Wildernesschatter

ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO PASS

2009-05-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

Hello gentle readers and goodbye.
I will no longer be posting to this blog instead I am posting on the blog attached to my web site......www.fiveassegais.co.za ..........so to read about my adventures go there and follow the trail to TRAIL TAILS for all the latest and greatest, and sign on as a follower please
Thanks for the interest
Francis

2009-05-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

HELLO AND THANKS FOR READING THIS BLOG ..... I AM NOW POSTING ON MY WEBSITE BLOG.....WWW.FIVEASSEGAIS.CO.ZA PLEASE GO THERE AND BECOME A FOLLOWER

NOTES AFTER A LONG BREAK

2008-05-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

So here I am back again, with a new keyboard and everything and I had better do another episode or I might never do one again.
So to bring us all up to speed fast, the saga with the influx of natives into our African landscape has been down a few trails. A meeting was called by the evildoer to ‘consult/ inform’ the community as Ged was deeply concerned, or so the invite attested ‘to do the right thing’ so it seemed churlish to refuse.
When I arrived the meeting had already commenced and there was a delegation seated at the head consisting of Barry our local farmers unionist, a dolly bird with ‘personality’ and some chap that looked like he was a lawyer from some American sit com, who was espousing the wonders and delights that he felt was surely evident to even the slowest, of Geds idea to import rapists, cattle and sheep eating, murders disguised as workers into the bosom of our little community.
He had charts and flow meters and all sorts of computer generated gobbildy gook to impress and startle the gathering, and a speaking style that was sooooooo boring and dull that the entire congregation was already in a state of stupor.
He was just getting into his stride when Fishy Tim enquired in the nicest possible way, why the hell this man was presenting a ‘proposal’ about something that we all felt should never happen and was in fact already happening and we were not here to discuss the merits of any ‘proposal’, we were here to see that the illegal activities that were going on, were stopped immediately and that as such he felt that we should take a vote to state as such and until the accommodation of these workers was stopped no one was willing to entertain any proposals that Mr. Smoothie dull as ditchwater had to offer.
No matter how seductive they may be.
This took the wind out of Mr. Boring and Monotonous, who felt that he had been paid to spout bollocks and should have the opportunity to do so, at his leisure, without some grubby chap in a floppy hat telling him to take his ‘proposal’ and stick it.
The vote was taken…. unanimous, but a great deal of heated debate was entered into nonetheless. We had all come to insult Ged and wanted our turn. He was a man alone indeed. Lots of discussion about waste management and other stuff was aired at length, but surprisingly after all these cogent and heartfelt arguments, Ged did not stand up and say ‘Mea culpa and ever so sorry” or volunteer to dismantle his Satanist scheme, buy us all a present, no, no, no, he did not.
The up shot was, what with holidays and all, his mouth piece lulled us into giving him a few days to reply to our he assured us were insignificant worries and concerns, easily side stepped. There was a chap there from the green scorpions which was exciting and made us all feels powerful and filled with the majesty of the law, and it would seem in the fullness of time he did get a letter to cease and desist, which was nice and all has gone quiet, bliss.
The side of the angels triumphed, so far.
My trials with my other neighbors have also seemed to have fallen on my side, having given them every opportunity to back down they pursued me till I reluctantly sent my nasty letter saying they could take their drawings and stuff them, they must get a proper oke to do it, not their web-toed cousin with a GPRS, and they must pay me 35 grand for their share of the fence and bla bla bla fuck you etc.
Well after a bit they have now returned with their proper drawing which has changed the entire picture as they saw it and there is a lot of back tracking going on, but now I am having too much fun persecuting them and am pursuing the matter to the finish, I am enjoying pulling their chain especially as I suspect that we will find that the true boarder line is well inside what they think is their property which will gall.
But I am getting way way ahead of myself, as since the last episode almost six months have passed! Back right back to last Christmas.
I had spent a cold winter watching the dam empty out and the rains never seemed to want to come, I searched the skies, but though the rest of the world seemed to be washing away, for me…. nothing but a bit of drizzle. The pagan rituals were undertaken, Tim in his own inimitable style got some homo magicians from somewhere to bedazzle his vast tribe of little and large black people, with tartrazine in vast quantities to stimulate the crowd. I can’t even remember it anymore it feels so long ago.
And then the relies arrived to finalise the ‘deal’ and have a gay old time in Africa. So it started to drizzle and mist interminably, still no rain as such just miserable, and cold. This was NOT why Sis had come to Africa, and she was willing to complain. We had had such a jolly time the last time we went a wondering that it had been decided to do the same again, but this time through the Transkie down to Pletenburg bay where we were to stay in Howard’s shack on the beach.
Well that was the plan, which was not going well, I had tried to find lekker places to stay but it is not my style to book ahead, just go and see what happens, like last time, but I let slip and tried to book ahead, so the sort of alright came to the front, you only find the ‘other’ places when you are there, first mistake, and the weather was still very English.
We belted down past Ermelo to land in some dreary some star place with a pool near a dam but at least it was now hot and sweaty, still not to madams approval, Nick nearly caught a tiger fish and we had a massage before drifting down through the Transkie.
My my what a peek into the future that was, the place is a toilet, not a soul there knows about paint and the litter is indescribable, Butterworth and Umtata, old colonial towns look like they have been raped and pillaged, repeatedly. The weird part being that the citizenry seemed to be inordinately pleased with the result.
These wonders of mans lack of enterprise and ingenuity failed to entertain so we trundled off, I got arrested for going 180, which made the disgruntled sister even more critical of my arrangements for her visit. But we had fun waiting in the court listening to sad peasantry being persecuted and after some tears and recriminations we negotiated the Byzantine rituals of the New South African judicial system, much less scary than the one of yore! And escaped with a stiff fine, bummer.
The holiday almost immediately got much much better. Howard’s shack is very nice. Just the sort of place every communist has ever warned you about! Every millimeter reeked of a the pervasive perfume of Fuk-le-poor, positively reeked, with fluffy towels, massive beds, and every but every creature comfort the resourcefulness of man can conjure, we were satisfied, a great deal, for quite a few days.
Well that was the very extended holiday over with, and power outages, Zim, no rain, crime gone mad and generally every one getting a cold from the north etc rudely interrupted this bliss. The whole country went into a decline and as usual we all started to think about pastures new, even though we all knew that that was not really on the menu. It is the South African white lament, no voice, and no point and deeply concerned, touching really.
Howard was released from his personal hell with the legal world and cheered up so much that he felt constrained to lavish more loot on the farm, and I have entered into a phase of conspicuous consumption.
Quite hard work actually and takes up a whole lot of time, especially if the desire is to spend it well.

THE DISTRICT COMES TO ARMS

2007-12-22T22:26:00.000-08:00

There are in the world of fiction many extreme characters both wicked and good, but it is rare to find such in real life, but we have one here, a wicked one to boot.

The other day Fishy Tim arrived here for a little dinner party and was fired up big time. He had left his most pleasant and convivial estate on some errand and gazing out over the idyllic scenery passing his Cruiser window clocked several porta-potties and big yellow machines grinding up and down on his neighbor’s property. Naturally he did a sharp turn to find out what was up?

He was informed, to his distress, that they were hell bent on erecting housing (see squatter camp) for 100 plus wekkers for the mine down the road!

He did a swift about turn, all thoughts of his farming activities forgotten to address this threat to his life and property. The phone lines got red hot as contacted the owner’s, who consisted of an entire family of conflicting intertribal interests and pitting the one against the other, prevented this horror from infesting his valley.
He was triumphant; he had the trucks stopped, the porta-potties dispersed, the enterprise and its cement consigned to the void from whence it had come. JOY was all abounding!
He was a hero, and we praised him.
This one would have thought would be the last of this episode. This flagrant misuse of land with no permissions or any consultation by a large and experienced company had already cost them thousands of Rands, which one would have thought would have taught them a lesson. In fact the entire episode had almost been lost in the mists of time when it transpired that they were back!
This time on my doorstep!
WB and Wankers Construction commissioned by Nko Mine a subsidiary of some other nameless entity controlled by interests far from those of us introverts tucked into this bit of wilderness, had managed to get hold of our local villain and negotiated to erect their slum, at huge cost to themselves and huge profit to the bad baaad boy of Uitkoms.
This news rapidly spread through the entire community, which was universally, shocked, shocked and appalled. The thought that a huge crowd of wekkers (see young black men) was to descend onto them did not please and delight. This bigotry was naturally hidden behind heartfelt claims to be concerned with the quality of water, sewerage and other PC areas such as planning permissions and good citizenry, but basically they did not want a bunch of young bucks wondering around unsupervised eating their cattle, raping their women and murdering them in their beds!!!
NO, NO, NO. Fuck that!!!!!
And neither did I.
As you can imagine this inspired a great deal of spirited conversation and debate. Mr Craw’s personal history and the many slights he had inflicted on virtually every person in the district were aired again with renewed vigor. People huddled whispering in small groups looking over their shoulders, with a renewed sense of community and purpose.
Nothing like the work of the devil to unite!
A group of ‘concerned citizens’ constituting representatives of the local Boer Verineging (farmers union) as well as our local Tourism Association who had dissuaded a convoy of heavily armed bakkie's rolling onto the offending parties patio, had instead approached this terrible man to politely enquire what the devil he thought he was up to? Which incidentally we all knew, but they wanted to hear it from the horses mouth.
Sadly I was not present myself, but it was reported that the delegation were received with minimal hostility, Itzk our local plumber was immediately accused of being the instigator. Mr. C is nothing if not aggressive in his debating techniques.
He admitted that yea verily indeed he was to import 100-150 murders and cattle thieving rapists into the heart of our area, with the heartfelt wish that these interfering busy bodies should keep their collective noses out of his business and their presence off his farm. He felt that there was NO need to mention this to those who would be murdered, robbed and raped by his new tenants. He intimated that this was ‘his’ farm and he could do whatever he wanted and what were they so twitched about? He lied and fabricated stories of his deep concern for all his beloved neighbors concerns, he assured them that he had sought permission from the council, but was unable to produce any documentation. He assured the gathered that the sewerage would be removed by the council’s honey wagons, if it transpired that the plastic septic tanks were inadequate to the task, and in short was less than willing to roll over and lose the fortune that he would be paid to spoil our lives.
Our delegation left to digest this information, and to pass on to their respective congregations the awful news. The local lines hummed with screams of indignation and concern. We were not pleased. The consensus was to shoot him, insult his wife, poison his cattle, and report him to the press, the council, the police, anybody and everybody. Action was being called for in shrill tones. It was settled however that we would hold off till the delegation had consulted with the authorities and that a letter would be sent. I am sure that this gave our scoundrel sleepless nights, not!
Well I for one was not satisfied. I felt a somewhat a more forceful reaction was called for than a mere letter but I was prevailed upon to restrain myself, even our local firebrand the Afrikaner Welshman Mr. Itzak Davies felt that we should do this the ‘right’ way so the letter was sent, all formal and precise listing all our grievances.
I none the less got hold of my legal eagle who also advised me not to send my digger down to trench his road or to do any other impetuous and foolish things such as had already, on many occasions forced her to interrupt her profitable legal biz to bail me out off. Instead I was asked to get a petition signed by all to keep me quiet.
This took me on an altogether different adventure, back into the past, Getting signatures in this area is not like in some urban jungle, where you can be a minor irritation to people on the pavement, here you have to travel, far, very far with the likely hood that the incumbent you are visiting is on a hill and far away so when I heard that there was to be a Farmers festival at the local hall I was dead pleased. I could catch these elusive folk at play and in a group.
Well let me tell you this was something to behold, I rolled into the place which consists of a prefab building like a low barn, hidden from civilization in the depths of a blue gum forest, you have to be in the know to know it is there. The crowd had already started to burn meat and drink. Young bucks scampered with rude health about the place with their gee gee’s and rugby balls while the girls helped their mothers with the cooking and the ‘men’ gathered in groups drinking brown drinks.
A veritable wave of ‘who the fuck is this’ swept over me as I approached but fortunately there were a few that knew me and I was brought into the fold. No adulation or even much civility let alone drink, food or any hospitality was offered, although they did welcome my petition and even asked for more for the next day when the main proceedings were to happen. I was very aware that I was an English, Jewish stranger in a very peculiar world. I made a hasty retreat the whispers behind me deafening in their disapproval.
The next day I brought more petition form for the disgruntled to sign and was faced with the full might of the local commando, on their horsies with their women in voortrekker outfits, a domineeee (Afrikaans priest) flag poles with ‘Vier Kleur’ (four colour) flag flying no SA flag let alone the New SA Flag and it was only the threat of an instant lynching which prevented me breaking into “Inkosi Sikele” when they sang ‘Die Stem”.
It was all a bit sad, the last hoorah of a small and forgotten people lost in the wilderness, made one wonder how they used to be so scary! How the mighty have fallen.
Well the pagan season of celebration and drunkenness is upon us so the saga rests till all the brews have been drunk and expelled, wives have recovered from their beatings, the food has been digested and children have been sent back to school when we will return.

BOYS GET TOGETHER TO MAKE A DEAL

2007-12-12T00:40:00.000-08:00

With all the excitement of this destruction in my life it was a relief that the I just had time to turn my slashed and tortured paintings to the wall, when Nick the Baron arrived at Tambo/Joburg/ Smuts airport and I could flee the farm and have a very expensive dinner.
Always a great consolation in times of stress.
Some few months before, Howard, having enjoyed his bundu investment, a lot, fallen in love with the place, and with some disposable loot in hand, which he felt would be well spent on such foolishness as Francis’s little dream in the bush, wanted to up his shares.
Which is nice.
He had ammo and Nick didn’t, so he needed to get more of the pie to justify such investment and Nicko who had an urgent need to turn left on a plane again, was very amenable to such an unexpected return on his investment. It seemed that this would be an easy and pain free negotiation.
Now in this world of real estate when ownership is discussed the thorny subject of ‘value’ comes racing to the fore. How do you put a price on a piece of rock, weed and vermin? A thorny and vexing question, as the sums discussed, even at the lowest level were considerable!
I was dispatched to get an evaluation, and old man Winkler the local lad in this department came measured, um’ed and tutted, drank my coffee and showed me what local farms were selling for. Very gratifyingly high, his assessment was sent to all, one party was delighted and the other not so. So the not so one (wid de mullah) asked his chum to look at it, his chum did nada, days and weeks passed, with no resolution, e-mails, sms’s were shared, the philosophy of the farm was discussed, the nature and size of the money involved was explained, substances were shared and things said under the influence, both parties went into and came out of their respective coma’s to chuck in their latest theory of life and everything into the pot.
I was a little cow between 2 old and cautious bulls that insisted on snorting and pawing the ground across the valley. In short we were arguing between 6 and 16! A bit of a gap.
So after a few months of this inter continental bickering the Baron realized that his presence was required in the actual field of play, so there I was at the Airport to fetch him. Taking Greg to give moral support we ended up in a Chinese restaurant.
THE CHINA MEETING
The venue, a communist style minimalist hall brightly lit with nary a shadow to be seen. We let Nick do the ordering, being a trencherman of note and a cognosti of the archaic world of Chinese menus, we even got saki to ease the negotiations.
Naturally with two such reticent chaps as H & N silence fell like a curtain over the table, interspersed with glib tales of no consequence. We chattered and gossiped away like a bunch of old ladies.
I had decided that I must let them get on with it and not push the situation. But they were very coy and retiring, 2 virgins on the verge. It was all I could do to not stick a fork in the pair of them.
The fags came to my rescue as I was bursting to get things moving, so Greg and I departed to the street, to have one.
“Round 1” was rung on a handy glass.
We left them looking at each other as though they had NO idea what they were there for.
Returning we found them looking flushed and strangely intimate, worrying, but obviously some ground had been covered, at the very least foreplay had been indulged!
At that point vast amounts of food started to arrive. Do not leave Nicko in charge of a menu if you are unwilling to eat a lot. It was very impressive show, so much so that a book club of ladies in a nearby table wanted him to do the same for them. A feast indeed!
Between all this Howard managed to insert plaintive squeals about how he was being irresponsible spending all this money and Nicko tried to look sad and poor, but not desperate, between mouth full’s of wonderful oriental grub. Quite a trick it was a sight to see.
The truth is that both of them had decided what was what long ago and this was all some sort of complicated tango to see who would lift their skirts first. Now between a pair of sexy young girls this can be a good spectator sport but between these 2 old bruisers it got dull quite fast and the deal as had been first mentioned so many months before was left for being slept over for one last night, thankfully confirmed the very next day!
Well this pleased me as the farm would get some more loot, Nick was pleased because he could go home with some wedge from his ‘African Investments” and Howard was pleased because I was pleased and the truth be told he had acquired himself a gentleman’s estate for a keen price and with no aggravation for him, that these acquisitions normally engender.
THE ITALIAN MEET
With the value established, the price agreed, all that remained was to sign the grey stuff and all would be well ……….HA!!!! Life should be so easy. We gathered again this time with Kim the legal eagle in tow to set it all up, and all had a very convivial time. This and that came up; archaic points of law and tax were discussed with great interest. An endless stream of dissipated punters approached Howard, being a bit of a rock star in the gambling firmament; Kim took notes and babbled on her phone. We ate food.
Leaving this I thought that all was settled. There was no further need for any discussion, addition or any delay in the finalization of the task, and within in days if not hours all would be done and I could strike another job off my endless list!
I am such a girly!
Now after 6 weeks have passed nothing but nothing has been achieved. My deal has disappeared into that strange void between lawyers and accountants with their complications. The propensity of both parties to be a combination of vague and nit picky at the same time consumed more time. Creating, as we are spread far apart, endless complications and confusion with a long delays created even in this electronic age as both sides like to read these things slowly and at leisure and then do nothing for a while too.
There is a down side to being the plaything of wealthy men.

DAMNATION AND DISASTER

2007-11-24T04:55:00.000-08:00

Troubles have a tendency to sneak up from behind, and my latest brush with woe was no different.
Once again it was a lesson in ‘Beware of what you wish for’ as it tends to bite you in the backside. I had been complaining that what with the advent of loot on the estate, life has been wonderfully smooth and as such not much to write about, so I should have suspected something when a week ago the ex arrived at my door step.
It has been a year or more since last we were an ‘item’ and much water has passed under the bridge, so I was cool and calm with a promise in my heart to be ‘nice’. A pleasant evening was passed, too pleasant, as then she decided to extend the occasion, paradise being a hard place to leave.
She picked up my phone, message or what ever and clocked the message that the present incumbent had left, sent etc, they might even had words, however, whatever transpired between them,
It was………..DOOOOM
I had gone to the neighbors leaving my cell at home, (mistake) to fetch my dog that has a tendency to stray, leaving the house in peace and tranquility, with no inkling of the storm that was about to break. In fact quite the opposite as I had encountered, on the way home, some neighbors, who have bought an adjoining property, who were causing a not so minor ripple in my equilibrium with queries about the new fence line, who were pleasingly quiet over the issue.
Some time before, they visited me to enquire if I would be amenable to them installing a footpath through my place along which they intended to send 40-70 hikers a day!
When I expressed less than wild jubilation at this prospect they got all snooty and left me threatening and demanding type paper a week later.
I just hate that.
I have learnt that it is best to keep my mouth shut in these affairs I sent them a reply saying I would send them a reply, and rushed of to: -
1. Fishy Tim. The country king. Who directed me to peek at the general surveyors plan on my wall, DUH that showed the road firmly within my property, PHEW, and advised me to tell them to go forth and multiply.
2. Howy, my new WK (white knight) told me to go and buy their farm! Which I thought was super cool.
3. Kim, my legal rotweiler who also thought that they were trying their luck forwarded me a letter to present them, which was so back in your face and scary that even though it was addressed to another I got twitchy. She was all steamed up to eat their children.
4. Back to Fishy, consulted neighbors, got all worked up at this invasion, went back to everybody in fact, several times, even offered the local legal beagle some folding money to give me his opinion and procrastinated in the hope that it would all just go away, as I am sure that in the field of law and detail I am always wrong. I don’t do that sort of stuff.
Weeks went by and just as I had forgotten about it they came back to enquire what I wished to do about their demands, bummer. I was still unwilling to send Kim’s letter, as there would be no return from that! It is very scary and we would NEVER be able to deal with each other again without several other parties involved, tedious and expensive. None the less I did feel we were in a strong position legally wise and was not constrained by thinking that this would expose me to any great trial and tribulation, quite the opposite in fact, but I hate a fight, so I got my very tactful and cunning chum Howard to dictate what I thought was a very clever letter to them.
Dear (Tedious Neighbor)
I was hoping that you had forgotten about this little thing, but I have taken an opinion (I loved that) and think that things should just stay as they are, but if you wish to pursue this let me know.
Yours etc
Me
Well it had been a while since I had sent that and when they saw me riding Howard’s multi thousand Rand quad, while they were on cheapo Chinky ones I think, settled the matter. They being of the sort who looking at such a machine, with a nutter and his dog aboard nog al, which they had coveted in boys magazines, would be inclined to think that I would not be a push over like Wimpy or Lina.
So it was with light heart I returned home to find the ex in a state of high dungeon, having digested the truth that I was now seeing some one again, it was fine while she thought I was right handing it alone on my farm but this new knowledge changed everything.
She was as mad as ten cats in a sack, like she had just caught me in flagrantly, most disconcerting. Positively blew me down with a feather.
We had seen each other what 5 times in the last year; she had even got engaged to be married. I mean What the fuck?????
The old chestnuts were trotted out with great vigor (can you women not find some new complaints about men???)
1. I am a bastard, a lying, cheating swine!
2. I have stolen the best years of her life!
3. I broke all my promises!
4. I never loved her!
5. She gave everything to me!
6. I took advantage of her!
7. I Stole her money!
8. She loved me totally and like no other. Oh and I never loved her!!!!
9. I Tortured her!
10. I called her ugly!
11. I called her fat!
12. I am a bastard!
13. I am a very very enormous lying cheating swine of a bastard! ! ! ! !
14. I will die old ugly and alone.
15. She doesn’t need me and can have any man she wants.
16. She is NOT mad, drunk or on drugs and I have told the entire planet that she is.
17. I am a pervert, gender bender and S&M nut case, and wanker. (Which is true)
18. That I made her love me and that I am a bastard
19. I hate her children (which is not true)
20. Oh and that I have never done anything for her, given her anything, just take, take, take and I am a bastard too.
Being a sensitive and Jewish man I believed every word she screamed at me.
And on and on she went, building herself up into frenzy, calming down and then starting up all over again. Fell asleep and drank the bottle of cheap plonk that had hidden in my shelf for a couple of years, and started in again, and again and again, getting more and more enraged.
She realized that after what she had already said, let alone what she still had in mind, this was the last chance she would ever have to exact vengeance on me. She knew that when she left I would roll over and go to sleep. Which was true but she was getting to me, it took my all to not get mad with her, and the fact that this was not an argument rather a spilling of bile and there was nothing I could say or do that would not send her into an even bigger frenzy, did not help.
This went on well past my bedtime, a never changing monotonous out pouring of ugly ugly hateful words. The sadness of our parting dragged out and flagellated time and again. A stuck record in a rut of very real pain. It was hideous, frightening and very very sad.
Questions with no answers, demands with no possibility of satisfaction and lost dignity.
I eventually behaved badly and slapped her when the bottles started to fly around, shamed myself, the triumph in her face after that was the worst thing I have ever seen. She knew she had made me do this unforgivable thing. Like saying fuck to a bureaucrat, you have lost.
A bad bad day and when she finally passed out I was so relieved I could have wept.
Next morning I thought she would get up and go, so I went for a long long walk but NO she was waiting with none of her anger dissipated by a good nights kip, in fact she was madder than ever and was now hell bent on having me arrested for assault and attempted murder! I might add that I had given her such a wimpy wake up smack that there was not a mark on her, I had wanted to knock her lights out, I really did. I determined that the best course of action was to just shut up and eventually after many false starts she left.
I was so relieved I followed her on the bike to ensure that she was actually gone, I needed to see her leave the property, and determined that I could do with a lockable gate fitted ASAP, which was confirmed when I returned from taking the guests for a quad bike ride to compensate for the screaming and slamming of doors, SHE was back!
OH lordy lord.
It transpires that she had decided to have me arrested for assault and gone to my local cop shop, who had sent her away to return when she had been without booze for 24 hours. Obviously they took her vicious assault seriously. She had overcome her fear of this dreadful beast of a man, me, and was determined to stay till then……….OH lordy lord…..immediately starting in on me again too, so I fled, took my book and bolted, tail between my legs to stay with Fishy Tim.
I knew that another night with her and I would kill her, well not really but I just could not face her pain any further, could not face the truth that one way or the other I was a part of it, and could not do anything to ease it.
I suppose I must have wanted her to punish me, I accept that I caused what happened. Somewhere inside of me I needed to cut myself to the quick, to slash and break the most precious part of me, the part that defines me more that I do myself. She did a terrible terrible thing and I was and still am bereft, and left.
I was further mortified by the fact that I actually thought that it was cheap at the price to get rid of her forever.
I have in my life been blessed with the love of many women and never had I caused such pain, it has given me more than pause to consider who and what I am. To think of all my relationships, with my children, not good, with my fellow man, distant and the truth that I am alone.
I felt a bit sorry for myself.
So I did what all men do and went after revenge, actually that is not quite true, I went and blubbed on every shoulder I could find like a big girls blouse. And the women particularly were all for throwing the bitch in jail. In fact I was roused enough to call my chum Insp. Brendon to come and witness the horror of it all. He was most gratifyingly enraged at the damage, being a man of less than feminist inclinations he was all for violence, he wanted to hunt her down and kill her for me, and on that subject asked me if it was the same crazy chick that had wobbled into his station on 10 inch heels, demanding that the surgeon general himself be roused from his Sunday braai to look in her mouth, where she assured a very confused Corporal N’Kosi he would find evidence of a brutal assault.
Which she was indeed.
So after all this, Brendon was disappointed as I restrained him from a bit of gratuitous violence, She was miserable because she had done something dreadful and unforgivable, and I cannot walk through my studio without flinching…doom and damnation indeed.

A LONG LONG DRY WINTER but Love is in the air

2007-10-16T02:08:00.000-07:00

A LONG LONG DRY WINTER but Love is in the air
The sky is silver blue, bereft of moisture. Dry as a bone and life has been hard on man and beast. My sins and bad judgments have come to haunt me. My eldest unmarried son, no longer wishes to communicate with me due to his perceived sins of my omission and neglect, long past but still fresh in his mind. Even this modest diary has been censored (the correspondence that circulated in my desire to get in touch with him) due to the sentiments and ‘issues’ of my American cousins. In fact this cutting off of my stream of consciousness has blocked me for some time, but NOW I am inspired by both love lost and gained to write again.
Just to swiftly get up to speed we have had our first major disaster on the bovine field and Nkulu my biggest cow disappeared, with nary a sign to mark her passing we have hunted the kloofs and canyons from high to low but nothing has appeared. We even consulted the local witch doctor who also came up blank, it is all very mysterious, a cow is a large thing and even in my enormous garden it is something hard to lose. Posters offering a substantial reward have illisitaed no response and the finger of blame is still swinging too wildly to make any judgments of guilt.
Then Gearbox my fine old bull had a large metal cylinder stuffed up his rear end to stimulate some hidden nerve that made him come, and to our chagrin he turned out to be shooting blanks, even though he had managed to impregnate 20 cows. In the world of bulls this is seriously bad news and he had to go. I was not happy, Gearbox was a nice old fellow, and his condition left me with but 2 choices, I could take him up to Bardendorfs AUCTION house of pain and suffering to be loaded in among other doomed beasts to be turned into sausage and biltong, in what my fertile imagination pictured, could only be a most disagreeable and scary end. Or …….I could allow my chum Fishy Tim to come with his lads and a .38 and drop him where he stood, and considered the kindest thing to do.
Little did I understand the nature of this sort of country pursuit, which like most, seems to always constitutes more than was ever expected or desired.
Fishy Tim led me down the old farm path, again, having volunteered his and his men’s services to deal with Gearbox and convinced me that his ‘cunning plan’ would be the best thing to do, i.e. to humanely and kindly make Gearbox ‘late’ and that they would from this produce for me a large amount of meat, you have no idea how much meat, a truck load.
So after the late Gearbox had spent some 4 weeks in fishy Tim’s walk in freezer Norah, Poppy and I went down equipped with knives and plastic bags to carve him into manageable bits. What a fiasco that turned into, and the only consolation being that Gearbox was unaware of the indignity of his fate, but would have approved of the financial losses that his murder engendered.
A small amount of meat from the total was cut out for the Numzaan, me, and then while Tim and I enjoyed the early spring weather on his patio, our staff hacked and chopped him up leaving me with buckets of bits, with nary an identifiable piece to be seen, such as a rump or T-bone. I had taken down some Durban Poison that had got Tin whacked and frankly he lost the plot. Perhaps I just never realized how much of a cow is in fact inedible, as proven by the slab of neck I poorly chose for our lunch. So although I have some small consolation that I did good by my bull, I am down by the cost of him, a deep freeze to put him in and several days spent disposing of him, I thus highly recommend to any out there contemplating slaughtering a bull to reconsider.
Apart from the tragedy of my bull the winter has had also it share of joys and triumphs. Principle among these has been my encounter with an old friend.
Brave Liddle A has been in my life on and off for the last 25 years. We first met when I purchased a property over the road from her with the inevitable sharing of bodily juices that the young bi-pedal ape indulges in, when in close proximity. I was still in those heady days of yore a player in the market of sordid encounters and A was one of many that I enjoyed, but when she declared that she was keen to have off spring my enthusiasm faded and she followed her desires and got married produced swiftly the desired rug rats but was equally swiftly disillusioned with the father of said rats and so she re entered my little world, which at this stage was plumbing the depths of brass pipe smoking and transsexual power exchange. These plumbed depths were murky and dark but a hell of a lot of fun, but inevitably had, as all drug based love, to come to an end and though we continued for some time after that encounter a break was inevitable and dully occurred. So another 7 years or so passed and I having terminated a relationship and indulged in a long period of celibacy was pleasantly surprised at the enthusiasm I felt for this old chum, who too had recently booted her male companion, we were in short both at the right time and place for each other.
This was a strangely warm and cuddly situation and yet still imbued with all the excitement of a new relationship, so good in fact that I have been to Johannesburg many times to pursue her.
However life on the farm never stops, with the loot from my NBF’s internet casino pouring in we have achieved miracles that all the enthusiasm of an errant hippy could never match, the farm is fenced and waiting for the ungulate auctions to start to be stocked with the original inhabitants of these hills, the herd has been substantially added to with fancy stud ladies and 2 new young stud bulls to replace the late Gearbox, to satisfy them this summer. The late Gearbox’s offspring are gamboling about the place and this place that used to contain so few heartbeats is now thumping with life, all very satisfying.
I had thought foolishly what with my fancy new fire engine and extensive fire breaks that this year I would spare the estate of the horrors of fire but the best efforts were undone by some sad mad old man that wondered this hill cheerfully setting fires, and to add insult to injury I actually gave him a lift here, so the place is black, and I am filled with remorse as I was the one to make a bad decision which allowed the fire to get out of control. The truth is that fighting grass fires is a thing that needs to be done a lot to understand what is what.
The other great event on the farm has been the arrival of Mr. Wonder Boy Sibanwe.
My man Douglas decided on some African whim to disappear into the undergrowth leaving me short handed and irritated, but being a chap of infinite wit and sagacity I kicked the bushes and was informed that Jan Trekker my neighbor had chucked by his chap and that this fellow was available for low paid toil.
Now being a white man in Africa, my mission and reason for living is to keep African ladies and gentlemen employed, the universal outcome of these exercises being, I am sorry to say, at the very best mind you, one of mild disappointment. These collaborators in my schemes have managed with the wisdom of this continent to do just enough, that their pitiful wages, their services command, to if not actually fail at their appointed task, also not really quite doing it either. A rather cunning ability ensuring that we get used to being surrounded by people doing everything for us badly, so when I went to have a peek at Wonder Boy Sibanwe’s first contribution I was expecting little.
I cannot actually remember what this appointed task was but of this I know, that as I gazed at his contribution to the fiscals I perceived something I had never seen before.
1. The job was complete sooner by far than expected
2. The job was done to my complete satisfaction!!!
3. In fact better that I could have hoped for.
4. Maybe better than I would have done it myself if I was not so bone-idle!
This fellow had thought about the task, something never attempted before in my experience, had come to a plan, another first, executed it fast and efficiently, another unique manifestation and was ready for more, I was impressed.
However being a man who has seen new brooms working before who would rapidly loose their enthusiasm I kept my expressions of joy muted and allocated a more demanding task, which was again done with speed alacrity and efficiency as were all the jobbies I have set him since!
My joy was over bounding, I raised his salary to dizzying heights, gave him a bakkie to drive a new cell phone and now live in fear of losing him, in short I am in love. The sad part being that none but none of my resident staff have followed him down this path to wealth and privilege, to bad.
Well that has been my winter more or less and spring is here at last.

BACK WITH A BUMP & DOWN HELLS KLOOF

2007-05-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

BACK WITH A BUMP & DOWN HELLS KLOOF

After such a long break from the farm it was a bit of a shock to return, not that there was much amiss except for the lack of rain, a great lack of rain, and naturally I blame Bush and Mugraby. The dam in front of the lodge though substantially larger than before, is still only half full. I’m not betting that it will fill this year, ‘Lake Berchy’ is almost full, but the dam below that is still sad, while ‘Three springs dam’ is a triumph, the reticulation to the top of the farm is perfect and my math’s was good so why am I so hmmmm?
I reproach Bush & Mugraby, obviously, amazing what a couple of brain deader’s in ‘office’ can do!

Some many years ago when the Rand was cheap and life was simple we purchased a piece of rock, weeds and vermin that was also completely inaccessible known as ‘Hells Kloof’. This fetures the old pass road down to the Komati from the high veldt and drops through some of the last extant Yellow wood gorge forest which I have been trying to go down for quite a while, but for which, companions have been hard to persuade as it is steep, overgrown and a little scary, being about 400 meters from top to bottom. But the new partner still has the enthusiasm of the recent convert and volunteered himself and girl friend as my victims.
We tried once with a larger party but after tormenting us with impenetrable wattle groves that choke the head of the pass and scratch and tear at all who would go by, the consensus was that such an expedition requires more preparation than grabbing a stick and camera.
So a week or two later with special rope, from the climbers shop, picnics, coffee in the thermos and stout boots strapped to the tootsies we tried again.
This time we tried to bypass the wattle to little avail, but managed to get through after some swearing to have the indigenous forest open before us with all the wonders that had been advertised.
The stream that I like to claim as all my own work (due to our eradication program that now allows it to flow all year) gurgled and tinkled through a wonderland of soaring great trees, many meters high that held a spectacle of orchids and other magic stuff in its branches and roots, causing all the commensurate, oohing and ahhing.
Down the water course we went past magical crystal clear pools but after too short a spell of reasonable going we came to a section that looked very intimidating, climbers rope or not, I decided to try to go around, being of a mind to not kill my partner at this early stage of the affair and before we knew what was what we were forced by steep steep slopes and thick thick bush away from our chosen path and had to battle the grass lands. Still scary steep and seemed to go on forever.
I started to truly appreciate the trials and tribulations of intrepid explorers who did not enjoy the comforting thought that help was but a call away. Not only were we not going through the gorge as planned but also every time we broached a rise thinking that we were but a step away from our destination the planet got larger and the walk longer, I as the beloved leader was I must admit getting a little concerned as my companions and faithful followers were my responsibility and I was concerned that I was leading them into doom and perdition. It was hot and tiresome to battle through what from a distance looked like pleasant pastures, but on closer investigation proved to be quite the opposite. In fact the tune ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen’ was shrill in my mind as Howard started to fade from lack of water, heat and exhaustion, his boots which had been made by hand with great love some time ago, of which he was inordinately proud were also less than satifactory, proving to be more decorative than functional.
It really was very far and steep, many parts being only negotiable on the third foot, namely sliding down on ones backside. So I did what any sensible leader would do, I deserted my soldiers to fend for themselves as best they could while I continued down on my own to send up reinforcements to fetch them while I soaked the aching limbs in the dam.
This was not the triumph that I had hoped for, though we did get from top to bottom, we had failed to negotiate the actual gorge itself, which had spat us out with contempt, so there is still virgin territory to explore next time, which I think I will try to go up rather than down.
Since then much water has passed under the bridge but little has flowed into my dam and the reports of down pours everywhere else has started to make me feel that I am being picked on. We have got ourselves a nice old tractor a ford to which has a bit more grunt than the old ‘Val Japie’ which has been relegated to being a mower and people porter, in fact after so much strain planting grass the inevitable has now occurred and I am forced to invest real money in cutting it, in fact what with the cows becoming such a presence on the farm, I find myself consumed by the state of my pastures and have even built a haystack, so that is another one to tick off the list of things to do in this life, I now just need to find someone to roll in it with me. Ever hopeful.

THE GREAT SEA WOTA ENTERPRISE START UP

2007-02-27T21:35:00.000-08:00

Returning back to the farm I just had time to throw dear Poppy off a speeding quad bike, well actually she threw herself off. Not being the sharpest tool in the box and for reasons that are as fathomless as only Africa can be, she had taken it in; to give another large lady a ride to the road. Against all sense, the rules and her profound ignorance of the hazards of the internal combustion engine, the inevitable occurred, she and the bike came a cropper, lots of screaming and wailing to welcome my sister and Nick straight off the plane.
They were very impressed with the snappy ambulance service that dragged the wailing and very contrite Poppy off to the hospital with a lot more powerful drugs from Nick’s vast portable pharmacy than the ambulance man had to offer, rattling inside her.
Thus did my second Holiday start.

After an hour or two I got a call to say that Poppy was fine, bruised and bumped about but in a better condition than the bike which was really quite bent, and they (Norah & Poppy) required transport home, but that they might be able to get a lift, perhaps, who knows, so I gather my large brother in law and trundled far down the road to fetch them. I thought I had given clear instructions to call us if they got their ride, which they failed to do, so we were left standing like lost farts at the hospital when they finally called to tell us that they were now in town and where were we?
My patience was being severely tried this day.
Collecting the girls and loaded down as we were, in the B in L’s dinky rental French shit mobile, with 2 large men, 2 unhappy ladies plus wailing child, we naturally lost the exhaust!
This was turning into my worst day ever.

I was consoled with the thought that that was 3 strikes and as such must be the end of it, which in fact it was and a second period of doing nufin with friends opened its arms to me.

Now although most think that I never do anything and as such should be an old hand at doing nufin, I find it quite tiresome and so the mind drifted back to the story of the sea water. Every south African will tell you that it is a bottom line requirement that when on vacation, to the coast, a bottle of sea water, with sand in, to authenticate its provenance, was brought home for the nanny/ gardener what ever, which was always very gratefully received, so me thinks “ Hey! There has got to be ammo in this”.
Especially as the water I had brought back with me from Plettenburg Bay was greeted with such joy!
I did my usual trick of sticking my face in strangers path and engaging them in whether…they
• Would you like a bottle of sea water?..............OH YES
• Would pay for such? …………………….Yebbo
• And how much????????????? ……………?????
• Mebe R20 !!!!!!!!!!!
• Holy smoke!!!!!!
• “But I have never been offer theees befo”,
• Which I found particularly interesting.

Much discussion was entered into, Norah was sent off with samples to return with the news that there was indeed a demand and the long and short of it was that Greg and I have shaken hands and are now the ‘ Eh Sea Wota Kings’ Which was why he was accompanying us down to the coast to pick up some stock.

So off to Shaka’s Rock for a bit of beach, sun and a dip into our new ‘store room’ as we now considered the sea! We treated the in-laws to the wonders of the local Nampac warehouse in Durban to get bottles, which they assured me was with out doubt the most original tourism venue I had found to date.
The wonders of the North Coast which I fondly recalled from my youth of quaint fishing huts and oyster beds is now a thing, lost in the mists of time, the frantic rush for coastal property has created a weird new type of village, empty ones. One swings off the highway and straight into endless new development that is all empty, not a soul stirs!
It seemed as if the world had been infected with some weird virus that had evaporated the entire population except for the cleaning, security and gardening services! Really quite bizarre to travel through miles and miles of suburbs, people, nary a shop or restaurant, just empty locked up mansions, we are talking serious ammo lying around the place doing nothing.
At first it was a bit disconcerting and till the Mall was found, very worrying, as there seemed no place to eat or get anything for that matter. But we had a great time filling the bottles, or rather getting some lads to, anyway.
In some ways this country has not changed and a few bucks still gets a lot of toil, but mission accomplished!
350 bottles filled, corked and packed in the truck.
And very fine and dandy our bottles of water looked in their slick, sealed little bottles, all we needed to do was get them home and they would turn into real folding money, in fact they already had, in our minds.
The enthusiasm for this latest ‘Darvall” scheme was high, we could see no fault in our calculations, many people wanted it, who cares what for. We can’t be held responsible; we make no claim, other than it is seawater and sea sand. There already is a vast distribution network of tomato and apple sellers who are ideally placed to flog the stuff, I could see our tankers covering the continent delivering sea water to a grateful and appreciative market, with all the commensurate filthy lucre that that sort of thing gets a boy.
Greg was sent back to get the first lot of bottles sold through his nanny and her indolent sons.
The anticipation was high, for fast and furious sales with another trip to the coast already planned, boxes sought and labels printed, while this big financier and business genius with his jet set relatives spent a pleasant time eating and traveling about the place visiting friends and avoiding relatives.
Notable among these is Dib, a friend from the days of yore when we were all little white people in the Northern suburbs of Johannesburg, who is now an old lush, concerned with the plight of the poor from her million dollar designer pad overlooking a national park, really ones heart goes out to her.
We had planned to go 150 klm. Up the coast from Cape Town to a fishing village where there was supposedly a restaurant that was worth the trip (cheap and large crayfish) and where we could over night in salubrious off season 5 star comfort.
Caroline and I had done our jerks together and gone for a long walk etc before the others had managed finally to get out of their pits and when we returned Madam Dib’s was on the blower in full cry.
It turned out that her long-suffering nanny / house executive, had been accused of shoplifting!
Dib had a mission on her hands, which had priority over our pleasant excursion and was in full voice, as we all, house executive included, squirmed in embarrassment while she harassed some poor shopkeeper.
When I entered into the equation she had already been trying for some time to be put through to some sort of authority and had some unfortunate on the line.
“ What is your name” Dib demanded “ And who the hell are you???”
“ Ralph, the assistant’s assistant something” was presumably the reply
“ Well Ralph that is not good enough” Dib yelled down the line, “ I want the chairman of the board at least, if not the manager “ for which she got a polite rebuff which delayed her not, as she went ballistic.

“ Now look here” Dibs bellowed down the line, “ My good friend, an honest and religious person, was at your emporium and was dragged out to be BRUTALLY searched by YOU!!! …..and accused of being a …THIEF!!! This being a woman of the very highest moral probity and I want to know what YOU!!!... are going to do about it???????”

Long pause as one imagines the thoughts flying through the mind of the 20 something assistant to the assistant floor manager who has been delegated to ‘handle’ the ‘crazy woman’ on the line.
“Um….ahhh, well you see madam” is probably all he could get out before Dibs who one really suspects, had no interest in his take on the matter, sounded of again into his shriveling brain,
“Now, now young man, be damned, let me tell you that my friend of many years, who would NEVER steal a penny and is an upstanding member of the community, the church, a deeply religious, kind and altogether wonderful human being, who I have know for years, gets waylaid and publicly called a SHOPLIFTER!
She is here in tears, disgraced and humiliated in the eyes of this communityso I want you to get your ENTIRE staff together and apologizes publicly to her and PUBLICLY AND TELL EVERYBODY that she is not a thief, and, I am shocked and appalled, appalled do you hear me? and, and.”
She eventually petered off and the unfortunate Ralph was able to get a word in
I can only imagine that he said something along the lines that he is terribly sorry that they did not find anything incriminating on her (this time), but that shrinkage in the retail biz is a multi million Rand affair, that she; the honest (white) consumer was ultimately paying for in higher prices and …………and
Well he got short thrift, “NO, NO, NO, I am not interested in all that, you have humiliated, maligned and besmirched the good name of a deeply religious woman,” Dib thundered on, “ Do you realize that the entire community now thinks that my dear friend and companion is dishonest, THEY ARE POINTING FINGERS AT HER. Why even her brother called, as he had heard that she had been ARRESTED.
Dib was going red and blue in self-righteous dudgeon, great plumes of smoke were gusting out of every orifice and to give her, her due she did not say ‘fuck’ once, while the rest of us did our best to constrain our amusement as she would then have been turned on us for sure.
I am sorry to report that there was no conclusion to this saga, and can only imagine what would have happened if we had not insisted that she leave there and then with us, the thought that she would in all likelihood have dragged that unfortunate woman down to the mall and started screaming the odds is too horrifying to contemplate.
So off we trundled along the N27 North towards Namibia and the wonders of Paternoster, Caroline who bears the brunt of our genetic make up was struck low with a migraine of gargantuan proportions, so it was a quiet trip with just a stop to let an angel of mercy stick some powerful narcotic into her which changed her from a groaning refugee wrapped in rags back to The Baroness in minutes, a veritable miracle of modern medicine.
Paternoster is one of the latest fash villages that are up and coming, unlike my own, and is in truth charming. The crayfish are cheap and plentiful, we indulged in some conspicuous consumption at the local tourism shops, stayed an extra night and got the news that our bottles of sea water had been uniformly rejected by the buying public who doubted their authenticity and accused us of using river sand and salt, it seemed that we had of all things a credibility problem, (more shells was the accepted solution ). Such is the nature of the market, if we did not know better (remember the remark….I have never been offered this before?) we would be forgiven to think that we were not the first to come up with this scheme. In fact the only punters we could find were white people buying the stuff for their staff!
So we are stuck with hundreds of bottles that no one wants, unless they are free, such is the nature of Juju medicine!
It is a somewhat disheartened me that is now again in the saddle here in the bundu, what with the resounding failure of the ‘Sea Wota’ enterprise, though we are determined to soldier on nonetheless and have staked our all on the rural market. Pension day is the time.

A VERY FIRST WORLD SAFARI

2007-01-26T01:33:00.000-08:00

A VERY FIRST WORLD SAFARI

For most of human history a journey began by taking the first step, today the intrepid traveler climbs into a first class, air-conditioned, six cylindered, fully wired and connected, stereophonic, turbo charged, road eater’s cabin. So imploring my faithful retainers to please not burn the place down, eat my cows and other irrational fears I set out into darkest Africa to give my new pick-up a good burn around the southern end of it.
The first stage to Johannesburg was dull, with only a short stop to get some stimulants, which since the advent of the Nigerians being in charge of the Peruvian marching powder market was useless, and even after several doses up the nostril I still had lunch, conclusive proof of a stinker in your gram! And art supplies.

Less than stimulated by either the art supplies or the Nigerian not so white, I sailed uneventfully down towards Bloemfontein, with only a bit of paranoia to show for my blocked nose and saddened by the sad state of the fencing, which seemed to my farmer’s eyes the thin edge of the wedge, foretelling the immanent collapse of our society, due I suspect to the ‘people’s’ need for farms, as they say in the press.
This has always been the downfall of even the most egalitarian of Revolutions, namely who is to stay in the Lords/Bosses/ King’s house once the old Lord/Boss/King has been turfed out of his silken sheets and had a stick shoved up his bottom. A vexing question that has abrogated the many fine ideals of founding fathers from the French Revolution to our own change of regime. America being the only exception, where the Brit’s were sent packing and the lads went back to their farms with no redistribution of wealth expected or offered, thus maintaining their constitution and ensuring today’s ‘Trailer Trash’ paradise.
In this fashion the mind wanders, as the eye searches over the endless plains for some comfort from the dreary architecture of miserable little ticky tacky houses and the many tin shacks, the weight of the architects hand notable by its absence on all the manifestations of human habitation, quite weird really, almost on the level of the workings of the devil.
I was a bit beaten by the pervading sense of the landscapes human expression which seemed so utterly ruled by the expression of the lowest denominator and seeing a sign offering a barn experience in overnight accommodation I pulled off the highway into a deserted farmyard, which did indeed boast an old American style barn, attached to the inevitable electrified fortifications of the African country abode.
This establishment radiated a strangely disquieting atmosphere of charm and poor white desperation that the dribbly web toed youth that approached did little to disperse. Missing an arm, to add to his addled expression, he stared at me blankly as I enquired if the establishment was indeed open as it was all very quiet, too quiet. This elicited a grunt, some small shuffling of the feet, and a gap toothed grin. Not very encouraging, however at this stage a very large, also bare footed lady of indeterminate age and provenance appeared from one of the numerous dilapidated structures leaning about the place and her bandaged legs and arm in a sling and grubby piney did not offer the tired traveler much comfort and attached to her skirts was yet another blank eyed expression of unregulated copulation that was missing several digits! This family was falling to pieces in front of my eyes, but they implored me to stay as the owners were, they assured me were but a call away and that I would find comfort and succor in what was I still thought, quite a charming place, genetic throw backs not withstanding.
A call was made, a message left and I went to stretch my legs around their lake that was heaving with waterfowl while I awaited their return.
The Barn B&B is not I think for the more discerning traveler, one requires a spirit of adventure to see beyond the remains of a litany of broken dreams that were scattered around the place, the tired sad remains of pig sties, chicken runs and even an empty pigeon loft which all pointed to many attempts with few if any success’s, the barn was very nice though and although it was infested with weirdo’s it was still stand up and clean so I gave them a gap and waited for some time before giving up and dragged myself now really quite tired, to Bloemfontein and pulled into the first hideous Motel I could find and collapsed, it had been a long first day of my holiday.

Day 2 started with an expensive breakfast that I thought was part of the deal for the room and so still a bit miffed at missing the charms of the Barn B&B and under an overcast sky I plunged into the vast majesty of the Karoo.
The cosmic scrublands floated past my window propelled at a steady 150 up hill and down, cool air wafting over me from the air conditioner, insulating me from the heat and dust I was passing through, when I spotted a magnificent herd of cows gathered about a water trough. I had already passed many miles of hamburgers on legs, with not a moments interest other that attempting to estimate just how wealthy the owners were of these massive crowds of ruminating bovines that infest the country side, but these were N’guni Cows and I came screaming to a halt, climbed through the fence to admire them a bit closer, and fine fat cows they were indeed even though to my eyes there was absolutely nothing to eat that would support anything larger than a thin lizard, but these ladies seemed more than contented, amazing beasts.
The Karoo stretches for forever and beyond, glorious in its emptiness that humbled the soul, and the lightning on the horizon promised a massive storm which struck with extraordinary violence, a once in a life time experience to see rain in the desert. And what rain, a storm of note with horizontal driving rain which turned the land into a vast lake a couple of inches deep in seconds as I sheltered behind a massive truck that ploughed the way through it for me, while the even loonies were reduced to pulling of the road to shelter from the rage of the tempest.
It was over as fast as it arrived and nary puddle to be seen just a few miles later, the water having soaked straight into the ground, which was almost as startling as the storm itself.
Eventually I rolled into Beauford West and feeling peckish, looked about for some emporium that might grace my palette with some Karoo Lamb but was fobbed of with usual array of Franchises, the curse of our modern age everywhere. Disappointing, so I drove on, but pulling of the main highway onto a minor road I noticed a sign that all resort owners recognize as a lodge that was foolishly also proclaiming to the public that they were willing to feed the passing trade I trundled down a long dirt path to pull into a very empty but charming establishment in an Olive grove.
The management was a bit startled to have a punter arrive unannounced at their door but rose to the occasion and did indeed rustle up a plate of chops. And what a plate it was, the lady in the kitchen might have appeared flustered and a little insane but she knew how to cook like an angel and the chops and spuds lightly fried in olive oil with sesame seeds in a light creamy sauce was a revelation, I had by pure chance happened on without doubt the best meal anyone had got on the entire freeway, I was blissfully happy.
Well fed I wandered into Prince Albert to join the Trollop women for Christmas, Nicola, the second oldest and one of the unfortunate women that had attracted my attentions in the past, with all the tears and distress these encounters engender, none-the-less welcomed me into her house for Christmas which was already heaving with her other sisters their daughters and her mother. It was to be an estrogen bath of note an intimidating prospect for one that had had NO female contact for nearly a year! Thankfully there was a new boy friend and Mothers chap to share the fortifications of masculinity with me, me being so macho and all.
The conversation started early and went on till late, chatter, chatter, fight, chatter never ending about ……………...
‘RELATIONSHIPS’, with the briefest of interludes to talk about food. It was exhausting and never stopped, and by the time the actual feast had been eaten and Tanya our resident ‘Lipstick Lesbian’ had stormed out in a huff I was deeply grateful to take Trollop the younger’s boyfriends bike up the Swartberg pass to escape the remorseless dissection of men and the past and present incumbents in particular.
After the festivities I wondered not a little stunned down the road to that ghetto by the sea known as ‘Plet-doll’ which was indeed full to the gunnels with red sea pedestrians clogging the facilities, but the holiday hut my mate has a share in, more than compensated for having to fraternize with my tribe of pyramid builders at play.
He has acquired a well-moored Yiddisher ship, in fact a palace that thankfully is firmly built on dry land and contains all but all-possible creature comforts for the weary traveler.
On first being confronted by this awesome concrete and carpeted pile which used to be a hotel, that was taken over by the boys, lock stock and barrel down to the magazines books and videos in the foyer, was a little confusing and disconcerting, but I was conducted with squeals of joy at my arrival (always gratifying), to a truly deluxe suite overlooking the sea which radiated 25 star blue pool, fluffy towel splendors, I was dead pleased.
The rhythm of the house soon settled into a very commodious pattern based on Lynne’s rather erratic sense of time, they got up late and I got up early to walk along the beach with my new I pod featuring my dear friend’s most marvelous music selection.
Let me digress to give him a punt.

Greg is a man who LOVES his music and boasts a comprehension and collection that is really quite fine indeed, and since he has joined the wonderful world of the computer literate, has compiled from his aforementioned comprehensive knowledge of music a selection of easy listnin tunes, 1000 at last count, which can be sent to you on a DVD that will sort all your listing needs forever! Send $10 (no Zimbo ones please) to Greg at…..
PO Box 84115,
Craighall
2024,
South Africa
With a self-addressed envelope, enjoy.

Howies little fishing hut on the beach was not at first a haven of peace and quiet, in fact there seemed to be an endless round of visitors and guests, the place was swarming with new faces of all ages, sexes and inclination. All pleased well fed, lucid and friendly, I was lost in the throng of new names and it was only after a few days that I even knew who was actually staying in the hut. One couple that was in and out I only realized were actually staying there after they had left, well they were having their Honeymoon so we did not see much of them. ‘The Hut’ is a very nice hut indeed and come complete with all the toys, sauna, pool, Jacuzzi and best of all this thing in the kitchen that serves constant boiling water and another that gives endless ice, the words get, good, as gets and it, spring to mind.
So days melted into days, flying kites and painting pictures, competitive card games and lots of food, and what with even a massage being thrown into the pot in our own private health and beauty spa there really was little call to venture into the maelstrom that is this village on the coast in the season. We sailed through New Year and the last of the marching powder actually kept me up past midnight, just 5 minutes but better than I have done for 5 years.
This was turning into a real holiday, so ascertaining that all was well on the farm I gratefully accepted the invitation to wallow in conspicuous consumption for a little longer.
All good things come to pass and after devouring many crayfish, reading several novels, was soundly trashed at our card game by an all time record loss of 23 cards, which without doubt gave Howard the best 10 minutes of his life, even I enjoyed watching the cards fall in almost mystical harmony,but too soon the time came to vacate this haven of wealth and privilege for my own little bit of paradise.
I stopped in Port Elisabeth for plastic bottles for sea water, I had thought that this ritual of African Holidays was a thing of the past, but as all the others were taking some up for their retainers I was not to be undone and as I have more than most and was also keen to cheaply please the entire village I was committed to many bottles thus the diversion into Lizzies port.
After drifting up and down the coast a bit I found a convenient beach (close to the road) to fill from but even this was toil, crouching over a rock pool filling bottles and lugging them over hot soft sand was sweaty work and after 20 bottles I gave up, but it turned out to be worth the effort, and all were dead pleased to get theirs, especially the older ones.

4000 kilometers later and deeply impressed with my pick-up that had carried me up and down the hills and valleys of this mighty land with nary a single hiccup other than a slow puncture, was deeply gratifying, as are my feelings towards my country, true the place is in a sad state, the architecture and development leaves a lot to be desired, and whether it was the correct choice to build in every village, miles and miles of little plumbed and electrified huts is questionable, the fact that they have done it is admirable, the roads are smooth and spectacular and being improved, everybody is very nice, fat and well dressed, well a hell of a lot of them are, that used to be horrid, thin and scruffy are anyway.
The police seemed very much out there, smiling at the old ‘UmLungu’ (white man) sailing past them, in their uniformly smart new vehicles and snappy uniforms, they seemed extremely pleased to see me at the many road blocks, checked my paper, gave me a map, waved me on with smiles and good wishes and even let me off a large speeding fine after only a bit of groveling. This revolution seemed to be looking better and better, my minions had looked after my estate with style and panache, the new year is already old, and I am grown-up by yet another 365.25 sleeps and am now officially a GOM (grumpy old man) the cows are fat, the machines are broken and the dams have filled nicely though we still long for more rain and watch the sky with anxious eyes.

DOWN IN THE DUMPS

2006-12-12T21:19:00.000-08:00

DOWN IN THE DUMPS and the sad lack of understanding between my buck and I

I have this theory, rigorsly tested through personal observation, so we are not talking science here,
However I still like the idea, namely
‘In this life, in this universe in fact, the rule is… that we all get ….. Exactly what ‘ we think’ we deserve’
Soooo I had good cause to worry when I started to get the bleaks, it roles around every now and then and I start to shoot myself repeatedly in the foot. First I started to puff at the tobacco again and the weed and am back to my bad old ways again.
Why I wonder do so many others and I allow ourselves to be taken down by ourselves? It is a mystery within a conundrum but nonetheless something I certainly do with monotonous regularity! Just when I should be taking the high road I start down the dark way, with an urgent need to strangle the witch.
Self-loathing takes the reigns and leads us to perdition.

Some time ago we got ourselves a small herd of Blesbok, nice little chaps with white bums. Now the definition of a farm animal is……..’It’s ability and propensity to go through a gate’ once that level of understanding has been reached, the beast is ours to do with as we want, there has to a lesson in that.
Blesbok do not know about this sort of stuff and hold small confined spaces in deep suspicion, making the task of persuading them to vacate the spot they have chosen for the one you have in mind difficult.
Having believed the local wisdom, that these particular buck, being so small and or lacking in the ability to jump were containable behind a cow fence and once again I have found that this font of wisdom is sorely lacking in truth!
The beasts were delivered in the back of a truck as night was falling, this sort of enterprise is fraught with difficulties due to the lack of comprehension and co-operation of wild animals to the devious plans of men, so they were late. A couple of likely lads chucked them out into the night which took all of 5 seconds, they were keen to get as far away as fast as possible, and I was 10 grand lighter, just like that! Swift but quite exciting, the first buck and all, and for a couple of days they stuck around before proving all the old codgers wrong and waltzing through the fencing as if it was but décor.
They went over to my neighbor’s recently burnt fields and had no inclination to return, and the constant harassment by my lads and I did not endear them any further. They in fact started to see our quad bikes a source of distinct menace and bolted at the first sight of them with incredible speed and agility soaring over fences with no thought that this contradicted all the road side wisdom re their genus of ungulate!
We did get them back for a short time but as my not so faithful Madotta (young man in Zulu) had neglected to fulfill his duties fence repair wise, so they just strolled through the gap, back to whence they had come, I was not pleased. There was some consolation to this first bash at wild game management, as my neighbor who has a fine game fence lost 30 of his buck, so there really is no knowing, it is all very random.

THE BIG BOYS WITH BIG TOYS LEAVE BIG HOLES
As death visits the valley!

The most sticking feature of Machadodorp is the Dutch Reform Church that looms over the dorp and rings its bell mournfully every hour on the hour. A building which I have studiously avoided for 15 years, but when one of its favorite sons, Sean Klopper, my earth mover man, a keen aviator, a man of strong convictions, family man, a local player in the community, and a man who liked children, in short an nauseatingly nice chap, died in his Gyro-copter, I felt behoove to attend his farewell.
Young Sean died doing his thing which is little consolation to those whom he touched as he really was a lekker oke in the truest sense of the term, he was a man who did it all right and even though he was a deeply involved in a renowned conservative religion, he was none-the-less, surprisingly, not even a little prejudicial of others, though he did make me blush once. Quite an achievement in itself, I showed him this video I got on the net of Jesus singing that famous gay anthem, ‘I will Survive’ and transforming into a raving queen in a nappy that gets hit by a bus, very droll if you watch it but it was obvious that he did not think it was amusing at all, he did not say anything but his silence, none the less shamed me into some serious introversion which culminated in my actually calling him to apologize, an almost first ever, he was a nice guy.
I was having coffee in Nelspruit just the day before his accident and he came past with the biggest chap I have ever seen, at least 7 ft, and a really colossal man. This is a bit of a spooky story in the light of what happened. Sean who was a bigish chap looked strangely reduced in this goliaths shadow who looked for all the world like the grim reaper and to add to the effect said nary a word, just sort of loomed there for a moment and disappeared, really. Also Sean who is distinguished for his ruddy completion was strangely pale and wan, spooky.
Well the funeral was truly a gathering of the dorp, it seemed like every man and his dog was upset at his passing, I thought for a second that even the priest would burst into tears, a deeply mournful occasion, helped by the crushing weight of his Lord as exemplified by the building, I was quite cowed. This was to my eyes a very scary and vengeful God, authoritarian and somber, a hard master to please, with a capital M on the master. Women seemed to be but décor to soften the effect. I sat there in my suit and tie, and like most there contemplated the very tenuous nature of the life we all live, especially when one, in his prime goes like this.
Well the grim reaper is doing the rounds out here and Johann the local poacher and purveyor of his daughters to the trucking trade also came to a sticky end, he lives just down the hill from me and has earned his ten rand working for me occasionally so I was indeed a bit touched to hear his sad tale.
The farm is situated on the slopes of a very steep pass and Johann was returning from some walkabout up the hill and had decided to have a smoke, rest or whatever at a particularly acute turn on the hill, which a large truck loaded with hay and propelled by a loose nut behind the wheel was unable to negotiate, due no doubt to excessive speed, alcohol and stupidity with the inevitable consequence being that it turned arse over tip, and talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as poor Johann was crushed under the avalanche of dry grass. Buried in it, to the extent that he was only discovered a few days later! Very nasty and random.
So the area was plunged into mourning that was as is the way of all flesh washed away by the arrival of the rain and the joy that engenders, and also the mud that stills even the mightiest yellow machine. The work in short came to a shuddering halt, to await the resolution of the tragedy.

So none the less nothing stops no matter the human situation, the spring started flowing yea verily a full month sooner than last year, once again proving the perfidy of the alien trees, and we now have a small stream where no water has flowed for many years, the bottom dam is full and the others are also getting more or less their share and their levels are rising, prompting great hope of non leaky dams, always a deep and passionate prayer of new dam constructors.

So a miserable addition to my blog but we will make an effort to make the end of year special special.

A BOER FROM THE PAST POP’s OUT OF THE ETHER

2006-09-19T03:08:00.000-07:00

Many years ago when I first fled a habit into the bush, one of the foremost characters that washed up was a large, a very large chap with a bushy mustache, a real farmer with a pipe, real tractors and a bona fide desire to feed Africa, and a hell of an attitude.
Right from the start we were in friendly conflict.
It all started in the shower one morning. I had built myself an outdoor one, that overlooked the fields that had inspired the name of the farm, Cosmos, which grew in profusion on those long neglected lands, however that morning as I diligently scrubbed my bits, I noticed with horror that the gorgeouse pink and white fields were now brown plowed lands! Someone had come onto my place and plowed all my flowers into the ground!
I was infuriated.
Well after a couple of calls it was ascertained that a certain fellow down the way was the party to confront over this blatant misuse of my place, and I was all fired up to have it out with him.
We met bristling on the drive in our 4x4’s, and from the very first we knew that we came from opposite sides of the universe. He from the darkest reaches of Afrikaner conservatives and I from the loony left, it was a marriage made in heaven.
It turned out that he had negotiated with a well know villain in the area, who had told him that my land was in his gift and had taken payment in kind for the use there of and so on and so on. In short a long and likely story that was deeply rooted in the web toed parley prevalent in the area. It seemed I would get nothing but a plowed field instead of the weed infested one I had enjoyed to date and would have to further more be imposed on for coffee and conversation for the foreseeable future.
Johann was equally delighted to enjoy the benefits of my lands that he managed to avoid paying for, ever.
So having been thrown together as neighbors and being frankly, mutually intrigued by each other, we entered into a relationship that got intense enough for us to come to blows.
I was, in those distant days, completely isolated from the world, no electricity and only a wind-up phone, at the bottom of a very bad road, deep in the unvisited badlands on the edge of the escarpment. I had retreated from the city with fear and loathing in my heart, empty handed and desperate. I was at the point of total implosion, it was one of those pivotal points in a life led at full volume, where the wise drug warrior knows that the path from here on, will teach no more lessons and that the end has come.
I was an injured hippy/ and bankrupt, hanging onto the edges of sanity, after a long journey into the unknown. I was tired and wounded. I really don’t know how I survived those weeks and months where life itself seemed to hold no value. Food had no taste and no water could sweeten. Into this morass of conflict entered the Boer.
Johann hefty, in body and presence, a seriously robust chap going head to head with the planet, with his steel machines; he was everything anyone would imagine an Afrikaner farmer should be.
He had it all, from an extensive family, many dogs, gun on the hip, khaki outfit and a big smelly pipe Jan was 100% Boer. He and I disagreed on everything.
From then on he visited me regularly and sometimes weeks would go past where he was the only white face I would see. Our chats covered a wide variety of subjects, for he was not like most the people who live out here and had a assortment of experiences that the average Boer sure did not, from a gay brother who died of AIDs to working as an ice skater in Europe, which alone put him way beyond most locals, who think Swaziland is over seas!
But for all that he nonetheless clung to archaic ideas about women, dogs, religion and sex. He used the K word with embarrassing frequency, and thought that President Malan was a traitor let alone De Klerk who I suspect, if the opportunity had raised itself, he would have shot.
I will never forget the look on his face when I took a tray of tea and biscuits to a bunch of black women that were working for me. I never lived that down. He really knew after that that I was beyond redemption politics wise.
Though a handsome a rugged fellow he had the ability to send every woman I knew into a rage, he just oozed such arrogance towards them, that without saying a word he drove them to distraction, we all felt sorry for his missus.
Black people just kept right out of his way, they knew, just knew, that within a 20 meter radius of this wild man apartheid was well and still the law, and he was a scary chap with his beefy legs and massive firearm. Not to mention the mustache! His politics are somewhere to right of Genghis Kan, in fact he made that Mongolian warlord look a little soft, he had no doubts about the superiority of his racial group, god and community. He drove his wife and children mercilessly and himself too.
He had purchased a large tired farm down the road that he was bringing back to life so in that we were both in our own way pioneers carving out new territory. He was hell bent on making serious loot through the propagation of thousands of acres of corn and tons of beef, in pursuit of which he plowed and scattered with wild enthusiasm, swiftly proving to me as I watched him toiling up and down on his big tractor in the mud, that I was no farmer but he did everything well and with enviable thourghness and seemed to be achieving his dream.
So we spared and bickered over world affairs, the state of the town and drank gallons of coffee as me mutually puffed at our weed and tobacco and the truth be told that though we never really agreed with one another we grew to like each other.
Then I discovered Five Assegais and the distance parted us and precluded our regular chats, we no longer saw much of each other. By this time he had expanded his operation and had built an abattoir and a feeding lot on his property, which if the local gossip was true was his undoing and combined with some shady deals and other strange happenings caused him to suddenly disappear from the area.
I missed him and mourned his passing.
So the other day having downloaded Skype I was delighted when he appeared on the screen, he is now in the darkest reaches of the antipodes where he is doing I know not what, as before I could delve into the depths my computer exploded losing me my contact with him, and others, including all records of bookings taken for the lodge that I had negotiated over the last couple of months (if you reads this Johann get hold of me) causing me no end of strain as I have no idea who is coming when, a big problem, as double booking has to be the worst thing a lodge owner can do.

THE PATRIARCH DIES

2006-09-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

This day the 25th August 2006 I became the older generation, thankfully not the oldest in the family but close enough, with the passing of my Mothers Brother, Uncle Herbert, at the ripe and spectacular age of 95.
What can one say “but well done and long life” and wish for the same, so in that rare sense this is an occasion to celebrate a life well lived rather than to mourn times missed as is so generally the case.
Good old Herby, a long life!
As you expect from a man who has lived so long, he seems to have always been there, he was my mother’s rich big brother who lived on the hill, and visited for occasional Sunday lunches, a distant and rather formal presence in the background of my life, the sole male of the family who sadly saw in me, my father, whom he detested, for the shabby way he treated his sister and for being a Catholic to boot, both unforgivable sins.
He only really featured for me after we returned from England after my parents protracted and loveless separation with all the injury and disgrace this entailed, sentencing us to a position as mere supplicants to the cold charity of the exalted Unky Herby, who was furthermore tiresomely gracious and kind, which just rubbed salt in the wound.
He and I had many an embarrassing interview, particularly after I was released from the confinement of my boarding school onto an unprepared world, which reacted with all the predictable rage and irritation that a longhaired hippy engendered in those dark days of the 60’s! He had to bail me out of some deep poo poo for which I should be eternally grateful, but what with his inevitable and predictable inclination to make me feel like the biggest stupid arse hole that ever lived, he elicited little more than grudging civility.
Shabby on my side.
The truth be told I harbored a strange and illusive ill will to this fine Jewish gentleman, which within the scope of his personality, water under the bridge and my intransigence, was perhaps misplaced. As I grew older and I hope a little wiser I found my own attitude towards him less and less appropriate, but nonetheless I was never able to put aside the feeling that he owed me something. What, I did not know, but I imposed on him an expectation of something that even I did not understand. Damn odd.
So we bickered and pecked at each other over the years with no real outcome, and even got to amuse each other with our mutual distrust, when our paths crossed, which we were both thankful for its rarity!
And so there it would have stayed had not my dear friend Howy invited me to attend his eldest unmarried son’s Barmitzfa.
At this point I need to digress to a little background material. Being a Jew boy, born and bred, mothers Jewish, that’s that so are you, it’s a tribal thing, my father was a Catholic which even confuses them, so in the end I was christened Church of England under the logic that ‘ if you are Catholic or Jewish you got problems but no one gives a shit about the Cof E.
I was initially inducted into my fathers family of soldiers and the white memsahib of the British Empire, of which I had been promised a privileged place, if I would but speak proper, play rugby and cricket, and tolerate the constant flogging the young and the privileged that empire received before being put in charge of the heaving masses. Cool think I and just as I am getting my teeth into that, I was taken away with no consultation and sent to a military rugby school in South Africa where I was persecuted by boys and masters alike for being a mouthy cheeky very small and skinny little turd, I was not pleased, but as there seemed no choices, I stiffened the lip and plotted vengeance on who I knew not, but someone had to pay. I am sure you know the feeling.
I soon got it into my head that I was alone and not part of any tribe or nation and only a token and vaguely tolerated member of a family, the English crowd were far away and distanced further by the indifference of my father, who consisted of two quid for Christmas, not a formidable presence, so one way or another for better or worse I drifted, it is true quite gaily, through a life that had no commitments or responsibilities on the edge of society, in retrospect a good thing but still lonely, boo hoo.
So back to the barmitzfa where for the first time I attended an actual public service at a Jewish Temple on a Friday night, quite an experience, never before had I been in a room with so many Jews before, and the scary part was that I could recognize them all, and saw for the first time that I was after all a part of something bigger than my group of one, that I could be one of them if I wanted. Suddenly I realized what I had missed for all these years. Came as quite a shock to the extent that I was quite struck down with a deep, deep feeling of being bereft of something of great value, of having been denied my birthright. I finally understood what I resented old Unky Herby for.
It was his job as the bloke and boss man of the family to have made sure that I became inducted into the society of Jews.
So the next time I saw him I confronted him with this reality, and bless me if this fine old fellow agnoledged his failure in this and a great weight fell from me, this small conversation took from me a weight that had burdened me for so many years, and I think for the first time he and I became friends and forgave each other.
Thank god I already had a circumcision, not that I was about to buy a seat at the schule, learn Yiddish or at this late stage become a practicing Hebrew, but it was good to feel that I was a member of the pyramid builders and Red sea pedestrians. I will never really understand the services like I do those of the goyem but if I wanted to make the effort that comfort zone was mine for the taking, so Salaam and long life to a great old guy, Herbert Meyersfelt my Uncle.

WHY FIRE ENGINES ARE SO CLEAN AND SMART

2006-08-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

As winter comes to an end, the fashion on this blighted grassland is to ignite it. All and sundry are permitted to burn with impunity till the end of July, after that NO….. it is verboten! So naturally every nutter with a match, myself included, rushes out to light his or her bit of the environment while they can.
There are 2 principle justifications for this strange activity, the first being to burn fire breaks, which is universally acknowledged as the cause of at least 90% of all run away fires, and the second is to have the grass ready for early rains to get fresh growth for our animals, which is the cause of the rest, all others being a complete mystery.
Being a man with cows I wished to have grass as early as possible for the mumbies and what with all the activity building dams and running cable and piping ditches all over the farm there was a situation which seemed ideal for a nice safe fire over a 50 plus hectare section, so assembling the team and with a good plan in mind we set about it.

THE CUNNING PLAN

Madota 1& 2 (young men) with backpack, fire squirter and milie cob in diesel, were to light the fire along the ditch which would allow them, in theory, to slowly go around the area in mind with the ditch holding the fire within the specified area.
Thinking that all was in hand (never do that) I started to back light the fire to burn into the fire that the lads were setting, so far so good, we got a bit of a thrill when the pile of leaves and branches from a recently felled blue gum went up, but all seemed well in hand and I looked like it was going to be a beautiful fire.

THE CUNNING PLAN GOES QUICKLY WRONG

I watched as the lads disappeared around the hill, their trail of smoke, marking their progress, when the phone started to ring, country life has changed a lot with the advent of cell phones, allowing instant communication from one side of the farm to the other.
“BOSS BOSS the fire it has jumped” came the frantic appeal, so with the confidence of a chap with a state of the art fire fighting machine on the back of his pick up, I charged around to their side of the hill and with swift efficiency settled their problem, I felt powerful!
Then the cell went off again!
“BOSS BOSS it has jumped!!!” the cry came from the ladies doing the washing, on the other side of the fire and once again I went to the source of panic and was able to contain the conflagration with great efficiency.
Now it is one of the strange things about grass fires but they seem to attract their own wind. One can light a fire in absolutely still air and the very second that you strike a match, the wind comes up like an avenging angel, this disagreeable situation when combined with the stumps, still abounding from the old plantations, having the tendency to smolder, and send off sparks, we suddenly had a situation where all was going wrong, as fires are won’t. We had little fires springing up in a random fashion all down the fire line as bits of burning blue gum stump played with our minds. A fire is not out, till it is stone cold dead, rule 5a of the country code.
The first intimation of doom was the swift realization that a smart shiny fire engin that could not get to where the fire is, circumvents all the best plans of mice and men.
We were reduced to backpacks, very heavy and they run out fast, and the ubiquitous flapper, still the most reliable and handy bit of kit, but warm work. We soldiered on and the power hose was, on the wings of desperation, driven over rocks, logs and fire to where it was needed, we cleared and killed all the errant stompies getting very black and manly in the process.
We had come seen and conquered surely?
I had the kit! I was THE MAN???
So I did not quite roll up the hose as well as I should, and when I got to the next stump in the clean up, the hose was trapped under the water tank, so no wata! HOW!
I managed to huff and puff that and then the wota she runs out, not good but thankfully we had got the fire under some control, and I could return to base to fill up. Let me tell you it takes forever to fill a tank especially when you see plumes of smoke where no plumes should be, and the cell phone is hemorrhaging missed calls indicating situations of fright which required IMMEDIATE attention.
Then suddenly the pump did not want to start! Panic pulling at a motor never works, the buggers pick up on your fear and won’t start, or so it seems at those times, thankfully the enjin she was still shiny and new and just played with my mind for a moment or two before roaring back into action.
Then I neglected to put the sprayer in its slot and that nearly created a disaster, which is why when dealing with fire the first rule is be prepared and do things right or you will get bitten in the bum.

WINE TASTING AND A WHOLE LOAD OF BULL

2006-07-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

WINE TASTING AND A WHOLE LOAD OF BULL

I have been nagging and whining to be included in the local wine tasting group for some time, even though wine is no friend of mine, having the propensity to send me into a world of pain, but what with my depleted social life and the fact that I seem, now that I am a reborn breather, to be able to tolerate wine a lot better, I was thrilled, when the invite came through and looked forward to this treat with some enthusiasm.
I arrived promptly on time and was in consequence the first there, so I had some time to enviously enjoy their fine herd of cattle, however soon enough the others arrived, Fishy Tim and his family, a rosy faced chap with his squeeze who was in fact the ‘major domo’ of the group, thus the complexion, another chap who looked for all the world like a dwarf, a tiny fellow with huge ears, in short a cordial bunch of locals.
We stood about for a while drinking sherry while waiting for two other ladies who were late. The sun was hot, the company convivial and the sherry palatable, so we all had a quite a few glasses before we even sat down and I was feeling the effects.
I had not been fed any breakfast and had only a cold Vienna in the tum to absorb this alcoholic invasion so after 4 liddle glasses I was almost frantic in my attack on the biscuits the only fare to be had, in the vain hope that they would absorb some of the booze, but by this time I had already lost most of my self control so another couple of glasses went down before the late ones finally pitched, consisting of a pair of genial country ladies, very hopeful thinks I blearily.
Well this got the show on the road and our host Rudie, Cheryl’s very tough horse riding husband who I feel obliged to mention had just earned the right to wear a large buckle on his belt indicating to those that knew, that he had completed 2 gazillion kilometers on a horse in under 8 hours, quite a feat.
He gave us a little speech about the booze to come and pulled out a bottle in it’s own special little bag. It turns out that the ‘fun’ of these gatherings is to guess the name, where it was from and vintage of each bottle, we all had 6 glasses in front of us, indicating that there were 6 glasses of wine to be drunk, I was already reeling from the sweet sherry.
I tried to be careful about how much I was quaffing but the wines were very nice. There was none of the gurgling and spiting out of the wine at this event, every drop was savored and swallowed with sage swirling of the glass and holding up to the light etc. which I did more in the line of monkey see monkey do than with any real clue as to what I was supposed to be looking for. I sniffed at it and sucked it into my mouth and other than the fact that some did smell a bit stronger than the other; they were all delightful wines which all asked to be drank, so I did.
We had a form and pencils to play with, to make sage notes on what we were drinking, I tried to see what the chap next to me was doing but I was already so pissed I was seeing double so that was out and eventually I gave up and just drank, started to laugh in the random fashion of the inebriated till eventually all six bottles had been opened and drunk, they were then pulled from their little bags and their provenance was revealed and all were proud or crushed depending on whether they had got it right or not, I had given up long before and did not even try a guess, and even with the bottles on display I am afraid that I could not tell the difference between a merlot, a Cab Sav, or a shiraz and drank a whole lot more trying to find out, and failed.
I was getting a bit loud and I have a feeling that I have blown my chances of being invited again as I was yelling my inane remarks over the sage discussion led by the beloved leaders wife, never a good idea but I was well on the way and had lost all restraint.
At this stage the food was finally brought out, oxtail and chicken that I thought was just the thing to soak up the wicked brew of sherry, wine and biscuits swilling about inside me.
I tucked in with the enthusiasm of a man that is to go to the gallows as I was convinced that reborn breather or nay I was in for a hard time in an hour or two, but in the mean time I was feeling great. We had a lekker pud with both custard and cream and as I was already beyond the pale had 2 helpings with nary a care for my swelling waist line.
After all this conspicuous consumption a stroll through the garden was called for, and which turned into a sage discussion with Tim and Rudie about the various merits of cow husbandry, a subject that we are all keenly involved in having herds that we all hope will be a source of fortune if not fame, we perused the weaner’s that were gamboling about and generally felt that life was good although Rudie did tell us a horror story about his Toyota, which as far as I could tell through the haze, was that he had fitted a bit and neglected to put oil in it with all the consequent tears and shearing of gears requiring that he invest large amounts of loot to replace this thing and was in consequence going to have to put two of his bulls into the ring to be turned into hamburgers, One of the poor fellows was right there in front of us, right in hearing of this morbid discussion of his fate.
I was mortified, he looked such a fine fellow and his offspring springing about all around us proving his ability as a bull so through the haze of my pissed brain, with the encouragement of Tim I soon found myself the new owner and savior of the immediately named Cruiser Gearbox, 800 kilograms black and white bull with a nice scrotum.
Having shaken hands on this I was committed and staggered home with a vile head ache and a sneaking suspicion sense that I had been set up, where the devils brew, swilling about in my distended stomach, decided to go to pastures new and forced its way out of me in a truly spectacular display of projectile vomiting, so after all this I was weak and pale and the owner of a dangerous beast, o lordy lord.

HUNTING FOR A WIFE, BUT A BIT OF NOOKIE WOULD DO

2006-07-12T02:32:00.000-07:00

HUNTING FOR A WIFE, BUT A BIT OF NOOKIE WOULD DO

Some few months ago, as predicted by neighbors and friends when I embarked on my no smoking, no drugs etc campaign, I was given the boot by my girlfriend of some many years standing, with the crushing comment that I had turned into a bore, ohh girls can be so cruel.
I took it on the chin like a good little cowboy, took full responsibility for it too, I let her and her friends call me in the middle of the night to insult and threaten me without being rude or aggressive, like a good little modern man and looking bleakly at the talent offered by the community of Machadodorp I realized that I was truly alone.
So being fully connected to the international community of the ‘www’, I signed up with a dating agency, sent them my wedge and was established as a gold member of ‘Love 2 know U’ an organization that an old fat chum like I, had said he had had some success with. Thus was my handle ‘Grumpy_oldFart’ born in the ether. Well I did not want to have any of the hordes of panting horny young women waiting out there to be under any illusion that I was still the gorgeous young stud of yore.
I filled in all the strange questions that the site demanded, admitted that I liked Thai food and travel, who doesn’t? Down loaded a picture or two that were recent and did not show quite how old and fat I have become, considered optimistically of investing in a jumbo box of Viagra to deal with the afore mentioned panting hoard and started to chatter with women out there.
The first shock was just how many people there are trolling the web for friends and sex; in fact I hear that these dating sites have now overtaken porn as the biggest revenue earners on the web! There are every type of person imaginable, who all but all incidentally like Thai food and travel, what is it with Thai food that it has such a social cachet?
The second shock being how few it seemed are suitable for me!!!!
Nonetheless I proceeded to send off what I thought were witty and lucid letters to them and awaited the return of post with beating heart, and bated breath.
Soon enough the replies came through, the majority it seemed had:-
A. Found someone,
B. Were no longer members of the site,
C. Thought that I was a wanker,
D. Were living in the Ukraine or Russia
E. Or were younger than my daughter
So after 50 plus letters, and a lot of toil, I was without a single real possibility of a date and the reality of how far I am from all known society was no help.
This was making me feel very very old, depressed and frankly a bit sad, the actuality of my situation was being consistently brought home to me in a very direct and brutal manner as only women are able to do, I was snubbed and or ignored, or the women were illiterate, children, 100 years old or as big as a house, a larger collection of trailer trash and empty heads I had never encountered.
They all loved Thai food, were loving and faithful and fun etc. I was getting very depressed especially as I knew that there was no chance in hell of getting my money back.
Eventually a few ladies did crawled out of the undergrowth, and I did have one or two sensible and entertaining conversations but I am afraid that Grumpy_oldFart was no big score.
My first contact of any note was ‘Eponagirl’ a web designer and horse mad, seemed a match made in heaven, I needed my web page redone (do have a look at the new site at www.fiveassegais.co.za) and I have a farm tre suitable for gee gee’s and indeed we did chatter but sadly her service was to expensive for me and my farm was to distant for her to visit with her horses, we did manage to have a lunch but there was no magic, we could be chums but the reality of my living on the dark side of the moon was a big impediment. We continued to spasmodically send each other funnies but even that lapsed.
These dating sites are quite sophisticated and I suspect deeply affiliated with each other and when you sign with one the others soon enough find you to tempt you with their particular charms and differing angles on the sad business of isolation and loneliness, from Jewish friend finders to ‘IwantsexNOW’ services, the latter sending a woman to me who had posted a magnificent pair of pert breasts as her picture, very hopeful thought I and arranged to liaise with her, boy did I get a fright when this withered old witch with hungry eyes approached and being a coward of note I fled.
At this stage I was writing to several women around the world an Airhostess (very edgy and defensive) a number of very young women in the darker parts of the ex Soviet Union, I still have not worked out what their scam was, and oddly a lot of very young girls in England and the United States, but they were pretty much consistent in their inability to construct a sentence or even use spell check and I was finding that rather than being introduced to a lot of interesting people I was being reminded constantly that I was old, fat, and unavailable and the reality of my choices in life in respect to having a bit of fun was being forcefully and painfully made clear to me. This was not what I had had in mind at all.
My dream of endless streams of young girls washing up on my doorstep as promised by Love2knowU had been shattered on the harsh reality of life passing by, I even briefly considered going back to the old girl friend and begging her to return, we are talking desperation here, but more than that I was very concerned that I was not as concerned about this celibacy thing as I felt I should be, the truth is, that the juices are not flowing like they used to and I seem no longer to be desperate to earn the approbation of women, based on their beauty.
This must be what becoming an adult is all about, where the physical attributes of a woman are not considered the sign of infinite knowledge that I used to think they were.
So after much correspondences and letter writing, other than a meal in Middleburg with a very nice woman I had had absolutely no success at all, thank goodness I did not spend treasure on Viagra.
So it has been 3 months and my contract with Love 2 know U has expired and once again the thought of trying to find a good woman in Machadodorp faces me with its entirely bleak prospects, the worrying thing being that it would seem that this modern life with all the wonderful means of communication and inter reaction offered is in fact becoming the loneliest part of human history ever, thank the lord for my friends, dogs, goats, chicken and mumbies who make me the most popular fellow in the whole world wide world.
(If there are any women out there who want to sleep with me they are welcome to apply ☺, send correspondence to 18151@lando.co.za with a recent picture)
Which brings to mind the story of a fellow, who advertised in a Farmers magazine,
WANTED, WOMAN WITH TRACTOR, SEND PICTURE OF TRACTOR!!!

PLAYING WITH BIG TOYS

2006-07-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

PLAYING WITH BIG TOYS
But proven none the less to be just the biggest wimp

One of the grand things about having a bit of loot and a dream to spend it on, particularly after a long time loot less, is that one does not have to think too hard about what to do with it, so I did not hesitate when I got mine, to get hold of the earth shifter boys ASAP.
I wanted Big Yellow Machines, the bigger the better, grrrrrrr!
In consequence I have been in negotiation with a number of yellow machine merchants, who have been extremely polite and attentive to my slightest need, these yellow toys are very, very expensive, and the owners of this kit need it to be kept busy, all the time, so a man with loot to spend on ‘Big Yellow machines’ is a man to be tenderly courted, which was nice.
They all sent me paper proving conclusively that they are the most skillful, cheap and best yellow machine operators, ever, and that I should succumb to their charms, before all others and choose them.
I felt like a good-looking woman.
That had to end and the choice was made, and Grobler’s Construction got the job and the others were boarder line rude at the news. I felt terrible for them but I could hardly have all of them cluttering up the place, it just wouldn’t be practicable. They would bicker.
‘Young Sean’ eventually arrived with some very impressive machines indeed, a golly big digger thing, an enormous truck and a large tractor with a dam thingy on the back, I was well satisfied as was YS with the HC (huge cheque) that he felt was a necessary prerequisite to enjoying his charms, he was a man that sold holes after all.
So he stuck some sticks in the ground indicating wall and water heights and flung his steel dinosaurs at the unyielding earth and very quickly these seemingly indestructible toys were broken!
It would seem that the bigger the machine the more likely it is to go the way of all flesh and succumb to the forces of nature.
Anyway this was all but meat and three veg to YS who was equinanimous about these great piles of steel and grease sitting useless and dead in the ground due to the perfidy of a failed widget or grommet, which was far away and hard to replace, he is a brave man and I was determined not to look at him with resentment the next time he approached for a cash injection.
So the earth was forever changed to my lordly design, the top of the Skurweberg which has loomed over the Komati valley silent and unoccupied except when people were hiding from their enemies is being transformed into a watery paradise.
While all this feverish activity was going down at the one end of the farm my ladies were equally feverishly preparing soap for the ‘Innibos Kultur Fes’ which I had signed up for in my misplaced enthusiasm for flogging soap at markets.
They had produced a great many sweet smelling blocks of samponified oils that were labeled and artfully wrapped; we were all geared up to do this thing.
When volunteering for this market I had not really taken on board what it entailed, and when it was to late, the dawning of realization that we were to stand in the middle of winter on a sports field for no less than 5 days from morning right into the dark of night became bewilderingly clear.
I had also roped in my chum One tooth to join me in this enterprise, older and wiser heads had volunteered, seen the light and bunked, but us poor idjits were packed and parceled with our kit and caboodle into the bakkie with trailer, it took a lot of rubbish to sell soap, from tables to lights, but we were well and truly ready for this selling feast.
We arrived late at the venue, where things started to go badly right from the off, we found the place easy enough, it was hard to miss and wound our weary way towards the inevitably multi colored Ferris wheel looking for the entrance for exhibitors, when we came across a young blond moustache in a traffic outfit who sent us off and around the congested side streets of Nelspruit to end up I kid you not but 50 meters from where he was still standing sending the world on this fools errand for no good reason, already I could feel the dread weight of pre freedom day authortar and the old familiar lager mentality which naturally enough sent me into a rage, however we were sucked into the vortex of this agricultural/ cultural/ barbarian rave up where bedlam and confusion danced side by side to the back ground music of the local rugby teams theme song, something about the Blue Bulls doing revolting things to the rest.
Now I am secure enough in my manhood to admit that I do not know how to reverse with a trailer, the coordination required is one of the first things that the product of a broken home lacks, and in consequence I hate driving with them, and negotiating a congested festival with only wrong turnings available was nothing less than a nightmare, the challenge of finding our stall in the bedlam was remote.
Sitting there in the dust watching the great unwashed of the Lowveltd wander past our window, sucking sweet things and yellow beer even at this early stage of this Bachiavelian ceremony was I could see proving to be a strain on One Tooth, who was gazing in horror at this spectacle before his eyes, and the many hours entertaining these mudflat trailer-trashers, that we would soon be committed to flashed before our eyes. We were not happy, we were worried, and we were concerned.
Being a man that never stands on ceremony, I floated the idea to the assembled hippies that perhaps we might not want to do this after all and the lack of any dissent, in fact the active encouragement from the entire team soon prompted me to turn the machine around and putting our tails between our legs we fled the scene with palpitating hearts at the thought of what a close call we had just been in. If we had come but a couple of hours before we would have been trapped and I would still be sitting, standing, down there in the freezing cold and misery instead of looking forward to a nice dinner with my NBF in front of my cozy fire, whew, in deedy. I did feel like a major wimp.

CONFLICT AMONG THE NEIGHBOURS

2006-06-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

CONFLICT AMONG THE NEIGHBOURS
WHEN A NEW BOY HITS THE WILDERNESS
And a trip to the wheelbarrow economy

The other day a chap calls me to book a bed in the lodge, always a welcome addition to the contents of the old oak chest, and he turned out to be the mysterious new owner of one of the farms along the Salad Corner road, who had been seen to be spending big treasure on a new road and a fancy name plate at his entrance.
I was naturally agog with anticipation to the extent that I invited him to have dinner with me.
Well he pitched up in a suitably fancy 4x4 with a dolly bird in tow and first impressions were favorable, he is a French Canadian and the French accent always enchants me and over and above that he seemed to be a complete lunatic, just my kind of fellow. Well we had our meal, and by the time he left I was in 2 minds as to whether he was the biggest bullshitter I had ever come across or not, being full of stories about millions of money, Lear jets, multi thousand square meter plans for his farm, all very confusing, just the way I like it and I was on the blower to my friends and relatives to inform them that we had a new feature to our life in the bundu that would I was sure be an asset and a delight what ever he actually turned out to be.
Well a couple of days later I got hold of him as I had promised to organize a cottage in the area for him to stay in while he was building and was informed that he was selling his place and that we could all go and fuck ourselves and that he intended to donate his farm to the heaving masses to boot!!
This was a big surprise and distressing, as fab new friends out here are not common. I naturally inquired as to the reason for this startling turn of events and after a lot of confusion and tears it turns out that a local blight in the area, namely Gold taps Alfic’s manager had cut off the locks to a gate bordering their mutual properties which had enraged John (for that is our new boys name) as he is fanatically private sort of prickly fellow, and when confronted by Gold tap’s man over the issue had been insulted by this abrasive and self important little man to the extent that he was ready to raise the flag (very French) and flee to pastures new.
I was enraged at the thought of losing a fellow maniac and decided that contrary to my normal policy of studied indifference to local matters I would take things in hand myself, there was NO WAY I was loosing such a delightful fellow, especially to the likes of Goldie’s idjit.
So the wires began to hum between Goldie’s idjit and I as I got all feudal and hoity toity, pointing out to this lowly peasant that he was but a paid skivy as opposed to John and I WHO ARE LAND OWNERS and that in the same spirit of keeping the wekkers in their place I was prepared to contact his boss and lay a complaint unless he undertook a bit of serious groveling before his betters. This I suspect came as a bit of a shock to this turd of a game keeper but he saw the light and smoothed the waters and the ‘For sale’ sign came down and peace was restored to the wilderness and I had a NBF (new best friend) to boot.
The next adventure came soon after as my particular chum One tooth Levieux the coffee and picture merchant needed to go to Zim to get some stock and required a pick-up for this task, of which I am a proud owner.
So being a man that cannot be distracted from his appointed task I packed everything in and went off into darkest Africa, and after crossing the Beit River I was amazed at just how dark it can get.
One tooth and I after a difficult time with the unwashed and raggedy Zim authorities at the boarder started down what had changed from an electrified fully agricultural and busy land into a place that was completely and disturbingly empty. The fences were all gone, one could see that they had been there some time ago as there were some sad and lonely droppers sagging in the ground but other than those the lack of any human endevour was startling.
We drove on through an endless emptiness like I really have never known before, there just seemed to be nothing at all for mile after mile, no people, no cattle, no wild game, few birds just a seemingly endless plain of wonderful trees and stone hills, awesome, quiet and incredibly lovely but so, so vacant as though all life is hidden and waiting in dark corners in breathless anticipation or some celestial event to occur so that life may continue.
My first scare came when Toothy who I thought was up to speed Zim wise, having been up and down a few times in the last little while and was acting as guide and the font of all knowledge about the form in Zim, mentioned as though this was a subject of but passing concern, that he doubted that there would be any food or refreshments available between where we were and his cousins estate, which was still some many hours drive away!
Well I did my nut, I am a man who when traveling enjoys most of all the food and drink available in far off exotic places and I had been looking forward to something more refreshing than coffee from a flask for some time already, I was to put it mildly hungry, and felt I thought with some justification that if he knew we were entering a zone of limited or non existent creature comforts that he would have suggested that these be obtained before we disappeared into the wilderness with nary a tin of sparkling water to sustain the to too mortal flesh hmm?
Well my deprecating remarks prompted his addled brain into some action and he remembered that there was a famous watering hole from the days of Smithy just up the drag that he was sure would still be able and willing to succor the parched and wandering souls on this bleak and endless road and sure enough there appeared the ‘Tusk and Elephant Motel’ like a shimmering oasis in the sands and we pulled in to its completely empty car park, nary a soul did stir, all was very quiet indeed.
We entered their shady colonial portals and startled the staff into action, they were not expecting guests but were non the less enchanted to see us and we were presented with an old style menu from the days of old, limited but familiar with those old favorites like prawn cocktail, steak, chicken and ice-cream and little else, we plumbed for the chicken which turned out I suspect, by its texture, colour and flavor to be one of the last in the country and had led a correspondingly difficult and fraught life. It was small grey and as tough as an old boot. We loved it and paid some astronomical amount for it, which turned out to be about 30 SA Rand, welcome to Mugrabyland indeed.
So on we plunged through the most wonderful landscape on a road that was virtually our own private way with only the most occasional vehicle being passed along the way, but the path alongside the road was a trail well traveled by people that seemed to have come from nowhere and were as far as one could see going nowhere, a lot of them with wheel barrows, seems that is the principle form of transport of this blighted paradise.
And all the people seemed so sad, flashing past the window of our supa deluxe, leather seated and air conditioned padded 3 liter diesel Turbo compartment, they are all sort of slumped which started to get me down a bit, hard to be cheerful when all about are in mourning, sort of a dampener on a boys spirit, but hey ho I do persevere at my remorseless cheerfulness, what is one to do?
It was a long tedious drive to arrive arsestiff at the high fence of our destination, with the mad hounds of Baskerville slathering at the gate in front of the old retainer left to deal with our creature comforts by the absent host, business having taken him away.
Well a pleasant night was had in this last vestige of white enterprise in mugabyland, it does make me feel a bit bitter and twisted to see what they are doing to that poor blighted minority, can you imagine the up roar if they confiscated the property of black people in England in the same way, wellll I mean?
After loading the coffee we went our tranquil way through the unique minim rain forest of that region and down to the local village where we swapped 200 Rand for $8,000,000 Zim money, from a chum of the manager who was leading a fraught and dangerous existence on the fringes of life buying and selling the detritus of the sad lost lives of the ex Rhodesians, he had a broken old Massey Ferguson tractor for a pinch at a mere 2.5 Billion Zim dollars I kid you not, I can send you a picture!
I got quite excited at all this loot that he gave us, great wads of the stuff and for a brief moment I felt rich and was dishing it out with gay abandon but sadly the truth be told it got us a quarter tank of gas, 3 packets of crisps and a couple of cool drinks, I particularly noticed that dish wallah was going for $400,000 for a small bottle, it gets very confusing working with such huge figures.
Our next stop was at Great Zimbabwe, or as we all know them the Zimbabwe ruins, the only but only stone structures pre the colonial days in the whole of sub Saharan Africa, the mind boggles, one thing for sure that I know is that these awesome structures were not built by skin covered Shona savages as the guide insisted, they are very very atmospheric and mysterious, definitely built one suspects to drive off the lurking hordes of spear chuckers.
I had a million dollar meal which was not nearly as nice as the price would indicate and in fact was just a nasty piece of cow, overcooked, an egg and a sausage with a bit of tired tomato it is all just so sad so we left the poor people of Zimbabwe to push their wheelbarrows and returned with a sigh of relief to the joys of a first world economy or home Gawd bless her ……South Africa.

A DAY AT THE BARDENHORF’s VLEIS MARK.

2006-05-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

A DAY AT THE BARDENHORF’s VLEIS MARK.
(A day at the meat market)

On Wednesday’s meat is on the move, the road to Belfast, though not actually congested with trucks and pick ups loaded with beasts, is none the less notable for how many of them there are, for this is the day that the beasts of this area dread, the day they go to market.
This last Wednesday I was again tempted from my world of bucolic peace by he of the open gates, as he was keen on acquiring a small herd of agile ruminant mammals that are related to sheep and have backward curving horns, straight hair, and a short tail. Genus: Capra in Latin, Umbutie in Zulu and to you and me …..Goat’s.
As the alternative was to do some real work at the easel, I dropped my brushes and arranged to meet him there, the truth be told I have always had a strange fascination for these clever irritating little ungulates, perhaps because I am a Capricorn? I being already responsible for the welfare of 25 cows the thought of a bunch of these chaps wandering around did not daunt.
Bardenhorf’s auctioneers draws the majority of our local lads, who have even the most passing interest in turning meat into cash, and as such by the time I arrived the parking lot was already heaving with a eclectic collection of farm vehicles from the most battered to the shinny new, the leveling effect of the auction house doing it’s magic, and when the auctioneer starts into his spiel, aaaah nnana dingle and 100 ….aaaaannanaa dingle 110…. etc we all go into a trance of fixed concentration and may the buyer beware.
This particular house of pain is a large warehouse, badly lit and lined wall to wall with pens for the victims, the human ones enter from the one side while a veritable conveyor belt of animals are fed with great efficiency in the other and the singing auctioneer and his crowd of supplicants move slowly up and down the lines disposing of a baffling array of beasties.
Well Tim and I wandered up and down the goat section, having ascertained that bokkies go for 3-6 hundred Runts per beast with certainly in my befuddled brain very little to distinguish the desirable goat from the not so sought-after.
The competition is fierce and the bidding brisk and intimidating and as I mentioned the whole thing is conducted in a dark warehouse resounding with the plaintive cries of the distressed and anxious animals that are herded into tight and brutal little squares for the buyers to peruse.
Added to this cacophony is the unintelligible patter of the Auction man broadcast over the dickey tanoy making it even more difficult to think over the piercing screams of the pigs and other beasties.
I still have no idea what the other buyers were looking for when bidding but I know that we were fresh meat in this pit of vipers and when eventually I realized that I had bought 6 of the buggers no one was more surprised than I, but there is no backing out of a raised finger and the umbuties were mine to dispose of as I saw fit, and shortly after an equally confused Tim stuck his oar in and was possessed of 9 of them which surprised him as he had thought that he had bought 8!
There is many a slip twixt cup and lip at Bardehorst’s Vleis Bazaar, and we were only in the paddling pool section of small creatures I hate to think what could have transpired in the cattle section where serious money was changing hands.
Well having made our purchase we could then indulge in a Vet Koek, and Coke, which has to be the nastiest concoction ever fried in oil, it is huge tasteless and made of some paste/flour that has been deep fried in 10 year old grease, it is truly addictive and has to finished no mater how the body and ones finer sensibilities revolt at this culinary assault to ones senses, not to mention the pallet. While forcing this down the throat we did the social rounds, and Tim introduced me to an endless array of calloused handed men and women who were extremely nice and welcomed me into their world of farm trading.
Well we wandered around for a bit, paid at the window and eventually loaded the beasts into the rear of the pick-up and delivered them to their new homes, old softy here had constructed a little housey from the canopy of my old bakkie and some sleepers with hot and cold running water and all the mod cons and soon realized that I had made a baaaaaaad decision on my choice of parcels of goats as I had acquired 5 males 3 without nuts and a female that looks dodgy in the extreme, my wekkers think I am a twat, again but hey ho it was a great day and a lot of fun, and they love me already for my ability to manifest corn from a bucket every night.

ALL’S WELL THAT END’S WELL

2006-05-08T05:40:00.000-07:00

ALL’S WELL THAT END’S WELL

The arrival of my herd has prompted a great deal of interest in the district, and among the many that have come to see was my dear chum Fishy Tim, a man considered by all, in high regard for his skills as a fish farmer and country gentleman. I with all the due ceremony of a man who has acquired a considerable asset conducted him to my paddock where we sagely contemplated the munching bovines with the deep and mutual satisfaction of cowmen through the ages. I got this warm fuzzy feeling like I was selling my daughter, I felt like a hell of a man and saw myself as one with all the men who had gone before me who had experienced the particular joy of knowing that one has enough meat to last a long long time.
“Nice herd’” say sagacious Tim, with some snide remark about one of my perfect cows rear end, “Why are you keeping the Mumbies (cows) locked in the paddock?”
With such innocent words do the doors of hell open!
“Well” says I for this question, from this man of the soil, was pertinent and I had given it much thought and cognostication over the previous weeks when plotting this introduction of ungulate’s to the estate, “ I am going to keep them in there for a week or so, till they are used to place, while I finish the 15 hectare camp, then I will get them used to that, and coming back every night to the paddock, and then, I will start to release them into the estate with an electric fence.” And leaning back against my kraal fence I looked at him to get the full approbation that I fully expected for this cautious and sensible plan.
Instead I saw a look of scorn on his face, I was crushed.
“What what,” I squeal’ “Is wrong with that?”
“These mumbies need to roam,” say he with an air of infinite wisdom and sagacity.
“ But they will disappear into the bush and never be seen again” says I meekly for the truth be told I was rather in awe of this fellow with his deep connection to the earth and all things natural, he even speaks native for gods sake!
“ Nah, they will just hang around here and come back to the lick at night”
“ But but but” say’s I, not convinced at all.
“Ja man, they’ll be cool you see, they need to get out!!”
“ Are you sure?????”
“Yea let them out, don’t be such a sissy”
That stung, being called a sissy before 25 cows has a poignancy and force that is quite devastating.
So with deep misgiving and doubt in my heart I let him open the gate.

Oh Lordy Lord they sprung through the gap like cows possessed, and disappeared, as predicted by me, like smoke in a high wind, gorn, buggered off, no longer visible to the naked eye or any other eye clothed or otherwise. My newly acquired symbol of great African wealth was gone, lost among the rocks and canyons of my 1000-hectare wilderness estate.

“ I TOLD YOU, YOU IDJIT” squeal I in great distress.
“Yea I didn’t expect that, “ admitted this man of the soil with a vaguely surprised look.
I was left gob smacked and enraged gawping at him in consternation, my mouth hanging on a hinge as I pointed uselessly with a trembling digit in the direction of my ex cows.
“WHAT the F%$£@@@@KKKKK” I gasp, “ HOW THE Bloody hell in a basket are we going to find them for crying in a bucket???????” I wail, “they are gorn.” I scream in some distress. “This isn’t a nice fenced farm like yours….. This is an endless, unfenced, untamed wilderness with only a fence around the border”
“Argh well that’s alright then, they can’t get out” he replies with nary a twitch as he gazed at me in mild surprise as I gnaw at my fingers and wail at the sky in fear, anger, frustration etc.
“They’ll be back” he smiled with the confidence of a man who knows, exactly, where his own animals are.
I was not amused, I was enraged.
“ Look you web toed excuse for a human being” say I as I grab him by the collar, my scrambler is knackered, my staff are all AWOL and YOU are going to help me get them back in your big 4x4 Right PHUcking NOW!!!!!.... OK?”
Realizing that I was not to be consoled and also I could see feeling a bit guilty as he had not really expected them to fade away with such determination, we charged of into the wild and it is true, soon found them in a pleasant spot munching as mumbies do, “there you are” he says with mild scorn, “I told you they were fine” and I had to agree they looked fine there among the rocks in the sun and I wished I had my camera to record this scene of bucolic bliss.
I was crushed, and as we gently herded them back to the homestead I was in a state of shame at my sissy behavior, and had a great time with my dog as they gently and with great ease wandered before me, as I conducted them to a particularly juicy section of kikuyu grass and watched over them as I awaited my chap to finish his lunch so that he could watch over them, for I was still not convinced that they would just hang about with no control, but I foolishly though still that Tim knew what he was talking about and had come to a compromise solution. I had decided that I would allow them to roam but that they must be under the eyes of my man who would ensure that they stayed close to their anxious father, Me.
With this plot instituted I returned to my studio, where sure enough I was soon disturbed by a very disturbed wekker panting with exhaustion from chasing a pair of the mumbies which had taken on themselves to make a bolt for it and had some how with the cunning of the bovine mind found the only gap in a 15 kilometer fence and gone through it with, I was told, some speed and determination to see the world!
We were not amused, the word you idiot, stupid and bastard, etc, flowed through my mind.
So here I was, a cow virgin with 10k in missing mumbies in da undergrowth and only a deeply distressed Mandla to deal with this horror. I have lost a lot in my life, being of a careless disposition at the best of times, but never have I been as upset as this, I was bereft.
We climbed into the van and charged around in ever increasing circles to try and track the babies down. It is at moments like this that one realizes just how big the world is, how steep and rocky and difficult the terrain can be. And the thing is that although the 2 cows concerned are white with brown and black markings respectively, they are none the less damn hard to see, well camouflaged in fact, as per zebra, and it seemed that they had no idea that they were missing, had no inclination to react, let alone come to our heart felt cries and in fact when they were eventually found looked upon us with deep suspicion.
Who are these strange fellows in smelly machines and what do they want from us were the thought’s that flowed through their bovine minds and the conclusion they came to was that we were up to no good and that they should get as far away from us as possible, easy to do in an endless plain. I was in tears by this time and thinking bitter thoughts about my ‘chum’ who had started this whole adventure.
Well we charged around after them over the veldt, trying to keep my cool and not also destroy my new pick up by crashing into hidden rocks and holes, bursting my poop string running like an idiot after animals that looked upon these antics with the contempt that all quadrupeds have for bi-peds that are chasing them and thinking dark dark thoughts about he who had mentioned opening gates in the first place, and now naturally it was getting dark too.
I was really in tears now, we got the rest of them locked up and having at least managed to get the 2 back onto my property retired to call Tim and heap abuse on his head, and to mail and skype conference around the planet to trash him before the world of public opinion, I was pissed off.
However when discussing this situation with chaps around the world instead of getting the sympathy I so badly craved those with even the smallest experience of cows assured me that this sort of thing was par for the course and I better get used to it cause as I now had the beasts I was stuck with them and they would be spending their waking hours plotting how to get away from my tender care. It would seem that the cow mans lot is to spend a great deal of time worrying and chasing after errant cows.
However this did not prevent me from trashing poor Timothy and guilting him into leaving a scrambler here for us to find the cows with, which we did the next day, not after the entire team had spent a pleasant if fruitless day walking the estate with long and sage discussions as to the direction that these beasts might wander. At the end of the day they were discovered at the far far corner of the estate from where they had last been seen. Just goes to show how these chaps can shift around.
So we left them there and the following morning took the entire herd to gather them into the fold, and the happy reunion was a joy to behold and peace was restored to the estate, my mind and although Tim has been reduced to a third rate power in the country lore stakes he has been forgive if not forgotten.
I have now invested in an electric solar fence, which means that never again will I be bereft of my mumbies, a happy ending indeed.

A BOVINE REACTION from Jules

2006-04-26T03:38:00.000-07:00

So Francis, it has finally happened: the bovine spell is upon you. "It is a
truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a piece of land
in Africa must be in want of a herd of cattle", with apologies to Jane
Austen. You have finally understood what it is that cattle breeders do:
nothing. You may recall that I was once the proud owner of some 50 Red
Angus, a fine, fine animal by the way, and one you should consider. They
have great character, are very resilient, and are good herders. Also very
good to eat. I had to slaughter one of my best breed cows because she got
sick, and although it was not easy to take her life, her flesh was very
tasty, and that helped!

Nguni are fabulous beasts, the original African cow, and part of African
mythology, but they are not so good to eat. They are very handsome of
course, and many cattle owners are content simply to gaze at them all day
long. The Zulus in Shaka's day were able to identify each animal by its
coloration, even in a herd a 1000 strong. If you breed Ngunis, will it be
for pedigree, meat or beauty? Anyhow, best of luck. Don't forget the cold
weather when choosing which race to get.

I have loved cattle since I was a small boy. Growing up in Botswana meant
that you more or less had to shoo them out of your way when taking a piss,
going to school, stealing fruit from your neighbour's garden, etc. Living
next to the abattoir meant I used to watch 1500 animals march to their doom
daily, smelling the blood of their kith and kin as they approached the kill
zone; but there is a bond between humans and cattle which even mass
slaughter cannot erase. On a more peaceful note, I once witnessed three men
slaughter a huge white ox in the driveway of a house in Gaborone. I was
passing by the front gate when I saw a man holding a large basin against the
throat of the beast, which stood silent and calm before them. A second man,
holding an absurdly small pocket knife, felt with his left hand along the
throat, and then, in a conversational sort of way, inserted the knife easily
into the skin. The ox twitched but made no sound: then the knifeman
withdrew the blade, and a stream of blood gushed into the waiting basin.
That was it. A few minutes later the ox went down on its front knees, a
second basin was brought to catch the blood, and then the animal slowly
collapsed on its side and died. A good death, I thought. All the while,
the three men kept up an animated conversation: they slaughtered the animal
almost absent-mindedly. Two hours later I passed the same driveway again.
The ox had been butchered, its meat hung in large sections from the roof of
the carport, and the huge skin was salted and pegged out on the lawn. This
is an ancient story. When Odysseus made sacrifice to the gods, this is how
it would have happened - followed, of course by a serious feast.

Finally, congratulations on your website - it sure looks cool. I see you
have 'The Fall and Rise of Mr Grumpy' posted there too. Fantastic. I spoke
to my niece who is a commissioning editor (educational books) in London, and
she said there is one essential step to being published, and that is, get an
agent. Without an agent your chances are virtually nil. Because it is so
hard to get an agent, when you finally do acquire a decent one, publishers
take you seriously. She says that publishers are flooded with manuscripts
and proposals, and can read only a fraction of them, so they rely on agents
to screen them. Anyhow, good to hear from you, keep well.

Yours in the big smoke
Jules

COWS ON MY MIND

2006-04-24T22:07:00.000-07:00

COWS ON MY MIND

I have been persuaded by my friends and neighbors that cows are the thing, the deep desire and lust I have sene in the eyes of various country folk when gazing over my rolling hills has convinced me that growing meat is what the farm needs to go forward into the future.
Being an urban rat by upbringing and inclination I had never really mulled over the value of grass, it was something that kept the soil off my shoes, was a pain to cut and maintain and was quite attractive when trimmed, but I did not really appreciate that it was of some value when passed through a herbivore and converted into edible flesh, this has now been brought to my attention by the fact that a neighbor, who is as mean as cats piss and is renowned for the shortness of his arms and the depth of his pockets, who was nonetheless willing to hand over your actual folding money to have his beasts wander over the afore mentioned rolling hills munching the grass and pooping.
Furthermore I noticed that contrary to the observation I had made of farmers that grow stuff in the soil such as corn or beans, steak farmers do remarkably little in the way of actual toil, such as struggling in the rain and mud with great lumps of broken steel, or trundling endlessly over endless rows of dying plants with expensive chemicals with nasty looking kit and sprayers on the back of large and temperamental tractors. No sir, they tend, to spend a great deal of time leaning on fences looking at their beasts and waiting for some underpaid hireling to gather them from the fields to be sprayed and or injected or inspected and little else other than chatting with their fellow meat growers about the latest beef price at the market, it always goes up!
So the decision having been made to invest in bovines as an alternative to building for-ni-catoriums for bright young things, the next big decision is what cow to choose, there are lots of different types of cow, blue, rare, medium rare, Beef Wellington and on a bun all sorts and those are just the ones I know about, Mickey he of the short arms etc. had been running the ‘most popular’ breed when considering kilo’s as ones main prerogative, called Bosmarra cows which are accepted at all your feedlots and other brutal purveyors of flesh to the suburbs and are without doubt the most dreary and dull creatures to ever grace a plate, grass converters born and bred to be consumed by bi-pedaled monkeys and tedious beyond tolerance.
I suspect that if ones sole purpose in life is to either breed more of your kind or to be eaten at an early stage in life it pays to not think too deeply about the universe and everything. These beasts of burden have been bred to think not at all and to be as efficient as possible at one task in life, that being to turn pasture into edible protein. Not what I want to have around the place at all.
However there is a cow that is a wise and ancient breed, a bovine of mystical status among Africans a cow that has lived and thrived here on the African plains for thousands of years living among the wild beasts of Africa and is adapted to life here unlike their fat lazy cousins that the Umlungu has brought from the soggy north, Nguni cattle, sneered at and ignored by the soulless brutes that feed the masses but a beast in my eyes of noble grace and wonderful colors.
So the first task is to fix the kraal to contain these ladies and fit selfsame with running water and all the mod coms that a bovine of a discerning disposition requires, having done this and consulted with my chums I then entered into the murky waters of bovine acquisitions, a world filled with hard eyed chaps who know what’s what and can see a wet eared idiot like myself from the other side of a 10 acre field. To mitigate I hoped the inevitable costs of learning the ropes I donated one of my paintings to Cheryl down the road who though not an expert in all things Nguni is a nice lady and has been growing these beasts for a few years so is fairly well advanced in cow circles and most importantly is now behoven to me to protect me from at least the most blatant of rip offs that cow merchants are wont to do unto the innocent and uninformed.
So the first thing was to get in touch with these hard men and enter into negotiations, I had hoped that my entry into the world of cows would be as simple as my friend Tim’s in as much that he called a fellow who sent him cows and a bull and there he was set up, however when I called this selfsame purveyor of the African Bovine I was told that as usual when I want something the price has just rocketed and why had I not called say a day before because now he had nothing to offer me as the government is suddenly keen to set up emerging farmers with this particular type of cow! Bummer WITH A COMMESERATE RISE IN THEIR COST, double bummer and even more distressing he had none to sell me. I went into a deep depression.
However us country boys are made of stern stuff and I soon ascertained that indeed all was not lost and further more the fellow called me a little later to inform me that in fact after all there were cows to had from his admirable herd and that furthermore if I was so inclined he was keen that I should visit him on his newly acquired estate and peruse what he had on offer.
With Cheryl and Rudie in tow we trundled of into the bush to the far side of Ermelo where I encountered one of the strangest interviews I have had. We arrived at the designated estate, which was tired, but magnificent and extensive in buildings and acreage where Mr. Hill and his family were in the process of transferring their herds and home to. We were introduced to all, shown the house and finally taken to see the cows that I was under the impression were there for me to purchase, and a wonderful gathering of fine Nguni’s they were indeed, I have been looking at these cows for some time and can at this stage understand some of the qualities that the lover of these cows appreciate, fine athletic build and thin legs, we will not go into the subtleties of scrotums, which are vital, not mention the sheaths but enough said this was a tremendous collection of cows and I wanted some, however every time I tried to broach the subject of exactly which beasts he had in mind to sell me the man got all coy and distant. My first inkling that all was not as it should be was when he described me as an executive, due to my mistake of dressing up a bit in my finest new denims and a clean shirt for the occasion in the hope that he would understand that I was solvent and able to pay and it was only when he realized that I was not a city boy playing at farmer and that I live on my farm that the atmosphere changed and suddenly we were kindred spirits in the long road of life and the coffee and cookies were spread before us, he still would not talk turkey about the cows and I eventually gathered up my chums to go home none the wiser as to whether I was getting some of his ladies and how much he intended to ask, such is the way of cow sellers, they love their beasts and need to know that they are going to a nice home, I think I passed the test, Cheryl and Rudie declared me home and dry which was a relief as I was now panting for his animals, there is method to their madness me thinks hmm?

DOWN THE SLIPPY SLOAP

I have my 25 new ladies and am enchanted with them, I have even got over my buyers remorse and am looking forward to a long and tender relationship with these wonderful cows. I spent a morning with their father a grand fellow who has had an unnatural relationship with this particular breed of animal for yea 15 years or more and is thus an expert.
He was very gentle with me as he bust my cherry re all things bovine, though he did enjoy scaring my knickers off with all the different injections, dips, sprays and other chores that come hand in hand with these particular animals, one would think that they are all just conspiring together to find ever more evocatively named diseases to die off, from lumpy skin to stiff sickness, it all sounds quite disgusting.
I was then taken to be introduced to my new charges that took one look and tried to flee the country. They charged around in a very disconcerting manner doing their best to avoid all contact with the bi-pedal monkeys that we had sent to round them up. They knew already in their young lives that this sort of attention usually ended up with something sharp being stuck in their backsides and they were not wrong.
They were all forced into a narrow wooden passage know appropriatly as a crush where I was initiated into the art of sticking it to female grass-eating quadrupeds. Dave has this cunning trick where he holds the needle (large one) just so, then smacks the cow on the rump and quick as a snake in the grass thrusts it into the animal, the first time he showed me it was like a magic trick but I was soon smacking and sticking with the best of them and we injected the entire herd, it was a thrill really I was leaping up and down in excitement at the whole thing and got so macho and worked up about the whole idea that for the first time in my life I went to a pub on the way home to have a beer!

On a different note the estate is finding it more and more difficult to justify the staff levels that we are carrying as the wattle tree problem and tourism trade are not really keeping my sweating classes busy and productive, an anathema to a lazy bloke like me, so I have gorn into the soap biz.
My sainted sister has been flogging soap in England for quite a while with her loony friends at their local market, and they have like a coven of witches come up with very snappy recipes. Which if any of you have ever looked at the many books available on soap making is the key to the whole thing, which she has after some thumb screw work and nail pulling graceful condescended to let us, under license, use here in darkest Africa.
We (Poppy, Norah and I) have been cooking and mixing it up in the studio for last few weeks, and after some considerable investment in essential oils, palm and other oils, mixers, pots and a great deal of other expensive stuff have finally perfected, sort of, the fine art of samponification, or soap making and the studio now smells like the inside of a tarts handbag, not unpleasant.
The knity gritty however was whether we could unload this product on an unsuspecting public, all my forays into the swamp of retail product sales in the past have not been nice at all and the initial attempts were not heartening, all the ladies loved the stuff but my little helpers and I were less than sure that we could get the price required to make a profit as soap is quite cheap really and we needed to sell our’s at 3 times the price of the most expensive stuff at the local supermarket, not promising, but a call came through from the local market mafia who were throwing a fest at Tonteldoes a village on the other side of Dullstroom to us, and the opportunity to test the waters was to strong to resist, and we went into full production mode producing vast quantities of sweet smelling slabs of soap and even inventing a few new ones ourselves, having labeled and wrapped the bars in sexy raffia and with Norah in tow I liaised with Cheryl and her cow skins at the venue.
Tonteldoes which for the curious means ‘Flint box’ in Afrikaans is a tiny little village that throws an annual peach festival, and as the village is in the very heart of trout syndicate country is really quite well attended and is cute as hell with a pub and a village green where we set up among the peach brandy and dry peach merchants with our little stall of soap.
At first the pace was a little slow and the only trade being done was between the stallholders selling to each other but soon the punters started to roll in and the soap fairly flew of the shelf, most gratifying. The ladies loved it and did not blink at the price so it looks like we are in business, which it turns out is in fact an old family concern as my great granddad on the Jewish side financed his bank which I should have inherited but for the attentions of the Nazi swine, but then if not for them I would not have been selling soap under an African sun at flint box village so all things considered perhaps it has worked out for the best.

DOWN THE SLIPPY SLOAP

2006-04-24T06:06:00.000-07:00

DOWN THE SLIPPY SLOAP

I have my 25 new ladies and am enchanted with them, I have even got over my buyers remorse and am looking forward to a long and tender relationship with these wonderful cows. I spent a morning with their father a grand fellow who has had an unnatural relationship with this particular breed of animal for yea 15 years or more and is thus an expert.
He was very gentle with me as he bust my cherry re all things bovine, though he did enjoy scaring my knickers off with all the different injections, dips, sprays and other chores that come hand in hand with these particular animals, one would think that they are all just conspiring together to find ever more evocatively named diseases to die off, from lumpy skin to stiff sickness, it all sounds quite disgusting.
I was then taken to be introduced to my new charges, that took one look and tried to flee the country. They charged around in a very disconcerting manner doing their best to avoid all contact with the bi-pedal monkeys that we had sent to round them up. They knew already in their young lives that this sort of attention usually ended up with something sharp being stuck in their backsides and they were not wrong.
They were all forced into a narrow wooden passage know appropriatly as a crush where I was initiated into the art of sticking it to female grass-eating quadrupeds. Dave has this cunning trick where he holds the needle (large one) just so, then smacks the cow on the rump and quick as a snake in the grass thrusts it into the animal, the first time he showed me it was like a magic trick but I was soon smacking and sticking with the best of them and we injected the entire herd, it was a thrill really I was leaping up and down in excitement at the whole thing and got so macho and worked up about the whole idea that for the first time in my life I went to a pub on the way home to have a beer!

On a different note the estate is finding it more and more difficult to justify the staff levels that we are carrying as the wattle tree problem and tourism trade are not really keeping my sweating classes busy and productive, an anathema to a lazy bloke like me, so I have gorn into the soap biz.
My sainted sister has been flogging soap in England for quite a while with her loony friends at their local market, and they have like a coven of witches come up with very snappy recipes. Which if any of you have ever looked at the many books available on soap making is the key to the whole thing, which she has after some thumb screw work and nail pulling graceful condescended to let us, under license, use here in darkest Africa.
We (Poppy, Norah and I) have been cooking and mixing it up in the studio for last few weeks, and after some considerable investment in essential oils, palm and other oils, mixers, pots and a great deal of other expensive stuff have finally perfected, sort of, the fine art of samponification, or soap making and the studio now smells like the inside of a tarts handbag, not unpleasant.
The knity gritty however was whether we could unload this product on an unsuspecting public, all my forays into the swamp of retail product sales in the past have not been nice at all and the initial attempts were not heartening, all the ladies loved the stuff but my little helpers and I were less than sure that we could get the price required to make a profit as soap is quite cheap really and we needed to sell our’s at 3 times the price of the most expensive stuff at the local supermarket, not promising, but a call came through from the local market mafia who were throwing a fest at Tonteldoes a village on the other side of Dullstroom to us, and the opportunity to test the waters was to strong to resist, and we went into full production mode producing vast quantities of sweet smelling slabs of soap and even inventing a few new ones ourselves, having labeled and wrapped the bars in sexy raffia and with Norah in tow I liaised with Cheryl and her cow skins at the venue.
Tonteldoes which for the curious means ‘Flint box’ in Afrikaans is a tiny little village that throws an annual peach festival, and as the village is in the very heart of trout syndicate country is really quite well attended and is cute as hell with a pub and a village green where we set up among the peach brandy and dry peach merchants with our little stall of soap.
At first the pace was a little slow and the only trade being done was between the stallholders selling to each other but soon the punters started to roll in and the soap fairly flew of the shelf, most gratifying. The ladies loved it and did not blink at the price so it looks like we are in business, which it turns out is in fact an old family concern as my great granddad on the Jewish side financed his bank which I should have inherited but for the attentions of the Nazi swine, but then if not for them I would not have been selling soap under an African sun at flint box village so all things considered perhaps it has worked out for the best.

Up in smoke 2006

2006-04-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

2006

Hello again gentle readers, long time since last I sent out my ruminations and contemplations of the world and everything, due to my attempt to get a blog off the ground (which is still going) and where I have back published all previous episodes so you can have access to all these great and profound thoughts and ideas, if you wish and which you can guide your friends and relatives to, who might enjoy my brand of wit and wisdom, however due to the sad state of Telkom’s clunky Flintstone service I have been effectively cut off from the web for most of this year. There has been some gremlin in their wiring that despite the best efforts of their technicians and other flunkies they have not been able to sort out reducing me to such a slow download speed that there was no chance of doing any web stuff at all in fact it is faster at the moment to run the documents by hand down town, thus the blog and this letter has been absent from your consiousness, did you miss me?
However the other day I caught one of the bright young things that I entertain here in my lodge playing on his computer downloading his mail in the sitting room with no connection to the wire on the wall so I am hoping that this very week I will be connected via GPRS and thus be able to send out this letter to you all without incurring a telephone bill that would bankrupt me and my family for generations to come. AND THIS IS MY LATEST ADVENTURE I am now 10 weeks smoke free!!!

GOING UP IN SMOKE

It was 45 years ago that I first encountered smoke; in a tree house with a neighbor, we invested in 30 Rothmans cigarettes each and smoked them all! In one go, we did not feel well, an inauspicious start to a long career.

I did not smoke again till I left school when I got a job at a pottery and again discovered ‘the smoke’ and slid into a life of constant puffing with wild enthusiasm, going from zero to 30 in one leap, and from that point on I pretty much had something burning in my mouth for all my waking hours!

Cigarettes have no real perceivable high but seem to make existence nicer nonetheless, a convenient and handy way to avoid life itself. When I got to university I progressed to marijuana which was a lot better and I continued to puff both from then on. Thus did a life of slavery to breathing muck start.

What is a smoker? Why do we do it? That is the mystery. For the smoker it seems inconceivable that some people go their entire lives without ever seeing their breath except in the cold.

So here I am all these years later struggling with my addictions, I stopped smoking the weed after Christmas actually I stopped at the end of November but weakened under peer pressure and smoked over the festive season and that took me back to square one and I was left in a strange state of self recrimination and distress.
Chucking the marijuana habit is a lot more tiresome than I like to admit after all the years of justifying the habit to friends, family and the authorities.
For all these years of constant puffing I have always considered it to be no more powerful than tea and weaker than coffee and certainly preferable to booze, but the withdrawal that I am going through at the moment has given me pause. I try to analyze what is going on but it is like trying to herd cats, frustrating and difficult, my mind is frankly numb and I cannot approach much with any enthusiasm, and I feel incapable of painting at all. My heart feels empty and hollow and though I don’t feel bad as such, the sensation of emptiness is hard to bear and the days stretch as a great void with no motivation or desire to do anything be anything and the smallest task seems impossible and a terrible imposition.
Not nice, one would almost prefer a physical withdrawal, as that would have a face and a presence that one could fight.
However there are some strange compensations, the first being the wonderful dreams that start about 10 days into the deprivation, wild Technicolor Bollywood fantasies that leave one exhausted and sweating in the darkness with the Willie in a state not encountered since the days of puberty, very nice indeed but disturbing none the less and a waste when the number one girl friend is not in attendance, but in fact stopping the weed is not so hard and is hardly missed except when standing before the easel trying to dismiss the random thoughts that distract from the specifics of painting.
So having rid myself of this source of smoke the next and altogether more scary task is to get rid of the fags, ohh deary me just the thought sends shivers up my spine, so I have signed up and paid for Smokenders to aid me through this withdrawal.
I am a man who thinks that rehab is for quitters and for those who are too slup-dicked to know when the party is over. I have chucked, in my time, any number of powerful narcotics that I had abused with wild abandon and got seriously addicted to, but even the dreaded crack cocaine never scared the booties off me like trying to stop tobacco, so I sought help, which has come in the shape of a small round ex colonial from a Zambian tobacco farm. She is lady that had smoked almost from birth and admitted that she could actually not remember ever not smoking. Mercia runs the only anti smoking clinic in the whole of Africa and is the only competition to the formidable forces of the tobacco lobby, from a house in the suburbs of Johannesburg where she operates her saintly cause in fear and trepidation of her neighbors, who object to her tiny operation and give her a great deal of grief about the poor suffering addicts that attend her clinic and cause them some minor inconvenience starting up their posh vehicles coming and departing her sessions. Tobacco addicts are in a different league to most other victims of substance abuse and are all very civilized and wealthy.
So every week I climb into my pick-up and wend my way down to Johannesburg to be weaned of this foul and nasty habit. Our small group of sufferers, about 20-30 of us, gathered in a stuffy room at the back of her house where she conducts her course.
We are disparate lot ranging from a small coterie of homo’s to some slick executive ladies, all 30 something’s and a couple of older farts such as yours truly. We assembled for our first weekly meeting a bit self consciously even though we are not actually required to stand and declare our addiction as is the way with alcoholics anonymous we were none the less we are all a bit dubious about being there. There was a discernable sense that all there have contemplated their habit with despair, often, and have all been faced with the enormity of the task that they have set themselves and are hoping without much confidence that this course is the answer to a HUGE problem that we have all to a man realized is too big to face alone.
Mercia our guide and mentor is a lady of indeterminate age but I put her down at about 60 behind her tinted hair but she later admitted to 70 years, and believe me she is a formidable chick who I suspect has seen a lot of strange buggers walk through her doors, and seen every trick the despartae addict will do.
We were all issued with yellow clip files which we despiatly clutched as we surreptitiously checked each other out and sneaked a peak at the blurb in the brown envelope to see what was in store.
Mercia soon settled us down and launched us into our task with a very gentle intro into the nature of our problem chatting away about water and what makes us want to smoke trying to get us all to cease our nervous chatter so that she could be heard and sending us off with the delightful thought that the next week and in fact through out the whole course we could smoke as much as we liked which took a lot of the worry out of the idea, very clever, she did ask us to not smoke for 15 minutes after meals and before we went to sleep but hey 15 minutes seemed like nothing and I certainly went off with my fears tempered, puffing away with the confidence that I would soon no longer smoke and meantime I could smoke as much as I liked, magic!
A lot of the stuff she wants us to do is a bit embarrassing like saying out loud our promise, “ I will stop smoking on Monday the 13th February 2006, I will win!” but if that is what it takes to get rid of the fag so be it, we were exhorted to obey without question and put our trust in the program, well if you are going to do it, do it, is my thought, do the breathing, do the water guzzling and brushing of teeth, it was all about just doing it and I was determined to be the teachers pet, anything to rid myself of this monkey on my back.
So the first week went past and I felt like a champ the 15 minutes was a doddle.
Week two came and the delay time was extended to half an hour, and more restrictions were placed like not smoking in the car, but as I had already made the decision not to blemish my new Toyota this was not to bad either but I did find myself clock watching, and the restriction of no smokes after coffee made me cut down on that habit big time, the decision to smoke or drink coffee was an easy one, the smoke won hands down every time.
We have to record all our fags and drinks, breath from the belly, make lists of all the reasons why one smoke’s all of which seem very trite when put to paper and say our promise.
The delay time when we are not allowed to smoke became a lot more odious and I did find myself watching the clock, especially in the mornings when I was used to smoking like mad every day to get the drug in after sleeping, my neighbors found me wandering around the estate at dawn which they have never encountered before, so my life is changing already, Mercia pointed out with some force that we were sucking up no less that 4700 different poisons in every fag which gave me a nasty turn to think about and set more tasks for the following week.
No smoking pretty much anywhere in the house, car etc no smoking now for 45 minutes after meals, drinks etc making it a real challenge to find a gap when one is allowed to smoke at all, the clock became a really painfully slow instrument so that I was forced to stop watching it meaning that sometimes I missed a few minutes of precious smoking time. I am becoming ashamed of myself for the desperation I have for this smoking thing and stand outside with my fag thinking about what a twit I am to be so dependant that I still stand in the rain like idiot to kill myself, the course is working.
Week 4 arrives and Mercia puts on a show about the alien in our heads that makes us smoke that demands we feed it smoke, killing and degrading us, making our teeth yellow and long and coughing our way through life good only to smoke, living our whole existence from one fag to the next, she really showed us in mime what we were doing to ourselves and what our activity would do to us and how ugly we were and would become if we did not stop. More than anything to date, in the course, this little performance truly brought home to me how foul and nasty this habit is.
Our homework became more odious we have to hide our fags far away and even after all the lessons learned I am still going out to suck on the cig the second that I can, the humiliation of this dependency and weakness is profound and I am starting to truly long to be shot of this habit.
Week 5 is the big one NO MORE SMOKING AT ALL but by this time we are hardly smoking at all and only cabbage leaves standing on one leg at the bottom of the garden, so it is a relief not to be waiting for when we are allowed to smoke and sure enough the week goes past with nary a single smoke passing my lips for the first time in 38 years I am so proud and thrilled with this Smokenders program which has got me here. Money well spent.
I spend my time drinking water by the gallon and peeing it out at the same rate how the others on the course do it in town I know not, if I am farther than 10 paces from a bog I am lost, thankfully here in the bush the world is my toilet!
Week 6 and we all gather again this time with a week behind us with no smoking, some have weakened but not I though I have encountered some very unexpected side effects which were clarified as being normal when we met and Mercia issued us with a list of them, such as farting like a hunter, dippy thought processes, depression and sleepiness which was a consolation, we were exhorted to go and get our last week done before we went into the world alone without our old enemy for that is how my old friend cigarettes now look to me, such is the power of this program, that my best friend of 38 years has been conclusively revealed as my enemy!
What can I say, if I did not smoke during this last week of the course I MUST BE CURED, everything that could go wrong did go wrong, lightning took out my TV so there was no distraction from the cravings there and I ran over my old dog and killed her and yet I refrained from having a single puff, I must be cured or at least have the demon under control. I can still feel the bugger trying to make me fail, I still think a lot about having a fag but I will NOT as I believe in myself like I have not for a long time I know that I am no longer a slave to Mr. Van Ryan and his friend Peter Stuyvesant and that they can go forth and multiply without me.
So we met for the last time and this is actually my homework which is the first project that I did not do in time, what with poor old Crossbow dieing and my printer exploding but will be a good reminder to me now and in the future to never ever weaken and have a puff as in the words of Mercia my teacher and guide through this difficult time “ You are a puff away from a packet a day forever”
Yours smokelessly
Francis

Back Issues of FAWLTY TALES.from 2003

2005-12-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

TO ALL READERS OF THIS BLOG. I HAVE BEEN SENDING OUT A LETTER TO FRIENDS FOR SOME YEARS AND THIS IS ALL THE ISSUES FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS

FAWLTY TALES.

So gentle readers are we all settled comfy bold fair square on our botties then I’ll begin.

This is the beginning of a still unknown tale of a country house on a hill at the very end of the road.

A beautiful place with sweeping views that rest the eye, hidden places to settle the mind which in every way proclaim the wonder of life itself, in every sculptured stone and each crystal stream.

The ‘house’ having managed to expel the smelly old foul-mouthed Hippy (namely me) that was squatting in the front room and painting his loony pictures in the lounge, has been reborn in its true magnificence.
All of a sudden there are people appearing dubiously watched by this weathered old wattle warrior of old, whose task it is a joy to say is almost over, and now I am forced to put aside the oh so comfy mantle of grumpy old fart and assume that of genial host, very worrying.
The establishment of this sexy lodge was a thing of pain for the squatter, like getting a divorce where even my chums had to contribute to the final settlement, in short the lodge got everything, Zaza Gabor would be proud of Ms. Fantasy Farmhouse who took the lot down to the toaster and steak knives that my sister had given me, the bitch. However in terms of the settlement I get a very irregular alimony from her he he! Though sadly we are still mainly entertaining friends and relatives who are loath to pay.

To date the punters have been uniformly charmed and delighted though the fishing boys have been a bit disappointed at the cunning of our fish, even though the dam is heaving with the critters The slaughter has been modest and something will have to be done to entertain these fishy hunters from the smoke, it has even been considered to employ a diver to hook the fishy onto the hooky for them.

We have been open now for 3 months with to date only one complaint about the service here, mainly from my sister, who must be obeyed, re the pathetic attempts of the gas geyser to produce the goods so that has been made redundant by the installation of an electric one, so now all is perfect, the ladies want to make babies here and the lads want to be real men, a triumph of my old Art Director skills of turning pigs ears into a luxury duvet wilderness experience.

Well that is your Monday fix of wit and wonder just over 500 words as some of my critics have mentioned that I am tooooo wordy
Your old chum in the scrub
Francis

28/8/03

So here I am a fully-fledged holiday resort owner, or as we are known locally a product owner, rubbing my greedy little hands together in keen anticipation of paying punters queuing at my farm gates. After getting the lodge into shape the lull after the strain was a bit testing but now it seems that though there is no actual queue panting at the fence, none the less the tense folk from Gauteng are coming along.
I am now deeply involved in imploring the public that this is the place to be rather than say Sun City or Florence and as such have signed up with all the local tourist wanker organizations all of who seem to think that I have to spend my waking hours designing their brochures and pamphlets for free, while demanding huge fees from me to be part of their enterprise. Today was a point in question the local HTO (Highlands Tourist org) who in conjunction with the regional MTO (work it out for yourselves) and incorporating the LTO under the auspices of the LGM etc. it goes on and on, had a meeting at the Boven school hall to discuss the new launch of the Mpumalanga Tourist brown signs.
Supposedly very exciting hmm?
Mac my neighbor who is a retired banker and the enthusiastic Chairman of our LTO, who needs to fill his days, dragged me kicking and screaming to attend.
The lads and ladies were on the stage already looking like they were in a coma, after 5 minutes my eyes had glazed over, did these oh so sincere folk really think that they would attract 40 journalists down here for a train ride and a lunch in the vain hope that they would flog our bit of the bundu. I can just see the hung over hack, fresh back from test-driving the new BMW, in Germany! Blearily scanning their invite to experience the spectacle of some road signs, earth shattering stuff.
We were exhorted to set up huge and professional stands proclaiming the wonders of our particular neck of the woods in their ghastly freezing hall, and then spent at least an hour discussing how to arrange the tea and cookies for our jaded journo's, ‘TEA and cookies pu leees’ these people need to be drunk I needed to get drunk but this suggestion of free booze and a press pack was considered lame stupid and frankly not funny, so I lit up a fag to their obvious annoyance and bowed out of the continuing tea and cookie table discussion.
They droned on and on my pooch who I had brought along was ready to commit suicide and I was considering a slow death over a small fire as preference to the seemingly endless and circuitous babble around me, I got so desperate that eventually I volunteered to do their wretched stand seeing as it was first to be erected at the Getaway show which is a good thing and certainly more likely to be of some use.
I eventually shoehorned old Mac out of there and had hardly settled with a sigh and a joint in front of the easel when the call went out. FIRE, the charcoal burners had been playing with matches and our world was soon a flame.
Fighting fires is one of the more popular sports in this district at this time of the year and all are expected to attend.
Every lad and his lads rush around in a panic with flappers and their fire fighting equipment feeling tre macho and important. A bigger crowd of chiefs you never have seen.
Five Assegais Country Estate I am sad to relate is not a great contributor to these efforts. I need to burn my place anyway to get rid of the wattle trees so a run away blaze is no problemo to me (no cattle or critters to feed) but none the less it is considered bad form not to at least be there so off, Zak, Douglas and I trundled with 2 flappers, a couple of bottles of water and the sprayers, rather than the very expensive kit that most have We watched with great amusement as they all yelled at each other, 2 of them nearly got into a punch up over how to handle this, while we sent our wekers to sacrifice life and limb in the roaring flames with their bits of twigs to beat at the conflagration.
The lads just love to roar around the place in their bakkies getting black and dirty, cutting down fences, and generally making a nuisance of themselves till the professionals arrive from forestry to do the job, but a great time was had by all, and we only burnt one silly bugger. This was I admit a spectacular fire which got into a vast forest of wattle and blue gum with mighty 50 foot flames, really quite entertaining this country life.
Anyway Hey ho back black and butch and beyond my 500 words so adios till next time
Francis

5/9/03

I should be strapped to the easel but I am all sore and tired from driving to the big smoke and back in one day! Which in my motorized wheelbarrow is a feat of courage and daring do, in deed.
Saint Bob the patron to Flake’s was punishing me for having dared to clean my keyboard without consulting one of their Guild.
Big mistake!!!.
I had received a fancy foam cleaner spray from the B in Law who was shocked, shocked and horrified by the state of mine. Many hours playing Spite and Malice with dripping fag and mucus filled cough had he felt done little to improve the efficiency of our organization and the investment was long overdue.
I admit that it did do great things the first time I gave it the old rub a dub dub, so fine in fact that I tried it on the camera, miraculous results, and proceeded to clean every item of electronic kit in the place, from the remotes to the fax machine and all but all came up gleaming and with all functions quicker better faster, though I did miss sticking the TV remote to my head, it now just slides into the most hard to find places, however I digress.
Bolstered by this confidence in this wonder product I felt full of confidence when the T key stuck, give it a blast with Nikko’s wonder ju ju juice! Sadly this time it blew the works to hell and back, nothing as dramatic as smoke or flames but none the less all died and after many frantic calls to the supercilious yoot I was informed that all was lost and if I was to hold my head up out here as the master of all things design and computer I better get to his shop and forgeteth not the cheque book, actually he did the job for mehala, deeply hung over from a long gawk at the Titty Tickler had let down his guard, always catch the techky early in the morning, they can’t cope.
The Eh tourism marketing is going like a train, with me hanging onto the back having foolishly volunteered to do everything just about in terms of logos exhibitions and adverts, an initial strain but will bring benefits in the future, which was why the pilgrimage to the computer shop was so vital.
We had a second meeting of the Skurweberg gangsters that was a joy after the other meetings I have slept through, the atmosphere of unbridled greed and optimism positively made my missing foreskin itch. Ably guided by our chirpy chairman and equipped by the tre professional paper produced by our co-ordinater a new addition to our local community from the dark jungles of the banking world, we flew through the inevitable LTO and HTT bits, agreed to pay for the fun with barely a whimper from the assembled misers, and swept through my presentation of the logo advert and all with only praise lavished on me for my efforts.
There was, as always, one dissenting voice from our local representative of the Davies clan, that have infested this district since the days of the Koisan. Being a lonely place the inevitable cross peregrinations have occurred with the inevitable weirdness being manifest in webbed feet etc. there I will put my claws back, just don’t make facetious comments about my work especially if you are not paying for it grumble bitch rhubarb bastard!
I did notice that our “co-coordinator’ Pat who had taken over the tasks that I was initially condemned to do, and having persuaded the company I was incapable of doing, minutes programs etc. all a closed book to me, which I had volunteered Pat to do instead was a Coordinator while I had been just a secretary! Shows what a life in the ivory towers will do to a girl! May be that she can explain to me what my daughter does
Well here on the farm a young chappy me lad has washed up and is willing to take the place for the weekend at a good price, most gratifying the way the neighbors are pulling together and sending the detritus to their local lads, this old specimen is as we write down on the murky waters in the freezing mist wind and misery flaying away, ver odd! Fisherman god bless their wet socks.
Francis

22/9/03

Well it has been a sort of sad and slightly ill at ease little country boy out here for last couple of weeks, the combination of low energy levels brought on by the tragic lack of funds, seasonal angst due to lack of rain and the approach of Mars have all combined to make me less than enthusiastic about the wonders of the universe and everything.
I have been sulking, smoking too much and generally being a lazy fat f**k in the bush neither painting with any enthusiasm or writing to all you poor folk out there in the smoke who have real reason to feel that life is not worth the candle, not that we have been unamused or unentertained.
The mighty force of the Skurweberg Tourism Organization has taken me from the path and been a source of constant distraction.
I blew it with the lads from the Elands Valley in whose eyes I am now dirt as I backed out of the Getaway exhibition.
My initial enthusiasm to create a wonder stand in the heartland of the African Ruhr Valley was considerably dampened by the complete and utter lack of any cash being available to create this marvel of marketing to convince all that this was the place to be.
Young Joanne and some other hefty ladies from the district met with a long slab in his fancy jeep and after a lot of distressing and depressing argument it became clear that I had volunteered to go to the city, just my favorite occupation not, to stick their old and tattered map of the region on the wall at the dome, a task which I felt really did not require my talents or expertise and was taken furthermore as an insult to my self proclaimed genius.
I am it is true famous for the smoke and mirrors I can evoke on a shoe string budget, but this utter failure to contribute at all and my sad lack of loot definitely sapped any enthusiasm I might have had to wonder around a nasty and tiring exhibition hall for three days so I bunked out of school with the inevitable disappointment reflected in their faces when we met up at the much trumpeted launch of the “eh tourism’ signage launched at Waterfall Boven.
Pat, Mac and I rolled up there with our hessian and posters and erected with I think admirable efficiency our stand after the inevitable bickering about where we should be, which our able chairman had booked and the fancy boys from Dunkeld Estates had tried to bump us from, don’t f**k with our chairman hmm?
The next day the good and the great assembled with dancing natives, tables loaded with shnakeronies, tea by the gallon and millions of brochures to punt our stuff. Mind you it was a love fest devoted to preaching to the converted as 90% of the attendees were fellow PO’s but the Politic ou’s were there in force and as elections are on the horizon they refrained from calling us all a bunch of conniving thieving white bastards so all in all, what with the train ride and the feast after a good time was had by all.
Francis

26/9/03

Playing a home game.

If there is one way to get the neighbors up to the farm there is no better method than sending smoke signals.

The rain has fallen but now sadly ceased and as such it is time for the annual burn. This has required a lot of lazing about plotting and scheming. Many pleasant hours having been consumed judging the lie of the land, shaking wekkers out of the bushes and the accumulation of some impressive kit from the lads around about.
5am the unsociable kick off time for these games, I was ready in my sturdy boots and gimlet eye there on the hill like Nero of Roman fame, to fire the world.
The first half went all my way with only a small blunder, burning a small section of Tanie Oliviers place. We with admirable efficiency set fire to the northern border and with skill and daring do which got the grudging admiration of Jan, who thinks not without reason that I am a danger to the area, and burnt the first 200 hectares with no tears at all. A triumph, especially as Jan had bolted up here as the first tendril of smoke went up, convinced that the idiot on the hill was about to f**k up and destroy his grazing, his grudging respect was a prize enough and I felt a hell of a man when I retired to the pit seriously clapped out as there is a lot of toil involved being the general of the troops, what with standing on a high place and admiring my handy work.
The second half, the next day, on the other side of the place started well and with uncharacteristic zeal I sent the team down the one side while I watched the other working the fire gently ups the hill. What a glorious morning, Mountain ribok, baboons screaming insults and a couple of wonderful birds rewarded my efforts at farming as I flapped my way with long smoke breaks to admire nature and once again the home side was triumphant. All but all were lavish in their praise for the cunning and obvious bush craft that I was displaying. Soon enough the boeties felt confidant enough to leave me alone to finish and sure enough that was when it all went haywire!
We had just one last little bit left to burn in the afternoon but with his usual lack of foresight Zak my none to able Inkulu had for reasons no one will ever be able to fathom sent the wekkers home while I was having a little lunch and a kip which put us back a few hours as I had to drive around the world to fetch them moaning and complaining from their hovels back to the field of operations.
Once assembled again we started the fire and sure enough a brisk breeze sprung up at just the wrong moment, this was further complicated by the hideous reality that the idiot had not only decimated the troops but had also lied when I enquired whether he had filled the fire engine with water, an essential substance when fighting fire, mine eyes glazeth over, the twit.
So here we are with 10 foot flames about to consume the planet, only two men, one old woman and a girl as the remnants of the team and my reputation as a mashugana about to be carved in stone as we frantically scrambled up the rocks with our flappers whacking away at the fire, even I the lord of all he surveys had to get involved in the labor of the day, and I have the blisters to prove it.
Let me tell you this was scary stuff! Fire is like a wild animal out to get you, it sneaks around and jumps at you from behind, just as you think you have it in its box it’s chum springs up in another place, and even though I had finally got the fire engine full trying to get a tractor trailer through the rather scenic rocks of the Skurweberg is easier said than done, nearly tipped the thing over in my efforts to get to bits that were threatening to escape.
2 hours later, black and humiliated we finally put it out, thankfully not under the eyes of the boys round here and we retreated back to the shower after some strong recriminations directed at Zak from the darker than usual lads and ladies of the team.

1/10/03

The Fantasy is coming true.

I know that I have been whining and whinging about the lack of loyalty and support from my fans and admirers who have been very shy about touching down here in da bush and this complaint is still valid, so shake, up and visit.
However my massive marketing drive is, it seems, starting to bear fruit and the lodge is gaining some visitors. Especially gratifying is a reputation among the women as the lodge to get. The fisher boys are less enchanted with my murky dam, which leaves some work to be done.
Reactions from first time visitors has been very flattering, with all the desired Oh, Ahhh Wow’s freely articulated followed by heartfelt assurances that they would be back, the highest praise in the “eh tourism biz”.
This influx has provoked a great deal of analysis of the differing styles of our benefactors, with the downstairs section of the staff. My first realization is that the average punter is a good deal younger than I had thought, the majority being refugees from ‘Friends’ and ‘Sex in the City’ thirty something’s on, at my stage in life anyway, the first steps to disillusionment and despair, with still that sooo sweet naivety of the unaware.
Poppy and Norah my faithful Ladies and in the most contact with the denizens of the ‘eh lodge’ are less cynical and are deeply gratified by every soul that passes over our gates. Firstly I am a good deal more cheerful and secondly they like the wek, and especially the tips, which are almost always generous to a fault. While some are as mean as cats piss, odd?
They enchant and delight all with their smiley faces, excessive zeal on the cleaning front and utter naivety concerning the levels of service that they are giving, way to high. Anything to keep from being chased into the bush to clear and spray wattle!
I am trying to pluck up the energy to register and generally formalize their jobs re tax, government and paperwork, mine eyes glazeth over and just composing their letters of employment alone are a nightmare. Sort of boils down to doing whatever the fool on the hill demands whenever, subject to the natural inclination of the fools indolence and political swings to from just to the right of Genghis Khan to simpering left wing Jewish guilt. Complicated hmm?
Back to the space invaders however, bless their little cotton socks we sure had a variable lot this week, what with ‘honeymooners’ who wanted to have nothing to do with the locals. Gave the ladies a turn to realize that the job was more important than their presence, a worthwhile lesson, but none the less caused a lot of whispers at their late hours and chairs propped against the door to dissuade them from clattering about, at midday here to them, but dawn to the couple in the house, a clash of ideals that ended in tears as the ladies took it a bit personally. Felt that the lad in question was very ‘eh rud’ especially, when for reasons best left unexplored, he snatched his case from their helping hands when unloading them, tre odd? We all were a titter to know what was hidden in there! But they were too shy to actually have a peek. A strange taciturn fellow it was universally proclaimed, unlike the blushing bride. Caused a lot of sage shaking of heads!
The other couple could not have been more different, took full use of the girls and my experience re walks, picnics and generally up at 6 and into the bush, mind you they were ‘expecting’ so were a bit further down the road so to speak.
This weekend is full again and next week too so we are content
Francis

24/10/03

Damn, f**k, piddle, bugger and curses, my guests have cancelled, depriving me of a fistful of dearly needed wedge, we are disappointed, depressed and a bit sad.
Nuff said, as all that is fine has as usual descended again upon this child of the universe, who can be of so little faith.
So I am cheerful enough now to write to you all, one of the disadvantages of trying to be a humorous scribbler is the required elation, which for a compulsive sulker can be a big disadvantage. Must be something to do with the lack of alcoholic poisoning, which seems to fire most hacks.
I had the privilege of visiting such a chap the other day.
One of the great advantages of having a favorably married sister, that loves me, is that I get to see places that my low self esteem, money wise, generally precludes, in this case Mr.Ratrays estate in Zululand.
Mr. R ‘s stories about SA have entertained me over the years on the radio. And we went to his lodge near the battle site of Isandwana where the Zulu gave the Brits a good smack in the nose.
We were unfortunately deprived of the actual man’s rendition of the day, but his stand in was also a master storyteller and under the awesome Sphinx like mountain, in the shadow of a thorn tree, wove a tale of human deeds in the grip of forces we surly cannot understand.
Everything that could happen, happened that day from celestial concurrences, an actual eclipse, to great acts of heroism, and all at the end of the day due to a stupid bigot and mischief maker, my how the balance of the world hangs on the swing of a butterflies wing!
I am inspired to try to find the equal here to entertain and scare the punters with spine-chilling anecdotes from the past.
I am sure that I can come up with great battles and blood curdling massacres, so that I too can lean into the faces of the awe struck tourist and snarl “ Gatsha! I have eaten!” Like the chap at Isindwana, dead sexy and gets him laid for sure.
I realize that skirmishes between the Pedi and the Swazi or the occasional cattle raid, pale a trifle, compared to the slaughter of 1500 of her majesties finest by a bunch of screaming half naked savages, which toppled the government of the then most powerful nation on the planet, but none the less I am sure that there is plenty to get my teeth into and being less married to the truth than the Ratrays are committed to, we will come up with some gruesome stuff, Victoria crosses or no hmmm?
Meantime spring is bounding the wild flowers are a blooming and there is turmoil as usual among the staff. Some time ago, two years ago in fact Loedje my old retainer finally fell at the fence and left to go home to his many wives and daughters. His room is now the source of great speculation and confusion.
Zak my ex builder and now general factotum has in my mind anyway replaced the old boy, but coming onto the place as a temp. was shacked up in what will one day be a shower stall, and not a very commodious one at that, clubby in fact, and the mind balks at imagining what it is like in there when he is entertaining his lady friend. A woman built on traditional lines, fat very fat.
In the spirit of the New SA I felt that these were less that satisfactory accommodations and as Loedje it would seem is unlikely to ever take up his slot here again it was decreed by he who must be obeyed that Zak should get the vacant space. Really quite a simple thing I would have thought but even my extensive knowledge of the African mind was left lacking by the convolutions and complications that these modest changes engendered.
The screaming and shouting, the taking of me aside to whisper the latest outrage went on and on for months at time and has now built up to the point where we are going to have a general meeting of all concerned, which should be amusing.
The farm is to get animals soon, in the shape of 70 brown cows that will be a welcome infusion of funds to spend on advertising as we are still lacking the interest that we at any rate are convinced we should enjoy, looking forward to a busy pagan period
Francis

05/11/03

We got COW’s

Contrary to popular opinion, nothing in the country is simple. Quite the opposite, what with the tragic lack of Espresso bars, cinema’s and Mall’s, we in the bush have a propensity for complication.
The tale behind the cows started innocently enough, with the arrival unannounced or invited, of half a dozen fat bovines with the usual annual Spring invasion of the Van Tonder’s milk herd, for a change accompanied by some free milk, and Tany Olivier’s horses belonging to a second cousins child from his sisters aunties side,
Having now a plumbed and watered kraal, I cheerfully locked them all up, and soon enough a young chapy me lad rolled up to fetch his strays, and gazed with envy over my many acres of unmunched pasture.
We discussed at length the merits of ‘our’ team, the perfidy of the selectors and other dark forces nibbling at the fabric of society and other deep stuff, and eventually turned to the heated subject of feeding animals in the current climate of drought and taxes. We wove around the subject re prices and quality and settled with a hearty manly muscular handshake..
Of he chundered in a cloud of dust from which rose the disapproving face of my beloved chairman
“Who is this fellow his spectral image demanded, what do you know about him? Will his f**king cows eat my flowers? Poke the dogs and what about the water? Which we will have to pump for the creatures, not to mention rental for the cow man who is to be established in the wekkers quarters and a whole lot of other sensible stuff which I should have established, like his telephone number!”
Shamed by my usual over enthusiasm and naivety I recalled that he mentioned that he worked for the flower grower in the valley so I called him to get a reference about this chap.
I had hardly said “gooya more” (good morning) when the truth came out that my lad was his lad as were the cows and I had been making deals with the wrong fellow!
“See I told you so you stupid schmuk” whispered the spectral Chairperson
Anyway a meeting was arranged, as my reverie of whizzing around the estate on a scrambler, purchased with the cow money went up the way of shattered dreams.
A couple of days thinking cows helped to concentrate the mind and after the usual chatter about all things great and small I again struck a deal, this time with all the relevant questions carefully actually written down beforehand.
Faced with such a cautious and well-informed pasture salesman Mickey the flower man and I decided that a trial period should be entered into before we actually went down the aisle. So one way or the other my bike has gone up in smoke which will only be good for my well being, dangerous things scramblers.
Lodge wise we are still tragically empty. All my heartfelt imploration to the general public has fallen on deaf ears and the only calls that my advertising engenders is from people trying to sell me more advertising, does this imply some sort of conspiracy?
The horse trails have also been struck a blow, the husky, seemingly indestructible lady who dealt with these intractable beasts was helicoptered off the hill, to Gauteng, due to the behavior of one of her beasts, and is bed ridden for 3 months. What prompts this love of the equine is indeed a mystery? Viva the internal combustion engine Viva!
Hoping and praying that at least some of you my beloved readers will come and visit me.
Francis

11/11/2003
Bad day for frogs and trout

When I first arrived here on the hill my romantic nature prompted me to wander down to Schoemans Kloof where I had been informed there was a Koi salesman working, and having constructed a small wier I was keen to put some pretty fishies into it.
So one day having little to do off I wandered off to find Myron the Jewish fish farmer, who turned out to be an old chum from the depth of hippydom’s youth. We loaded the truck with bags of carp, which I dumped into their new home.
We got to be chums the fish and me, and we grew and prospered, the fish especially so.
Taking advantage of the occasional floods they invaded all the dams, and started to throw loud parties which made them fat and numerous.
Still they harbored a fond part of my heart, being more of a bait distributor than a fisherman, their trendy outfits and friendly nature enchanted me a good deal more than the surly attitude of the trout.
However as we all know when the wolf is at the front door, love goes out the back. Being now keen to satisfy the blood lusts of townies and their sons, the mess created by the carp merrymaking, which made the water muddy with their constant copulation became a source of conflict between us.
The punters, who must be pleased, were not!
Somebody had to go and as the Koki were not paying, the decision was easy. Especially as they were most remarkably fat, colorful and large and as such looked more and more like loot on the fin to my gimlet eye.
After much soul searching and agonizing to and fro I decided that seeing as we are in the grip of a major drought this would be the ideal time to drain the dam.
So the tap was opened.
Out gushed the water as I stood at the edge with my liddle net and a bakkie full of buckets.
It took ages to drain, I had no idea how much water there was in the dam, gave me pause as to the wisdom of swapping the lake for an ever growing mud hole, in these dry times, not pretty.
Well we waited and waited for the water to drain, went to sleep and returned, still no chance at getting at the fish. Went to sleep again and Sunday dawned bright and sunny, the dam was now but a puddle heaving with fish, frogs and the odd slip slop.
As with all things country, after much tedious waiting, to the point of coma, it was panic stations. The trout were having the worst of it, drowning in the mud, and there were some monstrous animals, that are now tragically residing in the deep freeze. See photo oh you fisher folk of little faith.
In we waded, slipping and sliding through the mud, shuttling enraged fish to the swimming pool as the frogs made a bolt for wetter climes. I am sad to report that a lot of them got a bit crunchy, a fatal complaint in the amphibian’s world.
The koi however seemed to revel in it and were soon all residing happily in their new home as I tried to count them and the money they represented. They are enormous and numerous too.
Well all went well except for the frogs and trout, and the cynical voice from the koi man in the valley as to the real value of my haul. I am now of to get a blue paddling pool to photograph the critters, the internationally accepted way to present them I am told.
We mourn those that lost their lives, it’s all tooth and claw out there! A crane is enjoying the last left in the puddle so Bon appetite to him.
Francis

17/11/2003
The Black hole of Five Assegais

The relocation of the fish seemed to have gone well and all were in the pool, grumpy but ostensibly, reasonably content, cruising around their new home when, plop, up floated a dead one, then another and another something was fatally amiss!
First to go was old scar face, featured on the last letter, followed in quick order by the rest of the trout. Panic stations as the kitchen filled with filleted fish being heaved into the freezer.
My theory as we gazed mournfully into the murky depths of the pool was that the trout had been so muddied and distressed by the move that they had turned up their flippers in disgust, as the Koi were seemed quite happy swimming around.
I watched in distress as every trout gave up the ghost but as the Koi appeared content I took these losses on the chin. The Koi after all, are valued by the centimeter while the trout go by the kilo and there were a good deal more centimeters than kilo’s.
Saddened but full of false confidence we retired to the pit and arose the next day, brewed the wake up call and elegantly attired in white dressing gown and slippers went to check the fishies.
Oh whoa, of fook bugger damn the pool was awash with dead Koi, all many centimeter ones to boot!
Fook fook fook I yelled at myself as I danced around with the net hoiking them out and short of mouth to mouth doing every stupid thing I could think off to bring them back from the beyond and into an asset in my wallet, my missing foreskin was in agony.
Thankfully fishy farming is early morning toil so Myron was well into his day when the hysterical Jew on the hill came whinging down the line at 5.30 very AM, calling forth all the points and our mutual heritage going back to Moses to force him to make a plan for me before the entire lot were but wekker meat.
Unshowered or washed with only half a cup of coffee in me sucking fags and in a BAAAAAAd mood I stormed down the hill, even paying the thieves at the toll plaza, such was the frantic nature of my mission of mercy.
Haunted by the vision of suffocating fish and tortured by the inevitable guilt of having been the cause of this gruesome carnage to my gaudy chums, not to mention the loss of hard cash, I was bereft.
Saint Myron of Fish Fall Farm, the man for fish, is a calm and tranquil chap behind his ferocious beard and soon had me back with tank and oxygen, paid the toll plaza thieves again, more pain and humiliation, returned again, had to pay the toll mobsters for the third time, much gnashing of teeth and evil eyeing of the hapless lady in her booth as she snaffled my loot and got back to deposit the fish in the tender care of the chief gynecologist of carp with thankfully no further casualties Whew!
Francis

IMPORTANT NOTICE
FOR REASONS UNKNOWN MY OUTLOOK EXPRESS WITH ALL INFO AND GROUPS WAS DELETED, SO SOME OF YOU WILL NOT WANT TO RECEIVE THIS, SORRY I HATE SPAM TOO PLEASE REPLY TO BE DELETED
FRANCIS
24/11/2003

Tis the season of Discontent.

I love Christmas, but the build up to this annual Bacchanalian feast is a pain. We in the southern hemisphere take these northern games seriously. From Rugby to cricket, us lost colonies are still immersed in the watered down ceremonies of our past masters and my wekkers are particularly keen fans.
Why, why? When their Boss gets sooo grumpy and mean is a mystery.
From about the middle of November there rises this atmosphere of expectation, mixed with a sad note of resignation that none of their desires and hopes will be fulfilled. Tis a sad and grumpy wekker slouching around the estate that they think is the way to encourage the paymaster to dig deep into empty pockets to fill theirs. Odd neh?
I myself have yet to come by a Christmas bonus, being of the class that furnish rather than collect, which puts me at a disadvantage when it comers to plumbing the depths of these annual politics of coercion.
They leave me in a state of confusion, surely one would put in a bit more effort, rather than the other way around, especially as the lodge has been so lacking in paying guests, but noooo quite the opposite. They get cross sulky and unbearably moody, like being with a gang of old women getting their second or third dose of the menopause combined with PMT, it is contrary to nature and good sense. That’s religion for you! Nothing but money and sex.

On a less tiring subject, I have tried for quite quiet a while to entice birds to share my space with me. One of the deep sacrifices I made by moving to a wattle and gum plantation was the lack of all life in there.
Having now restored the land, if not to it’s former glory, at least back to a grassland, the birds have also returned, but they studiously ignored the seed I spread, it all just got blown away, disappointing.
About 6 months ago Diana my beloved ex wife came to stay as she is wont, and put her chewed paw-paw skin on the stump in front of the new studio, which I noticed attracted the immediate attention of my resident redwing starlings, who have been ensconced under the stoep for some few years already, but this was the first time they had taken any notice of me other than to shout insults. Intrigued by this success I continued the practice and soon enough the pair of them were practically getting me out of bed in the mornings for their fruit breakfast.
Encouraged I again stuck out some seed as well which the starlings don’t like and sure enough, soon enough, the local LBJs and doves noticed the starlings living large and came to have a peek. Where they found to their general excitement a pile of food. My theory is that these country birds just did not suss that scattered grain was grub, not the way food is ever presented in the wild, but boy did they ever twig on fast, and they all told their friends. This was a triumph! Fruit was the secret!
.
The Blue Gum stump bird restaurant is getting a reputation of note among the better-heeled tweedy birds of the Skurweberg. The old regulars are constantly bringing in more and more of their chums as they arrive from where ever they arrive from, and others who were there for ages have toddled of to where ever they toddle to hopefully to return soon.
Birdseed and rotten fruit are now high on the list of life’s little necessities
Getting very Jewish as 25/12 approaches
Francis.

28/11/2003

Giving up.

I led a dissipated youth and to be perfectly honest a dissolute adulthood too, and as a consequence I have had extensive experiences over a number of years with various behavioral quirks and substances of abuse. Luckily I have managed to get through with only a damaged memory thingy (I still blame old fartage myself) however I was ill prepared for the reaction to giving up Free Cell on the computer!
A while ago, due to I hope understandable depression, caused by the constantly tragic state of the world. (I have been particularly worried about the ‘Atlantic Escalator’ a current that warms Europe.)
Relentlessly under the strain of the imminent secession of this movement of water led me to play an inordinate amount of Free Cell on the computer instead of say working, reading a book or even bugging the wekkers, not good, not to mention writing this.
After a long period agonizing over this new indulgence and knowing my own slack and undisciplined nature, I with inordinate reluctance deleted all traces of anything more amusing than Billy G’s Word from the hard drive and my life.
This was no easy decision, I agonized for quite a while, and procrastination is too short a word. I hesitated, I vacillated, I did not want to do IT, but like a good little soldier, I did it and the inevitable happened.
I was bereft, really missed it, the days stretched long and empty.
This was really creepy, I was having serious withdrawal symptoms for god sake. I caught myself gazing forlornly at the bleak screen of my life, fiddling with the mouse as though there would magically appear, a mind numbing game to distract me from the pursuit of life, love and happiness.
This was all too too familiar and as is usual with all addictions came as a big shock. Addictions are rather like falling off a building, it is only when you stop that it hurts! And I had hit, hit hard bounced and hit again, and all just because I liked playing a card game. Fooking unreasonable.
This was I felt a gargantuan injustice of ‘old age’ proportions, I was and still am shocked! Shocked and appalled.
There are many of you out there who have faced the bleak and lonely world of self denial, or you would probably not be getting this, and we all know that it is always a tedious burden to bear, certainly it was a shock to get this load of distress over something so innocent as a little mind game with a machine.
Set me to thinking I can tell you straight.
The hold that this machine has over my soul is very alarming, a constant call to cyber inertia and distraction. An excuse and avoidance of looking at the sky, really really out there weird.
It is as though; I can no longer remember when a computer was something in the mind of a science fiction writer. This is as bad as any drug. In fact my whole attitude to all things electronic is in flux, TV is the next one to go I suspect. Don’t know if I will be strong enough for that. Just the thought of the hole in my life that idiotic entertainment would leave, gets my skin crawling and spiders creeping from the dark corners. Makes one think????
All this staring down the barrel of a cathode ray gun powered by the detritus of dinosaur’s strikes me as being the work of shape shifting lizards, as being frankly the most logical explanation.
When one considers the time and effort, Nay life itself, that is being pissed up the wall around the world on mindless computer games and TV, the mind boggles! We would have cured cancer, old age and the riddle of existence itself with half that energy spent, think of that hey? Now switch this off and look at a bird.
Doing the 12 step tango in cyber space
Francis

03/12/2003

Tany Olivier my neighbor has returned from her dance with death in our medical establishments. She has been gone for some considerable time, disappearing very suddenly as the sick are wont, and I am afraid to say that I really thought that, that was it, for her. Tany (Aunty in English) is one of the old breed shacked up on 60 hectares of rocks, weeds and vermin, which straddles the waterfall and is how I met her and found this place. So I have a considerable emotional and sentimental attachment to the old bag.
She and her clan have infested this area for the last 100 plus years or so and have accumulated a funny sort of half brick and cardboard construction fortified to the rafters with steel bar and dogs on chains. This rambling crocked little emporium placed for no discernable reason in the middle of a field and surrounded by eclectic rusting structures and the detritus of corroded farm kit from better times, which includes the corpse of her husband under a stone. This hovel slavishly worships the school of Minneapolis baroque trailer trash architecture and combined with an electrical system that would pass muster among the lowest connections in Bangladesh is nonetheless charming in its pure hideousness.
One must approach the settlement with some caution as it boasts a pack of dogs which are mercifully generally chained up, I hate that, but eases the entry through the Gestapo camp fencing, which is electrified and razor wired, to be welcomed at the bars covering the patio by herself, generally with a quite disconcerting kiss right on the lips.
At night she is furthermore draped like Marlow’s ghost but with guns and knives rather than chains. This is one tough old bird.
Inside the first thing to strike one is the complete lack of windows due to the massive fortifications, all of which it must be said are very dickey and would take an enraged savage five seconds to dismantle, some of the walls appear to have been tied on with string but he would not get through her quite so easily!
The walls were painted before the second great war and by that I mean Kruger’s war, in a delicate shade of railway bog green to compliment the deep burgundy carpeting and furnished with the lowest depths of randomly acquired Goma Goma furniture which reflects a level of tastes that would make the Diaspora look like a trip to the sea side. The rest of the house, if that is an apt description of this rambling monument to the lows of human habitation is riddled with pitch dark rooms that I have deemed too dangerous to my low opinion of mankind, to explore but must contain many pits for sleeping in as every now and then she is invaded by a quite startling amount of relatives.
Tany herself is now only about 4 feet tall having been shrunk somewhat by her latest setback, lost a few kilo’s too, shame the poor old cow it must have been quite a battle.
After a lifetime of Wit Blitz and Chesterfields combined with the inevitable depredations of giving birth to and rearing a large litter, really far more than I can keep up with, she is doubled over but still slides up and down the steep stairs to my place a lot better than some teenagers that have visited.
On the sickness front I too have been struck low, thus the lack of your weekly read. I consumed something that was vile and evil, I think a tin of tuna which sent me puking and wailing to the great white porcelain throne consumed by the agony of choosing which end to point first, deeply uncomfortable and humiliating to boot. Definitely not on my Christmas list.
Francis

10/12/2003

One of our readers has correctly complained that ‘Tany’ is actually ‘Tanie’ and being the product of a Potchestroom vegetable sales person, who am I to contradict him, especially as he is or was the Mayor of Sodom and Gomorrah so Tanie it is. This letter has also been accused of being pointless which I take as a compliment, life is prickly enough without more evangelisms.
However the fact is I was stung, and as this has been the month or week or whatever of moaning and groaning about gender violence I though that a pithy and relevant comment in this letter would be a good idea.
For a start one should consider why the average wife beater and generally nasty drunk bastards should care about a bunch of women wailing in the wilderness.
These men, for in truth most are men, who have control over their poor cows are so concerned about their lack of power, voice or influence should consider the fact that though they can make their only friend miserable and silent, this does not in anyway make their voice heard, not that they can think at all when they are pissed.
The truth is that all this misery is due to booze; I am convinced that not many women or children have been assaulted by sober men, if any. And that goes for crime, motor crashes and all the other idiotic stupidities perpetrated by these alcoholics.
However for those sober chaps and zol smokers who don’t feel that this is their problem let us consider the mathematical certainty that if the smallest voice is not heard the only voice that is heard, is the loudest, so if you are not called Bush or Saddam you will not be heard no matter how you yell.
I would like to also point out that the more say and respect a society gives to its women the richer and more stable and successful that community is, so all you nasty buggers out there that think that women are just empty vessels for their pathetic sperm should be jumped on by real men and taught the error of their ways
That is my pithy comment for the year Francis

15/12/2003

Another annual ritual has passed, i.e. the ‘eh patty’, meat burnt, beers drunk and as only a half jack was tossed into the fray, with little damage done to property or persons for a change.
I remember the first country party I hosted at Cosmos farm. I had just sort of completed the house and the large team of builders was ensconced in a tin shack nailed to the old barn. I was still a beginner, in fact a virgin, at these punch-ups and being also a bit of an amateur drinker myself I was altogether too lavish with the booze and the timing of its consumption.
The evening started well enough with general levity, heartfelt prayers for the wonder of the food and the boss’s generosity as is de rigueur for African knees up.
The beers flowed washed down with burnt meat, pap and tomato sauce, the first blunder was dishing out the hard tack before the food so the level of drunkenness was swift and devastating.
These chaps drink what is opened, till it is gorn, as fast as they can pour it down, Savoring the quality and or smoothness of the booze was not on the menu, the object is to get as blotto as possible, the journey is not part of the holiday at all.
The differences in opinion about things that a white man who treasures his sanity will never try to plumb (survival instinct usually locks in) start being screamed and shouted over a space of three feet, with a steady rise in the undercurrent of immanent violence becoming very apparent, so I retired to the pit with the squeeze of the day feeling generous and nobles oblige and all that rot.
Being only about 100 meters from the tin shack that was now the main area of operations meant that I had a virtual front row seat and the sound of tribal warfare grew steadily. Eventually there was a hesitant knock on the window of the bedroom where I was in truth hunkered down over a nasty headache from my own consumption of 2-week-old brandy.
“What???” I yell
“Eh Boss they are fighting” I am informed over the steady thump of my aching head
“Oh Jeeeeses F**k off” is naturally my immediate management reaction, as I roll over groan in agony clutching my pain killers in a death grip……..silence for a bit, but by the time of the second tap on the window arrives, I can now clearly hear the bodies flying around a confined space, quite a distinctive sound, immediately recognizable.
“Eh Boss pleeeees you must come” is the desperate squeak from the youngest of the lads crouched under the window, “ They are killing each other boss, come quick now pleeees”
No getting out of this that is for sure, I stagger out into the night, taking my massive 4X4 Toyota Land cruiser with the steal girder for a bumper and a cannon that I had bought off a particularly paranoid crack head, it was huge, and my fat staffy Crossbow. We drove at speed into the side of the shack with the satisfying result that one wall fell down completely allowing me to leap out of the truck and be silhouetted and dramatically lit in the dust and the lights of the truck blinding the very startled revelers. Even the one that was flying through the air froze in place. Two cartridges of heavy gauge 12 bore into the air only added an element of gravitas to the gathering. I had their undivided attention.
Crossbow who had got the biggest fright of all was in the arms of the largest and main protagonist, quivering in terror, that old girl will never be a gun dog.
The lads needed no further instruction and I could retire with an easy heart that all but all would be quiet on the farm for the next few hours.
Dictatorially
Francis

19/12/2003
Ohh I am such a trendsetter, but as usual I only discover my trend ness well after all the loot has been made by someone else.
It turns out that I am a ‘Blogger’.
I must be in fact the first of the bloggers as this ‘blog’ has been going for years already! I only discovered this from last weeks Sunday Times, which I get on a Wednesday, of there being thousands of idiots that get a vicarious thrill from spewing forth, internet wise, to enliven their dreary and irrelevant lives
I am crushed,
I am just part of some sad modern urban sycophantic syndrome, of the general malaise of modern, dysfunctional and compartmentalized urban life. A marketing Internet phenomenon. The humiliation and self-loathing is profound and deep. It was bad enough discovering that my most shameful and humiliating sexual fantasy is just a common perversion with a million web sites devoted to nothing else, practically soft porn, with millions of adherents, but to have Barry Ronge write about the web phenomenon of blogging in the Sunday Times, which is the trend to have sites where people post the rambling thoughts and observances of their daily life, such as ‘Faulty Tales’.
For a dedicated weirdo and marketing incongruity such as myself, this is a blow to my studied eccentricity. I am torn whether to quit, or get a blog of my own, worry worry worry.

However till this momentous decision is made here is my Blog of the day.
I don’t know whether it is the sad state of the sky, cloudless, the inevitable introspection of the festive season or just being a bit broke, but the underlying angst about being a NON member of the previously and presently disadvantaged, among so many who feel that they are were and still are disadvantaged, and that the advantaged, among the previously disadvantaged, are leading the cry that those such as me, who are not disadvantaged, are the ones that are disadvantaging them! Non previously or presently disadvantaged however feel, non the less, that they were never that advantaged and that their advantages as far as they can recall, from the sad state of their over draughts, bonds and child support payments, are less advantageous than the disadvantaged seem to appreciate!
Got that????
OK then let me translate into South African
This White is pissed off about being White among so many Blacks who recon that they are Black because of the Whites, and that the Blacks who are now White are the ones who are telling the Blacks who are still Black that the reason they are still Black is because of the Whites. Whites think that they were never that White in the first place, and anyway that being White is not as White as the Blacks think!
Is that easier?

Look I am confused and a bit irritated about our South African revolution, it was just the best one ever, what with Saint Nelson, the Rugby World Cup, and happily and advantaged we would all work together to get rich! And to a greater rather than lesser extent we have had this dream, which is nice, so why am I and so many around me (Whites, advantaged etc.) so worried now?

Why do we get the message that we are tolerated, just, resented and that we are the problem? By we, I am talking about the ‘Foreign investment’ that is so sought after, that has invested everything down to the lives of their children in this country.
The Whites!!!! The problem, the source of all the misery and poverty in our land. Oops so sorry, their land.
It is me personally that is standing in the way of all, but all, getting a 3 bed 2 bath DSTV fed obese life, its true, it’s my fault completely, and while I am in the mood let me apologize to all in the universe that have had the winds of change, change them, and take all their money too.
What crystallized this mysterious fear, when after all I am told, nay implored by the good and the great, that I am a treasured part of the fabric of the land where I was born, was a small incident that was reported on the radio the other day.
Dingaans day, Day of the Vow, and now day of reconciliation or something, but generally a great and venerable South African Tradition of bringing in the season of the great laze about in the sun. This fab extra Sunday is when the good and the great are expected to attend really tedious ceremonies in the dust and heat with lousy refreshments and long speeches that no one will hear.
Well one such celebration was being thrown somewhere and it had something to do with all the ‘religions’ getting together and doing who knows what? Speeches I suspect, some singing and tea and buns for afters, the usual but it was reported in tones of shock and horror that only 3 of the ‘White’ churches had attended this ‘Black’ event. I wondered with little thought which ones had pitched and made a whole lot of suppositions like it must have been those racist white churches that always hated us and don’t respect us now and blah blah blah with a whole load of guilt attached. Heard the report a couple of times when hey ho what happens but some bloke phones into the program and explains that in fact all but all the ‘White’ churches had pitched and that in fact what had happened was that the show was scheduled to start at 2 and all these colonial oppressive bigoted swine did the disgraceful deed of arriving at 2, waited around like lost farts for 3 hours, drank the tea wondering no doubt if they were in the right place as they were alone there and eventually having flocks and families or perhaps a life wondered off, leaving only three to welcome the extremely late and tardy hosts.
This was never then explained in the official news pronouncements nor was it reported in suitably shocked tones that the leaders of this land are totally unreliable.
So I think what??? I have been through this with the last lot inventing and creating a climate of fear and loathing so is I wrong?

12/01/2004
HAPPY NEW YEAR

I am a bit ashamed of the last missive I sent out, very down and negative, I blame the weather.
Here in the bush we are slowly surfacing from the surfeit of turkey, 2, and Christmas Pud, just one, and all the other nasty stuff that I have absorbed in the spirit of Christmas cheer.
The drought is a big worry though I am fortunate that my dams are nonetheless filling up and soon I will be again able to offer the aquatic hunters from the smoke some good sport.
The other hot news is that I have achieved 53 wins in a row at FreeCell which considering that my previous best was 6 is a triumph of note, with such momentous stuff happening out here it is little wonder that the stream of drivel has run dry.
On another note, matters of faith are occupying my mind, or rather the lack of such, in my heart, this is a thing of concern, considering the fact that there are no atheists in the trenches it seems churlish to doubt in paradise.
Some time ago, almost 2 years ago, in fact I was invited to attend a Barmitzva a ceremony that I, even as a non fore skinner missed, so I was indeed intrigued and was as such willing to attend the whole kapish from the Friday night Shabbat as well as the inevitable party.
I pitched dressed in my suit with shiny shoes, borrowed a yarmulke from one of my Christian mates and being a good school Christian arrived in good time to be warmly welcomed by the gathered Red sea pedestrians outside the synagogue in deepest flat bread land. Howard after ascertaining that this social liability was not going to get him actually excommunicated or driven into the wilderness by his having brought along this well known heathen escorted me into the temple.
This was in fact the first time that I had ever been to a Jewish ritual other than burying my mother and Grandmother and marrying off my sister all of which were notable by the lack of Jews in attendance. All three occasions in fact were attended by more poofs than pyramid builders!
Unlike the heathen services which I had been forced to attend by the fascist institutions that had attempted to bring me to a state of grace in my yoot, this was very different, for a start the women were all banished to the upstairs section and there seemed to be no order or hushed respect prevalent in the austere God shows that I was used to.
When we got in, the place was already half full of rowdy Jew boys all of whom seemed to feel that this was a stock exchange or social gathering rather than a place of worship with all the cheerful chatter associated with those sort of places, lots of “hello Sollies, how’s biz” type chatter as kids ran about the place and all but all ignoring the chaps on a big box in the middle who had started the show some time before.
To my confused eyes this seemed a bit off, as they were putting a lot of effort into putting up a good performance. They were lavishly dressed for the occasion with all the kit, white scarves, silly hats and transistor radios strapped to their heads singing, nodding and chanting away with not a soul taking a blind bit of notice.
Well the place filled up, the volume of chatter rose and then something went down that I missed but all there suddenly stood and started with the actual service, lots of cheerful singing and barrog Israeling with coordinated turning this way and that, not a word of which I understood but I followed as best I could so as to not shame my chum who had taken such a chance with me.
Now lads and lasses as you might know I am a Yid by birth and as such had a lot of them to the house for pork on a Sunday so a lot of the words though incomprehensible were none the less quite familiar but the real shock was as I looked about was the fact that I had never seen so many Jews in one place before in my whole life, came as a bit of a shock especially as I could recognize every single one from my yoot, I gazed in awe at my tribe for the first time ever, I was transported to a place and a society that I was part off. For the first time in my life I was without doubt part of something, a group, a community, 6000 years of history surrounded me and for the first time ever this little soul realized that I was not alone that I was after all not a stranger in a strange land that there was a place in this world to which I belonged and was a part of.
I was stunned shocked and in fact outraged that this treasure had been hidden from me for all these years, that I had been denied my birth right, that I had been all alone and drifting like a lost fart my whole life, that even the cold and indifferent bastards that were my English relatives who had so studiously ignored and shunned me and my sister had done more to include and Anglesize me than my Jewish relatives, I felt robbed of something precious, I have been so confused about this that it has taken me all this time to resolve and settle it in my mind, I wept for a day and could not bring myself to attend the rest of the celebrations except for the party.
The thing is gentle readers is that I am now and have been for sometime such a fervent anti religious person that I really did not want to become a tasseled Yid now, it would to my mind be hypocritical and whether I had found this dubious connection or not the truth is that it is no closer to the way for me than any other religion and besides which I am like all Jews an anti Semite.
Meditavily yours
Francis

18/01/2004
Nineteen thousand three hundred and fifty eight and a quarter sleeps as per last night, and the doors of Five Assegais were flung open to celebrate this auspicious event!
19358.25 seems an innocuous number, no mystical connection that I can see or definite lotto numbers for that matter, but none the less divided by the number of times the planet rotates, relative to the space of time it takes to circumnavigate a minor globule deific, comes to a date based on the nativity of a peasant on the bit of land that joins African and Europe, which was a bad day at the office for my mother.
So we are wont to buy meat, get worried about whether anyone loves us. Get depressed about the state of our diminishing years and all the things we should and shouldn’t be doing and have or haven’t done. It seems a strange thing to do but after 875.6 one twelfths of each planetary rotation, I intend to do it again, just one of the little foibles that we all do and which this time I really enjoyed.
Greg my particular chum who has shared about 18 circumnavigations of the sun with me, started close to the spot on rout at about the same place as I did and at the exact same place as Andrew a neighbor did. This naturally inspired a veritable orgy of celebration in the area.
Komati Lodge started with a booze and flesh fiesta which gathered the denizens of the Komati valley, Katrinasrust, Five Assegais and chums and various others who propped up the bar down there, Pat had organized a couple of young women to keep the lads at the trough which I thought was a fine gift for her man and got me all over excited and keen on visiting the optician or rather the tasty optician’s assistant that was flashing her underwear as the yoot are wont. The underwear flasher being the sister of the bar lady who between them had been round the sun less times than I had, so it was fun flirting with them, got me all over excited, hot and bothered and annoyed the older women there no end.
They all took the opportunity to remind me that I was nearly a 20 thousander compared the luscious young lasses with just over 9000 and don’t you think it is sad and disgusting that I was dribbling over young flesh and worse getting some fun from her? Blah blah blah.
I had arranged to meet my chum who was coming out from the smoke for the celebrations and by some great feat of coordination arrived at the same spot at the same time, magic.
I have been shy of the wacky weed for a couple of weeks, since last year in fact, so this year, up to Friday the 17th anyway, is the first year in 30 years that I have been straight!!!!! I bet you are impressed?
Now being a man of sober and restrained habits the first thing I did upon this joyful reunion was bum a smoke off him which I flicked out just as I turned onto the Doorkop track, boy was that a hairy ride??? Caused no end of amusement to the ones following to watch me sliding over the wet and very slippery road, nearly got stuck for which I would have been mocked over for years.
For my 19358.25 we actually burnt meat on 19357.25 and most of the celebrants of the previous night pitched for a repeat, thankfully the optician’s assistant, she of the exposed knickers and desirable flesh had stuck to her own. avoiding the recriminations from my personal squeeze, the squeals from the other squeezes was quite enough. It was most pleasant with English being the language of use being in the majority, a first in this area for me, for the times they are a changing la la la di da.
It was also notable by the complete absence of any drunks lurching and falling about ones person, what a joy, I find that my tolerance for slurring idiots on fermented fruit is getting less and less, I suppose after being arrested and generally persecuted by the booze parade for years I am a trifle over sensitive but I just hate it when they invade ones personal space with no foreplay, let alone consent, silly dangerous buggers.

26/01/2004

Everybody just loves Five Assegais except the parrot
What can I say but that I was spoiled rotten, got loads of pressies from sexy underwear, (what you think only girls like that sort of thing?) Candles, booze and best of all lots of rain and more than that I have now lost so much weight that my Adam’s apple has returned!
Gave me a nasty turn, I was shaving the pelt from my face, a strange habit, when I noticed a peculiar movement in my throat that had not been there the last time I looked. The great flab of flesh that used to grace my chin had disappeared to return my hidden neck to the gaze of men, and women too. I rushed to the scale and sure enough I had lost yet another 10 pounds which I am sure is a bit of knowledge you are all amazed that you have lived without for so long, I am however thrilled with old-new lump.
I was also treated to a rare spectacle, one of the big plusses of having cows around is that they bring crowned egrets with them and they tend to hang decoratively around the dam, the other day with the advent of the summer raptors they were attacked and harassed by a large brown eagle, diving and swooping through the flock, sadly for the eagle his efforts to have egret for breakfast were unsuccessful, but the chase was pretty dramatic none the less.
I have also attracted a Redcollard Widow in the new pasture above the house a notable triumph to watch him flapping around for his lady friends in fact the life that is now booming on the estate is a wonder to behold though the maids are less than enchanted by the corresponding invasion of some of our reptilian chums like the night adder that is sulking under one of the gas cylinders, warm and safe.
We spotted a family of mountain Reebok with a bambino the black shouldered kites are gathering for their annual orgy and I have got a parrot, verily the pirate in me has succumbed again and I am the proud owner of a very shy blue African green who at the moment goes under the name of Stony, as it comes from the stone quarry. He or perhaps she is still after a few days less than enchanted with its new arrangement and I worry that it is pinning for company, but sadly there are no more chums for me to get for him at the moment so it spends an inordinate amount of time in the cozy box I got for him and bolts back inside at the first sign of a human face, I am being very patient as I am sure that the love I feel for this very expensive chicken will soon be reciprocated, we live in hope.
Francis

29/02/2004
Due to the shortage of good jokes and some personal quandaries I am sending this letter out on a monthly basis from now on so stop whining, after all you don’t pay for these words of wit, and I am going to try sending pictures too, sometimes, but onwards

Hello chums,
Well a long and momentous month it has been just shows you what an extra day can do.
The wattle war has now been officially won HOORAH AND TALLY HO!
I had this orgasmic moment when gazing out over my hills and saw nary a tree, the troops are still out there flaying and spraying away at the stragglers, this is a vicious and merciless war with no quarter given, but we, here at central HQ, are now celebrating and planning on how to split the booty.
The consequence of this is that I have indulged in an orgy of gardening and planting, a change from the mindset of tree killer. I am now again contemplating the joys of feeding animals and getting the ‘farmyard’ on the move, we already have cows and now horses!
My mother warned me, my sister beseeched me, my inner voice positively shouted at me but nonetheless, hey ho and off to break our necks we go. With a “front end bites” and a “backend kicks” and “ the middle is a horrible place”, on our lips,
I have grown to enjoy these beasts, having negotiated with a local Copper, a sturdy young chappy built on the lines of ‘Desperate Dan’ with a small head and huge chin, and his equally horse mad wife who is the local nurse, to run a Horse trail. Thus I get a free horse to fall off!
They brought a bunch of horses over at the beginning of the month and I have been feeding them and generally getting to bribe my way into their good graces with tidbit’s and oats, which precipitated an adventure even before I had climbed onto one of them, the oats, that is, as you will see,

It is a little known fact but Middleburg is a den of iniquity!
This is not immediately perceptible, as on the surface it is a typical small high veldt town.
It boasts many glittering manifestations of the sleepy dorpy such as a snappy new KFC franchise, old and beer soaked hideous hotel, sturdy municipal structures, towering grain silo’s and war memorials to fallen hero’s of yore and naturally malls, none of which indicates the criminal nature of this backwater, except perhaps the hotel.
I have had the privalidge and joy of wondering fairly widely around the planet and my own peculiar proclivities have taken me into a lot of tre seedy and murky spots, with nary a nasty moment.
However having had the dubious delight of visiting this particular blight on the face of the planet perhaps a half a dozen times I have been stitched up there TWICE now, weird.
These brushes with jeopardy have all been precipitated by lightning, blowing up some piece of electronic gear, requiring a pilgrimage to the nearest box fixer, that being Middleburg, in the middle of nothing and far from anything, so aptly named, though I feel lacking in any great thought, which is also a valid point.
The first incident happened some time ago, when I went to collect my fried DSTV box and was enjoying a chicken with a chum when ‘they’ swiped it from the bakkie, right in front of our eyes! He had neglected to lock the door, a very amateur job as they missed all the camera gear and other valuables. An obvious snatch and grab operation, hardly worth mentioning.
The last and more recent escapade however was a bit of a ‘cunning plan’, calculated by Middleburg’s nefarious classes to alleviate local fat old farts in ‘Bakkie's’ of their property.
I being, such a victim, was blithely sitting in my motorized wheel barrow chatting on my cell to the TV mender in the mall, when I was disturbed by the extraordinary sight of a young chappie me lad unloading, unbidden, a 25 kilo bag of oats (remember) from the open back of my trucklet!
I was naturally filled with a righteous outrage at this blatant act of banditry and leapt, no doubt, as expected, like a silly old macho bugger into the fray, to confront this lad with a great deal of finger wagging and “Are you fekking out of your fekking minding” with this young man, protesting in a vague but convincing way that he was just being a helpful fellow, doing the bidding of his betters and richers
He demonstrated that admirable African innocence and surprise at my outrage, gesturing vaguely around as to indicate some higher authority, before, quite suddenly conceding. With elegant virtuosity, he drops the sack back into the truck and ambles off into the local taxi rank.
I was left gaping with surprise at this strange encounter as he disappeared into the heaving masses, I climbed into the cab wondering dully, with more than a bit of adrenalin coursing the veins, what the hell that was all about, and trundled of to the coffee shop to await the TV to be finished.
It was there that the veil fell from eyes, upon the discovery that I was missing cell phone and wallet! Lots of scratching around under the seat and unbelieving patting of pockets confirmed the awful truth.
Old Mister Streetwise had been swindled, conned, tricked and befuddled by a couple of ignorant yoots who think that Swaziland is overseas.
Oh the shame.
While the oat stealer was distracting me, his accomplice, was rifling my car, a clever little scam.
Really quite a gentle and considerate little ploy, I could not but be secretly impressed and certainly better than a gun to the head nes pa?
In retrospect, the oat stealers calm calculation, and control was inspiring, the way he pointed away from the action to keep me
pre occupied in the wrong direction was a masterful stroke, these lads saw me coming and played me like an old fiddle, real Oliver Twist stuff.
The Old Bill arrived chop chop, but were less than useless, surprise surprise, the resident car watcher, even more so, probably in on the scheme, the blond armored copper implied to me.
I was bereft of communications, money and identification, and was humiliated, worried and somewhat annoyed.
Thankfully the TV guys, who claimed that every day in that area was a constant battle against the forces of darkness, fronted me with a hundred bucks. The bank gave me my card back and stopped the old one, very quick and smartish, the telephone was zapped and made useless, a lot harder and more complicated to achieve, requiring a many digit number and a surly attitude by the service provider.
Machadodorp municipality lifted some wedge off me for my new Drivers license and sent me here and there to get all the pictures, police number and all the other tedious demands of an established plutocracy in just a couple of hours, with tea tossed in with the Captain while we waited, the post office did not have enough stamps for the gun licenses but the copper involved is going to deliver anyway so hooray for country life, take you 3 months in a line to get that together in town!
Otherwise the lodge has been, for the first time ever, full, every weekend, this month, “HOORAY AGAIN FOR COUNTRY VISITORS!”
It is raining a storm, so the roof is leaking, it has been so dry this year, that I have not had to get to that job, and now I curse the rain, spread buckets and pots around and wait for it to let up, we are so ungrateful.
Well as I said a momentous month, got into the Saturday Star Travel section, a whole page with pictures and everything, filled the lodge this weekend directly from that, went out with the horses for the first time, thankfully uneventful, glorious in its uneventuality, I am still not sure about these beasts, Desperate Dan did take a most gratifying tumble, which was disconcerting, him being the ‘expert’, but all agreed that, that was a loopy animal as the rest were unfazed.
Thank the lord, as these animals can go like the clappers. Scarrrrrry
I have since ridden for the first time, on my own on a horse that knows me and that I saddled myself, really great, with the dogs running along side, a team, in fact today I went all the way around the Skurweberg, it really really doesn’t get better than this. I also got interviewed on the radio, Fame!!!! Well enough about me how goes with you?
Your chum in the bush
Francis

March 2004
Tiss the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness, with my guests huddled by the fire, quite embarrassing, as it is wet as well as cold, not the show that a concerned Vakansy Ordenaar would wish on the frazzled punter. One can only hope that they don’t get the impression that this is how it always is here, seems to rain every weekend, odd.
However I am achieving a level of contentment not seen since the last farm. Life is good, other than the trials and tribulations of Spaniards, Israelites and others the news at home is uniformly and pleasantly dull one would think that Bra Nelson was still in charge! I try to worry about Zim and crime, but really those old chestnuts seem to be but the sound of waves or wind, in short the trout are fat, though still uncooperative, the braai’s they burn and best of all, the lodge is full, oh happy days.
I now even have a chum in the area that I can pop in to, too share a joint with, a first in 12 years of country pursuits, mine cup runeth over!
We had the first art lesson in the studio, all the local ladies came equipped with, wine, food and cookies, we settled in to a still life which I had arranged with flowers, drapes, fruit and veg which totally intimidated the class and was reduced to a lonely pumpkin, however undeterred, we all got around it as I strutted around trying to explain how to draw, see, compose and paint, something I have never done, not so easy, as I have not really ever thought about how I do what I do!
Our ‘group’ it is safe to say will not any time soon threaten the status of the ‘Everad Group’ who were painting around here 80 years ago, you will be amazed to hear that The Standard Bank Gallery has as yet not approached us for a retrospective, but we sure had a good time, a couple of hours at the easel to justify the soul followed by food and vino in the sun is a great way to spend a day, the fact that between us we have lived several centuries only added to the stories, chatter and bonhomie.
In my now constant search for self promotion and free publicity in the never ending hunt for visitors we had a young travel writer chappy here who will promote us this Saturday on Safm at about 10.15am so listen up, and also an article in the Biz day not a journal I take regularly. This prompted a major tour of the region and sneak views of the competition in the area as I trolled him from fishing hut to country mansion, ohing and ahhing at the wonders displayed, there really are some great places here to stay and the interest by the steaming proletariat to visit is heart warming, I wish that Easter came a few times more every year, the amount of folk that want to leave town at this time would have filled the lodge 10 times over.
Our local Tourism org. got together for our AGM which was an orgy of meat and booze in Tim’s newly constructed disco which he has fixed up in his a bit smelly fish processing barn, with all the kit from UV lights to smoke machines and mirror balls so now we lack for nada out here except for semi naked nymphets on E, and dark chaps from Nigeria flogging crack at the door but we live in hope, for the nymphets that is, we chatted about ‘eh toorisem’ got a lecture from the girls and boys from Mpumalanga head office who dispensed packets of marketing material that we were all to busy bopping, burning meat and drinking, to read
I am touched by the reaction to my complaint that I was not getting enough jokes from you lot and as you can see some great funnies have swamped me, thanks.
One of the disadvantages of having a good time is that contentment does not make for funny tales to relate so hey ho enjoy your jokes and see ya here soon, I must mention a magic moment as I was feeding the horses the other evening, the sun was setting as a small storm swept passed creating a magnificent rainbow that ended above the house where I had a couple spending their Honeymoon, it was soooooo romantic and cute I nearly puked.
Your Vakancy Ordenaar
Francis

April 2004

Hello Chucklers,

Another full month Hooray, strange thusly, how I am still flat broke, the tourism biz she is a fickle mistress!
May looms with nary a single soul keen to taste the thrills and spills on the farm, worry, worry, worry, so on to more delightful tales.
‘Die Ou Mense’ as we are apt to describe the settlers in the region, who built the original house, built here for several good reasons, but the most important of these was access to gravity feed water, which was notable by its absence.
I had after some scrabbling around in the bush discovered a sad damp patch that I assumed and was assured by the few remaining denizens in the area. from 30 years ago, was in deed, the original spring and did indeed used to run always.
Well I might have mentioned, the recent wattle war that we engaged in here and I might add, WON, as such spoils were to be expected, but such a bounty as I have received was more by far than was ever expected.
For the first time this year the damp patch is now a considerable bog, the lower springs are behaving in a way that was also very heartening, all this combined with the happy coincidence of a free yellow mega digger persuaded me to take the plunge and open a huge hole.
Out flowed water, a stream of crystal pure water from the very base of the rock, a mystical miracle, much dancing around. And whooping it up!
Soon the whole hole was a muddy puddle and still the water flowed, I felt most Mossesish as I pitted that night.
Next morning still wild with excitement at the thought that soon I would have free water, I rushed up to gaze into my hole which I knew would now be a pure clear puddle, but what I found was a wonder that I still visit almost three times a day, and drag every visitor to see in the sure knowledge that I will get a resounding Ohh, Ahh Wow, that is amazing, from all!
Picture if you can an opal in a golden field, a jewel of blue water, blue, blue water, not just clear water such as in the next spring down, but a wonder of some coincidence of nature to create a stratified multi colored clay, blue water pot at the base of the god head of the hill, this is something really special.
We are overcome.
I have strung a pipe down to the pool at the house that my sister forced me to install, with dry remarks about the unsuitability of a laydiee to cavort in a pond, and the water is still this wonderful color.
This is big time pay back for many years toil
In less obvious ways though, I am rewarded for the work we have done here, cash would be nice but the steady return of life to the house is equally if not more satisfying.
Five years ago there was not a bird, lizard, mouse or insect on this poor blighted bit of the world and now I will have to invest in a snake remover! Night Adders sunning on the patio!
All this is good news, so it was a blow when the water for the house ran dry, with the house full of Guests too, including babes in swaddling with concerned and perturbed Mum in tow, who felt that this lack of the old H2O from the tap was a major management failure. I had to concur, panic stations was the choice of the day
When first I started camping here, I had purchased a very smart and powerful electric water pump, however what with the tardiness of our local utility company to supply the power required, I had fallen back on the old farms technology, i.e. a petrol clunker that has been pushing the aqua yea verily for the last many years, and the electric pump had been consigned to the back reaches of the dusty store, under the principle that what works don’t need to be fixed.
This had changed and required solving as in now!
What had transpired was that I had stripped the thread in the thingy at the top of the what not on the motor, I naturally blamed the staff, but the truth be told it was me, however blame having been laid at the wrong door did nothing to repair the damage but being a man with a spare pump in da store I thought this would be just another opportunity for me to demonstrate my bush tracker skills.
Not so, the forces of darkness were after a bite at my pink white Holiday Resort manager’s bum.
It seemed that some distant conflict between management and the toiling classes in some far away industrial zone having made the availability of copper cable a thing of the past, thus leaving me bereft of the ability to string vibrating electrons to the machine, thus this very dear piece of kit was left less than ineffective, no bloody use at all in fact.
I was alone with a crowd of punters who could soon turn ugly, not to mention dirty and unwashed, this is considered among the professionals in the trade to be a boo boo of note. My distress was only added to by the utter dearth of any local alternative, all pumps being firmly attached to their pipes and unavailable to a weed-smoking idiot on a hill.
Thankfully my fellow Red Sea pedestrian in Schoemanskloof who grows goldfish for a crust and consequently shifts, in the tradition of our forbearers, a lot of water, did thankfully, have a pump which required a frantic trip down the hill to fetch it, where I found a less than enchanted pyramid builder who had had his squeeze attacked by creatures of the night and was still so that concerned by this episode that he carried the copy of our local rag which had featured the attack on the front page!
In the spirit of blind optimism, though the attack was shocking and distressing and all that, I did take some small comfort from the fact that these nasty bastards did not do what they were so won’t to do just months before, being rape and murder. They were, I suspect restrained in their behavior by the sure knowledge that the bloody death of a white madam would bring a great deal more attention to their enterprise than just lifting her kit, so even though Myron was still convinced that they were after his thinnish white arse, I felt that the outcome was a lot better than it could have been.
I tut tutted away with him for a while before returning to the sad unwashed crowd at the lodge with pump under arm, confident, not, that this pizzily little low veldt pump would cope with the conditions here at the top of the world, and it did not.
This required a great deal of aggravation for the wekkers who had to pump water into a little water tanker on wheels, tractor that to the top of the hill and pump it into the tank, a long and laborious process which made one well aware of how much vita is needed to keep us in aqua.
We are fully watered by gravity and electricity now, so all can be welcomed by a spring fed swimming pool and as much water both hot and cold as even the most tiresome guest could demand, a pair of which washed up from the celestial heights of the corporate booze towers in the form of Bells Whiskey punters.
The community of local bed leters here, having the overwhelming desire to turn our backwater into a destination of choice, have been plotting and scheming to get the rich and influential down here for a days fishing, as such a ‘Trout Festival’ is on the cards, thus the Bells boys, sponsorships being the order of the day, were dragged around the area for a peek under our skirts, Tim in particular lifted his and we were all amazed and impressed by the wonder of pristine river and dams that the big boys from the local mine, keep for their executive stress, fact made in flesh the wonders of nature that many millions can achieve, the Bells team were suitably blown away and a meeting of souls was proclaimed especially after they met Pat.
These old corporate soldiers can see a fellow comrade across the room and they were thirsty anyway.
A booze fest developed into strident celebration, with competitions over who could mix the most devastating cocktail, I was left under the table, tre remorseful and ashamed the next day, boy the things one has to do to get people to come and stay.
One of the dubious benefits of this excursion was being introduced to the wonders of river fishing. A lot more tricky than flogging the fat lazy lucky trout that infest my dams. Being as I am, keen to plumb the depths of country pursuits, I feel obligated, started with the horses and it can only be a slow dive into fishin, shootin, and prayin, you can understand my lack of enthusiasm.
It is quite a lot of fun, when you have eventually got ones cast out, without getting tangled and in a mess. The whole universe seems, in that situation to be hell bent on catching your hook, except for the fish of course, they cruise past you, bold as brass, in the gin clear stream, making rude remarks and giving one the old fin as they sail past your tangled excuse for a lure, the buggers! Have been down now 3 times and have actually caught some fish, enchanting stuff, these river fish make a hell of a fuss when you snag them with much leaping and zooming up and down, and these are just the silly stupid tiddlers that I managed to con! What a big one does to the adrenalin levels, well the mind boggles.
So there you go, busy times with doom and even worse penury and disgrace but a blip on some distant computer away, aloe season is here again so do come and see them if you get the chance, Pooky my parrot has reconciled himself to me, though he still prefers women, who doesn’t? The temptations of the horses has faded into the realms of toil beyond the returns of pleasure,
Blue waterishly yours
Francis

MAY 2004

Hello Chucklers,
May, may come and May, may go and to be frank I am glad it is gone, phew, what a roller coaster ride, lucky to be alive, or if that is a bit melodramatic, lucky to be still in biz anyway!
April was a wonder of keen young things infesting the lodge, and the phone ringing off the hook with anxious last minute punters trying to get here, I thought that I was at last in the clover and from now on I would be spending my days raising the rates and collecting loot.
However from the last week in April the calls suddenly ceased, stopped, came to an end, to such an extent that I was sure that the phone had been cut, which it eventually was.
The cows soon got the message that this was a place of woe and disappeared into the valley, the horses, which had received so much love and attention also deserted me for greener pastures, Telkom with their usual aplomb cut the phone, the only time the cell sounded was to harass me with demands for wedge which was not available, and now even the cellular boys and girls have decided that I am a poor bet, all is misery, ohh woe is me.
Even the new spring went dry!
We plumbed the depths, lost faith, got scared, resented the rich and poor alike, all of which seemed to be after my skinny bum.
Next year I go away for May.
So I did what any would do and painted like a fury, you don’t? Well it works for me.
First came a commission, through the Mastodon pictures, this is the first time ever that I have got work from art done, what that says about my stuff does not bear considering!
Got a couple of bookings.
Paid the staff (God I hope I don’t have to retrench them)
Got the phone back and paid who I could but all too little and to late.
My pathetic appeals and frantic PR efforts to promote the flowers here came up with not a singe reply!
Therefore I can only recommend that if any of you want to visit me it better be soon as it looks more and more like this is the end.
Here are the jokes I got this month, enjoy
Hope I will be sending this out next month
Penurily
Francis
June 2004

Hello Chucklers,
What a roller coaster ride this resort bizy,ness is, who would have thought?
After all the doom and gloom, self loathing and distress of May, all returned to joy, though hardly anyone got to see the aloes, again, this year, but before you fall on your swords in disappointment and distress at missing, again, this wonder of the world, it was a poor season with only 1 out of 10 shrubs blooming, who knows why, drought, cold, it is a mystery. Try again next year.
The Place is looking amazing none the less, flowers or no, and very much the benefit of loosing the trees is manifest, I love winter up here, best time of the year, clear days crisp nights around the fire and the parrot munching on my shoe laces all very cozy

Bit of a break

Oh lordy lord, got as sick as a dog, not a thing that I am used to, having a constitution that caters for my erratic life style.
I never get the flu, well not like this anyway, where I crawled into the pit.
One of the grave disadvantages of not having a live in lover is the lack of the cooling hand on the fevered brow, not to mention the TLC that they are so good at.
Well there I was, I all alone, ag shame, sweating and shivering with nothing in the drug draw to combat this latest assault on my ebullience and after 2 days of Valium and Grandpa with just a little soup and sandwiches from Mac, Tim pitched with Med lemon and some other major juices to ease me into oblivion while the organism did it’s thing.
Let me tell you that Med lemon, 3 and hot, washed down with 2 Grandpa’s is like smack without the puking!
I am convinced that the rejection of my painting that I had offered to the bleak gaze of the art world was the cause of this distress, it certainly depressed me.
One of the ‘joys’ of painting are the deep and personal insults to ones debased feelings of self worth by the legions of critics, snotty nosed gallery ladies and the complete lack of enthusiasm for ones work by the general public, truly at times it is quite hard to believe at all!
Well we are recovered, after a week of depression, and it is still as cold as a witches tit, and when would the chain saws decide that they are old and grumpy and were no longer willing to accept the abuse lavished on them for yea verily the last many years, now, typical, so wood has become for the first time ever short, actually have to hand out cold hard cash for it!
Anyway this letter is very late, August looms, the school holidays are drawing to a close with the inevitable empty weekends that, that creates, starting to take keen interest in school time tables and public holidays, which as a non wekker have been things of little concern in the past, just another of the many little skills that the holiday resort owner needs to nurture.
Cold but cheerfull again
Francis

JULY 2004

The second cold front is upon us, and the country is huddled and shivering, the dogs are quaking at my feet in terror and fear what with the thunder and all, just the time to amuse and entertain.
July on the vakancy front has been good, not excellent but enough to give me a short stick to whack at the wolves, better than pathetic appeals to their better nature that’s for sure.
Well anyway the month started badly, the girl friend had a serious wobble what with the double full moon, and her boss who is equally erratic, has been on her case, so naturally I got the benefit and the same is transpiring again this week, so no nooky for me this weekend!
I can only take consolation from the fate of a thankfully distant acquaintance I have with Mr. Simon Mann in Zim who has had less than I for the last little while.
On the suffering front I was committed by my deep debt to our local tourism mafia to suffer the slings and arrows of cruel misfortune and spend some many hours manning our stand at a temple to conspicuous consumption in the better part of Pretoria.
Being one of Vosters Children my perception of that capital city is some what jaundiced by the memory of being dragged there in chains!
This time I had been sentenced to 2 days at the Menlyn Park Mall! Oh woe is me.
I was welcomed to our spot on the concourse by Pat, a big improvement on the last waiter I had had there, believe me on this one, and my cell mates were a good deal less scary too.
The Belfast girls were there in force, they are really keen there, must be their proximity to Dullstroom, who were notable by their absence, the other corner of our 25 square meters, was occupied by a grumpy pair of wrinklies from the depths of Marble Hall, I have no idea where that is and they seemed equally confused! The fourth corner was taken by a bunch of others who seemed to have no particular reason for being there but had lots of posters, glossy pamphlets and enthusiasm for the resorts in their gift. I think they had something to do with Badplaas.
I settled into my bit, which was decorated with our posters, and my bunches of grass which had already proven their worth and had been knocked over several times and were shedding like fury, pretty but tiresome rather like me ☺
Unlike the last cell I had occupied in that town, the fascists here were a good deal more restrictive, where cell 23 was darker and grimmer with a good deal less on offer in terms of distractions and products for sale, one could at least ease the pain with a smoke!
Well the hours simply sailed away with nary a prospective tourist to be seen, quite a lot of traffic past, by folk that were without doubt on a mission and shied away from our advances with a good deal of suspicion and I soon realized that the Marble Hall wrinklies were depressed for good reason. Sitting there was like being sentenced to three hundred years of all in wrestling, nary a soul was interested in who we were, where we came from and what we had to offer, not good.
However we soon discovered that the coffee shop allowed smokers and I had a great time taking the piss and reading a book, rather like being on holiday, but in a mall.
On a final thought about the deep need to get deposits, I am distraught that I am responsible for the early demise of an old lady, as I neglected to get a deposit from her daughter so the old dear gave up the ghost and I got a cancellation
Francis

August , 2004

The month arrived with the first breath of summer, just an illusion but welcome nonetheless and brought a considerable expansion in our operations. I am now the governor and general marketeer for the ‘Pongola Express’
One of my northern neighbors, is a formidable Afrikaner Royal, of gimlet eye, steely gray hair and generally a grand old lady of some considerable substance. She must be one of the first lady attorneys in the country, and the proud owner of a pair of splendid old SAR Railway carriages parked in the Skurweberg valley.
Tany Gritjie (as I am now allowed to address her) and I have been conducting a mild flirtation for the last few years, on the odd occasion that she comes to stay.
Having shared a crust and a drinky I have managed to ingratiate myself to her, and what with the nature of the tourist biz, i.e. being plagued by the punters all wanting to visit at the same time I mentioned that I could have filled her carriages with paying guests for cold hard cash, this touched a cord, and the deal was made!
Aunty G some 35 years ago, when she was younger but I suspect no less sprightly had managed, I know not how, to drag a sleeper carriage, first and second class as befits the dark days of yore, and a stupendous dining car, lined with exotic timbers, with just the greatest workmanship from the long lost days of elegant travel. We are talking ‘Orient Express’ with views to make the eyes water.
I have enchanted and delighted Tany Grippy already with her first deposit and as such am flavor of the month, and she sent some people to visit who had been expecting to come for free, and made them pay my share of the wedge so this is a relationship made in heaven.
However not all has been wine and roses in the Skurweberg and I am wracked with Jewish guilt, Tany Leni my erstwhile and much loved neighbor curled up her toes and departed this mortal coil, not unexpected really as hers was a life spent having children, washed down with Klipdrift and Chesterfields which has its side effects but a shock none the less and she will be surely missed.
It transpired that her daughter had had a terrible car prang, rolled her Toyota and poor old Tany died of shock. The guilt comes from the remorseless fact that I had not been told of this tragedy and had not visited her in her time of need, and there is never a chance to repair that sort of neglect.
Her funeral was a classic, held at the rather magnificent Ge reformde Kerk in Carolina, a dressed stone edifice complete with stern Commandant in bronze in front. The kerk had sadly been subject to a rather disastrous 60’s renovation inside and frankly the paisley brown carpeting and industrial sound paneling on the ceiling did little to elevate the spirit. The passing of the years and the obvious depletion of the church funds since then having disallowed any further improvements added a further feeling of despair.
The funeral was well attended and we gathered out side in our raggedy once a year suits, on the vast scorched highveltd winter plains under the bleached blue orb of sky to face our shared mortality, without the benefit of our late departed, why oh why can the cause of the gathering no longer be present to ensure that we know what we are doing?
The domini a stern young chappy me lad popped in and out of his pulpit like a jack in the box, rather disconcerting, as his stage was redolent with gravitas as is the wont of that particular sect, their deity is a grave and stern visage and the pulpit and the design of the layout would have done any aspirant Mussolini proud, the service was equally cold and distant as with all dictators and he managed to send me into a coma with long and tedious sermon on the longevity of the old profits and how we are all going to meet our maker sooner than they did and he intimated that we would receive a cool and deeply judgmental welcome when we got there, these people are tough in deed, but I wept for her and felt very alive so it was a success.
The other not so great tragedy that has struck us here in the bush is that my beloved parrot Pooky, wandered out of the studio while I was walking and clipped wing, not with standing, has gorn, leaving me bereft.
Though he was such a shitty prickly little presence in the house we had come to start to trust and rather like each other, I miss his little soul sitting and shitting on my computer and nibbling my ear as we watched the TV together. I have given up hope that we will find the poor little chap and taken down his house to the great joy of the staff and the dogs who all felt that he was a big mistake in the first place.

Some time later.

On the 19th August 2004 no less than two auspicious events took place, Mrs. Darvall and I reached 30 years since we were married and the first meeting of the Pongola 146 chapter of lodge owners was convened at the Pongola Express, the train that is always on time!
Having invited all my chums in the district to try out the wonders of my new facility, Lesley-Anne suggested that we all stay once a month at each others lodges, get drunk eat and generally enjoy ourselves, this was to be a serious secret society with our own secret hand signals and costumes.
Wine was drunk, Chicken a la king and goulash was consumed, Pat tried to convert us to catering being a reborn cuisineer, and the Brewskies as usual with their deeply ingrained country wisdom begged off staying the night, very wisely as it turned out as the Pongola in the tradition of SA Railways, sports beds that suited the old bits of leather that constituted their average punter of yore, but is less than bliss for those used to the wonders of a Sealy posturepedic bed with the down cushions and sumptuous duvet, the booze did not help though I was ver discreet and only shared a bot of white with Tin though on due reflection I recall the Champagne that Pat sneaked into my system, but none the less the next night at home was bliss.
Well the month is now past and a poor month it has been re the booking front, no one it seemed was interested in the pleasures of country life at my place anyway with only a few days profitably sold ho hum but at least the paintings in stock are mounting up
Talk to you all next month
Francis

September

Hello all,
This edition of the Fawlty Tales is in fact an obligatory ABJECT apology to the august and venerable members of the Skurweberg Group.
Our venerable organization has decided in their wisdom that a ‘Highlands Trout Ball’ will be just the thing to put us on the map and as the local girly boy I was seconded to organize the festivities for the wives of the fisher folk that do not, themselves, enjoy this particular country pursuit. A day of spring baths, massages and general pampering at Badplaas was deemed the answer.
Charged with this massive responsibility I tried in vain to get through to anyone at that resort, that could or would help me and was in despair of ever achieving this. Their switchboard alone would try the patience of an anxious creditor let alone a prospective client with wedge to spend.
Thus sometime later it was with great relief when manning our stand at Melyn park the main man from that very institution pitched up and after cornering him and explaining my difficulty he assured me that my problems were now over, and he personally, would ensure that an executive of ‘high caliber’ would be in touch with me very soon.
Two weeks later, at least, a young lady and her Mum washed up on my doorstep with snappy biz card, flyers and brochures of glossy quality and even R20 gift vouchers for the local golf club eatery, we went through the whole thing, at great length and in considerable detail, Twice at least and she departed from here fired with enthusiasm for this project with fervent promises that she would very very soon send me a detailed and extensive document breaking down all the details of our long and all-embracing discussions, itemizing menus and prices and all the wonders that her institution could offer to make 60 plus women feel like goddesses!
I was overjoyed and awaited this document with bated breath.
Quite some many days /weeks later I received this

Dear Francis,

QUOTATION : 30 PAX TEAM BUILDING

Lunch @ R65.00 per person
Team Building (Attached)

Have a nice day

Ansie

This came (attached massive file which I will spare you) with an e-brochure extolling the wonders of their torture trail where they send unfortunates into the bush to be persecuted with hideous and futile exercises to complete before they are fed, which entailed swinging over crocodile infested rivers with weighty logs on their shoulders while being insulted by a Nazi, even the dimmest I felt would agree that this was as far off the mark as one could get I thus snapped of the following I thought considering the situation a rather witty reply

Dear Ansi
What the hell is this all about? I asked for a quote to pamper and spoil a bunch of women with spring baths and massage and you send me this bolocks about torturing them on some corporate torture trail.
Are you all in a coma down there in Badplaas?
Get your act together this is so out of brief to be embarrassing
Yours
Francis

This sadly did not go down very well and Ansie got very ansy and sent back the following (her own spelling)

Dear Francis,

I do not appreciate the tone of voice used in you e-mail and no, we are not in a coma.

Nobody informed me that you required Hydro Treatments, I was told you require team building. There is a uged difference between team building and pampering.

Will you please e-mail me exactly what your requirements are so that I can work out a quotation for you.

Have a lovely day

Ansie

What a bloody cheek thought I being the client and all, and felt that a swift repost was called for, after all I had told the story to the man, his ‘executive of high caliber’ and her Mum and really felt that if after such it would be futile to try to illuminate this illiterate in this medium, if all other transfers of wisdom had fallen on deaf ears, and I was you remember spending money too, and quite a bit at that, there were to be 60 ladies not 30 and we were expecting a lot more than a R65 snack, we are talking a day in paradise with the personal attention of the arch angel and his minions so I wrote a little less witty reply,

Dear Ansi,
It is not my problem what you were told and if it was incorrect talk to the person that did brief you, I spoke at length to Susan van den Berg, she even visited me to get the details if you want our business talk to her and sure as hell do not get uppity with me
Francis

This was met by absolute silence so I made some other plans for the women, to whit to take them to the local game park for a drive and a ‘white mischief’ picnic by the hippo pool. Armed with this alternative I arrived at the next meeting of the committee full of confidence, the ‘Ansie’ issue long forgotten.
As usual I got the time wrong and was late, I bounced in and announced to the assembled coffee slurpers and cake munchers, “that Badplaas was off”, which was greeted with a chorus of ‘We know’!
This was bundu drums beyond my reckoning. I actually blushed in confusion at this common knowledge of my private communications, the buggers had copies of the above correspondences, which had been read out loud, to great merriment to the combined forces of the committee, by the deeply shaken and concerned CHAIRMAN himself, these are country folk not computer hackers for god sake.

It transpired that the ladies of Badplaas were so shocked, shocked and horrified by my ’tone of e-mail’’ they had felt compelled by their sense of decency and moral fiber to complain to our CHAIRMAN, forwarding the ‘offensive evidence’ with the expressed desire that he take me out to the old wood shed and give me a whacking for my cheeky behavior or consider the entire community of The Skurweberg excommunicated, banned and disgraced in the eyes of the Badplaas group, thus do vendetta’s grow, we will be fighting them down there for the next 200 years, Hozaaaaar!!! Oops ☺

To avoid this slaughter I am thus falling on my blunt sword in mortification at my outrageous behavior with the proviso that I still think that they must have the sense of humor of an aardvark with nail up its backside.
Anyway the long and short of it is, is that my name is dirt and the locals cross the path to avoid me. I am mortified and promise never to pee in their pools again (at least not from the edge) as repentance for my sins. (The sword was really blunt, rubber in fact) So don’t panic girls.

Well the month being blessed with a long weekend is full of people trying to all get in at the same time, even had folk trying the day before, amazing it is like a conspiracy, try to flog the following weekend and boy are you alone.
My good friend and ‘Ornithologist to the Stars’ P Prof. Benson has used his less than obvious charms to inveigle a wonderful spread for me in the country life pages 34-36 October edition with color pictures and even with me as Michael Cain on a horse, you got to get it to see, which should in theory makes me wind swept and interesting and draw the teeming masses to my gates. We live in hope.
Hope the warming thing did not get you down too bad, scared me
Enjoy the jokes
Francis

October/November 2004

Hello again friends,

Well I am late with this letter been busy painting away, getting more fishies done, and been severely humiliated by all that were approached to display them, as usual.
I took a whole show up to the Klopenheim Hotel who have treated me like a leper. Jerry who I thought was the man at that establishment had kindly offered me a space there to display my stuff and with wild enthusiasm I cleaned up all my old easels made a special sign and labels with prices for all the pictures to create I hoped a tre professional show which I erected in the spot indicated and awaited the expected sales only to discover that no sooner had I got to the bottom of the hill than his homo manager had dismantled the whole thing and chucked it with contempt into a back room where not a soul would ever see them. Not what I had hoped and did nothing for my deeply held insecurities about my work, then after placing my stuff at a couple of shops around Dullstroom I discover that they too were all consigned to dark corners where not a soul was likely to ever see them, let alone buy any!
Deeply and profoundly depressing in light of this personal and professional rebuff I have been less than enthusiastic about anything thus the delay in sending out this missive.
Anyway here are some of my favorite jokes and stuff, have a good pagan celebration and New Year
Deeply and totally humiliated again
Francis

October/November 2004

Hello again friends,

Well I am late with this letter been busy painting away, getting more fishies done, and been severely humiliated by all that were approached to display them, as usual.
I took a whole show up to the Klopenheim Hotel who have treated me like a leper. Jerry who I thought was the man at that establishment had kindly offered me a space there to display my stuff and with wild enthusiasm I cleaned up all my old easels made a special sign and labels with prices for all the pictures to create I hoped a tre professional show which I erected in the spot indicated and awaited the expected sales only to discover that no sooner had I got to the bottom of the hill than his homo manager had dismantled the whole thing and chucked it with contempt into a back room where not a soul would ever see them. Not what I had hoped and did nothing for my deeply held insecurities about my work, then after placing my stuff at a couple of shops around Dullstroom I discover that they too were all consigned to dark corners where not a soul was likely to ever see them, let alone buy any!
Deeply and profoundly depressing in light of this personal and professional rebuff I have been less than enthusiastic about anything thus the delay in sending out this missive.
Anyway here are some of my favorite jokes and stuff, have a good pagan celebration and New Year
Deeply and totally humiliated again
Francis

December 17, 2004

THE DINNER PARTY

Dear Francis, Nick, Caroline, Tim and Lesley-Anne

Andrew has not heard from the lawyers re the court case so everything looks set for tomorrow night. We are looking forward to having you all for the night. There will be no guests here so we will have the place all to ourselves. We expect you around 7ish but if you want to come sooner and settle into your rooms, please do. Sundowners on the veranda are always available. I make a mean strawberry daiquiri.

As it is our last "Pongola Express" meeting for the year, and essentially our Christmas dinner, I though it would be fun to do something different and have decided on a "Priest & Prostitutes" theme. Please come dressed accordingly. Men as prostitutes of course. I can just see Francis dressed up as a queen - the mind boggles!!!

See you all tomorrow.

bye for now

Pat and Andrew

We here in the bundu have started a not so secret society called the ‘Pongola Express’ to have a regular get together in each others lodges where we do despicable things under the full moon.
This months meeting to be held at Pat and Andrews place, coincided with a visit by my sister and her hubby who were flying back to England the next day. They were already in a bit of pre flight nerves but were nonetheless persuaded to join us in our pagan celebration.
We climbed into his rental and trundled many miles down to our rendezvous filled with joy at the forthcoming feast aside from when we got to the Komati river crossing we saw with the cunning and caution of country folk, that this was impassable in a tank let alone a dinky rent-a-car such as we had, the river was about a meter above the bridge!
Even an amateur tracker could see that this was a no go, so with heavy hearts, we returned to higher ground to find a signal to call Pat to tell her the sad news.
Pat however is not a woman to be foiled but a mere raging torrent, and sent her other half to fetch us via the back path.
Now as you will have noticed from the invite this seemed like a fancy dress party but was in fact a ‘cunning plan’ to punish Lesley-Anne and Tim who had not pitched for a previous date. They were the only ones who would be dressed up, ha ha ha. As I said we have poor reception here and this sort of prank keeps us amused in the bush, so when we arrived at the meet only Tim was in fancy dress, Les having a more cautious attitude to life came dressed in black, so if the worst came to the worst she was covered both ways, however Tim who we all suspect of having ‘closeted’ depths, was in the full regalia of short skirt and fishnet stockings!
Andrew nearly had a hysterectomy he thought it was so funny.
Being the ‘author’ of this ‘jolly wheeze’ I felt a pang of guilt but just a pang. It was a laf to catch out old Timothy, though, I suspect, has some devious plot already being hatched to exact revenge!
We pilled into Andrew’s twin-cab, women in the front and me with the hairy-legged transvestite in the boot, trundled into the mist and rain into the unexplored bundu, over rocks and cliffs. The wild night and speedy negotiations causing a great deal of intimacy in the boot as we plunged ever deeper into the unknown, till our enthusiastic chauffeur drove us into a hole.
The wind did lash and the rain did wail!
Lots of revving and reversing etc.
The pleasant polite chatter from the cab had ceased.
We were stuck
The cross dresser and I plunged into the darkness to do our manly shoving bit, darling.
There are few places quite as dark as the wrong end of a 4x4 and we were in a dark place already and to my eyes there was no track, road or even a path visible, just a mad man in fishy tights dancing in and out of the headlights. Hey ho we got out of that easy, but damp and covered in mud, fun fun fun.
Of we roared feeling pretty butch, having escaped with little discomfort; the PPC (pleasant, polite conversation) had just recommenced when Andrew found another cavity, deeper and darker than the last, with rocks in it.
More revving, roaring, cursing and advice, like “are you in 4x4 Andrew?”
Got out of that one, and into yet another, this time with a large tree jammed under the vehicle.
“Are you sure you are in 4x4?????” was the plaintive reaction from the now wet and soggy slut in heels???
“YES YES I locked the wheels myself!!!!” Andrew insisted.
By this time all thought of polite conversation had ceased, the English side of the party were too busy coping with their lives flashing before their eyes. At this point, we mounted a hillock at speed, sailed through the air and in the pregnant pause before we landed all that could be heard, was Andrew hissing through clenched jaws,
“ Oh shit!! We are in the dam!”
Expectant pause, the deathly silence punctuated by hysterical laughter from Tim, Les and I, though the thoughts of the rest of the party does not bear thinking about, Nick and Caroline just knew that they would never get out of this alive, let alone catch their flight tomorrow, Andrew could see his reputation as a bundu basher being the source of much mirth and finger pointing in the village for years to come. He is undoubtedly going to have his leatherman confiscated particularly as it was later discovered that he had not been in gear after all.
At this stage the consensus was to fire the nut behind the wheel and install Tim, not withstanding his costume, but Andrew was spared this ‘final walk of shame’ by the blissful end to the journey.
And then we had dinner, thanks Pat.

New year 2005,
Oh lordy lord another sectarian marker, goes past and as usual I have sworn on all that is holy, to achieve the following good intentions for this next circle of the sun.

1. Stop masturbating in church,
2. Stop stealing "Bridge Out" signs
3. Stop peeing in the coffee urn at work
4. Stop groping my girl friends senile grandmother
5. Stop secretly videotaping my guests going to the
bathroom (I installed a hidden camera )
6. Stop making my girl friend make "sheep" sounds during sex (hey, I'm
just a country boy!)

To date I am pleased after a whole hour of self denial that I have achieved number 3 with 100% record, (don’t work) so that was a trick resolution, blew the rest but I am still proud of even this modest achievement as I am sure you are too.
I personally am not a big fan of this time of the year, it always catches me by surprise, for some reason deeply psychological I am never ready for this annual feasting, I am always broke, no bonus for me and plenty to pay is the usual problem, sort of like rent and interest payments, they are never convenient when not on the wage slave cycle.
The last couple of months have been, over and above, the New Year, birthday, and the biz slump in the lodge, a time of deep introspection. I have been over run by offers to buy my farm, gratifying in the sense that they were all quite substantial, reassuring, but not really more than one can grab without a second thought especially as I am expected to toddle into the unknown as part of the bargain (for them) and when actually totted up it is amazing how many governments, banks, agents and debts would have to be paid before I get mine, balanced with so many if’s and but’s that at the end of the day one is left with only the dark suspicion that they all want what I have for nothing and are just a bunch of conniving crooks
Anyway January is already over and February has already brought its share of amusements.

MY BIG DAY IN COURT

Those of you that have been reading my ruminations for some time will know that I have a neighbor from hell, a real enemy, though sadly not one that I admire or even hate personally, so a bit of a disappointment. I am I know quite irritating at times but generally considered pretty harmless so to date I have never had an actual enemy. I had great hopes but sadly he is just a miserable displaced old Zimbo bullyboy however he is mine and a source of some diversion and chatter.
A couple of years ago there was a fire in the area, while I was building the studio, normally these are events which I enjoy attending, however this one seemed far away and being on a building schedule rather than a country one I was absent from the sport which ‘ mine enemy’ bless his cotton socks decided was reason enough to sue me!
The full majesty of the law (does one have majestic law in a republic?) was summoned to my door, interviews were conduced between myself and the constabulary, the local prosecutor gave the case the attention it deserved but was disinclined to prosecute, due no doubt to the fatuous nature of the matter, he would have the entire farming community in jail otherwise, but none the less a civil case was put forward.
Kim my ever present legal rotweiler was stirred to post a brisk rebuttal before my insurance company stepped in with their own retained legal beagles who sent up ‘investigators’ twice, instituted a flurry of correspondence where scary letters were exchanged between themselves and their colleagues attached to the cause of the opposition. Witnesses were sought and interrogated; a great deal of coffee was drunk and abuse heaped onto the head of he whose name must not appear in print.
All very exciting but actually nothing to do with me anymore, out of my hands and I was reduced to a mere spectator to the fight, but close to the action. Front row seats.
This all built up to the big day last week when our day was set, to be judged, ooohhh.
The team from the insurance chapies arrived, lawyer and posher lawyer, attorney or something, with big black bags and dark suits, awesome, I felt like Larry Flynn.
We spent the evening eating fillet and strategizing the demise of the antagonist and gathering our last remaining witness, one having died in the meantime.
I was commanded to clean up for the occasion in my full Domineer outfit and we arrived at the appointed hour to a deserted court, notable by the absence of a magistrate or electricity, not a good start.
The courtroom, a 1930’s neo colonial red brick monstrosity, had not received a coat of paint in 20 years, featured the inevitable wood benches, designed by a proctologist in search of new custom, a matching box for the missing magistrate, with a large hole in the wall behind his head where the hated symbol of the ‘apartheid’ justice system had been hacked out and never replaced, which completed the general atmosphere of fear and loathing that cloaked this leaky roofed melancholy room.
My team assembled their side of the table with weighty tomes, loads of files pens and volumous briefcases while I smoked and waited for about 2 hours for the magistrate, a slow start and as we had already ascertained that the enemy had appointed a lawyer who no longer practiced, we knew that this was to a damp squib.
However this bit of news had come as a bit of a shock to my assembled vultures, instituting a flurry of activity and frantic searching for legal bits and pieces. There is little in this world that distresses an attorney as much as unbilled time and they wanted to ensure that this tab fell on another’s shoulders, they were hell bent on making sure that this would be covered, the whole aspect of the day changed. But fear not gentle reader I was to see a bravura performance which has elevated ‘mine enemy’ to celestial heights, he really is more than I thought, almost worthwhile.
TE (the enemy) played a game that was a pleasure to watch. He was good very good.
TE has been resident in this neck of the bundu for a good deal longer than I and has been an active member of the community before being disgraced and plummeted from being a ‘Made’ man in the mines to his present status of ‘has to work in Taiwan for a dollar’. Some nasty business to do with transport allocated to himself, blackening his name in the mining community, so was altogether too friendly with the local constabulary, worried my brief, but none the less came dressed as a man of the soil in the full regalia of much washed white shirt, old khaki pants completed with veltdskoens with no socks, with pathetic crimpelened and cowed wify in tow.
What a coup here we were the nasty slick avaricious, suited and wealthy Attorneys with their smooth slicker client ‘bullying’ this poor bewildered hardworking farmer who sat bowed and humble before the court as I lounged in my finery and pigtail, the magistrate was almost moved to tears by his broken and pathetic show, to the extent where he actually advised this serial litigator to get some representations, even as he lied through his teeth with nary a blush and made out that I was at fault for the delays, he was great and conned all including my lot who were so consumed with getting paid that they lost all perspective as to what was going down.
After my slickness the attorney had presented his argument for payment and allowed the TE’s fibs to go unchallenged TE was I am happy to say told to pay costs to date to go forward which was a win for us and hopefully will put an end to this sorry saga but I suspect not.
Well as usual the course of justice grinds extremely slow so really there was no conclusion but next time we will have to be on our guard, I have since learnt that TE has successfully sued a neighbor for the same thing in the past and got paid out from a real man of the soil to the tune of 78 big ones and to think that the magistrate considered him to be naive
Yours litigately
Francis.

Easter 2005

Hello friends and chucklers,
It has been a while since I last sent out my ruminations been busy and also I am never to sure if anyone reads this, then just as I am about to give it a miss someone does send a note to demand the next episode. Just out of curiosity it would be nice if you sent some comments or even a demand to be excluded, thanks.

Well the bunny has come and gone the crowds have followed and once again we bask in the peace and tranquility of the bush, which was disturbed by a bunch of froggy visitors that graced the wonders of the Pongola and irritated me beyond speech with their desire to renegotiate rates, refused to pay for fish that they poached out of the dam with bread and spinners and even neglected to pay poor old Johan for the wood he cut for them, so I hate the French.

We have in the area a very enthusiastic lady who has made it her mission to promote the wonders of Machadodorp, a very thankless task and decided that what our dump required was a craft market.
I was blackmailed into participating by one of my painting ladies and rolled round to sit with her in splendid isolation at the local park by the river where we drank coffee, were hassled to hand over dosh to dancing pikeninies who did a gum boot dance in the background with wild and noisy exuberance but with few to watch their efforts. The day was as usual in Machadodorp another episode that nary a soul was aware of, but we had fun drinking coffee, eating tartrazine and generally agreeing that it would be but a short moment before the amazing (not) sights and phenomena of this craft fest would forgotten, what with Cheryl’s dead cow skins and mangy live chickens, the cookie stall the flower stall and my pictures making up the entire show, it was not a success in the long tradition of Machadodorp enterprises.

However as the paintings were packed into the truck I ventured over to Dullstroom which was a hive of young things getting the country air before they bred children and would be consigned to the depths of school fee penury and child activities, who fresh air not withstanding were uniformly disinclined to invest in my art, surprise surprise, but the cheese stall were giving free tasting so I gorged myself on their stuff read a book and got sun stroke in my futile efforts to enlighten and delight with my creations, it is rather like this little letter, a sad and futile effort with no return, though I must admit that a sort of modern relative, the boyfriend of an ex girl friends mother, did lash out and grab one at a heavy discount so all was not lost.

We have on the other hand had as I mentioned in the last episal, had a veritable flurry of steely eyed investors who wish to alleviate me of my farm and have flashed seemingly large wedges of dosh to temp me to vacate the premises, in fact they nearly reached the magic number, but after a good deal of soul searching they were all told to go forth and multiply as in the final summation after Mr. Mbeki, the bank buggers and others had all drunk deep from the cup there would have been precious little for yours truly, but we are gratified to see that what we are doing here is at least of some value to others with a less romantic outlook than mine, more than can be said of my painting, not that I am bitter or twisted.

Tim my particular chum out here was kind enough to entertain a bunch of eco loonies that I communicate with and who send me the most depressing stuff concerning the state of the planet, and of the perfidity and greed of large corporations, the predicament of the peasant populations and other dead depressing stuff that I religiously scan and delete.
Fifty or so of these very concerned folk gathered in his barn to sing to the choir about their particular complaint, from the vervit monkey saviors to the anti everythinger’s and plantations in particular crowd, who came armed with slide shows and multi thousand rand motor cars, with token voters in tow to demonstrate their deep commitment and caring attitude.
They were uniformly well informed and I admit did teach me a thing or two though the overwhelming feeling I got, being counted among that sick and demented group known as land owners was that I was more of a problem than part of the solution, in fact I got the feeling that some thought that I might be a spy/informer which after all my efforts I felt was a bit thick.
They munched on Tim’s excellent burgers drank his tea and coffee and generally had a grand old time boasting about how wholly holly they all were and how not withstanding their well healed appearance all claimed to be hard done by, frankly these chaps who know how to get grants all seem to be doing very well thank you very much, I particularly enjoyed the monkey crowd, who are expending a great deal of time and money on these charming tree rats, and their chief monkey man a tall good looking fellow with silver hair done in a pony tail obviously got laid a lot for his efforts, what the local black chaps thought about all this the mind boggles, but he was surrounded by gorgeous young things doing their gap year so I was dead jealous.

Well that’s that life goes on with no real sense to it, love driving my motor bike around the area and popping into my neighbors places where I seem to be very welcome which is nice, they feed me and show me their latest efforts in the building game, take me to their favorite spots and as I am getting older and thus no longer a threat introduce me to their daughters and chums, enquire after my health etc. on that note let it be known that I have not had so much as a sniff of the weed for 2 whole weeks now, no perceptible change what so ever which is less than encouraging but I am having the most fantastic and erotic dreams which is a great consolation, like going to the movies every night, don’t forget to send me some indication that you have read and appreciate this letter
Francis

10th April 2005,
Twenty one days and counting, since last my chapped lips grasped and gasped on a dube cigarette, just another 7 and I will be, for the first time in 37 years, street legal, able to pass the most onerous tests as to what is circulating in my blood and brain, I am sure that you are all impressed with my deep commitment and strength of character, however the truth be told, virtue has a lot to do with the lack of temptation, ha!
Nonetheless I did face the leering visage of enticement yesterday and resisted, what a saint I am.
Now as most regular readers know I do love a good funeral, so Poppy, Norah and I were all decked in our finery for the dead old fart in Italy, who was added to the ranks of lifeless old white men in the bowls of that epitome of conspicuous consumption, the Vatican. They had their Five Assegais overalls and I was crowned with my Hymie’s discount kosher meat yamika and Velcro foreskin but unlike the internment of that late and beloved bulimic stupid tart of Prince Charles’s where I wept with gay abandon I am sad to say that the old boy squeezed nary a tear from my sentimental eye, to dull, to long and in fact boring, we await the entombment of the dead old white man from the casino on the Med, with bated breath.
I was at the Vatican a few years ago, to worship at the feet of the master, Michael Angelo, and was deeply impressed, his ceiling, his tombs etc. all reflected the hand of a great artist but the whole show originally built to intimidate the Moslem hordes who at the time were at the gates of Venice sent me into a fit of rage at such a palace built by those that proclaimed the virtues of poverty, the waistlines of the red clad cardinals at their latest party, is proof positive that their concern for the fly speckled malnourished of this mortal coil is but a show, the words hypocrisy, pretence, double standards and lies spring to mind which did affect my unbridled distress at the funeral.
Anyway when I was there gazing up at the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, having quoted on a job or two myself, my mind was transported to the day the FOWM in charge at the time called Mike to discus his latest extravagance.
“ Hi Mikey, this is the Pope, are you busy?”
“ Don’t take the piss Raphael, I’m not in the mood, got a fearsome hang over”
“No really it’s me the Holy numerno uno Papa”
“Puleese you tried this tired old gag last week, Ralph, get a life man”
“Hey Angelo” the irritated pope shouts,” It is me, and if you don’t recognize my voice that shows that you have not been attending mass for some time, so get a grip and listen up”
“Ohh”
“Well anyway boy, I have a paint job I need a quote for”
“Yes your worship sir, I am a bit busy doing some grave stones for the Prince but I will get down there in a couple of weeks”
“Hey you grubby little brush, this is the Pope here, get your ass down here now and no stories about kings and such I am the top dog and when I say I want you, you drop the rest and snap too, understand? Or I will give the job to Raphael”
“ Yes SIR”
“Good, see you after lunch I will meet you at the new chapel I have skinned the heaving masses to build, don’t be late”
Later at the building site those less fortunate than his grace carries the FOWM, to where Mickey is staring in some trepidation at the soaring heights of this latest temple roof.
“Mickey my boy” gushes the Papa, “glad you could come, lets get this over with, the half a cow and gallon of wine I have consumed needs attention, this is the job” he says waving a pudgy bejeweled hand at the roof. “I want something straightforward to reflect the simple and holy life of the saints, you know the sort of thing, paint me as God with those scheming bastards of the Cardinal’s college in the nude below me suffering the misery of hell, being persecuted by demons and devils, I want my mistress over there in the corner, she insists, and make her tits a bit bigger than they actually are, and smooth out the pox marks while you are at it OK”
“Yes sir” mumbles Michael craning his neck.” It is pretty big sir”
“Now don’t give me a hard time Mike, it’s a simple job, just slap something up to get a bit of colour into the place, miserable draughty bloody place and I have to sit here every day while those grasping bishops demand more and more money so I need something to cheer the place up, how long will it take?”
“Urrrr???”
“Come on man I haven’t got all day”
“ Will you pay for the scaffold and stuff?”
“ Just build that into the price, man I don’t have time for silly details, how much?”
“Urrrr???”, stammers Mike, “ 10 grand?”
“ ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???? You get 2 and I want it finished by next week, get some help in, at your own cost mind, entertaining some important people so there might be a chance for you to get some commissions from them, Jeeze you should be happy to get the chance to do the job at all, Raphael said he would do it for one and half, you know, so get on with it and if you pull finger I will send up a special prayer for your soul OK?”
“But but”
“Mickey, Mickey Mickey, just get on with it, you know I think you are great, think of the glory man, the whole world will see it, this is your lucky break, it not as big as it looks, won’t take you long and I tell you what I will get the builders to knock up some ladders for you for free, how’s that?”
“Welll I’m not sure”
“Look do a good job and I will let you do the wall behind the alter too, OK Deal?”
“But, but but”
“ Look just send me a sketch, and sort out the details with the Chaplin, and don’t muck about I don’t want you and your smelly apprentices cluttering up the place for years, well see you later, need to meet with Chantal, Ciao”.
Some things never change
Yours funeraly
Francis

14th MAY

Maize a golden prospect,
Scarlet ‘BOOM’ of ancient aloe.

Nearly everyone that has a place like mine, hears one thing a lot,… ‘I am soooo envious of your life’ or variations there off, and usually one cannot help but think ‘O yea! I should have your problems! You rich git’ or variants there off, but actually one really can understand their sentiment’s what with the sun set’s just so’ the hills are just the right blue and all is great………
Then everything fell off the rails.

6th JUNE

I had just arrived back from a successful ‘girlfriends birthday’ always a fraught occasion, especially as I had failed in spectacular manner a couple of times in the past, but this time all went without a hitch, smelly and card were wrapped and presented, dinner and wine etc, contentment reigned and I returned to the farm triumphant, to fall down sick.

Being blessed with a fine and sturdy constitution, susceptible to only the regular doses of poison that I am wont to pore into my head, this was my first diagnosis. My first clue that this episode of distress was not the usual, was the lack of action at the porcelain altar, where no devils and demons were regurgitated from neither front nor rear!!
The pressure mounted.
I was a very unhappy bunny, weak as a kitten, hot and cold with the weirdest sensitivity in my skin, I could feel my clothes! And the pinky on my left hand had gone numb too!
All very strange.
I was spending my time switching the electric blanket on and off, interspersed with anxious episodes praying to all that is wholly holy and all the spirits, totems and spirits of the sewerage system for relief.
But they scorned my entireties, I was cast into the outer darkness into the world of pain, the organism was busy repelling boarders and had no time to send much to the brain, my world closed in, so I tried the method that had given me such a fine reputation in the district as a healer and general gu-gu man, 3 Panado, 2 Grandpa and some Valium.
Well that worked well enough, except when I emerged from the coma nothing had changed, disappointing.
After a couple of these treatments had passed, the look in Poppies big brown eyes started to make me panic.
I realized that when the entreaties of the faithless were fruitless it was time to worship at the altar of science; I called the local nursey,
Who sent her Mum!
Who gave me a shot in the arm of some unknown liquid?
Some ver big pills and soup.
Whatever it was I cared not, the sort of high of being ill was wearing thin, she could have given me a horse tranquilizer, and probably did as I sure as hell cared not a whit as to the state of the Ivory Coast economy, Bush’s war or the one in my body, in 5 seconds flat, this was Medicine with a Capital M.
I can see all the crystal clutcher’s and vegan homo readers thinking at this stage that I was being very foolish, allowing such an intimate invasion of my body with strange and powerful drugs, but it seemed to work and I was on my pedals in time to welcome my chum Greg to accompany him to the Machado Riverside Market to flog pictures and coffee.
Machadodorp has been ‘blessed’ with a new ‘Hero’ by the name of Trina, who has taken on the thankless task of making this sad excuse for a village the next ‘Thang’ and has in her wisdom deemed that this will come to pass through the creation of a monthly ‘Craft Market’.
She has to date of writing, done 3 of these, the first was a total no show, performance, Cheryl the chicken and cow girl came with, wait for it, chickens and a dead cow, there was a display of potted plants and a cookie stall, a large contingent of leaping pikaninies with gum boots who at indefinable moments would swing into action, leaping and gum booting away with wild enthusiasm, but other than Trina’s virtuoso display of cello accompanied by a sax lady from Soweto little was achieved as there was nary a single customer, though Cheryl, dead cows, live chickens, my trout paintings and I had fun drinking coffee and nibbling biscuits in the sun on the pavement, very pretty down by the river.
The second market I missed as I went to Dullstroom to sell paintings that was an even bigger disaster and was a distressful and humiliating day, featuring utter and complete indifference to my work.
This one, she had managed to get coverage on the radio and in the press was better attended, the cookie kids were back, there were no live chickens or dead cows, but a stall with knitted bog roll covers, a boereworse roll stand, fishing tackle stand and us.
Still not quite a triumph, however we were there, with coffee makers, posters, pictures on easels, there was no going back. You cannot believe the amount of cr@p required to flog coffee and paintings; it’s endless, from easels to extension cables.
I swung into full smouse mode but was constrained by the lack of passing trade, always considered to be a failing, by even the most innocent of outdoor sales people. But we started selling stuff to each other, the stand holders that is, which got the ball rolling, not a fast ball, but a ball none the less, and a few rather startled folk did find us lurking at the bottom of the park, but Trina was a driving force and rallied the troop’s, and Greg got his gas bill paid,
I did flog a picture!
To Trina, so I am forced to attend a couple more markets, a worrying prospect.
However the true butchers bill for this little jaunt was yet to be presented and payment extracted the very next day, I was sicker than ever, same bloody thing had come straight back, and seemed strangely at home in me!
I was thunderstruck, gob smacked, amazed and annoyed!
I did the tough little trouper thing for a couple of days and eventually after a great deal of no doubt needless suffering the nurse was summoned once again, but this time she felt that her Mum would not do, I should go deeper into the temple of suffering and dragged me to see a doctor.
Who I was distressed to see, through the haze, kept court at the Belfast Hospital!
This is a deep deep apartheid structure of merciless red brick with the charm and welcome of a army barracks, thank the lord I had Ammelda in her uniform there to guide me through the initial maze of bureaucracy, and extracting my ID from my wallet, left me slumped like an old rag to be cheered by the dreary Aid’s and cholera posters.
I had expected to be taken to some local quack and this hospital thing was a bit of a surprise. Un nerving, but I was so miserable that there was no fight in me and I followed like a lamb, but the stream of suffering peasants being sent away was distressing, I had envisaged being slumped in a country doc’s front pallor, not plunked here in an institutional passage, anyway after a bit contemplating the leveling effect of socialist medical PR I was ushered into a cubical space with all the kit, old gear but very clean and shortly a youth, to young to have a driving license? But draped with the universal symbol of medical authority, the stethoscope, the ‘doctor’ was standing in front of me.
Dr Mac Roberts no less.
We bleakly considered each other, neither I thought very pleased with the choice on offer, but we chatted about chills and poo, aches and pains, pee and swellings and other intimate subjects. This cheerful chatter went on for a bit, I pointed to where it hurt, I got the strong impression that he was loath to touch me which I felt was a bit weird, no pulse stuff, no temperature taking and he did not even use his stethoscope, but then he didn’t nag me about my smoking or do the rubber glove thing which was a relief.
Pregnant pause…….
Then he started in, I could see the thought process moving over his face like a movie. 50 plus old fart with a bellyache…PROSTATE !!! For sure.
He homed in on the pee, which was fine, but he was fascinated and was not to be deflected by details, like the lack of action on the other side! He liked PROSTATE, all old farts had them he declared after a very tedious description of a bladder, it’s a bag, got warmed up and was having fun cheering up a bleak underpaid Wednesday by scaring an old fart.
The bugger, but I could see how it could be fun.
Certainly his idle chatter about reboring the ‘old chum!’ Catheters and other nasty things that go places nothing should go, concentrated my mind a good deal and I found that I had suddenly and miraculously recovered.
There was NO WAY this child and his dubious helpers were going to stick anything bigger than a needle into me. Not there anyway, I have as yet not discovered my feminine side to that extent.
I demanded and was given a big bottle of penicillin, good stuff, let them take some blood, to test for Mac Rob’s bleak prognosis, and let him write me a script for the bladder/pee-pee area.
He really was not to be deflected from his diagnosis. But I was less convinced. I felt an alien presence in the organism that my system needed a bit of a boost to get rid off, to save the ‘massa’ some discomfort. None of this bags and swelling glands nonsense, let alone the big C bollocks, but sobering nonetheless!
Got the drugs and was sent out without having to pay a cent, amazing, and staggered out into the sun where the prostrate that Mac R had dismissed with nary a glance what with his desire to invade my prostate made it presents felt, Doc’s opinion not withstanding, I needed the bog in the most urgent way.
The Doc gave me the info needed and I scurried off, had the draws at half-mast when I saw there was NOOOOO bog paper, F@%K!!! Bolted down the long, long corridor and explained my predicament to the receptionist dolly who waved me to the staff facility, sweet child I thought, to find when again I had my pants half down, the arrgh of relief on the tip of the tongue to see, that here too there was noooo bum whipping gear in it’s handy little holder!
Double F@%K!!!
Well I lost it, I found this rather formidable Matron and started yelling about all they had to do here all day was deal with vast amounts of blood, puke, pee and more importantly Shit and how it was a crying shame and what did she think I was to do as nature would not wait and there was no way in hell that I was going home in soggy pants, NO SIR!
Well I think out of a sentimental sense of times past, they had not had an old white man shouting the odds down those corridors for years, creating a great deal of scurrying around and a compromise was found.
I could understand their pricing policy.
Well I bought them a packet of bog roll and was dropped back into my pit with some real bombers from the nurse and a handful of Penicillin in the tummy, which sent me away to await developments in the world of nod.
I awoke a few hours later, wet to the bone, from sweat, but I could feel my brain coming on line again, always a relief after a long party, this was familiar territory.
Just shows you, nothing like a scare and a good kick up the rear end to get the mind in order and the organism follows, the penicillin went forth and killed every living thing in reach, I poured soup, carrot and ginger root down by the gallon and was soon up and cheerful again.
I love a happy ending, the Doc in the short socks was forced to eat his words too, got a prostate like a teenager, well used, pha! Youth, I tell ya; they don’t know they’re born.
Well the lodge is filling up again after a very dreary May, will have to give big discounts next year, yet another hard learnt Lodge owners trick
I especially apologize for the long delay to the girls at GHASA and Country Life who have made this into a professional letter and have sponsored my writing with a free ad and no subscription fees this year.
Happy to be back in the saddling
Francis

June.

Flogging the tractor

I have in the area, very dirty and raggedy woodcutters and charcoal burners who live in utter poverty.
Being a chap who is keen to help his fellow man when he can, and realizing this, these chain saw specialists were soon lining up to get their hands on my kit.
Albert a very handsome Swazi chap was a regular, and his competition in the form of Chadrak also abused my liberal tendencies to use my stuff for free. Having to a large extent achieved the goals that prompted the acquisition of this gear, and the consequential idleness of these possessions, this was an irresistible temptation to ask to loan self same, whenever the need arose, which was a lot.
Contrary to the best advise of my neighbors and friends I loaned the tractor and soon enough their predictions of doom and disaster were manifest, Chadrak crashed the tractor into Steven’s new pick-up.

Well as you can imagine this turn of events caused a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth, thankfully Steven was insured but somehow these third world navigators had managed to smash up the tractor, virtually snapping off one of the front wheels! How they achieved this is a miracle, this tractor could drive right over a pick up with no damage but hey ho they had gently slid into this Jap plastic box with 5 tons of steel and bent it (the tractor) beyond driving.

We all met at the site of the incident with sad faces, Chadrak the cause of this distress was doing a suitable groveling act, punctuated with oh so sincere proclamations of how he will put everything back together, and the Boss must not worry, yea? Sure!

Well my lovely red tractor stood unattended and certainly unfixed by Chadrak on the side of the road. I being broke, as usual, was unable and also unwilling to invest the ammo required to attend to it’s needs and Chadrak it soon became clear had no intention of straightening, that which he had bent. A bigger liar and bullshiter I have yet to find. The bugger would look straight into my sad brown eyes with his evil blood shot ones and say whatever he thought would appease me, with no intention of doing a single thing, he was willing to swear on his sainted mothers grave, he would do.

This was an impasse that had no happy solution in sight; I was constrained by our new constitution from taking a whip to the lying thief and as such had little recourse, even his check to cover Steven’s excess, having been swiftly returned by the bank.

There seemed little hope of any satisfaction. So with a heavy heart I reached into my own skimpy resources. When the machine got home I was determined that this sad episode would never be repeated and knowing my own inability to say NO I was determined to be shot of it. When visiting the local mechanics’ emporium I was assured that I need look no further as he would sell it for me!
JOY! As I am ignorant in the way’s of flogging tractors.

I then took ill as per the last chapter and this priority along with everything else when skywards, till I got a call from selfsame mechanic demanding to know where the machine was , I was supposed to have delivered it to him. Keen, thinks I through the fog, and summoning strength from pure will power managed to get a driver, pump the tire and get a ride to town with my chum, I being still too knackered from the lurgy to drive!
Well we rolled into his yard I roll out to join him in bleak contemplation of my lovely big red tractor, while he kicked the tires mournfully I tried to sing with enthusiasm the wonders of my LBRT, power steering I gush, and not one but 2 spare rear tires too!

“OK men” say’s he, “Come into the office” where he placed me sitting very low as he loomed over me from the edge of the desk, as I huddled in deep misery.
“ Hes eet gott eny peper’s? No? thets OK naw probleem” he started in with the negotiations.
“ Naw check theese ut men, aw ken clean it up a bit, but eef you gonna sell eet, eet will be to a blek, Raught? End they tek a hell ov a long tarm to pe, Hey?”
“ja But well” I croak. I was less that enthusiastic at that point anyway.
“So look ahl giv ya twenty eight, cash OK?”
Was I happy? Did I feel beter? Did I get warm and cuddly all over? YES!
I had hoped to get a few bob as the man mentioned from a poor African fellow spread over a long possibly indefinite period, and just not having the machine around for the local lads to smash up was plus enough and here this saint with the terrible accent, was going to press real folding money into my hot little hand, I had only paid half that amount and worked the thing to death!

Well I was politely asked to wait outside while he got the ammo!
What!! ? He was going to give me ready money! There and then. This was too much to believe I was transported with bliss.
I could not believe this was transpiring. 5 minutes later I was recalled into the presence and presented with this huge pile of loot.
Joy, Joy Joy!!!
The transaction having being concluded Hendrik, for this is the name the Mackey glories in, felt that he could come out of negotiation mode and be a bit sympathetic to the miserable creature that he had just screwed (or so he thought, best kind of deal that when both parties think they have screwed the other) and informed me that what I needed for any stomach complaint was a teaspoon of Detol antiseptic in a glass of hot water. The man is insane!!
“The werst paat is dringking eet men” he assured me, “bet eet reely weks Ja”

Well I trundled home a happy chappy and smacked all the wolves on the nose.
Still got a bit leftly
Francis

PS Re the Chadrak saga, I was delighted to hear that his army of raggedy wekkers had turned on him for being a lying, cheating, non paying their wages type bastard and duffed him up good, bleks can beat up bleks even in today’s liberal climate, so I took them a crate of beer and we had a good laff.

JULY 2005

Hello Chucklers,
I have to date written this episal with just 2 fingers but I got a book the other day and have learnt touch-typing!
How is that for an old fart?

But the truth be told I am still very slow, the interesting part of this exercise is the way the fingers learn faster than the brain, one has to trust ones fingers to do the correct thing without looking, when you try to think and control your fingers the whole thing gets tangled up.

This month has been very smooth and in consequence there is little amusing stuff to relate, odd how it is the disasters that are fun to share.

My latest crusade is the distressing state of my waterfall, I have watched with great anguish how it gets smaller every year. Having watched this particular wonder with great delight for 10 years and come to know its moods and passions well. I think better than anyone.

For the last 3 years the waterfall has steadily shrunk. It used to have 2 streams making the Brides veil that was so distinctive. This has been reduced to being only manifest when the rain is very heavy, and for the last 3 years the Bride has been bereft of her full regalia and been reduced to but 1 stream. This sad situation vexed my tiny mind and I have ruminated on the problem in various sates of awareness.

I blamed in order, every user of the water from the Bankspruit but after due consideration of the history of the water system this seemed to have no basis on fact, as there has been no new usage over the last few years, all the dams and stuff being a good deal older than when I first started to notice the change.

This was now becoming a vexing situation with no immediate solution, and I worry, worry, worried!

However as with the ways of the bush, steady if aimless consideration generally makes the situation clear.

The first spark of understanding came through one of those endless but enlightening conversations that spring up around here, my chum Tim explained graphically how the water table works. I am sure that you have all heard of this mythical table that exists some where under ground.
I am still confused by the whole concept, what exactly was this table, I mean it is solid rock down there, what did this table look like? And where the hell was it? Is there a big lake sort of floating around somewhere? All very confusing.

Tim did not make it much clearer but gave me this image of this sort of level of saturation that is in a sort of balance. If you draw a squiggly line to represent valleys and mountains and draw a line through it that is the table, right? I didn’t think so, that is it and in a way that made me understand how activity very far from oneself will have an impact greater than the obvious things going on under ones nose.
The next revelation came through Philip Owen the head honcho of grassland huggers who wrote about the problems affecting the Kango Caves down the road, these caves and the surrounding mini eco system of rain forest, are being destroyed by timber plantations, that are now maturing, that had been planted on the leading slopes behind the caves.
Please note that a dry cave is a dead cave, and these caves have been around for 400 million years, us monkeys come around and destroy them in 20!
I realized that this was happening to me, caused by the plantations that are getting mature about 10 kilometers from the waterfall, makes one realize how really silly we are being letting these inconsolable companies to continue coning us with their constant invasion of land, bequeathing us a future nightmare of desertification!

I am torn what to do, I could say nothing, quietly go about my biz and just burn the trees down.

Or make a ver public fuss get into the eyes and be ignored by the companies concerned as they do not care, most people think that Plantations are forests and thus good, so an old fart squeaking in the bundu is hardly going to get some suits to destroy very valuable timber, and then I remove my option of chucking a match into their trees, and getting away with it that is.
A conundrum.

Under savage pressure in the bush
Francis

August 2005

Hello chumsters,

It is dry, ball cracking dry, the red dust of Africa is in everything and the world is on fire, but not the cursed plantations as they have so much kit to fight them with. My driveway is a misery and took off Corinne’s sump causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth but has thankfully not deterred the guests who by the time they reach this road disguised as a river bed are committed anyway.

It is getting misty again for the first time this winter, and tiny buds have appeared on the Blou Bessies. Life in a strange way has finally settled into some kind of order, the lodge is running, the trees are all dead and the studio is thick with the smell of turps and paint, all should be perfect and so it is, but one prediction of the crystal wavers and star gazers that has always been pertinent to me, i.e. their claim that Capricorns always get what they want, but then have no idea what to do with it, and so it is for me, a goat on a hill.

So when a wedding invitation and a free air ticket came through to go to Cape town I was enchanted, I needed a break from paradise. Little did I realize the strain that would ensure?

Weddings for an unreformed recluse are a minefield of hazards and this one started even before we got going. Sisters do not like their brothers girlfriends, no matter what they say, I have had a few, girl friends that is, and they have all been universally despised by my one sister till they dumped me, when they were miraculously transformed from the evil one into a NBF (new best friend), against the new intruder and it turned out that my innocently inviting my present incumbent to the fray was a big mistake.

The screaming and wailing, the recriminations and distress were something to behold. E-mails and international calls, at huge expense, were indulged in and my sainted sister took the opportunity to take a solid swing at her elder Boet over this insult to her finer sensibilities by my inviting ‘my slut’ (her words) to this do and there was no way that she was going to have anything to do with her etc. etc. while going through my entire history of social blunders, which took a quite a while to get through. The boys at the NSI who listen to our calls must have had a good laff at my expense.
Well when she had finally run out of steam, and I had informed her that I had arranged finer and more convenient, free accommodation for me and mine a compromise was reached and the vacation could start, joy was all abounding and SS (sainted sister) having got a lot of pent up frustration off her heaving bosom could settle down and be her normal loving self, I did take a large container of Valiums with me for her none the less.

Well what can one say about the fairest cape in all the world? It is fair it is true, nauseatingly so, the only relief to the endless cuteness are the occasional and well concealed acres of miserable heaving humanity in their tin huts, which the Capies kindly have laid out on the way from the airport so you can get that over with and live in cuckoo land with a clear conscience that you have seen and been suitably shocked and appalled as one quaffs the local brew with a prawn.

Cape Town has and I suspect always will be an old age home for al de kakkers that poffters visit when the sun goes down. I spent a few glorious years there when young and beautiful, which featured a short stint at UCT art school and some years painting for the local Operatic and dramatic society in the long gone days when Cape Town had a soul called District 6, and frankly the total domination of the landscape by the old and the rich which eased those people into their purgatory on the flats has turned this wonderful place into an overpriced Bloemfontein by the sea, boring.

However visiting all my chums who are now old or homo, and have gone to the top deck of the Titanic rather than taking the chicken run of yore, was fun though sobering to see how ancient they have all become while I have aged not a jot ha! They are all being very creative and interesting, sincere about saving the feral cats of the flats and fully connected with their inner selves, hey my brother, and so pleased that there are so few ‘bleks’ only coloreds around to do their dirty work, but I am not bitter or twisted at all about them all having a great time and feeling happy and content in their little island of peace down at the bottom of Africa. Saw my first whale, another thing to tick off the list of things that must be done before I die. Pretty bloody splendid but mostly far away and they never got out of the water so we could have a good look at them.

Well back and under attack from the bank who want some paper for tedious and depressing and useless bureaucracy or they will close my account so I have to drive many miles at my own expense to give them a copy of my ID which they have had for years but now suddenly feel the quality is not to their satisfaction and they want another, very dull.
Yours travelingly
Francis
SEPTEMBER 2005

Coffee with the Devil’s spawn.

After my last but one little letter re the plantations, I was contacted by many with good advice re the matches versus legal tactic’s, to rid me of these pestilent plantations, (matches won out by a significant margin) among which were the e-mail addresses of various salaried tree huggers who all worked for SAPPI the numero uno villain of the piece, which was a surprise as the info came from Philip Owen the local chief grassland hugger.
I contacted these chaps and ladies who all were very prompt in reply, which in itself was worrying. Even more so when they were far too available to visit me at their own expense on the farm, which they did last Friday.
These representatives of the evil corporations arrived promptly in their rattely pick up so I knew even before they had parked that these two were way way down at the very bottom of the pile, corporate ladder wise, and were bereft of any influence and were just a fop to my heartfelt cries.
I was nice to them none the less and made them decent coffee rather than the instant brew, while they brought out a huge packet of documentation, re the effect of timber plantations with lots of multi-colored graphs and pie charts, lots of if a=g then the peasants will starve type figures that seem to enchant such refugee’s from youthful idealism.
They did not have a map of the region but did produce a very detailed one of their activities that seemed indicative of their concerns. They would go to any expense to ensure the efficient use of the land they owned with nary a care about the surrounding area, and then they lied to me and said that they had not planted new area’s of tree, but had only replaced the gum with pine. This to a man that uses the road past their plantations on a regular basis to visit my only smoking chum in the area so you will understand that I pass their place a lot. Pissed me off, but I bit my tongue, realizing that these two were just wage slaves to the machine and probably knew less about the situation here on the ground than I did.
I brushed aside their volumous propaganda and told them my tale of woe, and was as swiftly brushed of with that old chestnut about there being no scientific proof of my assertions and reducing my observations to the obviously biased opinions of the terminally bigoted and ignorant sweaty masses which did nothing to endear them to me.
I swallowed my pride again, with a fervent ‘ forgive them Lord for they know not what they do’ and tried to convince them that I was actually a chap that loved the rich and avaricious and appreciated the need for plantations, that I was a very reasonable chappy, a good old boy who had a rational and justifiable complaint against a plantation that was there more by default than good sense and that they could do a bit of good with little cost to their masters.
These fellows who had the un enviable task of going around the place taking the abuse of their companies neighbors and trying to justify the unjustifiable under the title of ‘Environmental Officer’ did elicit my sympathy, they could say nothing, promise less and we all knew that they were there to prevent me bothering their bosses.
The first, the ‘Environmental Officer’ the obvious spokesman oozed PR cream from every pore, young and still glossy from the ecclesiastic world of the new religion ‘eco-science’ was accompanied by a very taciturn and uncommunicative chap who gave me a very aggressive and antagonistic vibe which was clarified when I eventually managed to get him to admit that he was in fact the manager of the offending plantations so perhaps had a greater interest in their preservation than most.
Well we danced around the subject, and we all soon realized that there was going to be little satisfaction form our talk, that no matter how pertinent my complaint was there was no way that the ‘corp.’ was ever going to give so much as an inch, that even if I was successful in getting this plantation closed the ‘corp.’ would insist on their being given alternative no doubt pristine land to plant their trees on instead, a lose lose situation for all.
This was purgatory, the underlying knowledge that these very aggressive and antagonistic companies, had only profits and growth in mind and be damned the rest was deeply depressing, one wonders what the children of these bastards would think if they knew what their fathers were doing in their names. Even these representatives of the evil one knew in their heart of hearts that what I was saying was true and that they were on the wrong side, but not on the record, after all they had children and bonds to pay off.
Eventually boring of this pointless conversation they waddled off with I have no idea what in their heads as to where this was going, I doubted that they would institute a research project to prove my assertions, that they would tell their bosses that they had to cut a million Rand’s worth of trees or in fact do anything at all, hoping that I would just fade away before the majesty of their vast legal recourses.
After they had gone I settled down to read their paper which did in fact prove me correct in my assertions that they were fully aware of the damage they were doing, every graph and pie chart showed them to be the bastard’s they were and yet they continue along the road they have started and in fact are daily increasing the load our blighted land has to tolerate for their corporate greed. The hypocrisy of this activity beggars belief and I hate them a lot.
Yours rattling his Safety Matches,
Francis

October 2005

WALKING ON WATER

At the beginning of this year I was entertaining my particular chum Howy, who like myself is an aficionado of a card game called Spite and Malice, during which I discussed my trials and tribulations caused by my having gone into bat way, way over my weight farm wise. This estate is really far to large and expensive for an artist that rarely sells his work to support, and in consequence I was trapped to the extent that I had to skimp and save to travel to the local village, let alone say a trip to Venice. In fact I was so tight that a pair of new underpants were an extravagance that I could ill afford.
Well Howy though the ex Mayor of Sodom and Gomorrah, is in fact a soft hearted fellow, and was touched and moved by my sad tale of penury, being broke is something that got to the waters in him and he suggested that he ‘might’ be willing to invest in the farm, and would be willing to ease my fat ass over my financial hurdles if I could ensure that his loot would be spent wisely on the estate rather than on fast women and slow horses as my biz rep from the past indicated.
Going on my knees before him while slobbering wet kisses on his rings I promised anything and swore that I was already a changed man, if he would release some of his hard earned cash on a loony picture painter in the bundu. PULEEEESsss
He was unmoved by my groveling and insisted that my loquacious and moving plea’s would be insufficient and he required some hard documentation that assured him of my plans for his wedge.
Thus did this old anarchist enter into the sordid world of hard busyness.
With dreams of wealth beyond my wildest dreams firing me, I got hold of she who keeps me from jail, my long suffering brief and my equally perplexed accountant and told them to get ‘my angel’s’ needs met, chop chop.
I also joyfully proclaimed to my partner that we had a white knight in our sights. He briefly thought that after many years hemorrhaging vast sum’s to maintain his idiot brother in law in poverty, he might get a little of his back, which is understandable.
I had as usual got the whole idea wrong about what it means to most when somebody buy’s shares in a company, i.e. that the partners get the money! That would put him high up in the claim line. However the deal was that the loot was to be spent on the estate, not on us, which was fine by me as that is all I wanted to spend the money on anyway. Though there where a few creditors who had strong opinions about that.
Well that was a big disappointment for him and required a great many long distant calls to resolve. Why he enquired with doleful pathos should my overdraft be settled and not his? And further more why should he have to relinquish two thirds of his shares for free and I should get half of those and the other half should be sold and he gets nothing? A good question.
Well being a long sighted chap with a depth of patience rarely seen among the hard nosed and wealthy of this world he accepted that this way there was a small chance that sometime in the distant unspecified future he would get his, rather than the present one where there seemed no chance of any possible return and a good chance that his wallet would be called on again to save us from doom.
Well this took a couple of months what with having to produce ‘financials’, esoteric documents that tell me I am broke, very useful I am sure, however they enchant and delight the bean and copy boys. Various delays such as, end of years and cycling trips in Ireland kept me in a state of anxious despair as in my tiny little mind the deal had been sorted the very second that it had been tentatively mentioned, such is the way of my head.
So the document got longer and longer and I got more and more confused and depressed. My professionals, my brother in law, Howy the ‘BIG INVESTOR’, all seemed to rely on me the biggest idiot among them to guide us through the labyrinth.
Howy has the alarming tendency to dive down avenues of interpretation and content with regular and startling sagacity, the attorney was constantly pointing out to me that I had got it all wrong and that it could not be done that way as did the accountant coupled with dire warnings of massive and crippling debt to the tax man, and all the while I stood at the gates of my financial prison, in heaven it is true, waiting to get out, to get in, all very trying. And it lasted for month after month, wavering to and fro with the loot seeming to be constantly on the point of being spent on more sensible things like Aston Martin DB9’s with but the slip of a lip.
To and fro the paper flowed, into Johannesburg I would ride with wings on my toes to return later with lead in my heart as yet another incumbent had been found which needed correction, adaptation, clarification or amendment, for a fellow that needs to take a Valium to go to the post office this was a nightmare.
Eventually after too many to’s and fro’s I was in a state of nervous collapse to the extent that ‘The X Mayor’ knew that he had to put me out of my misery and came to visit for the weekend, with his girl friend, which was a good sign as I doubted that he would bring me bad news with her in tow.
Ladies do not like to see grown men cry, I mean the man knew he was trapped by my cunning tactic of agreeing to everything! So he might as well commit finally, JOY.
I still had to run the gauntlet right to the last moment, there was Jewish New Year, tedious accountancy thingies, share issues, documents that had to be changed and signed in England and returned by post, letters of warranty to pass before anything could be finalized, and then when I arrived at the room for the big signing my lawyer came steaming into my face with some huge complication that I did not understand with the threat that once again I would go away empty handed, thankfully pathetic appeals to her professional pride got her reared up and she solved her problem for me and so we got to the end, but nooooooo not quite.
I have watched Howy do what he does in this long process, and have known him man and boy for the last 15 years or so and one thing I know is that his word is his bond and he gives it out thus, with caution. Unlike myself who is a man of straw.
Now as I have said this document had gone through many changes and I noticed that he read the thing every time in front of me from beginning to end even though he had obviously already studied the paper a lot on his own as there were note’s in the margins and every time he came up with a very pertinent and obvious mistake, he did not care how often he read it or what questions he asked and right there at the gate, at the very edge of the precipice, he again found something that indicated he might have to commit to percentages over that agreed, and the suits had to scurry around to do their job and settle this, which they did, just, but it shows you the guys with ammo read the paper for good reason and at the end of it I know that his pedantisism made the thing right for all.
Then suddenly it was all over, signatures were signed hands shaken, a HUGE check written on his lap in his Beemer and I was dumped on my chums doorstep with two small pieces of paper which represented five years serious toil, all my problems changed, my dreams come true, harvest time, BOOM just like that.

I could not help but smile.

Still smiling
Francis
PS
I had throughout this negotiation dreamt of a pick-up with a cup holder, ahh the dreams of the permanently poor, but sadly after due consideration I have settled for a new set of tires and a clip on cup holder.

˙
NOVEMBER 2005

Hello out there, is everyone still there? The last few weeks have been very quiet, dead quiet on the booking front anyway, the phone has been so dead I have on occasion panicked and checked the receiver to be sure that I am still connected.
This sad neglect of my sexy lodge is doubly depressing, as I have just invested lavishly in the comfort of these absent guests, equipping the lodge with new cutlery, crockery,sheets, towels and even new rugs to maintain our reputation as a lodge of distinction. This has irritated my other half as, as usual the lodge is the very model of a duvet wilderness experience, while my own quarters are a pit that no girl should have to experience. Men’s caves are at the best of times smelly dangerous places and mine is worse than most. She seems to feel that an old bent scrambler is no substitute for cotton sheets, thus does the gap between the sexes manifest itself.

Equally absent from my door have been the minions of the evil one, the plantation punters, who came here, drank my coffee and disappeared to where minions disappear to and nary a word has been heard from them since.
The chattering classes however have been vocal and shrill in their reaction to my last flip epistle, accusing me of being everything from an irresponsible twit, to a saint, to a girl, a blond and dippy one at that. Conversely the general tone has been one of shock, horror! However unless their living is being actually affected, I recon most people, myself included, think, what the F@*k they are at least creating jobs etc. and what with the world, our own little bit of it included, having some, I would venture to suggest, more pressing problems, I cannot see much coming from all this, when faced by the inertia of corporations.
I weep for the goldfish farmers in the Kloof and all their chums, I gaze mournfully at my springs and dams that are dry. I am deeply sympathetic to all these cries in the wilderness but hey, what is to be done? My suggestion that we burn them to the ground was universally considered to be, A not funny and B no one is amused, so so sorry.
One less responsible reader who is more of my mind suggested that I acquire a copy of the ‘Anarchists Cookbook’ which deals in length on the subject of plantations and how they have been fought elsewhere, successfully, Having ordered this dubious tome from Amazon.com I will not be wearing any turbans for a while, and I suspect that I better wait another 20 years before I go to Disneyland or face some penetrating and personal questions from their immigration chappies, who have probably flagged me as suspicious already.
After the initial lull, after the windfall, things are now going a pace here, natives of various skills have been shaken from the trees to labor in the sun, smooth young things with sexy equipment have been commissioned at vast expense to fly over the estate and do magic to produce a contour plan of the next stage in transforming this wilderness into a rich man’s plaything.
I am now reconsidering the whole idea of renting rooms to the proletariat. I pegged out the wonderful site of future fornicatoriums, that I briefly considered a vital element to the estate, but gazing at these pegs in the ground and drifting back to episodes of pain from the past which had all begun so innocently like this, with pegs in the soil, and had turned into financial and personal disasters I have reconsidered the entire thing. I never wanted to have a guesthouse, the dreams of the bed and breakfast brigade are not mine and I recalled what we were here for i.e. to sell wonderful country houses to the privileged few.
My chum down the road who is a genuine country chap convinced me that growing meat is the thing, he has pointed out that my hills and dales of wonderful grasslands are in fact a protein factory and that all I required to live a life of ease is to install the necessary critters. He has mentioned strange activities that are required, such as sticking my arm up their rear end, but my observations of the chap that runs his cows on my place at the moment have been that this form of agriculture has maintained its popularity through the ages due to the great ease with which vast mounds of flesh can be accumulated with little personal effort. Not like planting corn, that requires a great deal of toil.
I am now immersing my soul into that great African Zen experience of growing Nguni cattle a marvelous beast with great personal magnetism. These cows are great, I have never been very fond of cattle except when served medium rare on a plate but observing these unique African beasts I must say I have been converted, they are as intriguing as wild game and have the independence and spirit of same, unlike the great lumps of flesh that we have developed in the temperate zones.
Well that is it for this month,
Yours busy and contented
Francis

THE FALL AND RIZE OF

2005-12-16T05:12:00.000-08:00

THE FALL AND RIZE OF
MR GRUMPY THE GANDER
A TRUEISH STORY

In this best of all possible worlds, deep in a wrinkle, in a crinkle, of the misty Mpumalanga highlands, lived Mr. Grumpy with his gaggle Dibbles, Puddle and Charley the younger. They lived on the farm Cosmos, swimming in the trout dams, eating sweet grasses and golden yellow corn with the chickens, led by that great warrior and lord of all he surveyed, Son of Gatsha.

All seemed perfect and as good as it gets, but Mr. grumpy was not satisfied.

Dibbles and Puddles, Mr. Grumpey’s wives, both produced large clutches of eggs each year and were completely and totally conscientious in lining their nests with soft feathers, sitting on them, keeping their eggs warm, but every year they lost all their goslings after they hatched, it was all very sad.
The truth be told, they were both just the worst mothers, though they tried hard, yet every year it was the same story, and none of Mr. Grumpies goslings lived to carry on the name of Grumpy.

One morning Mr. Grumpy was looking over the valley with his friend and companiero Son of Gatsha when Mr. Grumpy decided to ask for a little advice. He was very embarrassed to ask for help, as they were both seriously macho, and Son of Gatsha was a chicken to boot, so he shuffled around a bit, cleared his long throat and eventually blurted out, “Son of Gatsha, what shall I do about Mrs. Dibbles and Puddle?”

“ What, what do you mean?” the rather startled Gatsha clucked, for Mr. Grumpy was a taciturn fellow at the best of times, both being the strong silent type except when reminding the world just who was running the show.

“Well Gatsha old chap, its those geese of mine,” he mumbled, “ they are driving me to distraction with their useless mothering, you have got a large and growing flock, in the last couple of years you have doubled the size of your brood but I haven’t got one extra gosling in my gaggle,” sighed Mr. Grumpy.

Son of Gatsha was very pleased by this unexpected compliment. He gave a mighty crow of appreciation but was nonetheless aghast at what Mr. Grumpy was asking him. Though Gatsha only had a brain the size of a pea he knew that the answer was not one that a proud and macho gander would appreciate.

Son of Gatsha had known Mr. Grumpy all his life and held him in awe. Mr. Grumpy was a tremendous gander, Gray and white, very large, in fact huge, very fierce with haughty button blue eyes on either side of his head. No one messed with Mr. Grumpy the farmyard gander, so it was with caution that Gatsha made his suggestion.

“Mr. G” he began, trying a little intimacy to soften the blow, but the gleam in Grumpies eye gave him pause, so retreating he started again.

“Mr. Grumpy what you will have to do is bring the next clutch up yourself!”

There was a stunned silence between them as Mr. Grumpy gazed bleakly at Son of Gatsha first through his right eye and turning his head he contemplated Gatsha through the other just to be sure that Gatsha was serious.

“What me do the job of a goose???” he hissed.
“Err um yes” Son of Gatsha replied taking a few steps backward in case Mr. Grumpy took a peck at him, he wasn’t called Grumpy for nothing.

“There is no other way,” he continued from a safe distance, “some hens just aren’t mothers. It happens, usually another hen will take up the slack, but both your geese are useless, and that’s the truth”

“ Me be a goose? Have you lost the pea that you call a brain” he hissed, “I’m a gander, you stupid chook, I’m busy, busy, busy, all day. I have to keep control, I am in charge here, and I have to keep on top of things. I can’t do goose work. It’s humiliating, and what if the wild Egyptian geese find out, I will be a laughing stock, I won’t be able to keep my head up”

Although Gatsha had expected Grumpy to take umbrage at his advise, nonetheless Son of Gatsha who was a proud chicken was a bit taken aback by this fit of temper and stamped of in a huff.

“Err um yes” Son of Gatsha replied taking a few steps backward in case Mr. Grumpy took a peck at him, he wasn’t called Grumpy for nothing.

“There is no other way,” he continued from a safe distance, “some hens just aren’t mothers. It happens, usually another hen will take up the slack, but both your geese are useless, and that’s the truth”

“ Me be a goose? Have you lost the pea that you call a brain” he hissed, “I’m a gander, you stupid chook, I’m busy, busy, busy, all day. I have to keep control, I am in charge here, and I have to keep on top of things. I can’t do goose work. It’s humiliating, and what if the wild Egyptian geese find out, I will be a laughing stock, I won’t be able to keep my head up”

Although Gatsha had expected Grumpy to take umbrage at his advise, nonetheless Son of Gatsha who was a proud chicken was a bit taken aback by this fit of temper and stamped of in a huff.

*

CHAPTER 2

A few weeks later sure enough, after the usual fuss and shouting, five beautiful goslings were born to Puddles. This time it seemed that all would be well. Puddles was all attention and devotion but after just 4 days Mr. Grumpy found one missing, lost in the night, who knows. Puddles just looked helpless, she had no idea how it had happened and Mr. Grumpy knew that he had to make a decision fast. Taking his pride in hand, he told Puddles to push off, which she was very relieved and happy to do leaving Mr. Grumpy alone with the goslings.

With his left eye, he glared down at them turning the other eye on them in preparation to telling them the rules he was just in time to catch one running to the left after a butterfly while the other disappeared in the other direction after a big blue dragon fly,and the other’s scattered in all directions, leaving Mr. Grumpy spluttering and flapping in consternation, not knowing which to go after first.

Mr. Grumpy was used to being obeyed, but these two didn’t know that, and life was far too interesting to remember anything for long.

They ran him ragged, keeping them in line and out of trouble. Just as he was having a snack he would have to drop everything to rescue one from the cat, or be interrupted from a snooze by the desperate peeps of the other with its foot stuck in a hole. There was just no peace. If he had been busy being boss of the gaggle, he was frantic as a mother.

Mr. Grumpy however was determined and persevered. Soon he learned that kindness worked better than squawking, hissing and pecking at the little ones. He loved it when they cuddled under his wings to sleep, in short Mr. Grumpy was becoming a nicer guy. Still grumpy, but nice, he even changed the goslings names from Muddle, Trouble, Strife and Idiot to Cuddle, Chuckle, Bubble and Fluff, much friendlier.

Soon enough they were following him around, growing their feathers and were declared by the whole farm to be charming and delightful goslings. Mr. Grumpy was a great mother and his goslings survived and prospered, it seemed that all was well.

CHAPTER 3

While Mr. Grumpy was looking after the goslings, he still managed to do most of his gander work, which was not easy, so it was understandable that Mr. Grumpy paid less attention to Puddles and Dibbles than before. Being chief gander is not all feathers and roses, you know. He had to know when to swim and when to snooze, when to get to Poppies house for mealie meal and when to just march around the farmhouse. All these important things and more kept a gander on his paddles.
The gaggles schedule was remorseless, so with all his extra duties he became off hand even rude to Dibbles and Pud. Being beautiful and vain they were very put out, which is where Charley the Younger saw his gap.
Charley the younger you recall lives with Mr. Grumpy and his wives. Charley was a handsome but dissolute pure white gander that hung around at the back of the gaggle with the girls enjoying the good life, with no responsibilities. As Mr. Grumpy was so preoccupied, Charlie’s flirting with the girls made an impression. He wasn’t bossy like Mr. Grumpy.

Puddles and Dibbles saw Charley in a new light. Charley gave them sweet tit bits. Charley listened to them and flattered them. He was graceful and charming, he laughed and played, he was really fun to be with and with bossy old Mr. Grumpy busy with the goslings they were having a good time.
Weeks went by Cuddle and Chuckles, Bubble and Fluff lost their fluff, grew feathers and became beautiful and graceful geese like their mother. They needed less and less attention and Mr. Grumpy decided to send them to the back of the line, being the youngest, and to sharpen up the gaggle’s act.

He realized that he had let things go. The Tigwan who is the king of the birds and also the rain bird and as such very important, had complained that his wives were eating grass that was to young, and were rude to his wife. The daily farm parade hadn’t been done nearly regularly enough; the chickens were getting very pushy at feeding time, sneaking corn from the gaggle. Crossbow the fat old staffy didn’t even get out of the way of the parade. All this and more was totally unacceptable to a perfectionist like Mr. Grumpy.

Mr. Grumpy ordered everybody into line, glaring balefully out of his left eye and right eye in turn; and proceeded to honk at them the entire gaggle act in no uncertain terms. Hissing and pecking them on the head, he went through all their various faults and failings in detail. He was determined to assert himself and get the gaggle in line.

Well you can just imagine their surprise and dismay at this return of bad old Mr. Grumpy. Everybody had become very used to a mellow Mr. Grumpy preoccupied with the goslings and had forgotten what a dictator Mr. Grumpy had been. When Mr. Grumpy turned to the subject of Puddles friendship with the Francolins, (noisy wild birds), he went to far.

“Oh I say, lay off, Mr. Grumpy,” interjected Charley the Younger, who had always loved Puddles and forgot himself in the heat of the moment. He was very scared of Mr. Grumpy.

“WHAT!” hissed Mr. Grumpy through his clenched beak, “ how dare you speak out of turn?”

“Yes lay off” piped Puddles made brave by Charlie’s defense of her, giving him a flirtatious glance.

Mr., Grumpy whipped his hand around, giving himself a nasty crick in the neck. He was stunned shocked and yes outraged, at her talking back to him.

“Lay off, lay off, lay off” squeaked the goslings, who although they had all their feathers, were still very foolish and goslingish and this was just a game to them.

Something came over Charley. The girls were looking at him in an adoring way; Mr. Grumpy didn’t look nearly so big and scary as he tried to out stare everyone at the same time

Before Charley really knew what he was doing he attacked Mr. Grumpy, jumping onto his back while his head was turned and pecked him hard on the head. Mr. Grumpy was shocked at this mutiny and when the rest of the gaggle joined in he was overwhelmed.

Desperately he tried to fight back. For all his faults Mr. Grumpy was a very brave gander but Charley was almost as big as him and with the help of all the others Mr. Grumpy had no chance. Charley realized that this was his oppertunity to take over as boss gander and really pilled into the fray tearing out Mr. Grumpies feathers and beating his wings in a huge display. Mr. Grumpy was defeated and retreated into the long meadow with the jeers and taunts of the whole gaggle ringing in his ears. Mr. Grumpy couldn’t believe what had happened and it was a sore and humiliated gander that hid in the reeds. Mr. Grumpy had no friends.

*

CHAPTER 4

What a dark day this was for our hero. Toppled from his throne, Mr. Grumpy had never felt so low. How could they have turned on him? He had always looked after them, kept them safe and secure. He’d searched out the best places to eat and made sure that the geese were the top birds on Cosmos Farm. He’d done goose work for the good of the gaggle and here he was driven out.

Even after a few days had passed they still chased him away and turned their backs on him. None of them would talk to him and Mr. Charley; yes Mister Charley now if you please was forever pecking him and shoving him of the grain at feeding time.

The worst of it was at night when all the others were safe in the hock, he was forced to sleep alone outside in the yard.

Poor old Mr. Grumpy was miserable, frightened and alone. He didn’t feel big and strong. Every night he honked miserably at the moon. He thought that soon he would go the way of Cock of the North.

Cock of the north had been Lord of all he surveyed before Son of Gatsha. He had ruled the yard when Mr. Grumpy was just fluff on paddles, but he grew old, tired and sick and was usurped by Son of Gatsha. Soon after he had faded away and Mr. Grumpy thought that he would follow, but in the meantime he tagged along behind the gaggle and cried outside the hock at night.

Mr. Charley was now boss of the geese; he walked at the front and decided when, where and what they did.

Mr. Charley loved the attention that the whole gaggle lavished on him and he became very proud and haughty. He saw himself as the ruler and made sure that all knew it.

*

CHAPTER 5

The rhythm of the farm settled down to the new status quo. The chickens did their rounds; Crossbow lay in the sun and made her tummy warm with Putcha the cat. Amos the man cut the grass and the guests at the lodge came and went while Mr. Grumpy sulked along behind the gaggle, which was a bit strange but we all soon got used to that.

Mr. Charley waddled along in front as proud as can be, but he did not really know where to go or what to do. Charley got confused about when the corn was to be scattered and when to snooze, when to swim in the house dam or when to sleep. There really was more to being head gander than he had realized and Charley, who was used to following Mr. Grumpy, was getting very confused and flustered. Not that he showed it, but everybody noticed that the gaggle was not as sharp as before. The truth be told Charley was too young and silly to be a head gander.

The parades around the farm now hardly ever happened and because Charley was in fact in a bit of a panic, he was no longer sweet and charming either. He pecked and beat up anybody that annoyed him and managed to humiliate the entire gaggle at one time or the other. Charley became grumpier than Mr. Grumpy had ever been.

Charley however, finally worked out a plan. He noticed that Mr. Grumpy went towards the next spot on the schedule automatically and if he kept his eye on him, hurried to get in front, he got most things right. This was harder to do than one would think. He never knew which way Mr. Grumpy would go and he often went one way and Mr. Grumpy the other leaving him stranded and looking silly. Things get confusing when the real leader is at the back. Charley was deeply regretting usurping Mr. Grumpy.

*

CHAPTER 6

The first thing Mr. Grumpy noticed was unlike ‘Cock of the North’ he did not get sick. Sad and betrayed, but not sick or ill or even tired. In fact with all the rest he was getting at the back of the gaggle, he was actually getting fat! He felt as strong and healthy as he had ever been, better in fact.

One lovely sunny day followed another, Mr. grumpy found it harder and harder to stay sad. Staying sad is the hardest thing, especially with a beak full of the sweetest grass and a glorious sun rising over the dewy valley. With his new freedom from responsibility, he had more time to preen and primp his feathers; he looked sleeker and plumper than ever before.

The rest of the geese soon forgot that Mr. Grumpy was disgraced and usurped, so more and more they found themselves passing the time of day with him. It was useful to see what he was up to and eating, as he always seemed to be at the best places at the best times. He was so grateful for the smallest kindness and was now so considerate that it was a pleasure to be with him.

From his position at the back and with not some satisfaction Mr. Grumpy noted that the gaggles standing in the yard was not what it used to be when he was in charge.

Dibbles got her tail bitten by Crossbow the dog, considering that Crossbow was the most gentle of souls who was even intimidated by the Muscovite ducks, this was a disgrace, but Charley did nothing, he was a terrible coward, the only brave thing he had ever done was to stand up to Mr. Grumpy and that only in the heat of the moment, sort of by mistake.

Son of Gatsha had to take over the chairmanship of the farmyard council, and was losing his feathers from having to think all the time. Mr. Charley was always too busy with his own problems, so for the first time ever a goose wasn’t top bird. Mr. Grumpy mourned. This was all wrong!

By this time he was back in the hock at night with his gaggle. Geese more than most need to be close each other and do everything together, so Mr. Grumpy was very relieved to be tolerated again. Mr. Charley still persecuted him, he missed the attentions Dibbles and Puddles used to lavish on him as top gander, but he was more content than he had ever known.

*

CHAPTER 7

Son of Gatsha however was not content, he was harassed and bothered. He was not used to being top bird, Lord of all he surveyed yes, indeed, but not the constant day-to-day problems that Mr. Grumpy used to handle with such ease. Geese are made to be top bird, chickens to be Lord of all they survey, that way everybody is happy.

Son of Gatsha like everybody else on the farm, was aware of the upside down situation with the gaggle of geese and he knew that if he wasn’t to lose all his feathers, he had to somehow get Mr. Grumpy back on his throne. He felt responsible. After all, it was his suggestion that had started the whole mess. He could see that Mr. Grumpy was not inclined to fight it out with Charley the Younger. Charley was a big gander and Gatsha could see that the Mr. Grumpy was quite happy.

Gazing despairingly at one of his hens being chased by a young cockerel called Dinner, and knowing that he was to busy with other things to do anything about it, he threw caution to the wind and preening his feathers to the max, he threw back his head and gave a mighty crow, a ruffle and a long wiggle that made every feather stand out in such glory that he shot his last remaining tail feather right out. This is the way a chicken thinks, having a brain the size of a pea this is the only way that they can think as everybody knows.

Son of Gatsha gave his all into this effort, sad as he was to lose that last tail feather, it was worth it, what his pea sized brain could not come up with, his feathers had they had solved up with a brilliant plan!

With his big idea tucked into his tiny brain, which took up nearly his whole brain, so much so that he could barely walk, he wobbled of to see Puddles and Dibbles and whispered into their ears. He drew Charley the Younger aside and even had a chat with the gooslings, after which with a sigh of relief he went straight to work giving Dinner, Lunch and Supper the other young cockerels, a good long chase and pulled all their tail feathers out. He wasn’t going to be the only cockerel with no tail feathers, and went to roost, a contented fowl, and Lord of all he surveyed.

Shortly after he had settled down warm and cozy among his hens, the geese came into the hock to settle down for the night. Silence descended, darkness fell, when from the back of the hock Chuckles and Cuddles honked together, “Why is Mr. Grumpy in here? He’s usurped”
“Yes, that’s true, get out,” hissed Charley as loudly as he could right in Mr. Grumpey’s ear.

Mr. Grumpy was already half asleep, he had been sleeping in the hock for ages and this came as a huge shock.

“Yes OUT, OUT, OUT,” shouted the whole gaggle and they all flapped their wings in his face.

Mr. Grumpy got a huge fright at this sudden commotion in the darkness, and being a brave gander, he attacked and pecked Charley on the head. Mr. Charley suddenly became Charley the Younger again and fell onto his back even though he was hardly pecked at all, screaming “OW OW that really hurts.”

“ I will not go out into the dark” honked Mr. Grumpy. He hated being alone outside.

“I will not go outside” he hissed, pulling some feathers out of Charlie’s head, but not with any real conviction.

“I won’t sleep alone” he mumbled.

“Yes, yes,” squeaked the whole gaggle. “We mean no no”

In all the flapping, it seemed to Mr. Grumpy that he had somehow swept the whole gaggle into a corner of the hock with Charley the Younger whimpering in front of them all.

He stepped back a pace and looked at them through his favorite left eye, quailing and cowering in a heap and realized how much he loved them and how badly he needed them to love him.

Cautiously the gooslings sidled over to him, followed by Puddle and Dibbles, who stroked his neck and cooed into his ear, “Oh Mr. Grumpy, you are top bird again.”

“No I’m not. I don’t want the job and what about him?” he grumbled, pointing his beak at Charley the Younger in a sort of half hearted peck.

“I’m beaten Mr. Grumpy, sir. O yes sir indeed well beaten sir,” Charley squeaked and cowered into the corner. “You are it,” he continued. “ That was a terrible battle, you won fair and square, besides which, and you did the job much better than I did.”

“Yes I suppose I did” replied Mr. Grumpy well pleased and giving a huge honk of triumph he took his old place in the hock.

At this point the chickens, dogs, cats in fact the whole farmyard had enough and shouted for them to pipe down and let them sleep. So they all settled down in their old familiar places for the best night’s sleep they had had for ages and ages glad that everything was back to normal.

*

EPILOGUE

One misty morning deep in a crinkle in a wrinkle of the mighty Mpumalanga Highlands in valley of seven springs Mr. Grumpy was sharing a quiet moment with Son of Gatsha lord of all he surveyed, after a comfortable silence had passed as they watched the five new goslings playing around Mr. Grumpey’s legs Gatsha remarked, “Handsome new clutch of goslings Mr. Grumpy, Puddles and Dibbles are handling the farmyard council really well too.”

“Well thanks Gatsha,” Mr. Grumpy replied, “and by the way my first name is Jim.”
“Jim, indeed,” clucked Gatsha pleased and flattered with this intimacy.

“And sorry about your last tail feather,” Mr. Grumpy whispered in Gatsha’s ear as one left blue eye looked knowingly into Gatsha’s bright orange right eye.

If a large, a very large in fact an extremely large, gentle gander called Jim could have smiled, he would have, at this best of all possible worlds.

THE END

THE TALE OF A RELUCTANT ENVIROMENTALIST

2005-12-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

I have always been sort of concerned for my fellow man, the planet and stuff, but never really enough to actually do anything. I attended anti-apartheid protests at university in the hope of meeting girls, and I lambasted the conniving corporations for rape and pillage, because I got none of the loot. I am concerned about the destruction of the environment, the starving masses, the denial of human rights to the imprisoned, but I was never among the hairy, noisy brigade in front of the embassy, my body was never exposed to the sticks and water cannon of enraged governmental forces, I walked past the outreached hands of starving children in the streets, I joined neither left nor right wing political parties, I spent little time and treasure of my own for my fellow man or the planet. I am and always have been firmly ensconced upon the fence, making snide and facetious remarks about both sides of the divide, depending on who constituted the audience, and I always had a lot of company, so who cared?

However, having acquired a large and spectacular piece of the planet, which was hidden from view and memory by bluegum plantations and wild wattle groves, I started to get rid of them, in total ignorance of the scale and nature of the project, seeing only that these trees from Australia were an ugly blight on the landscape and also very thirsty, and in every way a nasty pest that required destruction.

These many acres of trees had already attracted the attentions of another blight on the landscape, namely the charcoal and pulp merchants, who were keen to help me with this task; in fact they even said that they would pay me for the privilege of chopping them down.

This seemed, in my innocence, a win-win situation; I could look good and get paid for it, what a dream; I could wander around in a daze while the sweating classes toiled in the sun to magically transform these overgrown hectares into pristine pasture, and pay me to boot. Aah, the sweet delusions of the innocent. What actually happened was somewhat different. The first crowd to be given access to my estate was a ginger haired chap in a battered Toyota with some saws in the boot and a fat wife in the back. He assured me on his holy book, confirmed by his nodding spouse, that he would remove the trees and pay me R20 per ton. Not a fortune, and any thoughts of actually pocketing real folding money went the way of all great expectations.

Rustling up a crowd of no doubt illegal labourers who encamped in nasty tin and scrap hovels erected in the bushes, with women and children in tow, they started to hack, cut and chop at the bush, reducing the landscape to barren earth. They stripped the bark and loaded the timber into huge piles of tree skeletons to be removed for some other avaricious buggers to transform into ladies’ magazines and cheque-books. Great piles of twigs and rubbish remained. It turns out that only about 10% of the tree is useful, and the rest was kindly left on the exhausted land for me to dispose of, which I did with a handy match, sending vast plumes of smoke into the atmosphere! Not as green as one would like. Furthermore the intense heat of these fires was very destructive to the already abused earth, turning it into grey and black dust that looked very, very dead.

Within weeks we were left with devastated acres of bare earth and blackened stumps that seemed to be suitable only for the wattle that sprang up like grass! This was not good and though the progress of the tree cutters was impressive indeed it helped little as they were creating a bigger problem behind them. I watched this process with trepidation and distress; the place looked a lot better with the trees, which as I mentioned, were growing back with startling vigor.

Acting swiftly, the first thing I did was fire the chainsaw merchants, who incidentally had avoided making payments of any kind; timber merchants are up there with bankers and second hand car dealers as crooks of note. This gave me a chance to consolidate my position, dig in and defend, by golly. I bolted off to the local farm kit supplier who cheerfully supplied me with a large bottle of an appropriately labeled substance called Death To All (or was it Kurdish Mist), anyway something with instructions that were printed in tiny weenie type that was almost illegible but seemed to indicate that it should be treated with some caution. I was assured by the supplier that it was very safe; one could drink the stuff if one was so inclined, with no ill effects, but it would make short work of my wattle problem.

Cool, thinks I, and from the bushes I shook a large crowd of raggedy people to spread it about. They, however, needed to be kitted out with all sorts of gear to attend to the task; from sprayers to bush cutters, to pangas, the list was endless. They had to be accommodated, fed and watered; we were hemorrhaging treasure! I was spending every waking hour charging around keeping them in water to spray, sharpening their knives, hoes and implements of destruction, which required me to struggle up and down the hillside with heavy loads, all of which was a massive drain on the pocket of my long suffering partner.

This realization came as a slow dawning, as country tides are wont to do. The sheer size of the problem was a nightmare, with endless logistical problems on an agricultural, nay, a planetary scale. In retrospect it is all blindingly clear, but at the time it came upon me so slowly that only after I was well out of my depth, halfway up the cliff, standing alone in the devastation with no friends, did the truth dawn. And then it was too late, I had to go forward. I had cheerfully attacked these trees, thinking that they would just disappear and the old grasses would come back, but all that I had achieved was to awaken a sleeping dragon. The battle lines had been drawn, the challenge given and accepted, the trees so recently chained, sawed and burnt to the ground rose up like a gathering wave and grew back at a rate that was simply inconceivable; far faster than my small team of Wattle Warriors and I could fight back.

Let me paint you a picture of what confronted me. I had cut down say, 50 hectares of tree, burnt the leftover rubbish and there before my eyes was the stark results of my actions. It looked like a napalm bomb had hit the place; devastation is not an exaggeration. The hillside was hard as concrete, baked to a biscuit by 50 years under trees that had sucked every drop of water out of the ground and killed all life below them. Furthermore, this poor suffering land was pierced by razor-sharp, fire-blackened stumps which denied us all access by any form of rubber-tired vehicle.

After much discussion in the roadside school of deep wisdom with various overweight farmer types, the way forward was disclosed to me. It made depressing contemplation. My raggedy band and I would have to first spray the re-growth, then, by hand mind you, plant seed to get the grass to establish itself before the whole farm was washed away! Not an easy or quick job and many, many acres to cover. My Wattle Warriors and I had our hands full and I had no idea what I was doing, this was new territory, full of hidden costs and unforeseen problems. Daily we went forth on the tractor to these fields of shattered dreams.

I soon realized that this was also a very seasonal thing, and of course when the time came to do something like spray or plant there would arise a circumstance to prevent this. I do not wish to even try to imagine the difficulties of actually growing things - plant slaughter is hard enough. I grew to be intimate with subjects whose existence I had never even suspected! The wonders of bush cutters and chainsaws became a routine occurrence, the cost and intricacies of various herbicides and grass seeds were meat and 3 veg to me. Dealing with a 3 meter high re-growth of hedge-thick vegetation on a 45 degree slope was just another day in the office; and over and above all this I became a big player in the garden glove and gum boot business.

Thus did five long years go past, hectare by hectare, over rocky bits and steep bits and then steeper bits, hauling water and bodies around the place from early morning till late at night, a never-ending struggle against the elements, crooked wood cutters, bad weather, the seasons and the trying attitudes of underpaid and deeply deprived ‘wekkers’ all conspired with the perennial lack of funds to keep me wedded to the land. I learnt mechanical fundamentals such as the fact that diesel motors do not have spark plugs, and a number of other equally useless snippets that will only be deployed should I try a similar project in the future - and really, life is definitely too short for that to happen.

There were many compensations, it is true. As the trees fell, vistas opened before me that blew the brain away with their majesty. I felt like an impresario pulling aside a green curtain to amaze and boggle. The marvels that were revealed behind the trees were and are truly more than I had ever dreamed possible. Time drifted past and the wounds of past sins were slowly and gently healed and the land seemed, to my romantic eyes, to actually appreciate the work I was doing. I felt like a little fish on a whale, cleaning out the great gentle creature’s wounds and laying a dressing of grass over the exposed flesh.

Mind you, these wattles did not just roll over and die, they are rather like terrorists; you stop them here and they spring up there. The seeds seem to be almost immortal and live hidden for years waiting for a moment of distraction to spring back. The truth is that even after all the toil done, should the estate be ignored for just a couple of years, all that work would be lost. Every two years the whole estate will have to be gone over with spray, panga and fire to prevent a recurrence. Like diabetes, it is a manageable complaint but miss one treatment and all is lost. This realization raises one’s enthusiasm for the work the government is attempting with their ‘Wekking fo wota’ program, the size of the plague and the difficulty of removing the trees and keeping them so, makes it seem an impossible goal to achieve. And then the plantation boys go and plant more and more of these exotic trees with nary a care, it is immoral and we are bequeathing a desert to our children’s children.

When the wild wattle was finally ground down in abject surrender under my iron fist, I turned my gimlet eyes to the blue gums planted some 30 years ago. Once again I was in negotiation with the timber crooks who had managed to extract large amounts of wood from these persecuted lands without paying the sainted land owner, and again my matches did their ting leaving me with nothing but trouble and strife.

At this point I thought that I knew all there was to know about killing trees, but killing the wattle is not the same as killing the blue gum, not by a long chalk. Your wattle tree will die when cut but then, as I have said, it sends a signal to all the seeds that have been hiding under its skirts, sending a veritable blanket of them to avenge their mama. The blue gum is a less invasive creature than the wattle, but damn, is this a hardy tree or what? Nothing eats either, nothing can live in or on or under these selfish trees, but the blue gum can also take any abuse you can dish out. They seem to actually enjoy the saw, and the stumps spring back with greater vigor than before. Although we had applied some chemical to the stumps on cutting, this had a very low percentage success rate and only killed about 15% of the stumps; the ‘Spawn of the Devil’ juice seemed however to do the trick, but fate and exotics had more in store for us. Although the leaves faded and died with satisfying swiftness after an application of Devil spawn, I was distressed to find that the next season they sprang back with even greater strength. It seemed that a dose of this particular chemical did nothing to the actual life of the tree. I also noticed that this spawn I was spreading around with such gay abandon killed everything it touched, without discrimination, except the blue gum - in fact they seemed to enjoy it. Everything else died, creating a wasteland around the blue gums.

At this stage in the proceedings as you may imagine, I had become inordinately friendly with the local chemical candy man, he was a regular visitor, with his pick-up full of pricey bottles, stuff that not in my wildest dreams had I ever thought existed or I would ever want, who prescribed an even more expensive substance than before but one which would only kill the offending party. First we went at them with some stuff appropriately called Chopper, as each stump had to be chopped at to get the stuff in, which did the trick, but as every stump required 20 minutes’ serious toil by some poor peasant, and thousands to destroy, even at slave wages that still came to many piles of dosh and so that plan was swiftly abandoned.

Finally I was able to access the forces of the state. The powers that be had been less than obliging about my travails even though they were sending teams all over the place to rid us of these pests. The combination of my inability to deal with the authorities at the best of times, and the centralized, socialist inefficiencies of the government were sufficient to keep us apart. However I did find a chap down in Barberton who had some connection with ‘Weking fo wota’, who suggested that I use his juju juice, and as he was willing to supply it for free his argument was irresistible. Let the candy man rot, says I.

Costa, for that was his unlikely moniker, is a saint in my eyes and seemed to have unlimited supplies of mortality-in-a-bottle for the likes of myself to spread about, with, it seemed to me, no control whatsoever. I just called the fellow, chased him around the countryside for a few weeks and then basically cornered him and got as many bottles as I needed, for free. At 3 grand a bottle this was a blessing indeed, especially as I could also use it on the wattle re-growth that still came up through the grass we had planted, meaning that I no longer had to burn to keep the buggers at bay. For the first time in my life I had experienced the hand of a helpful administration; it felt good. VIVA ANC Viva!

This latest contribution to the effort was indeed a blessing as the stuff in no uncertain terms laid the toughest old gum stump to permanent rest with nary a twitch from the surrounding grasses. Joy! Well, not unbridled celebration, even this stuff only got to 60% of the stumps and it can only be applied at certain times in the year and requires a great deal of very heavy water to be carried vast distances to where the offending growth has chosen to germinate. I now truly appreciate the misery of our women who hump water.

My wattle team slowly got smaller till we were reduced to just 5, and then the one got drunk and tried to molest another, and then we were four; till one day I stepped out for an early morning stretch and casting my eye around the estate for the next battle field I realized that the war was won!

HOORAY!

There were and always will be pockets of resistance, one can never stop, but the estate was to all intents and purposes clear of the enemy. It had been a long haul and I was reduced to renting rooms to pay for it but now I was confidant the rewards would pour in. I could gaze across my hills, and where there had previously been a screen of green, there was now a vista of the Komati valley. Water started to run where no water had run before, crystal clear streams down old familiar places. The local cowboys seeing all this luvverly grass soon persuaded me to rent them my pastures for actual cash money, but best of all, the animals came back. Nature abhors a vacuum and the little critters returned to these now hospitable fields. It is a very slow process for an impatient city boy, even a converted one such as I, but my profound ignorance of things botanical is being redressed, as the beasties and foliage arrive individually and severally, giving the thick (such as me) a chance to learn their names.

When I first moved into the house there were just 2 doves in attendance. I now have in residence, in order of appearance, a pair of red wing starlings under the stoep, widow and red-breasted sunbirds, a family of bulbuls, a pair of mocking chats, some Cape thrushes, some familiar-looking something-or-others, and most recently, a crested barbet: what a show at my bird restaurant. The doves are now prolific, and the smaller critters like bees, rats, mice, ants and others have all decided to come and stay too, which is most gratifying. I am becoming acquainted with the baboons who like to visit, and their old chief and I now have a nodding relationship based on mutual distrust - he is a very big and fearsome fellow. I have klipspringers, mountain rhebok, porcupines, and I am sure that I saw leopard spoor by the dam the other day, very exciting!

I now roam over the estate, still, it is true, bending over every now and then to tear an offending sapling from the ground or whipping out my handy pen knife (that the converted country boy must always wear) to bark the larger trees that have escaped the net. Norah and Poppy, the last permanent force members of the Wattle Warriors do still get driven from their tourism toil to go forth into the wilderness to kill and destroy. We have won the battle and now I am converted to the evil and destructive regime that we are visiting upon these vast monoculture plantations.

They are a completely inappropriate form of land use, and in every way they reflect the irresponsibility of corporate ownership. The huge Sappi and Mondi plantations have destroyed vast areas of our wonderful country; much of the grassland will never recover, all in the name of corporate profit. These plantations, the green plague, these green deserts, destroy everything in their path, including human settlement and the underground water systems. For this, these vast companies take no responsibility, and seem quite happy to bequeath the ruin and suffering they create onto future generations with nary a care. South Africa now boasts the largest land area under plantation in the world, and do not kid yourself, plantations are not forests. They are silent, like graves.

Well, that is the end of my tale and I hope that you, dear reader, now realize what an intractable and dangerous thing is happening to our country, with this silent and growing man-made plague. When you are driving past endless tree plantations, do not think forest, think of the real cost that these corporate thieves are laying at your door. Think how they are stealing the future and remember too that they are well aware of their bad accounting, that they are taking our water, and the land’s natural beauty, with no thought of rehabilitation.

I know now what it would take to repair their damage, far more than the profit that is made by these companies, and I have realized that the destruction of biodiversity caused by exotic plantations can never truly be repaired. The grasslands that the plantation-wallahs portray as barren wilderness are actually the oldest ecosystems in the world, irreplaceable and uniquely necessary to the balance of nature on the continent. The destruction wrought by these plantations reaches all the way to the sea, along the rivers, and this loss is not accounted for in the return on investment from the plantations. I do not see the forestry accountants paying for the flood damage that is getting worse every year as rain just washes off the plantations into rivers and into the sea, rather than being held in the soil as the grasslands would do, yet more and more plantations are being planted!

I have done my bit now and have the scars to prove it. My estate, once a barren, impenetrable dead zone, is now a desirable tourism destination and a constant joy to me and my partners. I am no longer able to abide the plantations that cover our land, and I have once again returned to the familiar fence from whence I came, but let this be a lesson to more than just me: land used by those who care only for short term profit will be destroyed, and the suffering that this will bring to the people who come after us will be far greater than the small change that the timber merchants take to squander on their executives and shareholders. We will have to pay for our brothers’ greed, so we better add this crime to our list of things to change.