Satirists think faster than journalists – we are clever because we have never thought we would ever be muzzled, killed maybe, trodden underfoot, have our bitter tasting tongues ripped out and had the ‘pen and pencil’ that was given as a present for all mankind… snatched back… taken away…till now!
With amazing dexterity, the US of Arseholes has declared war yet again. This time it is against us, the people who adore the ability to post complete shite, tittle-tattle and rub bad peoples’ noses in their own muck. There will be big trouble over this – not so much the leaked documents (till now), or the ‘rape’ accusations against Julian Assange, but the Yanks war against freedom of speech, the very thing they are supposed to protect!
As you can see by the screen shots, ( Click on for enlargements.) these firms who have cut services to WikiLeaks, are actually quite happily cashing in on it all. Amazing! I struggle for a simile – It’s like the German government paying for stolen Luxembourg bank account details to catch tax dodgers – and get away with it.
Will I close my accounts with Visa and Paypal and stop buying from Ebay and Amazon? The answer is a resounding YES - if I find some other place cheaper. Some clever bastard with too much money lying around could set up LeakyBay with payments via WikikedPal and replace Amazon’s dominance with WizzOnMon and base the lot in China.
----
WikiLeaks post list of vulnerable targets for terrorists!
Now, I am quite the expert in counter-insurgency, COIN, to coin a phrase. If I need a list of targets to terrorise, I could jot hundreds down on the back of fag packet between the logo and smoking kills, in two minutes.
My favourite has always been driving a fully loaded petrol delivery tanker into the Hofbrauhaus Tent on the opening day of the Oktoberfest. That will teach the bastards for punching me in the eye. (Long story.) Hah-hah, take that.
Still, on second thoughts, I will cancel that one. The idea was I let the tanker bleed petrol, then I jump out just as it careers down the short grassy hill (this at the BACK of the tent,where the drunks vomit and sleep it off) and it ploughs insanely driverless into the thousands of tourist binge drinkers singing along with the Bavarian folk band, ‘Hey Wiki Ooh Ahh will you be my burl’. The gushing hose would spray around like a giant cobra spitting alien acid, and then…then the highly flammable vapours would ignite instantly amongst the tobacco and pot smoking pissheads and …whoosh! Hah-hah....yeah, get that ya bastards and er...(well it's more fun than counting sheep).
But, they banned smoking this year. Oh well…back to the drawing board…any one got a spare fag packet?
Well, according to the local newspapers, the England bid was stitched up from the start by the Russian mafia that according to Wikileaks run the place. Good for them I say. Compared to the UK, they know how to run a country. No one moans over there about their miserable lot. Not because they might be happy about it, but instead of benefit bailouts, the Russians simply give them something to genuinely moan about – like having their legs amputated with a chain saw and then make the grateful victim pay for the petrol.
No, the REAL reason the well organised and elegantly presented English bid was undermined and doomed to failure was due to Steven Spielberg. Yup, in another top secret Wikileak, it seems that the FIFA voting executive committee (less the English one), corrupt and rotten to the core as only dagos and foreigners are pictured daily in the Daily Mail can be, were shown extracts of Spielberg’s upcoming block buster film The Adventures of Tintin – Tintin in England
Originally, when Spielberg started work on the film, it was supposed to be Tintin in the Congo, but that was panned when it became apparent Spielberg wouldn’t ever be invited to the Whitehouse by America’s No1 butler, Uncle Barrack, because the monkeys portrayed talked more sense than the pentagon. Hence - Tintin in England.
Set in 1966, it accurately portrays how the English fans, in coordinated yob fashion, taught the opposition fans lessons in aggravated aggro and went on to beat up so many of them, that the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, considered to send them against Rhodesia. Traumatised members of FIFA were overheard to mutter ‘sacré bleu and vodka stroganoff’ as they left the screening. In a top secret meeting held later in the local pub in a 5 star hotel, many were obviously more than determined to vote for Russia after they were caught singing ‘Diamonds are Forever’, together on the Karaoke, and laughingly referred to the England bid as a James Bond ‘that fires only blanks’. This was obviously a reference to the pole dance put on for their benefit by Prime Minister Putin’s ‘The Spy who Loved Me’, Anna Chapman.
Spoiler Alert – We can reveal that in the film, Snowy, the faithful fox terrier, is seen humping the Queen’s corgis and is subsequently served up stuffed with Sage and Ebola, as a starter for the subsequently final losing German football team. Amazingly, when they asked what the delicacy was, they were told it was ‘English Schweinehund’. That of course is a lie, as Snowy is from Belgium.
The Wikileaks are making some interesting waves around the world. Most of what I have read, around 200,000 of them (I was taught speed reading in Rhodesia), remain a blur because I read them rather rapidly, but I did come across one about Zimbabwe.
It is a bit old now, 2007, but is a nice piece written by the then US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher William Dell. Some of you might remember Mugabe ranting ‘Dell can go to Hell!’. Zimbabwe opposition has jumped on this Email with glee. I am not surprised. It is a beautifully written and honest account of what was/still is going on Zimbabwe. Dell says about Mugabe –
Robert Mugabe has survived for so long because he is more
clever and more ruthless than any other politician in
Zimbabwe. To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant
tactitian and has long thrived on his ability to abruptly
change the rules of the game, radicalize the political
dynamic and force everyone else to react to his agenda.
However, he is fundamentally hampered by several factors:
his ego and belief in his own infallibility; his obsessive
focus on the past as a justification for everything in the
present and future; his deep ignorance on economic issues
(coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him
the authority to suspend the laws of economics, including
supply and demand); and his essentially short-term,
tactical style.
There is more, but man, has this guy done us a favour or what! I just love it. The full Email can be read here. Sadly, he balls up a bit, predicting Mugabe’s imminent demise.
Anyway, in the Times (print copy, I refuse to pay for their on-line service), which I bought for a train journey to school, it gave a Wikileak reference to another leak which I gather comes from South Africa. I can’t find it online, but it quotes Mugabe as a ‘crazy old man’. Nothing new here but interestingly, it refers to ‘president Mugabe’. With a small p. Mmm, well that could just be a typo mistake…but, have a look carefully at this picture I scanned from the print edition.
So, is this a sort of signal that he is sort of, like president, but not really President….hah hah – brilliant!
Following a referendum the previous year in which voters had overwhelmingly backed independence, in late 1965, with negotiations between the United Kingdom and Rhodesia at an impasse, Smith (according to his biography Bitter Harvest) had authorized a committee under Cabinet Secretary Gerald B. Clarke to look at historical independence declarations in order to come up with a suitable version for Rhodesia in the event of a UDI having to be declared. The committee decided to use the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence as its reference. Once the text was agreed upon, the Government Printer in Salisbury created the actual document (during the first week of November).
Clarke placed the document in storage in the Rhodesian Parliament building until the morning of November 11, when Smith and his cabinet colleagues — after a last-minute appeal by the British Government failed to convince them not to follow this course of action — voted unanimously to declare their independence. Clarke was then directed by Smith to prepare the signing ceremony. The document was placed in an adjoining conference room to where the cabinet had convened to take their vote. With a photographer to record the historic moment, Smith, Deputy Prime Minister Clifford Dupont, and the other cabinet members signed the declaration. Later that day, Smith read it out on national radio, along with a speech giving justification for the action, and giving warning about probable negative reactions by the international community.
The timing of Smith's telegram to the British Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) announcing the UDI was symbolic. The message was sent at precisely 1 pm local time (11 am in London) at the exact moment that the United Kingdom started its Remembrance Day tradition (two minutes of silence to mark the end of World War I and honour its war dead). The not-so-hidden message in this timing was to recall the fact that Rhodesia had helped the UK in its time of need in both World Wars and that the British should not forget that.
Actually, I remember reading somewhere that the Rhodesians lost more servicemen as a proportion of its population than any other of the commonwealth nations. I also recall that during UK imposed sanctions the Rhodesians were banned from commemorating their fallen comrades in the UK on this day.
As a Rhodesian teen, I never really needed a deodorant. Come to think of it - I don’t really need one now. That’s because I am lucky enough not to ‘pong’ if I raise a little sweat. For example - opening a can of beer or turning the boerwors over on a Barbie. (Er, Barbie as in Braai, as in BBQ ; not the little plastic doll.)
But, around about the age of 16-17 year olds at Mount Pleasant High School, Salisbury, mid ‘70s , the type of deo worn became an example of class distinction among the males competing for the available sexual counterparts. All this because of Fabergé Brut 33.
As Rhodesians get old and senile, they desire some form of contact to those ‘good old days’, (the word’ good’ being rather ambiguously used). So here is a story.
___
Rhodesia had its own home-grown anti-stinky stuff. I think it was called Shield. The cheapest way was in a small bottle with a ball on top and you glued your armpit hair with it and they all turned white and stiff. Like a Mohican punk doing a hand stand. In fact, you could glue anything with the stuff. Generally, poor whites used the stuff. The alpha-males usually had Daddies with lots of readies, so the Rhodie jocks could coat themselves in Fabergé Brut 33.
The problem was that the stuff was imported and, due to sanctions, luxuries like this was like finding gold fillings in your inherited grandmother’s false teeth. When ‘posh’ Barbours (the Rhodesian equivalent of Harrods - less the Arabs), had a delivery, the word would quickly go around. Within minutes, mothers became rabid jackals, desperate to obtain the smellies; so desired by their hunky, rugby playing alpha-male off-spring. I was supposed to use my pocket money on such luxuries. My pocket money barely covered a white mouse from Leslies Pet Shop once a month (about the speed the cat found it in my bedroom clothes drawer. (Conversion rate for the time – One white mouse = five Coca-Colas (less deposit) a week.)
I remember when the gorgeous Cindi Tate, once leaned against me whilst we sat on the school desks backwards, swinging our legs so cool because Miss Simpson wasn’t there, and I filled her in on the latest gossip about her rival Gail Shaw, and touching my shoulder, ever so softly with her exquisite nose, she sniffed delicately, and said
‘Are you wearing Brut? I love Brut.’
(To imagine the passion of this statement, think - Like she sees your car key fob, and goes ‘Ooh you drive a Porsche!’ (Not quite, I don’t remember any Porsches in Rhodesia- just the usual porch, so a Datsun 120Y was good enough.)
I was mortified! The only thing I was wearing that she could smell was my khaki school shirt - most probably washed with Lever brothers Cold Power! (my Mum liked to save on electricity. Rich people used Surf). The reason she smelt Brut was simply because that orange haired, six foot two, orang-u-tang, ‘OX’ Bruce Barrett, had passed us by with enough Brut back draft to open his own factory. (We zero-males, opposite to alpha-males on the Darwinian hypothesis, concluded his tag - ‘OX’ - was due to his brain capacity - rather than his physical features that averaged in body mass to two of us.)
At that point I made it my life work to have a tin of Brut. Luckily for me a sort of on/ off girl friend presented me with a tin for a birthday. I didn’t think of it as a hint, but as a sign of testosterone fuelled desire. The fact she got her mother to buy them in a six pack to distribute amongst all her beaus was unbeknown to me at the time.
I cherished that can. It was used so sparingly (only for parties) that the can would have rusted if I lived at sea level. I think I even kept the empty can on prominent display in my bedroom. Anyway, as you can imagine, as soon as I received my first pay check, I bought Brut 33.
Aah - envision it, there was me, doused with the stuff, pulling every bird in the bush, as I stumbled along on anti-terrorist patrols. I could be shot to pieces in moments, spotted by my aroma. I would have died a Rhodie macho man!
So, for a few years I wore Fabergé Brut 33. I could purchase it in Germany, but then at sometime I grew out of my teenage obsession and purchased smellies more in line with my supposed income. Fancy bottles and fashionable names cost fancy prices.
And then I was poor and old. Sob! And then you get that melancholy malingering of memories and purchase a bottle of Brut and squirt it up your nostrils in divine ecstasy, remembering how you inexplicably snogged the prettiest girl at the party and put it down to Fabergé Brut 33. If you got a feel of her breasts, you swore to buy shares in the company!
Well…I have been using Brut for a couple of years now, but as I am slow in the head, it has taken a while to realise that the Brut I was buying wasn’t the same as the Fabergé Brut 33, I remembered.
I think that when I bought a tin the other day for £1.67 - I first got suspicious. I sort of recall that ‘back then’ a tin of Fabergé Brut 33, deo set you back a day’s pay. White man’s pay at that!
So…I had a good sniff of my armpits after a good dose of the stuff. Yup, something was wrong. Very wrong. I looked in the mirror and saw an old, grey haired man sniffing his armpits to see if he had it still to pull birds at parties using his last weapon - Fabergé Brut 33.
How sad is that? Anyway… The great smell of Brut wasn’t all there. So, I then found my spectacles, and tried to read the small print through the fogged glass. (I had just finished having a bath with the window closed.) I couldn’t read a thing about its true identity besides being most probably the best thing in the world. After I opened the door to allow much needed humidity into my Welsh water soaked apartment, I gathered that the green can I had tried to read was actually a can of Carlsberg beer. As you can see from the pictures, they are hard to differentiate under abnormal conditions! It took a few moments to correct my visibility and it is true! Fabergé Brut 33, is now just some diluted dilution flogged as poor mans smellies. No Fabergé logo, no number…it has lost the connection with us Rhodesians.
I am bitterly disappointed, but I still use the cheap crap!
____
Interesting links –
Here is the irony because…wait for it…33 denoted the fact that it was Faberge’s el cheepo range! Yup, the 33 meant that it only had 33% of the real McCoy.
Many regulars may recall the saga of me attempting to learn Afrikaans. This is pre- OU prose, but is still the most popular reading and has the most comments. To save new comers searching the archives, it can be accessed here.
Now, whilst I was walking on clouds of utopia today (due to just getting my results for OU Children’s Lit with a Grade 2 ( one short of a Distinction, mind you) ), I had the perpetual yowl of Radio 1 in the background.
Well, hard to believe, but some Afrikaans speaking lunatics are storming up the charts with some insane gibberish, that sounds remarkably similar to my version of Afrikaans after Mrs Smuts had beaten me semi-dead.
So…I looked to see what this is all about and…. amazing, the total end of the Boer idea of white supremacy in some alcove in South Africa is seriously put to the test. So I therefore present… er…this which with 5 million hits might be a barometer of the way South Africa is going -are these lunatics. My personal opinion…They never met Mrs Smuts.
Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, who has died aged 83, was the last commander of Ian Smith's Rhodesian armed forces; his otherwise distinguished military career ended in humiliation when he became involved in the political turmoil that surrounded Robert Mugabe's accession to power in Zimbabwe in 1980.
The above headline was taken from the Telegraph. The obituary has some inaccuracies and also some interesting comments…but -
What has cropped up on numerous online forums with reference to the passing away of Lieutenant-General Peter Walls - exactly how tall was he? There seems to be discrepancies, and as a former police officer, Boy Scout and enthusiastic amateur forensic scientist, I believe I have solved the problem using a picture downloaded from the net.
Looking at a South African made standard 330ml tin of Castle Lager in Wall’s hand, it should be possible to work out his height. The can measures exactly 4 and a half inches high. In the picture I printed out, the tin is 1 inch high. Using this scale, I measured his head. I had to guess a bit where it ended under the cap, but it is safe to say it ended just about where the badge ends.
That means his head is… I will just switch to millimetres for a bit…
Okay, tin is 25mm and head is 43mm in the picture. So if the real tin is 115mm, therefore 25mm is 22% of real tin. Erm…(I am getting a bit lost here.) So…if I divide 25mm into 43mm, I get 1.72 tins per head. Multiply that by 115mm = 198mm.
Convert back into inches (give or take a hair’s breadth), we have a tad under 8 inches, which means his head was about the size of a large turnip. Now if we look at the next picture - according to the chart, the head is 7 times the body height, thus he was 56 inches, or 4 feet 8 inches tall. Quite remarkable he was allowed to enrol in the army at all!
Obviously these observations may be not quite accurate, or for that matter, my math skills may be a bit wobbly.
Picture of a flaming plasma Flying Tokoloshe over Mana Pools recently.
I awoke from my bed today after having been abducted by evil aliens employed by Ebay, when I happened to stumble across a strange little blog about UFOs over Zimbabwe.
Fascinating stuff, so I contacted my reliable sauces, Daddy Brown and Red Ketchup, to see if they could come up with anything remotely food for thought connected to egg, bacon, sausage and toast.
They managed to obtain some classified information from the Zimbabwe office of Senator Precious Littlesense, which, under Littlesense, oversees the Minister of Money Making Machines. Amazingly, it would appear the Zimbabweans have managed to build an undetectable flying machine. Okay…well you sort of see it, but when it flies it is bathed in strange lights. On the ground you see it.
Picture of a Flying Tokoloshe just before being loaded with plasma.
In fact, it is a sort of helicopter powered by plasma! The CIA claim Zimbabwe doesn’t have the scientific know-how to manufacture plasma, but they got around that minor detail by sucking the stuff out of the confiscated televisions originally stolen by thieving white farmers. Once the machine is powered up, it goes mental, gets very hot, becomes invisible behind an aura of red hot plasma, shoots around like some drug crazed banshee, lands tits-up somewhere, usually deep in the bush - killing the pilot.
Picture of a Flying Tokoloshe cockpit. Note condensation on the windscreen. This is due to the plasma firing up and the pilot sweating buckets.
With the semi-successful trial flights of the secret machine - code named Flying TokolosheMark 5.1 and counting - the Zimbabwean government has entered into negotiations with the Taliban, who are hoping to procure several of the ZANU airworthy certificated invisible UFOs, to help them fight imperialistic invaders (whom, oddly enough, seem to be paying for them via aid money for displaced poppy growers).
A healthy bribe to an official from the afore mentioned ministry, who wishes to remain anomalous (spelt correctly), did say off-camera that -
‘Thunderbirds are go - as soon as we have more plasma TVs and pilots.’
Professor Daniel Chingomas - surreal entrepreneur, inventor of the Flying Tokoloshe . Seen here shortly before being last heard of by agonizingly screaming his head off - whilst enveloped in a ball of fire several hundred meters above a school in Ruwa, Zimbabwe. Several pupils were treated for trauma.
I am in a filthy mood. Tried to sell some stuff on EBay, only to find the money has disappeared into cyber space and it is turning into a nightmare sorting it all out. I have sent EBay a strongly worded letter of complaint that either they, or I, have a link missing in our vital software.
Moving on. I have to tell you about Bubbles. Bubbles as you may know was the late Michael Jackson’s pet. For some strange reason he obviously disliked Michael changing his nappies because maybe he played Willie Wonker at the same time, and as a result bit him. M.J. was not amused and poor old Bubbles was sent away.
Now Bubbles had obviously got used to the rich lifestyle of his late and now departed owner, but being penniless and not being mentioned in the will, Bubbles had to find another way to make a healthy living. Luckily for him a great opportunity arrived when amazingly, thanks to some good friends who have fuck all else to do than believe in ridiculous Emails promising cash for nothing, he read this following Email –
READ IT, IT WAS ON CARTE BLANCH
I just opened this mail now... and quickly went into my bank account
I have received R300 000 in my account.
thanks Janette.
This was on the 9:00 o'clock news the other night and this works
THIS TOOK TWO PAGES OF THE TUESDAY USA TODAY - IT IS FOR REAL
PLEEEEEEASE READ!!!! it was on the news!
This thing is for real. Rest assured AOL and Intel will follow Through
with their promises for fear of facing a multimillion-dollar class
action suit similar to the one filed by Pepsi-Cola against General Electric not too
long ago.
Dear Friends;
Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates is sharing his
fortune. If you ignore this, You will repent later.
Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in an
effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program,
Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will Track it (If you are a Microsoft Windows user)? For a two weeks time period.
For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you
$245.00 For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,
Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and ! for every third person that receives it, You
will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your
address and then send you a check.
Regards
Charles S Bailey General Manager Field Operations
Well, well, thought Bubbles, surely this is a SCAM. Luckily many people thought also, but they gave it a shot and would you believe it, they hit the jack pot! Many of these amazing people who made fortunes by simply sending on daft Emails added their names to the ever growing list of dumb saps at the bottom of the original mail. Oddly, you may notice a large contingent of Afrikaners based in their homeland of the rainbow nation of South Africa, who rushed in to get a piece of cyber Witwatersrand.
As Bubbles originally originated paternally from Africa, he could understand the Boer's grunting gibberish and decided to give it go. Here are some extracts from the lucky people –
I thought this was a scam myself, But two weeks after receiving this
e-mail and forwarding it on. Microsoft contacted me for my address and
within days, I receive a check for $24, 800.00. You need to respond
before the beta testing is over. If anyone can afford this, Bill gates
is the man.
It's all marketing expense to him. Please forward this to as many people
as possible.
You are bound to get at least $10, 000.00. We're not
going to help them out with their e-mail beta test without getting a
little something for our time. My brother's girlfriend got in on this a
few months ago. When I went to visit him for the Baylor /UT game. She showed me her
check.
It was for the sum of $4, 324.44 and was stamped 'Paid in full'
Like I said before, I know the law, and this is for real.
Intel and AOL are now discussing a merger which would make them the
largest Internet company and in an effort make sure that AOL remains the
mostwidely used program, Intel and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.
When you forward this e-mail to friends, Intel can and will track it (if
you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period.
Try it; What have you got to lose !
For what Its worth die vrou werk saam met my suster (die bankrekening afskrif).
When you forward this e-mail to friends, I! Ntel can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period.
For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $203.15.
For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $156.29
And for every third person that receives it , you will be paid $17.65.
Within two weeks, Intel will contact you for your address and then send you a check..
I thought this was a scam myself, but a friend of my good friend's Aunt Patricia, who works at Intel, actually got a check of $4,54323 by forwarding this e-mail.
It works I just checked, my bank account and found extra R20 000
U won't believe it ...I just had a look at my bank statement & there was an extra ..wait for it .......50 000.00 in my account ..this really works .....just do it ......I love u Douglas ...thank u some much for thinking of me & this GREAT gift !!!
Hi ouens, hierdie is die ware Jacob, ek het wragties geld in my bank rekening ontvang om presies te wees R125723.07, ja dis reg die volle bedrag en nog 7 sent. Microsoft is die beste, hulle gee verniet geld weg somer so 'mahala'
HET MET PIET VORSTER GEPRAAT HY SE HY HET GELD GEKRY...................
Ek het wragtag R 18000 in my rekening gekry! Julle moet dit probeer!! Dit werk!!!
From: Wilna van der Westhuizen
Hi ouens,
Glo my hierdie is regtig nie 'n Scam nie, want 'n bedrag van R22 000.00 is laas week in my rekening inbetaal Jy moet net die e-mail aanstuur vir soveel as moontlik mense wat jy ken - that is it!
So Bubbles did as instructed and forwarded the letter to every chump on the planet. He waited, and guess what, a few days later money came pouring out of his computer screen. Fucking amazing! All brand new dollar bills!
So I am also going to forward this Email and soon I will be so rich, I will not need this blog anymore because I will be back in Africa shooting any chimp wearing a suit and sporting sunglasses.
Amazing, yet potentially true. In fact, if all goes to plan, you, as a Windows user, have a claim to a bit of foreskin.
As reported in today’s Guardian –
In Zimbabwe, Population Services International (PSI) is working with the government to try to get mass circumcision underway, using a "conveyor belt" strategy that allows doctors and nurses to move rapidly from one patient to another, operating on 10 instead of three patients an hour. The goal is to circumcise at least 80% of all young men between 15 and 29 – a total of 1.2 million.
And
PSI told the conference that it had devised a rapid circumcision strategy which it calls Move (Models of Optimising Volumes and Efficiency), using pre-sterilised, pre-assembled kits. Instead of stitches, the wound is cauterised.
Sounds like fun. Now we get Bill Gates involved –
PSI received financial help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the study demonstrating the efficiency of Move.
The whole story can be read here. For some strange reason, instead of an appropriate picture, of say Bill holding up a bag of foreskins to be sold on EBay, they had a picture of Annie Lennox, former howling butch-bitch of the ‘80s pop group Urinals or Eurhythmics or something. Not sure why. Maybe she collects knob ends.
Last of the Rhodesians: Chronicles of a Colonial Anarchist
Night Raid – a true war story.
(Somewhere in Rhodesia, Central Africa, early 1970’s)
We knew that the enemy we most dreaded had returned to plague us once again. Year after year, that ever grinding war of attrition -the same old battle of nerves. We had never been able to really to corner them, and end it in a final fire-fight. At most, we could take out a few of their leaders and leave them disorientated for a while, but there was always another to take their place, and the guerrilla war would start afresh.
For most of the year we held the upper hand. Our latest base was comparatively new and our designated area for patrols seemed relatively free of the menace. Daily our small unit pounded the now familiar routes with an ever weary eye open. It was our land and rightfully so and we sculptured it as we liked, because we had made it our home. But they dared to question this with audacity. They remained for the most part unseen and would spook us from a safe distance.
The rainy season always changed the scenario. It was almost as if both sides needed respite from the game of hide and seek; a status quo, an unspoken agreement between the antagonists. We hated to slog through soaked grass and the ever increasing quagmire of rich, venial-red mud. Legend has it that Africa’s soil is that colour because of all the blood that has been spilled fighting for it. There would be more blood spilled, but we hoped our superior intelligence and armaments would ensure it would only be their blood that would soak into the ground to blend with their forefathers’ life juices.
The enemy had slinked back into our territory with some primeval instinct, just as the first summer rains finally came to break that smell of parched earth and moisture- starved yellow grass. The incredible majestic force of tropical storms normally kept us in base. Few dared to go outside when Mother Nature decided to throw her weight around, randomly spitting deadly bolts of lightning that killed hundreds each year. The enemy knew of our fear. Not far from where we slept in our fortified abode was a small isolated oasis with dense foliage - a perfect hide. They were happy to take time out and reorganise their forces during this time.
We had used an observation point on the small hill overlooking their recently re-occupied stomping ground, hoping to spot them, but with no success. Team leader reckoned that we would get some tonight. The Old Man, as he was better known, was frustrated with the previous failures. The whole thing was getting on his nerves, and he was starting to take it personally. That morning he had approached me.
‘I have a job to do, but I will be back about 6.00 p.m. The weather report is for a big storm about that time. I will try and nail their leader then. Get everything ready, I am taking you with me on this one.’
I felt honoured, as I was still in my teens. Any thoughts of ice cold, pre-meditated murder never entered my head.
The timing had to be impeccable. We picked up our fully prepared weapons. I had checked them over that day, to make sure they were working perfectly. The last thing we needed were faulty tools of war. Not only would it lead to failure, the Old Man would never forgive me. There was still a hint of light from another stunning African sunset, touching the edges of the gathering storm clouds with hues of orange, and in the distance, bright flashes of lightning were followed by the soft growls of thunder. We needed to be in and out before the storm hit us.
Night was their weakness; their soft underbelly. They always seemed a bit chatty as darkness approached, but for the last few days, their incomprehensible mutterings had been loud enough to be heard at base whenever a storm started to approach. They had got away with it for so long that they were becoming arrogant. Surely it would give them away at last!
The other members of our team would stay back at base. They would know sooner or later if we were successful or not. As we prepared to move out, the Old Man addressed them,
‘Leave some of the lights showing, that way the enemy won’t expect our surprise attack.’ After a second thought, he grinned wickedly, ‘Turn the radio on, not too loud though!’
I thought that was a very clever distraction. He turned to me,
‘Once we are outside, I don’t want to hear one peep from you. Keep that loud mouth of yours shut for a change. Stay behind me and look for my hand signals.’ I nodded my head with acknowledgement; my heart was already racing with nervous energy.
As we moved out, heading for the watering hole they used, I could hear the soft melody of the Paper Lace hit, ‘Billy, Don’t be a Hero’. Somehow, it helped to settle my nerves.
We moved quietly from tree to tree, freezing if we thought we had been spotted, crouching low and silent on aching knees, and then breathing a soft sigh of relief, as their short suspicious silence would again be broken. They were so confident that nothing was going to happen to them. They threw caution to the rapidly increasing wind, as they used the opportunity to call others before the heavens opened up, cutting off all communications for both sides.
Adrenaline pumped through my body, overcoming any fear of failure. I had an overwhelming feeling that this time we would get at least one of them. The wind was picking up rapidly, ruffling my sweat-soaked crew-cut.
Just before we had reached our intended cover of a group of bulrushes, we heard a noise, about three feet to our right. In the darkness, we had almost stumbled on top of them.
‘Shit, shit, shit!’, I thought.
The Old Man gave me the agreed signal, and I opened-up with all I had whilst simultaneously, he armed his huge weapon in one smooth stroke and brought it, on instinct, into play. We were in trouble; my heart was going ape-shit, my hands shaking from the suppressed excitement. If the Old Man missed, we were lost!
I will never forget, even till the day I finally croak it, the spectacle that hit my eyes, as the darkness was brutally ripped apart from a bolt of lightning, so close I could almost smell the ozone it created. For what seemed an eternity, I looked squarely into the shocked eyes of the enemy.
This one was the biggest bastard I had ever seen. His throat bulged, ready to let out a defiant roar. As he prepared to leap for safety, obscenely huge leg muscles visibly rippled under his almost perfectly camouflaged outer skin.
‘Get him, Dad!’ I screamed in involuntary excitement above the massive clap of thunder that hammered at our eardrums.
The powerful beam of my flash-light replaced the spent lightning and kept the Bufo gutturalisin full sight, squatting on a large lily pad. Before it could draw its next breath and start that damn raucous din all over again, or escape into the deeps, the Old Man, from way over his head, brought the massive spade down, and one African Guttural Toad became airborne.
It must have risen six feet into the air, as the shock wave pounded through the fishpond. The force, powerful enough to create a miniature tsunami, broke over the concrete walls, soaking our feet and bellied-up a few unsuspecting goldfish. It’s a hard knock life; a few innocent citizens, caught in the crossfire.
The exploded corpse, its guts hanging out of a surprised mouth, came down and lay spasmodically kicking, just like the one we dissected at Biology class, as it lay at my father’s feet. Except this one looked more like a flattened avocado pear with legs. With a deft swish, he scooped up terminated toady and flicked it neatly over the hedge into the next door neighbours’ garden.
We went back to the house and celebrated our success over a cup of tea with Mum. We were all able to get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in days.
I actually became quite deft at terminating toadies. The best bit was to see if you could whack them again as they came down. Like a baseball striker, if you connected well, you blast the bastard really far over the hedge.
Many years later, I told this story to my kids, but they weren’t having it. Well, in the late ‘90s, I was down in Beira, Mozambique, and demonstrated the technique on a beached jelly fish. I flicked it up and connected it perfectly. One small problem - unlike the toad, which had a rather tough skin, jelly fish exploded! All this was filmed on VHS, so one day I might be able to convert it and make a multi-million virus hit YouTube.
Here is something to cheer us all up. I have followed the antics of this young man for a few months now. Amazingly he has almost 60k ‘fans’ on Facebook and an entry in Wikipedia. They list his occupation as – Thief, Burglar. No one has got hurt so far and I presume that those who were thieved should be covered by their insurance. Failing that, I am sure they can be well compensated when the block-buster film comes out.
He will be caught eventually. Hopefully they will not be too harsh on him. There must be some profession that could use his incredible skills…Wall Street for example!
I seem to have recovered some what to be able to write this. Any one watching the game Germany against Argentina yesterday must have thought they were actually watching football for the first time. This was football at its finest. It is not to say that Marodonna’s team were rubbish, but they were simply and magnificently outclassed.
Now Germany’s young multi-cultural team are all of a sudden hot favourites to lift the title for the fourth time and their striker, Klose, may equal or better Ronaldo’s 15 goals.
But…some Germans will not be very happy if their team win. One group are the marketing geniuses from Media Markt, one of Europe’s biggest electronic retailers.
They started a campaign prior to the start of the World Cup, with an interesting offer – buy a TV over 500 Euro and bet how far Germany would go. For example - reaching the semi-final, you received 20% back. For winning, you get the TV for free!
It will be interesting to see if they were clever enough to have planned some kind of insurance policy..tee-hee.
The other group are the ones who are now wishing they had bought the TV and are sick as Argentinean parrots…hah hah.
My prediction for the final - Germany 3 – Holland 1
