How To Buy A Couch In South Africa

I just have to share this.

Jo Pete is a 50 odd year old Rhodesian rascal who builds roads, dams, mines or whatever, with his H.Q. in Jo’Berg, South Africa - at the moment. Thus the Jo. When he was working in Mozambique it was Moz Pete, Botswana = Bots Pete, but for some strange reason when he was in the Congo, he never posted as Con Pete. This is from a forum I am a member of and was posted this morning by him. I have not messed with it.

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Helluva thing. I've jhust been to buy a new couch. Told them it was for my dog and I had to be sure he liked it before I bought it. Jock was called off the back of the bakkie outside and invited past the no dogs sign onto the couch. He made merry on the couch until the store manager arrived and demanded in a pretty hostile voice what the hell was going on. Jock did not like his tone so bit him good.
Anyway we didn't buy the couch, manager is threatening further action. My advice to the manager was to get an anti tet jab choppers as Jocks mouth is vrot from all the rotten meat I feed him.
I am home on a 4 day month end break,well deserved I might add. I will keep you posted on the Jock situation but I have a feeling that there is a bit of kak coming my way.

This bit was posted this afternoon…

The Jockie thing is now resolved to my total satisfaction. Whilst tact & diplomacy are not my strong suites I can be smooth talking and a complete gent when the situation requires it. I was at my all time best today. I have bought the couch at a discount. The amount of the discount covered a new pair of rods for the manager and an anti tet jab. I have guaranteed that Jockie will be admonished in the strongest possible way. I have also promised that next time I buy Jockie a leather couch I will go to another store.

Zimbabwe Prepares for Agriculture Show

The Harare Show, to be opened by Equatorial Guinea's dictator Teodoro Obiang Ngeuma, will feature exhibitions including more than 100 cattle, goats,
pigs, guinea fowl, rabbits and chickens, the state Sunday Mail reported,
citing organizers.

One planned highlight is a livestock auction on Thursday, and as Zimbabwe
once southern Africa's main agricultural exporter faces acute shortages of
meat and staple foods, many of the animals were expected to quickly
disappear into the cooking pot.

Organizers said the show's theme this year was

"Our Task to Feed the Nation, Time for Innovation."

One highlight of the show is a plastic milk bottle containing almost a litre of petroleum. It will be encased behind bullet proof glass and guarded by a legion of war veterans to control the huge masses of visitors paying Z$300,000 for a glimpse of this incredibly rare commodity.

Eagerly anticipated will be the Rhodesia stand, organised by a few middle aged men living in cyber space. On display will be a full range of Rhodesian currency, including the extremely rare R$10 note that was the highest denomination ever printed.

Visitors to the stand will be greeted by a full scale statue of the late Wrex Tarr, dressed in a light blue Rhodesian made Safari Suit with matching long blue socks and a black comb just peeping out.
For a small fee, people will be able to purchase a Nanny Nostalgic Pack, made up of a standard monthly ration that was given to female domestic workers in the cities and towns on top of their wages. It consists of 20kg of Mielie meal, 12 candles, 2 boxes of lion matches, 1 bar of Sunlight soap, 5 kg of ‘ration meat’ and 10 Kingsgate cigarettes.

The Rhodies are expecting to shift 7 million of the packs!

I have always had a soft spot for this show. Back in the ‘good old days’ it was called the Salisbury Agriculture Show.

It wasn’t just for agriculture. As a kid in the early ‘70s, I went often. Most of us were not interested at looking at the animals, although there were plenty of them being presented. It was the other part that was the best fun. Most of Rhodesia’s industries were there, displaying their goods in the hundreds of stands spread out over the show grounds. Some of the larger firms had rather fancy buildings, whilst the small entrepreneur would have to make do with a three sided, asbestos roofed allotment.

I seem to recall that the show was of a week’s duration and seemed to fall during school holidays. A few of my class mates would arrange to get jobs. One of them was the gorgeous Cindy Tait. She would lie her bikini clad perfect body on a ‘couch’ perched over a swimming pool, and for a fee, people could throw a ball at a target and try to disengage a locking mechanism that would plunge her into the rather cool water. I could never afford to try. I once had a job there. Dressed as a St Johns First Aider, I went around dispensing headache pills. I received no pay but I gained free entry and as many hamburgers to shove down my throat as possible.

In the very early ‘70s, there might have been a few foreign displays but I only ever recall the large South African one. The most popular of all for the adults was the one from the National Breweries. For some strange reason the people went in with eager brisk steps, stayed for hours and always staggered out!

The in-thing for us kids, was to wander around getting as many free samples of anything, (which invariably just got chucked away), and then it was down to the Lunar Park fun fair to spend your pocket money on the ‘Danglers’ (15 cents a go) and the ‘Octopus’ (25 cents a go). The Octopus was the scariest fun ride of them all. Once, in the ‘70s, one of the cabs with two kids inside took off, flew over the security fence and landed on a pile of gawkers peering through the fence, killing three of them. Was that kill-joy or what!

Health and safety regulations didn’t exist, so going on the Danglers was tantamount to suicide. As soon as the thing moved off, several things could happen. The person behind would give you a savage kick in the arse, sending your long chain suspended chair crashing into the person in front, normally leaving your exposed shins bleeding from the impact.

In a state of shock you would latch on too the chains of the poor sap you have just crashed into. As the centrifugal force really took hold, the entire contraption of screaming, fear induced, vomiting kids, were spun around like ants on a gyroscope. You then gave the chair’s occupant a double kick boost. This sent the eye bulging, shit filled pants kid into an orbit that incredibly was almost parallel to the madly spinning ground, before they were brought to a bone crushing halt in a pile of jingling chains as they crashed dived into the next person in line. This bit of fun would be repeated along the whole circumference, leaving the happy joy riders visibly scarred mentally and physically for life.

This was also the place for the vain attempt at chatting girls up. I remember bumping into a school friend of mine, Clare Finlason, just as she and another girl had been approached by two 17 year old hopefuls, who having managed to get a hold of a beer or two and whose line of chat was as stimulating as a gas filled corpse. Clare ascertained very quickly that they were from Prince Edward School and asked what they thought of their headmaster and was it true that he caned boys really hard? The grinning apes then went on to describe their headmaster in terms modern day Zimbabweans refer to Robert Mugabe. Clare waited till they were finished and sweetly said

‘How nice, I’m his daughter. What did you say your names were again?’

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If anyone out there has any little interesting stories from the show, please Email me and I will add them here. AND pictures please!

For Sale: Zimbabwe (formally Rhodesia) Pvt. Ltd.

We have been authorised by our client, a well respected African statesman, to sell off his company, Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd. to the highest bidder on the internet auction site eBay. Starting bid will be US 1 cent. There is no reserve.

Our client, who wishes to remain anonymous, intends to step down from the position of managing director and to look forward to a well deserved retirement.

Sadly, his pension fund was recently confiscated by the British government, desperate to finance their collapsing economy. Our client believes that the sale of his company will raise enough for him to continue to live out his remaining days in a modest life style that a man of his position deserves.

The company is situated in Southern Africa and is easily accessible by swimming crocodile infested rivers to the north and south, by climbing a 5000 foot high range of hills to the east, or a short walk through the Kalahari Desert to the west.

Assets.

The company owns land approximately the size of Texas. Most of it is fertile and could be used for farming. There has been a recent problem with white squatters, but they have either been murdered or run-off their illegal shacks.

Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd. employs a staff of approximately 12 million. This consists of upper management of 4000, who keep the day to day operations running smoothly, assisted by the firm’s own Security department of 100,000 men.

4 million workers are presently on holiday overseas or in neighbouring lands, and the rest are fully occupied looking for something to eat. The average age of non-management staff is less than 40 years, many preferring early exits, so there is a constant influx of fresh blood.

All workers are enthusiastic and hard working; in fact most of them earn several million dollars a month. A few disgruntled part timers, mostly of British origin, will be dismissed as soon as the British government finalises evacuation plans.

Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd. has an excellent accountancy division that keeps its books perfectly balanced by printing as much money as it needs. All loans to any international credit institutions are simply ignored.

The firm has a fleet of 14 aircraft at its disposal, however, 13 of them are presently undergoing their annual inspection but they will be flying again in the not so distant future.

The company is presently revamping it mining operations which are a long term project, and as such, returns are approx. 90% lower than in 1980.

Also listed are several lodges, scattered throughout the companies’ premises, which are used for visitors. Presently they are only 17% occupied, due to restructuring of their kitchens. Once food is again readily available, the company is sure that 100% occupancy will again transpire.

Other assets of interest:

A large fleet of brand-new Mercedes-Benz limousines, used by management.

Two Chinese made 78 seater buses, 12 Ox-drawn carts and 53 bicycles used by the rest of the staff.

A small television and radio station operating 2 hours a day if electricity is available.

They are used to promote firm efficiency alongside light entertainment with Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo repeats.

Several hospitals and clinics, but these are presently understaffed due to the summer/winter holidays. The same goes for the staff training centres.

A handful of wild animals. It is hoped that the last of these will soon be converted into more profitable ventures, such as handbags, and briefcases.

A full list can be made available to any interested parties for a small fee of US $10 million. Please make bank guaranteed cheques out to: Robert. G. Mugabe.

‘Be Prepared’ to do a runner.

With all this Boy Scout story writing, it is a bit of coincidence that this year the 21st World Scout Jamboree celebrated 100 years of the global Scouting movement, which began when Robert Baden-Powell took 20 boys on a camping trip on Brownsea Island in Dorset in 1907.

As it was reported in the Evening Standard 21^st of August,

As thousands from 162 nations enjoyed the activities at Hylands Park in Chelmsford, Essex, 13 of their brethren disappeared.

Nine Scouts from Bangladesh and Uganda never arrived at the campsite, while four from Sri Lanka and Nigeria vanished during the 12-day event.

Now, I wonder what happened to them?

Simon Carter, a spokesman for the Scouting Association, said four slipped away during the jamboree, but the other nine did not arrive at the park. He added: "Somewhere between the airport and the campsite, they went missing - at which point we have no control over them.

Well, I have it from a very good source that all these figures are not correct. Out of 30 Scouts who went from Zimbabwe, 3 also disappeared. This was not reported in the local press.

The best vanishing act done recently though was in Germany, when the entire Sri Lankan handball team mysteriously disappeared once they had arrived. They had been issued visas from the embassy in Sri Lanka for the proposed tour. It turned out that there was no official Sri Lankan handball team!

I wonder how many athletes will compete in the illegal immigrant dash during London’s Olympic games? Might be worth putting a few pennies down at the bookies. They are offering 3-1 odds on between 5 and 10 thousand ‘runners’.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23407790-details/Are+13+Scouts+out+to+get+their+Illegal+Immigrant+badge/article.do

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Referee Rob Styles was forced into a humiliating public climbdown yesterday as he apologised to Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez for wrongly awarding Chelsea a penalty at Anfield on Sunday.

As usual there is uproar and plenty of suggestions how to stop future incidents.
I thought about this for a few minutes and came to the conclusion that if the players all played by the rules, why do you need a referee! These players receive wages in the region of £50k a week, presumably because they are top professionals and are expected to know the rules. So I say, let them play their matches with out a referee.

Now that would be a great spectacle to watch!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml;jsessionid=41152ZBOW33SLQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/sport/2007/08/21/sfnfro121.xml

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I got a bit of a shock listening to this for the first time in twenty odd years. I never realised how much of it is in Chilapalapa! I really struggled to recall what little I had ever learnt. Hopefully there will be more of the late Wrex Tarr’s masterpieces to hear for free soon. This one is about the Exodus.

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For those vaguely interested in my Open University comment to the story of Sixpence and the Great White Bwana, here it is. There will be no more extracts from the book posted here. Don’t worry, it is barely 10%. So, now I have to get back to finish writing it.

Although this story is part of my memoirs, it has been completely re-written and severely edited to attain the allowed word count. Originally it was done in the first-person. The memoirs covering my school years in Rhodesia are made of several separate stories, all done in various styles. For this story, I used a third-person limited narration approach, because I believed it was the most appropriate.

This kind of narrative, a fusion of first and third perspectives, is based on the way White Rhodesians told anecdotes using the name Sixpence as the typical stereotype for a Black person. It would be told in an exaggerated English accent spoken by the Black populace. I personally believe that it was the White Rhodesians who inadvertently mimicked the natives’ natural style of story telling. Often the narrative would be interspersed with a pidgin language called Chilapalapa, which blends elements of the Ndebele, Shona and English languages. I decided against using Chilapalapa, as I thought it would be a distraction. The absolute expert in this style of story telling during the ‘70s in Rhodesia was the late Wrex Tarr. His L.P recording Yeno Lo Chilapalapa , is still hugely popular amongst the Ex-pats of Southern Africa. It was never considered racial. Tarrs’ anecdotes had diverse themes ranging from James Bond to the Exodus with Moses.

To create the ‘voice’ I had to constantly speak out loud the lines in this theatrical style of the English language. Listening to Wrex Tarr, for the first time in over 20 years, after I have written my story, I was pleased to see that I had followed the style of the ‘voice’ quite well. It is normally spoken with exaggerated tones and constant use of body language. Grammar and vocabulary is kept deliberately simple. Swear words are kept to the minimum and never vulgar.

The reader is given no description of the main characters. It is only important to know that one is a wily buffoon servant, the other a condescending master. My story is obviously satirical. Sixpence is me, and I am White, but I am nowhere as well educated as the Bwana and I could never have matched his culinary skills. The cultural differences in the dialogue are designed to emphasise this. However, the hero of the story has to be the underdog, ‘poor’ Sixpence, who at the end triumphs over the clever ‘Great White Bwana’.

Modern Black Zimbabwean writers have honed this satirical approach to their story telling to perfection. Sixpence, the Colonial stereotype, has been replaced by more up to date characters; in Lenox Mhlanga’s column Breaking the wind (2007), in the New Zimbabwe newspaper, tells of Black University graduates in London looking for work. Unable to use their qualifications, they learn to lie at the job agencies and list experiences from fork-lift operator to care worker with obvious hilarious results. Again ‘poor’ Sixpence has to do battle with ‘Bwana’, now represented by the British establishment, and get out of the situation as best as possible. They do that, of course, with great success.

It is late Sunday afternoon. I am rather mentally tired after doing this. It is not easy if you haven’t done a video before. It wasn’t helped by the weather, which is so miserable, that even the internet connection appeared to be soggy.

I was prohibited to put any more chapters of my forth coming book on my blog for you to read. I immediately thought of a way around. So here is the abridged story that I am handing in for my assignment for the Open University. There is a lot missing that will be replaced for the book. I have to do a 500 word summery before I send it, but I can’t be arsed today anymore after all this work. I will put it up in a couple of days.

I hope you enjoy this. BUT, you can’t read it – you will have to listen to it!

I had to do it in two parts. Total time is about 12 minutes.

The Amazing Cooked-Up Story of

The Great White Bwana and His Trusty Servant Sixpence.

100th Posting

Greetings readers,

I am sort of back in the land of the living, albeit dragging my feet like a slow motion Zombie in Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Today is a special day. It is the 100 th posting on this little bog, er Blog. So we have a mixed bag of all sorts to cheer up your day.

Before that, let’s have a few stats about this Blog.

Amount of Visitors so far, adding the previous counter to the present one – 13,200. Of which 12,000 is me clicking away every 10 minutes!

Longest time spent on my Blog. Approx 13 hours by someone in Norway, but I got a sneaky suspicion the page was left accidentally on overnight.

Number of abusive comments – an amazing null!

Number of direct verbal threats of physical violence being performed on my body due to something I have written on the Blog – One. (So if I don’t post for a month, could someone notify the funeral parlour.)

Number of people who are awaiting with baited breath to purchase my forthcoming masterpiece – 32

Number of people who don’t give a shite – 2

Wackiest comment – Someone who thought my name was Susan and tried to chat me up!

Most popular story – Learning Afrikaans. If you haven’t read it yet, to save you scrolling the archives, here is the direct link

http://lastrhodesian.blogspot.com/2006/02/learning-afrikaans.html

That is enough for the moment. Okay, on with the show. Grab a drink and put your feet up as this is a long one…

Are you white and English and looking for a job in the United Kingdom? Well you can forget it. The government of the UK is going out of its way to racially discriminate against its own people. Here is a little excerpt from an article from the Daily Express, 9^th of August.

In the name of cultural diversity, Labour attacks anything that smacks of Englishness. The mainstream public are treated with contempt, their rights ignored , their history trashed. In their own land, the English are being turned into second-class citizens.
This trend was highlighted this week by the case of Abigail Howarth, a bright teenager who applied for a training position with the Environment Agency in East Anglia but was turned down because she was too white and English. The post, which carries a £13,000 grant, was open only to ethnic minorities, including the Scots, Welsh and Irish.

It is well worth a look at the whole article…

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/15991/How-the-Government-has-declared-war-on-white-English-people

What this article fails to point out, that there is one huge minority class in the UK that is constantly harassed. These people of all ages and sex, have been literally forced to congregate on the streets and open places, some willing to stand in freezing temperatures or pouring rain, to practise a tradition brought over from America by some nutcase, called Walter.

Nutty Walt, as he was affectionally known by, unable to find (thieve) gold ingots to repay the loan on his ship, was tricked by some dodgy Red Skins into buying tons of Gold leaf. Upon his return to the UK he discovered that the stuff was useless. Pulling off one of the greatest bits of spin (almost as good as the WMD in Iraq story), he conned people into sticking them in their mouths and setting fire to them. The result was that the victims head was enveloped in smoke and was supposed to be a lot better off for it. Thus the term, ‘he is a smoker’. Walt had his head chopped off by Queen Elizabeth I, for smoking in her chambers and in 2007 Queen Elizabeth II got the government to fine every one £50 for smoking anywhere but in their own homes.

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Here in the UK, all vehicles are required by law to have a valid M.O.T. Now according to the government web site,

Your MOT certificate confirms that at the time of the test your vehicle met, as far as can be reasonably determined without dismantling, the minimum acceptable environmental and road safety standards required by law.

This is all well and good, but what does M.O.T. actually stand for? Mother Of a Test,
Made Of Tin? Amazingly I couldn’t find on the site what it does stand for. However, on the way back from Scotland the other day, using up my free first class Virgin rail ticket, the waiter solved this problem by waving at me a teapot and saying with a rather heavy Scottish accent,

‘any more tea?’

So there you have it!

We all know the world is in a right sorry mess, but I do think it’s a shame to take it out on the poor gorillas. Maybe the perpetrators got confused with guerrillas. Either way, this recent massacre appears not to have been done by poachers, as the bodies were left where they were shot, and intact. Such a waste, there aren’t many left now. I was in the Virunga National Park in the mid ‘80s (the Rwanda side) and had the luck of getting to see these magnificent creatures close up. The tourists had been warned not to look any directly in the eye, as this could be interpreted as an act of aggression.

I nearly had a Silver-Back pull my head off, before I realised that my 500mm telephoto mirror lens was just about the biggest evil eye this particular great ape had seen. The things I have to do to get a bit of attention!

More details here –

http://www.gorillas.org/gorilla_Shootings_July07

As usual we have to have a bit of the old Zimbo Loony Tunes. So what’s new in La-La- Land where everyone’s a millionaire, but the shops are empty? Not a lot really. A quick skim through the last few days postings on www.zimbabwesituation.com revealed the usual. Namely, that it is all the white mans fault. Yawn, this is starting to get boring. A couple of giggles were there. For example –

Zimbabwe army officers have stormed Ross Camp police
station in Bulawayo and recovered hundreds of looted grocery items from
police officers enforcing a controversial price crackdown that began last
June.

Sources at Ross Camp said the soldiers stormed the housing complex at
the main police station and conducted a thorough house-to-house search to
flush out police officers who had looted the basic goods.

Then there was this one –

Millions of Chinese made faulty vibrators are being withdrawn. Thousands of women have been left gutted! Catholic Nuns raid Anglican churches accused of hoarding candles!

Okay, I made that one up, but which story is more believable?

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Edinburgh Art Festival is always a joy to visit. Whilst I was there, by absolute pure chance, I came across a tiny exhibition in the foyer of some large theatre on Princess Street. A white lady by the name of Diane had come over with a small selection of Shona carvings. We had a nice little chat. I asked her if she had seen any of the sights. She said that she had but the most remarkable was the supermarket!

Approaching Euston train station from Euston Square Underground, there is a row of metal boxes full of free newspapers. One of them is called The New Zimbabwe. This was issue No.4. (They have a website at www.newzimbabwe.com which has Issue No.5 up.) What an excellent little paper. One article was about a man, who after being found naked in a woman’s room and being caught after a short chase, admitted to possessing ‘mubobobo’ (I have spelt it correctly, not mumbo-jumbo, although when you read on you might think so), a form of ‘juju’, which allows a man to be intimate with a women without her consent or knowledge. The paper went on to say that the enraged husband, when he turned up, attempted to axe the culprit, who under questioning from angry neighbours admitted to have been doing quite a bit of the old, ‘in and out’, on sleeping victims.

The best bit is at the end. The officer commanding crime in Marondera, Supt. Darlington Mathuthu, said the man had been arrested and would face charges…wait for it… ‘unlawful entry into private property.’ Hah hah hah. Nice one.

I am happy to see that Zimbabwe humour is still first class. Story telling is a fine art. For my latest assignment for the Open University, I took a piece from LOTR Part 1 and completely redid it. I decided to take this particular story and write it in the classical way the Rhodesian Whites related an anecdote using the stereotype Blackman, ‘Sixpence’. There is nothing racialist in this approach. If the story was about some absurd White character, his name would of course been ‘Van der Merwe’, the Afrikaans slope headed rock spider. The English use ‘Paddy’ for most of their little witty dittys, unless it involves Germans, in which case they are called ‘Fritz’ or ‘Hans’, etc etc. I think you get my drift.

In my little story, Sixpence is actually WHITE! I have been forced to convert the adventures of Sixpence into 1500 words for the assignment, which must be finished in less than a week. However, I will return it into a fully blown story for my book, and as a special treat, I hope that the next posting will have the first few paragraphs to give you a bit of a teaser.

In The New Zimbabwe newspaper I came across another great story teller. His name is Lenox Mhlanga and he has a column called, Breaking The Wind. The column is hilarious. Sixpence is now gone of course, but he is replaced by all sorts of characters, nearly all with University degree who are in London looking for work. In this brilliantly written spoof (based on a lot of fact) our heroes have been down to the local agency, and applied for every job going, happily ticking boxes such as: Forklift Operator, Crane Driver etc.

It gets really funny when one successful applicant, after lying he is a professional Care Worker, nearly breaks his back whilst pushing some old biddy around the residential home in a wheel chair. For some reason he doesn’t understand why the thing leaves black rubber marks all over the vinyl floor, until eventually someone explains to him that the thing has brakes and they are still on!

The last bit I have to report about Zimbabwe, is of a strange meeting that Mad Bob had with the demented members of his politburo. One clown pulls out a list of Zimbabwe related websites and other lying bastard colonial racialist western news web sources. 51 in all. They also had several printouts from these sauces and the lads were not amused. Sadly, I am not on it. BUT as Barbara the co-webmaster of Zimbabwe Situation proudly pointed out to me, they ARE! Lucky sods!

www.zimbabwesituation.com

Anyway, this is all well and good, but what they going to do about it? Er, that’s what they said and they agreed to mull over it, because at that point in time, they don’t have a bloody clue.

I must wrap up in a bit, as this posting is getting rather long. I noticed over on the web site, South Africa Sucks, that they commentated there had been little or no coverage in the local press of the Expat protest march, in London on the 12^th of August. They were trying to raise awareness of the high level of crime sweeping through South Africa. It was given front page headlines by the free newspaper, South African, which claims to have 105.000 readers a week, but I didn’t see a report anywhere else. Fact is, Whites protesting about Blacks in South Africa will never get covered by the western press. We all know why, don’t we!

You don’t?

Well, everything that is wrong, tits-up, corrupt, anarchy, etc etc, to do with Africa is the White mans fault. This is an excepted fact. If, God forbid, that there are people (white ones) who try to point out that perhaps, just perhaps, this might not be the real situation; horrors’ of horrors, just put a legal blanket on it.

BUT, sadly for Big Brother, the internet is still free and we can get our information elsewhere.

There is a ZimFest in London, September 1. PRINCE GEORGES PLAYING FIELDS, BUSHEY RD, RAYNES PARK LONDON,SW20 9NB

If the weather is good, I will be going and hope to rope in a few Rhodie mates as well. It sounds like fun, so any one out there from London, maybe I see ya there. Details at

http://www.wezimbabwe.org

That’s it, catch ya laters alligators and please send comments and add to the poll, thanks.

Lore, Simply The Pest

The Country That Used To Exist

Here is a well written article about Rhodesia.

I recommend it, because it mentions ME!

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/country-that-used-to-exist.html

Heir To The Scottish Throne Gets Free Holiday

The British taxpayers love with royalty reached new heights this week when they happily contributed free board and lodgings for the future King of Scotland’s 5 year holiday.

The son of Idi Amin, Faisal Wangita, 25, was among a mob who beat Mahir Osman, 18, to death near Camden Tube station, London, in 2006.

Read all about it…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6929285.stm

Bits and Bobs

Sorry for not posting for a week, I have my kids here on holiday and I am also trying to wrap up my next assignment.

Someone asked me, on a comment, would I recommend Peter Godwin’s latest book, When The Crocodile Eats The Sun. I was also asked if he wrote in the style of a bleeding heart liberal dish cloth.

I haven’t got around to reading the above book, but I am at the moment reading for the second time the prequel, Mukiwa.

Godwin is a very clever and brave man. He is a well respected journalist and has done articles for National Geographic. His co-written historical book, Rhodesians Never Die, is perhaps the finest documented account of the impact of war and change on White Rhodesia 1970-1980. It is not the book for die hard Ian Smith fans.

I look forward to reading Godwin’s latest, as his memoir continues up to the present day. From the book description, it would appear that his once wealthy family are ruined by Mugabe. He might not be a fan of White Rhodesians, but he certainly dislikes Mugabe and has risked his life fighting him, but you will have to read Mukiwa first.

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I would like this opportunity to bring to your attention an interesting debate going on at the web site, Why South Africa Sucks (WSAS). Now called South Africa Sucks (SAS). My blog is linked to this site and as a result my traffic has doubled, which is great and many thanks to those people who take the time to read it.

I think they have been rather caught off guard with their rapid success and now have reached a cross road. Let me explain.

Imagine you meet someone at a boring party. In a corner, this person hangs around looking rather arrogant and leers at all the half-wits wandering gormlessly around. You approach this person and start a conversation. Before long it is apparent that the person is highly switched on, satirically witty, articulate and extremely entertaining. Within a short time, most of the other party goers are hanging around listening in. Just as things are going so good, the person, who had started to drink a lot, suddenly shits in his pants and starts screaming obscenities as a sort of phonetic punctuation.

Some people are so pissed by now, they don’t notice the bad smell, and had from the start, struggled to follow the persons thread. But as soon as the school yard garbage came out, they let up a huge cheer of understanding, rushed into the kitchen, found a roll of Black Pudding in the fridge, threw it in the micro-wave till it exploded, whilst chanting ‘the pig is dead’.

A few people, having just arrived because they had received a text message from some friends at the party, smelt one whiff and stuck around long enough to hear that, ‘a sodomising, spear throwing baboon, who likes eating babies raw organs, is President of South Africa’, and they head for the door, swearing never to go to the zoo again. As they leave, ‘the pig is dead’, chanters, run after them and smash empty bottles of Castle beer over their heads, whilst singing ‘We are marching to Pretoria’.

Meanwhile, you, who had at first, also had a good giggle at the original outburst of gutter slut verbalism, start to grow a tad weary and switch an automatic filter on.

The speaker now notices the restlessness and looks at the Cane and Orange in his hand. He thinks, ‘shall I down this or shall I have a glass of water?’

To wrap up – On holiday in Wales, day before yesterday.

People are odd. I was on the beach with my kids, playing ‘Botcha’. Well, that’s the name we know it by. A basic game - a small black ball is thrown a short distance and each player, with two weighted tennis sized balls, attempts to make points by throwing them nearest to the black ball.

The kids, bored with a normal, flat sandy playing field, decided to create all sorts of obstacles. Humps, ridges, bunkers etc, etc and it was great fun. Near us were a couple, in their early thirties. They packed up and left a rather nifty large sand castle with a deep moat and loads of turrets.

We promptly became ‘farm invaders’ and using the castle as the major attraction in a new playing field, spent the next 45 minutes systematically destroying it.

Suddenly, in the middle of a round, the previous constructors/occupiers/owners reappeared and went into some form of shock. The husband seemed to be rather afraid of us lot chatting hysterically away in German, and kept some distance away as he instructed his wife to walk slowly around the ‘castle’, PHOTOGRAPHING it as documentary evidence! Then they buggered off.

So whilst we waited for the police, we finished trashing the castle till it was completely flat, thus destroying the evidence.

If the rain stops to-day, maybe we go out and torch the local church.