Thursday, April 16, 2009

Boyle-d in the bag


So Susan Boyle does her thing on Britain’s Got Talent and wows the cynical judges. And the huge audience on Youtube. Even I watched her with my work colleagues yesterday.

Great. Good luck to her. She has a real talent – at last – and isn’t just a moronic, oh-so-knowing pretty face famous for being famous. In fact, she is the polar opposite.

Her problem is that she is a member of the peasantry. Same as me, same as most people.

She hasn’t gone from some “masters of the universe to be” public school background, being groomed for stardom from leaving the nappy. She is in fact unemployed.

She has (allegedly) some form of learning difficulty.

She is, in some people’s opinion, not the prettiest in the world. As Shawaddywaddy might have said “nature didn’t give her such a beautiful face”. Of course, beauty is the in the eye of the beer-holder, but it’s an opinion that’s been stated in such an obviously brow-beating sort of way that dissenters (lovers of the fat girl or the boy with the baldy head) need not collect £200 or pass Go. YOUR OPINIONS DON’T COUNT. We’re the media. We know best.

She’s a Christian. (Ooh, maybe that’s a cunning front for her ack-tu-ally being an Islamist terrorist scumbag).

She volunteers. (Yeuuucccchhh).

She has a positive attitude. (Wot – not a cynic like US???)

All the better ammo for the shithawk, rat-laden press to knock her down.

There isn’t much hope in Sleb-land for the, ungroomed, ordinary, nice person, who slips through the processing plant, such as her good self.

I truly, honestly, wish her the best of luck.

I just think she’s being set up to be cooked and eaten for breakfast by a petty, squabbling rat-pack with nothing better to do. Remember Michelle McManus, anyone? Oh yes, the fat girl who was knocked down and knocked out after the X-Factor win.

It is simply the question of “how long will it take”?

I’ve already taken a £10 bet that within three months, she’ll be a child-abusing, 30-years-ago abortion having, wicked, stupid, inadequate zero. And she’ll also be described as whatever the media slimeballs refer to these days as the politically correct version of “peasant”. Cos she is one. God bless her.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Reunion


South Africans really love their shopping malls. Menlyn Park, near our hosts’ house, was around the same size as Lakeside Thurrock to give at least South East Englanders a sense of perspective. Every large city seems to have three or four of them. There doesn’t seem to High Street culture as with the UK. Sad, but not so bad when the rain is tipping down as it did for a few days before we left for home.

Our arrival in Johannesburg was a bit momentous as neither ourselves or our taxi driver could receive mobile phone coverage and hence we could not let one another know where we were (platform 16, a rather obscure, out of the way place as it turned out). What might have been a disaster turned out to be a minor glitch. Just as we were considering making our own way to Pretoria, our driver found us and transported us through the congested northern suburbs for over 1.5 hours. The traffic is easily as dense as London’s.

I won’t name them here. All I want to say is that it was pure delight to meet our friends and their young children (who had been babies last time we were there). Most of the next few days was spent with them catching up on old times round the bra’ai, talking into the night with plenty of Windhoek beers, good South African wine and Johnnie Walkers (which I’ve grown a taste for thanks to our hosts).

We visited the local shopping mall, I bought some specs – much cheaper there and of equal or better quality than the ones I currently own and wandering round the Pick ‘n’ pay. Pretoria is not a hotspot on any tourist trail of South Africa, but that wasn’t the reason we came. Mrs D found a fellow wordsmith with our lady host and plenty of female bonding took place.

And their kids were charming, intelligent littl’uns. I had been quite nervous in case we didn’t get on with each other, but that wasn’t an issue as they at best ignored or and at best asked us to read to them and in turn tell us some of their stories. I feel a career in writing may be in order.

I feel a little bland not mentioning their names, but for sake of their privacy I won’t.

To our hosts though – THANKS. Your boundless hospitality was and still is most appreciated by me and Mrs Dukc. I hope we’ll be able to reciprocate in the not too distant future – though sadly I can’t see how we’ll squash into our postage stamp sized house, unless it becomes suddenly blue, makes strange growling noises and sprouts the word “POLICE” above its door.

Tomorrow, I’ll write about a momentous, perhaps life changing event, which won’t name anyone.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Shosholoza Meyl Train


Pardon me boy, is this the Shosholoza Meyl train?

Now we come to one of the highlights of our South African soiree – the Shosholoza Meyl train. Not quite up there with the Trans-Siberian, this is the longest train journey I’ve made. At 27 hours from end to end, and at £30 for the joy of being on the train this long, not only is it the budget alternative to flying, this has to be one of the biggest rail bargains anywhere in the world. Apparently, a sitter costs £7.50 one way, but I really don’t know how anyone could possibly do this and remain comfortable.

At 1230 sharp, our train left the far end of Cape Town station, trundling its way through the suburbs and into the country. Our first stop, Belleville, was unremarkable, and a few hours later, after travelling through some mountainous countryside, we travelled for mile after mile towards Worcester and onwards. Our beds were made up at 6, we ate at around 2030 and had a very relaxed time reading and talking crap until about 2330 when Mrs D hit the sack, and I carried on reading and admiring the starlit view – we rarely see stars in England due to light pollution.

It was a fairly large area in which to sleep – the arrangement is light that of the old slam door compartment trains which ran south of the Thames until recently. You have about three quarters of the entire width the carriage to sleep on, and have a fold down bunk above you. Fortunately, these are only really used when the trains are full, which since we were out of season, they were not. Between the seats is a fold up table, beneath which is a small sink (ours only gave out the meanest of dribbles). There are two toilets per carriage, so you essentially share one with about 8-10 others. The showers and toilets seemed to be given a thorough clean every few hours. British train companies could learn a lot from this. Food from the dining car was no more expensive than outside the train (a burger and chips was about £2.50) and was pretty basic though perfectly fine. It helped that we’d bought lots of bottled water with us and you do tend to get quite thirsty on these trains, even though ours did not feature air conditioning (the premier class train which does the same route is about seven times more expensive, so dream on).

I can’t think of anything negative about this trip, apart from being told that were running on time, when in fact we were an hour later than scheduled. Not a major concern, but we had contacted our taxi, meant to be picking us up at the station, and who had travelled from Pretoria. He became increasingly irate with us for keeping him waiting as he was on a meter and had already picked up a shared fare returning to Pretoria.

It was an interesting journey for its countryside, for the gentle tck-tck, tck-tck of the rails and because there isn’t a better way to travel apart from maybe a cruise ship if time is not a concern (we made time for this one and was definitely worth every hour “lost” to not having flown).

The company slogan is “A Pleasant Experience” and despite my reservations the strapline was spot on. It was and I’d recommend it to anyone who can make the time to do it.


Inside a sleeping compartment

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Robben Island


Robben Island "welkoms" you.

On the Monday, we travelled over to Robben Island, holding place for many apartheid-era political prisoners, including of course, the main man, Nelson Mandela. We had to hang around a while after buying tickets, since there was a bit of a backlog for the ferry, but after a meal of very large burgers, the boat took us across the five or six miles of water to the island.

Our tour guide was an ex-political prisoner and really knew his onions, offering us a humorous (yes, really) tour of the island, with plenty of information and anecdotes about what it was like to live there involuntarily. We started the tour by bus, followed by a walk around the cells where prisoners were incarcerated. We then travelled to the individual cells, including cell number 7 where Nelson Mandela lived. Because of our lack of sight, the tour guide allowed us into the cell – a rare privilege apparently. My thoughts on the island (though not the prison, which was suitably grim) was how beautiful the island is, with its views across to the Cape. With its white limestone and eucalyptus trees, it was rather like a desert island. But would like to live in the harsh conditions of the prison cell and hard labour? Nope. I think had we arrived during a storm, I may have left with a different opinion. I’ve been to Kilmainham Jail in Dublin, and that place was a true representation of grimness. Apart from the physical humiliation of having to move loads of lime from one place to another…then back…then back again (there was no real work for the politicos to actually do) I think I could almost enjoy the environment here, though not the incarceration.

An evening of wandering around the Waterfront again, followed by our final eats at the Kraal restaurant bought our stay in Cape Town to and end. Tomorrow would be the mammoth trip to Pretoria on the Shosholoza Meyl train.