A different view on current affairs & history
Everybody has a special place; a place that one calls home. For the McCleland’s it was 57 Mowbray Street, Newton Park, Port Elizabeth. It was nothing special; just a normal middle class rectangular house without any pretensions of greatness, grandiosity or style. But what it did possess was not character but some unique features which will forever be remembered by the family and associated with our home.
Main picture: The diamond shaped window panels of the patio
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Amazon in the UK made two separate shipments on the 30th January 2015 to me. I have only now on the 11th April 2015 received one of them. What has happened to the second?
The source of these facts is unknown. Like many emails that one receives, its author is never known. Unlike most which I immediately delete or distribute after reading, this is one which I kept and read again the following day.
Maybe you will also find some of these facts equally as fascinating. For instance, the size of a kangeroo when it is born in its mother’s pouch cannot be larger than a few peas.
It was like déjà vu. As I drove alone south on an almost empty N3 in the pre-dawn gloom towards OR Tambo to catch the early morning flight to Pietermaritzburg, I was astounded at the overt racism of the callers either in their justification of the attacks on the foreigners or their “humane human-rights” solutions to the problem.
All of the callers to the Early Breakfast show – as it is styled – on 702 Talk Radio were predominately from the townships.
Main picture: Xenophobic attacks halted business in Durban’s CBD
If I had to ask God just one question what would it be? “Why take Barry so young” or perhaps rather, “Why Barry?” Such were the questions that swirled in my mind when I heard that Barry had passed away from a stroke. The final question – a rhetorical one I suppose – posed to humanity in general is why we do not celebrate somebody’s achievements and their life before that person passes away. Why reserve it for the eulogies after their death? Shouldn’t we verbalise the positive that we feel about our friends and family.
So it was with Barry.
Main picture: Barry Cornish with son, Craig
Hard grinding physical labour was the lot of these workers. What was more iniquitous was the pittance that they were paid for these long hours of toil.
Main picture: Lumberjacks besides their handiwork. The height of the man is indicative of the diameter of the tree
The chain saw is merely a metaphor for machinery
The incomparable David Attenborough has introduced me to a few especially the star-nosed mole which has feelers protruding from where its nose should be positioned and the disgusting naked mole rat which even at birth has the body of a wrinkled superannuated rat on its death bed.
Main picture: The star-nosed mole which only its mother could love