so here goes:
“Remember how you said ‘Are you mad?’ when I bought it in Cape Town, Koos?!”
**mumble** Well, I didn't say 'mad'. I'm sure I said, "Are you sure?" **mumble**
It was January 1993 and Aitch paid R2660 on budget over six months on her credit card. She pinned the slip to the back of the painting. What an investment! Note how they used the old shook-shook credit card machine.
~~oo0oo~~
More about Willie:
Born in Montagu, Western Cape in 1956. He began painting murals as a child, and it was also then that he first developed an interest in recycling industrial and waste materials. As an adult, Bester worked for 15 years as a dental technician’s assistant before rekindling his love for art. His first solo exhibition, held in Cavendish Square in 1982, was mounted without the assistance of a gallerist. Bester went on to study part-time at the Community Art Centre in Cape Town where he was exposed to the idea of art as a political tool.
Following this encounter he had a meteoric rise to fame in the early 1990s, exhibiting at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg before taking part in exhibitions in Dakar, Senegal, and in numerous centres in Europe, including Africa Remix, which was mounted at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2005 before travelling to the Pompidou Centre in Paris and thereafter to Johannesburg.
Bester has received numerous prestigious awards including South Africa’s Order of Ikhamangu (Silver). Most recently, Bester exhibited at the Changchun Sculpture Symposium in China where he was voted the most popular artist and honoured for his innovative use of materials.
~~oo0oo~~
Bester’s mixed media works have frequently included passages of painting that have contained strongly naturalistic elements. Continuity is also evident in Bester’s sustained preoccupation with apartheid’s legacy, and the empathy and dignity with which he represents the dispossessed.
Curriculum Vitae
Training – 1986: Community Arts Project, Cape Town.
Exhibitions – 1982–2003: Eleven solo Exhibitions in South Africa.
1988–2001: Five solo exhibitions abroad – Dakar, Senegal; Trento, Rome and Turin, Italy; and Brussels, Belgium. 1989–2004: Participation in approximately thirty group exhibitions in South Africa.
1991–2005: Participation in approximately forty-six international Exhibitions in thirty-five cities and towns in the UK, Italy, The Netherlands, France, Switzerland, USA, Cuba, Germany, Canary Islands, Spain, Austria, Senegal, Brazil, India, Malaysia, and Ireland. This includes several biennales and high profile exhibitions.
Collections
Iziko SA National Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum, Port Elizabeth; Durban Art Gallery; Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg; Pretoria Art Museum; University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; University of the Western Cape, Bellville; University of South Africa Art Gallery, Pretoria; Department of National Education, Pretoria; Department of Foreign Affairs, Pretoria; South African Broadcasting Corporation, Cape Town and Johannesburg; Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town; Contemporary African Art Collection, Paris; Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC.
Awards
1991: Merit Prize, Cape Triennial.
1992: Prix De L’Aigle, 4th Grand Prix International D’Arts Plastiques de la Vlille de Nice, France.
2003: Honorary medal for promotion of Fine Arts: Suid Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns.
2004: Order of the Disa, Members Class, Government of the Republic of South Africa.
~~oo0oo~~
~~oo0oo~~
We had a delicious breakfast. Hi-igh carbos!
Their Last Walk – here comes Jess! As her Mom Patricia Delicia would have said “to tremendous applause!”
Mrs Wendy Hicks, Mrs Janice Freeman and the Wendon Matric Class of 2016
When October comes round – again, too soon – and the jacaranda blossoms lie on the road in Elston Place, it reminds me of the 76 things I should have done this last year and that I have on my to-do list.
That’s all. It just reminds me.
Trish and Janet’s mom Iona died this week aged 90. Their Dad Neil passed away in 2013 just short of his 88th birthday. Poor Iona was not happy after Neil’s death, having to move into a home, then earlier this year into frail care. She remained feisty, but in pain from a crumbling hip. She missed Neil’s amazing care and she missed Trish and Janet, who was her last remaining comfort, but so far away in Maun.
At the end she suffered strokes within the last few days which hastened the end. Janet got down from Botswana in time to make her last two days more comfortable.
Neither Neil nor Iona wanted any fuss – no funeral, no service, no lies. Daughter Janet instead arranged a little wake – a gathering of good friends where we celebrated them and spoke about and laughed about Trish, Neil and Iona, and drank to family, health, fun, friends, memories and dammitall. I’m so glad she did!
Some months later, Janet and Tobias saw to it that their ashes joined Trish’s (and Bella’s!) in our garden.
~~~oo0oo~~~
So I’m on Noakes’ diet – well, eating plan. OK – Trying to follow his advice, sort of.
Well, actually just trying to cut out sugar. Eating tons more bacon.
So Marc is in our garden cottage while he’s learning to be a chef at the international hotel school up the road. Lovely chap, son of canoeing friend Kelway Tanner, and already hired by Zimbali to cook for them.
When I get home he says –
Here you go – Today was “desserts” and I made this for you.
Double choc, caramel layer, thin layer of blueberry, biscuit base, WICKED!
Mmmm mmmmmmmm!!! Don’t tell Tim.
. . . . .
By the time I thought to take a picture there was just a smear on the plate, no crumbs even. Then I licked the smear.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Mkhuze is dry. Very VERY dry! Nsumo Pan is empty. One little mud puddle has about twenty hippos huddling in it, caked in thick mud. Their farts probly don’t even bubble to the surface now.
At the entrance to KuMasinga hide, a chap with stunning new Swarovski binocs and a huge bazooka-like Canon telephoto lens asks, “You a birder?” Spotted my Zeiss binocs I suppose. In the next two minutes he’s told me the Swarovskis are R36 000, only Canon lenses “of course”, Mkhuze was last this dry in 1963 when he first visited, Swarovski gave him the binnies, he wouldn’t pay that much, and his name is Ian Sinclair.
“No shit?!” I said, “I’m a fan, I’ve got all your books”. “Got them here?” he asks, “I’ll sign ’em for you”. Faint Oirish accent. So he walks back to my bakkie with me and does just that in the only one I have with me.
“I’m writing another one. All of Africa’s birds. Photographic.”
Where are you staying? I ask. We’re staying at Ghost Mountain Inn”. “Ah”, I said, “They’re licenced to sell beer and whisky.” He grins, “And I’m licenced to drink it! I’m Irish!”
In the hide, a bird party is sipping on the nectar of a profusion of red flowers. Fellow Irishman Tommy is photographing them with his bazooka. Ian is guiding him on his Africa trip. “What’s that tree again with those red flowers?” Ian asks of me. “Schotia” I say “Schotia brachypetala“. “Vernacular?” he asks. “Weeping Boer Bean”, I say, thinking he’s having me on. “Ah,” he says.
“I’m going to tell everyone who’ll listen that I told Ian Sinclair something he didn’t know,” I say. “Oh, I’ll deny it,” he says, quick as a flash.
Ian Sinclair! Well that was definitely the most interesting mammal I spotted on this trip. Read more about Ian here.
The feature pic shows that weeping boerbean tree at the waterhole. Ian said visit me if you come to Cape Town. I said I’ll bring whisky.
~o0o~
Enjoyable birding list:
White-backed vulture, yellow-breasted apalis, chin-spot batis, brubru, bulbul, sombre and yellow-bellied greenbul, golden-breasted bunting, orange-breasted bush shrike, camaroptera, yellow-fronted canary, long-billed crombec, pied crow, laughing, red-eyed, and cape turtle doves, emerald-spotted dove, FT drongo, blue-grey flycatcher, crested guineafowl, white helmet-shrike, African hoopoe, trumpeter, crowned and yellow-billed hornbills, YB kite, black-winged lapwing, red-faced mousebird, BH oriole, RB oxpecker, petronia, green pigeon, African pipit, 3-banded plover, puffback, fiscal shrike, bearded scrub robin, scimitarbill, grey-headed sparrow, cape glossy and black-bellied starlings, woolly-necked stork, white-bellied, scarlet-chested, purple-banded and grey sunbirds, wire-tailed swallow, blue waxbill, village and dark-backed weavers, cape white-eye.
Few animals: Tortoise, zebra, nyala, impala, waterbuck, kudu, warthog, giraffe, wildebeest, hippo, terrapin, slender mongoose, rock monitor lizard (Jess spotted these last two). Eleven big male nyala in one tight little herd.
~o0o~
Went with Jess and Jordi. Tom visited friends. We stayed in the safari tents. A yellow-bellied greenbul ate our crumbs right at my feet on the deck, and two thick-tailed nagapies (bushbaby / galago) raided our kitchen while we ate supper. Everything’s really hungry!
And a tiny little plant all alone in the dry dirt between the tents:
~o0o~
