REUTERS
A man wearing a national costume leads a camel giving rides to children during the Nauryz celebration in Almaty. Nauryz, an ancient holiday marking the spring equinox, is widely celebrated across Central Asia. picture: REUTERS
Breakthrough in the Greek debt crisis? American satirist Andy Borowitz suggests it could be in sight.
“In what many are hailing as a breakthrough solution to Greece’s crippling debt crisis, Greece today offered to repay a bailout from the European Union nations by giving them a gigantic horse.
“Finance ministers from 16 EU nations awoke in Brussels to find that a huge wooden horse had been wheeled into the city centre overnight.
“The horse, measuring several storeys in height, drew mixed responses from the finance ministers, many of whom said they would have preferred a cash repayment of the EU’s bailout.
“But German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she ‘welcomed the beautiful wooden horse’, adding: ‘What harm could it possibly do?’”
Oh, lovely stuff!
Turtle catchers
INFORMATION comes in on the remora, the parasite sucker-fish that attached itself to a surfboard at Dairy Beach recently.
Monty English, former Springbok game fisherman and a man who has fished for marlin all over the world, says different species of remora are found in numbers in every warm water ocean.
The sucker by which they attach themselves to sharks and other large fish evolved from the dorsal fin. In Australia, Aboriginal fishermen used them to catch sea turtles. A loop of line would be put around the remora’s tail and it would be cast towards the turtle. It would attach itself and the turtle would be hauled in.
Monty says remoras do sometimes move in shoals and they do take baited hooks. They attach themselves to any large sea creature and have been known to attach themselves to scuba divers swimming over reefs.
Colin McLean says one of his party caught a remora from a boat in Durban harbour about 50 years ago. It was caught on a hook baited with bay shrimp.
“Then one recalls the verse, to the tune of Valencia: ‘Remora! Wie de hel het jou vertel … etcetera etcetera …’” (The etceteras have to come in at this point because from here the line becomes unprintable).
Meanwhile, an anonymous reader points out that the famous advertising line needs some adaptation.
“Where’s the Remora?”
“It’s not inside, it’s underneath!”
Red cards at home
PEOPLE are becoming highly critical of the quality of the refereeing in the Super 15 Rugby competition. (Though I feel our own Craig Joubert has been exemplary. Natch! He went to Maritzburg College.)
I have it from impeccable sources that in one household at Mount Edgecombe golf estate, the wife has introduced a system of yellow and red cards for her husband as they watch on television.
If he waxes unduly wroth at the ref’s decision, she issues a yellow card and he has to leave the room for 10 minutes.
For persistent offending, she issues the red and he has to leave for the rest of the game. (Though he is allowed afterwards to watch a tape of what he has missed).
Who are these folk? Step forward Jeremy Nel, who played centre for the Boks in the 1950s and went on to become head honcho of Johannesburg Consolidated Investments; plus his wife, Sheila.
As the Aussies would say: This is some Sheila!
Lookalike
US PRESIDENT Barack Obama is so popular in Columbia that they organised a lookalike competition in the city of Cartagena.
Motor mechanic Carlos Alberto Perez was chosen from five finalists after making a bus trip of 1 200km, at the insistence of his boss.
I only hope one of the four runners-up hadn’t made a rather longer journey from Washington. After all, when Bing Crosby once sent in a tape for a “Who sounds most like Bing Crosby” crooning competition, he came third.
Road manners
Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up, he’ll never be able to merge his car on to the freeway.
Bumper sticker:
“I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart. Now what?”
Tailpiece
THE GALS are at coffee. One seems troubled.
“What’s the matter? You look stressed.”
“It’s my boyfriend. He’s lost everything in a stock market crash – money, savings, everything. He’s bankrupt.”
“You must be worried about him.”
“Sure am. How’s he going to cope without me?”
Last word
The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale. – Arthur C Clarke
