How I Saved South Africa

The first thing I did was to declare a state of emergency. That freed me up to get things done in a hurry. I assembled a team of experts to provide me with reliable information and advice. I went on TV and radio to tell the nation what I was going to do to get the country working and on the path to prosperity.

The most pressing matter to deal with was the Covid 19 crisis.

Henry's First Day at the Dockyard

"There are nine intervals, either end of each being announced by The Sirens. That makes ten times a day that The Sirens sound." He looked at his watch. "In about half an hour we'll hear the 9.30 siren. That's when we take a half hour tea break."

Henry was puzzled. He was seated behind his new desk in the office that he was to share with Senior Stores Officer Mr Alf Whitehead. Mr Whitehead was standing at the window looking down on the Dockyard through the large expanse of glass.

"But we've been reading the paper, drinking coffee and chatting since I arrived this morning. I don't understand, when do we start work?"

The storeman, a portly man in his early fifties with receding grey hair and an upper lip which, over the years, had been allowed to run wild and was now covered with a huge tangle of overgrown moustache, turned to look at Henry, his face suddenly rendered grim by a veil of non-comprehension. Then the light of understanding returned, he snorted and resumed his contemplation of the naval scene.

"You're very new here. It's quite natural that it will take you a little while to acquire our way of seeing the world. There's a lot to learn. You see, to start with, it doesn't matter what we actually do, it's when we do it. Between 7.30 and 9.30 we work. If we choose to drink a cup of coffee in that interval, then it's work."

"But…" Henry remained nonplussed. "I mean, how do we justify it?"

"Good God, boy! Justify it?! If you can't justify it there's no hope for you. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be on the planet." He paused, trying to control his impatience. "Look, if we are drinking coffee it's because we're testing a victual. Commander Wolfaart has complained about the freshness, or staleness, of the instant coffee. We are conducting tests on different batches of Nescafe to determine which one it is that fails to meet naval standards. We are consulting the newspaper in order to find out when that French freighter will be docking in Cape Town - you know how urgently the shipment of submarine parts is required. We are in conversation because I am briefing you on important matters concerning the efficient running of this store. Get it? Really, if you can't justify your existence then you are bereft of imagination. But don't worry, I'm sure you don't fit into that pitiful category. You'll soon pick it up and become adept in…"

This is an extract from The Life of Henry Fuckit, which can be read on my website here.

What is the Memory Project?

Memory Project is my attempt at writing a memoir. Over a period of three or four months in 2016 I listened to a BBC series called ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects.’ The objects were all from the British Museum, starting with a lump of rock that was a Stone Age tool, and ending with a solar-powered lamp with charger. It occurred to me that this could be a way of exploring my memory, using pictures of items as stepping stones. I realised that each item could in turn lead to others, and yet others, exponentially. The objects could include books, photographs, letters, works of art and music. If I didn’t get bored, this project could keep me busy until I kicked the bucket. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

An Mbira

I bought this mbira while on a hitch-hiking trip through Rhodesia in 1976. ‘A member of the lamellaphone family of musical instruments, it consists of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, and is played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs.’ (Wikipedia.) My mbira has six tines, but it is common for others to have twenty or more. It is considered to be an African invention and can be traced back for at least 3000 years.

On one occasion as a child of about eight or nine I visited the houseboy squatting before his fire. I found him busy hammering a length of fencing wire on a short piece of steel rail he had scrounged from a friend working on the Railways. Every few minutes he would stop to heat the wire in the flames and then resume pounding it flat. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was making an mbira. About a week later the instrument was completed and I saw that the flattened wire had been cut into lengths to form the tines. For a resonator he used an empty Cobra stoep polish tin. A piece of rubber cut from an inner tube was stretched over the mouth of the tin to close it like a drum skin. I was impressed with his ingenuity and enjoyed listening to him singing and humming as he plucked the tines with his thumb nails. The ‘boy’ in question was Joseph, and I was sad when he resigned after a year or two in order to return to his wife and children in the Native Reserve.

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Covid 19 and the Albatrosses of Gough Island

On a quiet afternoon in the ward the duty sister approached me and said Matron Sharp wanted to see me. I was to go to her office on the 4^th floor immediately. This was forty years ago and, as I have described in a previous post, (My Affair with Florence Nightingale)I was working as an orderly in A1 Medical Ward at Groote Schuur Hospital. An orderly was an assistant male nurse who occupied the second lowest position in the nursing hierarchy, superior only to a porter. The highest rank in the chain of command was that of Matron, and there were four of them. They were uncompromising disciplinarians who demanded impossibly high standards from those working under them. My face must have looked like I was recently deceased and my hand shook as I knocked on Matron Sharp’s office door.

To my surprise, she didn’t start shouting at me for having left a spoon down some old codger’s gullet, or for over warming a bed pan and burning a patient’s bum. Instead she informed me that the Department of Transport was urgently seeking the services of a suitably qualified person to fill the position of medic and serve as a member of the next team leaving for Gough Island in two weeks’ time.

Because my mouth was hanging open she told me to shut it and stop looking stupid.

“But I’m not a doctor,” I protested. “I’m just an orderly and not even a …”

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to be a doctor. The man you will be replacing is a veterinary assistant who was recruited from the Cavalry Corps in the Army. His only medical experience was with the gelding of horses.”

That is how I got to spend a year on Gough Island as a member of the 26^th seven-man Meteorological Expedition.

Four ornithologists spent the takeover period on the island studying aspects of bird life. They had plenty of birds to choose from. Eight million, in fact, but they confined their study to albatrosses. There are three species breeding on Gough, the Yellow-nosed, the Sooty and the Tristan (Formerly thought to be a Wandering Albatross but now classified as a slightly different species.) Before these ornithologists boarded the ship and returned to Cape Town they approached me with a request. They had noticed the interest I had shown in their work and wondered if I could assist them by ringing some of the Tristan Albatross chicks before they left the nest in a few months’ time.

I agreed, and when there was a break in the weather Ray and I trudged up the mountain and made our way to     the main breeding site. Ray was a member of the contingent of three Met officers and was a keen hiker. We pitched our tent and then went into action. One of us would approach the chick on its nest, grab it and hold it under one arm while clamping its beak shut with his free hand. The other man was then able to position the metal ring around a leg and close it shut with a pair of modified pliers. The bird was released and it climbed back onto its mound of mud, grass and moss.

We ringed about 10 chicks that afternoon and another 20 the following morning before returning to the base. We had spent the night in our tent, protected from a near gale force wind that tore through the valley. In the early hours I had awoken to find a mouse exploring my beard. In torchlight we chased four visitors from the tent and tried to go back to sleep.

At that time, in 1980, the island was already overrun with millions of feral house mice (Mus musculus), which had been introduced at the beginning of the 19^th century by a party of sealers. We treated the presence of these mice as a nuisance and a threat to any dry foodstuff not kept in secure containers.

About ten years ago I learned that these mice had adapted to conditions on the island in the space of some 200 years and had developed a taste for eggs and chicks. Then, five years ago I was horrified at the news that as a consequence of their new protein rich diet these rodents had increased in size by as much as 50 percent. They had begun to scavenge on the chicks of even the largest birds, the albatrosses.

Field studies revealed that as many as 2 million eggs and chicks were being lost to the predators each year, and some of the rarer species, notably the Tristan Albatross, were threatened with extinction. In the face of this looming ecological disaster the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and other organisations developed a plan to eradicate the mouse population. Using helicopters with agricultural dispensers tons of poisonous cereal would be scattered over the entire surface of the island. This method had been used successfully on other islands and the operation was scheduled for early 2020.

Personnel and equipment were already on Gough when the Covid 19 pandemic intervened and the undertaking had to be called off. One type of plague was given a reprieve by the arrival of another. This means that for at least another year I will be tormented by the image of an albatross chick being slowly gnawed to death as it sits on its nest.

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

Little Red Riding Hood

The widow’s Jack Russell died of old age, just as her husband had done a few years earlier. She continued to live in her house alone, preferring to postpone the day when she would be forced to give up her independence.

Deon was a homeless man who had been in the area for many years. He was a work-shy drunkard with a criminal record for petty theft, but he was tolerated as a harmless nuisance who might be seen lying under a bush or heard shouting that he was hungry and demanding alms.

It was late afternoon when the widow went out the back to bring in some washing off the line. On returning to the house she was annoyed to see Deon waiting for her at the kitchen door.

“I’ve got nothing for you today, Deon. Now go away.”

“But I’m hungry,” he said, patting his stomach to show how empty it was. “Just a little bread, Ouma.”

As she pushed past him he tried to grab her arm.

“Don’t you touch me, you filthy rubbish!” she shouted, wrenching herself free. Then she slapped him hard in the face.

The stinging pain he felt triggered something in him and he cast about for a weapon. Catching sight of the brick that served as a door stop he picked it up. It was a solid clay brick weighing more than 2 kilograms and when he shoved it in her face it smashed her glasses, her nose and other bones. She collapsed to her knees and before she could fall flat he brought the brick down on the top of her grey head the way Raskolnikov did in Crime and Punishment. The heavy blow was enough to crack her skull, which resulted in massive bleeding and she was dead within minutes.

Deon explored the kitchen cupboards and the fridge and gorged himself on what he found. He also drank the contents of an almost full bottle of sherry. Feeling replete and more than a little drunk he staggered into the widow’s bedroom and got into her bed without removing his boots. He soon fell into a deep sleep.

The widow’s granddaughter drove a 7 year-old Chevy Spark that the old lady had helped her to buy. It was bright red. Twice or three times a week the granddaughter called in on her on the way to work to see if she was in need of anything. Because it was early the young woman let herself in with her own front door key.

“Grandma,” she called in a cheery voice. “It’s me. Are you awake?”

There was no reply, so she made her way to the bedroom. The curtains being drawn, the light was dim.

“Are you awake, Grandma?”

There was only the sound of snoring. How strange it was that Grandma had pulled the duvet right up over her head.

“Grandma!” she called again, more loudly this time. The snoring stopped.

Not far away there lived an old man who took his dog for a walk at the same time every morning. He kept the dog on a leash and carried a walking stick to ward off other dogs. As he passed the widow’s house he heard the young woman’s scream.

“What the hell is going on there?” he asked the dog. “That red car belongs to the granddaughter. We had better take a look.”

The front door stood open and the sound of strife from within caused him to hurry inside and follow it to its source. Just as he had begun to suspect, a rape was under way.

“Stop that, you bastard!” he shouted, and whacked the rapist on the back of the head with his walking stick. At the same time he released the dog. Distracted from the urgent business he had been engaged in, Deon extricated himself and tried to get up. He was hampered by his trousers, which were down at his knees, and by the dog, which had grasped his forearm in its jaws. The old man first jabbed the fellow in one of his eyes with the end of his stick and then again hit him on the head. When both of these actions failed to subdue the struggling assailant the old man went in search of a heavier weapon.

In the kitchen he found the body of the widow, and lying next to her the brick.

“This should do the trick,” he said aloud and picked it up. Back in the bedroom he raised it on high and brought it down with as much force as he could muster, and this did indeed do the trick. The young woman, shaking and sobbing, was able to get to her feet and the dog was obliged to cut short its meal.

The old man was rewarded with a good close-up of shapely breasts in their prime before being hidden from view. For this he was grateful, not having set eyes on such youthful beauty since the time he visited a prostitute on his last business trip before he retired many years ago.

 

This is a cautionary tale illustrating the danger faced by well-meaning young women who are deluded into believing that their good deeds will somehow provide them with immunity from ill fate.

(From the Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales collection.)

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

White Supremacy

At the end of this story the reader will be asked to choose between two possible interpretations of the outcome.

The Story. A public figure well known for his contemptuous attitude towards black people – let’s call him Steve - is abducted and taken deep into a sprawling squatter camp. He is led to a tiny shack made of iron sheets, cardboard and plastic, and told he must stay there for three weeks in order for him to experience what it is like to live in poverty. He only has the clothes on his back and nothing else. He is given a loaf of bread and a can of pilchards. He is told that if he tries to escape, or make contact with the outside world, he will have his balls cut off.

The Idyllic Life

This scene from the early 1970s is set in the public bar (Europeans) of the Majestic Hotel in Kalk Bay. Long after the bar was closed down, the building was renovated and is now the home of Kalk Bay Books.

They were seated on their barstools looking out through the open door to the harbour and the sea beyond the wall. Both felt pleasantly weary after a morning on Fish Hoek beach playing touch rugby with Ivor’s mates, fooling about in the waves and soaking up the hot sun and the cool southeaster. Now it was easy to feel the relaxed freedom of mild intoxication, and Ivor waxed eloquent on the merits of a playboy existence.

“Man, this is lekker. This is the way to live. What could be better? What more does a man need?”

“Well, maybe some good food. In the medical trade I believe it’s known as hypoglycaemia. I have all the symptoms: faintness, weakness, tremulousness, visual disturbances, confusion, palsy, personality change and, above all, hunger.” They ordered fish cakes and fried potato chips, and Ivor continued to extol the free-and-easy lifestyle of an unencumbered bachelor.

“You know, one doesn’t need much to live like this. The best things in life aren’t free, but they don’t cost a whole pile of money. It’s a pity we don’t live in a society that caters for individuals like us. A modest pension for life and in return a commitment to stay out of the job market, make room for those obsessed with the capitalist work ethic, those driven by insatiable greed to possess THINGS. And we could undergo voluntary vasectomies, thereby helping to diminish all this rampant procreation that has overcrowded and overloaded the planet. It makes economic sense. But no, the society we find ourselves in is terrified of the likes of us.” He shook his head regretfully. “They would be threatened by our incomprehensible happiness.”

Henry was in full agreement with these sentiments. “I’m afraid you are dreaming of a utopian world beyond the realms of possibility. We can’t look to Society for any assistance. On the contrary.” A coloured waiter of diminutive proportions appeared behind the bar bearing a tray laden with four fat fish cakes, one large platter of golden yellow chips, smoking hot, salt, pepper, vinegar and a large plastic squeeze-me tomato of sauce.

“God, but this looks good! This is the ultimate! Place before me a naked young wench, all eager and panting, and require me to choose – I’d toss a towel to her and tell her to await my pleasure, and I’d sate myself on this superior pleasure. Then I’d see to her. Probably in a half-hearted, unsatisfactory way. But what the fuck? A man must eat.” He squirted a puddle of tomato sauce onto his plate, took up a fish cake in his left hand, dunked it in the sauce and took a mouthful. With his right hand he began on the chips. Henry followed suit with grunts and other non-verbal utterances of appreciation.

At length Henry paused to drink deeply of his beer before asking a rhetorical question. “Do you know why these fish cakes are such good value for money? The ingredients would be in the dust bin if we weren’t eating them.”

“Tastes alright to me.” Ivor looked unperturbed but gave the last half of his second fish cake a precautionary sniff. “Smells alright too.”

“I’m not suggesting anything unsavoury or unsafe. It’s just that I happen to know a little about the preparation of this dish. Mrs Hildagonda De Groot, the housekeeper at Ingachini, was a very competent cook and, being Dutch, hated to throw away food of any description. If it wasn’t fit for European consumption it was fed to the dogs and the black staff. Whenever we had fish we knew we would be getting fish cakes a few days later. A very simple recipe: a cup or two of leftover fish flaked finely, two or three leftover potatoes mashed, a grated onion, one beaten egg, one tablespoon of cake flour, a sprig of chopped parsley, a few scrapes of nutmeg, a dash of Worcester sauce, salt and pepper. Throw the whole lot in a bowl and mix till stiff, then fry spoonfuls in hot oil. As easy as that. It makes sense for a hotel to recycle the leftovers and sell them cheap to the dronkies in the public bar.”

Ivor was almost finished with his meal and was looking thoughtful. “What you’re actually saying is that there exists the possibility that the food that I have just eaten was partially masticated in a former life. The fish might have borne the denture marks of Colonel Blithering-Wickforth, or some other honoured guest. The potato might have been lodged in the windpipe of some old codger before being coughed up onto the floor and then converted into fish cake.”

“Exactly.” With a split match Henry picked a morsel from his teeth, took a mouthful of beer and proceeded to light up his pipe. He blew a cloud of smoke towards the door and watched its transformation as it drifted into the sunlight. “Apart from dreaming of the Perfect Society, have you no other ideas on how to lead this idyllic life without having to work? Surely there must be a way.”

From The Life Of Henry Fuckit

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.