Is there a Santa Claus?

I wish to commemorate that milestone in American emetic journalism when a New York editor, Frank Church, received a letter from a little girl named Virginia.
Virginia told Church that her friends were mocking her because she believed in Santa Claus. Frank Church wrote: “Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age… Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in fairies.
“No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever.
“A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
One wonders how, in this day and age, an editor might handle little Virginia’s letter.
How, for instance, would I have handled it?
“Dear Virginia,
“Thank you for your letter of the 12th inst. Herewith is my response, please find enclosed.
“Your friends are dead right.
“Santa Claus! Ha! You might as well believe in fairies. Nay, you might as well believe in the Easter Bunny, time tables and what you read in the newspapers.
Make no mistake, Virginia, Santa Claus is a figment of the Chamber of Commerce’s mission statement.
“Have you ever stood back and watched Father Christmas at your local departmental store? Do you see how obscenely fat he is? Can you visualise him sliding down your chimney – even supposing you have a chimney which, living in New York, you almost certainly don’t?
“Can you imagine him getting into any suburban home today without setting off alarms and Rottweilers and getting lead poisoning from 9mm slugs?
“Come on Virginia, get real.
“I am yours ever so sincerely,
“James F Clarke
“Editor of the Column that Tells It Like It Is.”
As I typed in that final full stop (please find) I heard the thump of gumboots getting louder and louder. They stopped outside Stoep Talk Organisation’s luxurious suite of offices. Then a fat, white-bearded man, dressed in ridiculous red clothes launched himself at my computer’s “ZAP” button.
“Stop!” he cried. “You are crazy! You have gone insane! Look at me! Say who I am! Go on, say it!”
I said: “Who I am.”
“No, no! Tell me who, or even whom, YOU think I am!”
“Father Christmas,” I said, taken greatly aback. (Nay, Virginia, I was gobsmacked.)
“And how did I get here notwithstanding the absence of a chimney?”
“You screeched up on that sledge pulled by those overgrown sprinklebokkens and kicked down my door causing the picture of my aunt, Pamela Anderson, to fall off the wall.”
“Yes, well, it was an emergency. But note that your lack of a chimney was no handicap to me. I gain entry through MAGIC.”
Then he said: “Look here, do you want something really nice for Christmas?”
“Yes please. I could do with a one of those cellphones that takes movies, prints faxes, boils kettles and has a built-in Swiss Army knife. Then I’d like mag wheels for my dustbin and I’d like some socks and…”
“And what must you be to get all these things?”
“I must be a good boy.”
“Then just remember that!”
And, so help me Virginia, he hit my “ZAP” button and rode off leaving a trail of stardust which the cleaning lady is going to be spitting mad about.

The collected papers of …

Today is International Columnists Day when newspaper columnists the world over traditionally update a past column so they can knock off early and sort out their beer mat collection.
It gives me the opportunity to recount how, some years ago, I read that Princeton University was working on the collected papers of Albert Einstein. Time said it was “one of the most ambitious publishing ventures ever undertaken in the history of science”.
Ha! I tried to imagine what it would be like if somebody tried assembling the collected papers of James F Clarke when he finally parks his bicycle.
Actually, my papers are already in a collected condition – piled high in cupboards, on shelves and in boxes in the garage.
Finding material that might prove remotely interesting would be the challenge.
I can see it now – a two-man team from the new University of Ogies’ English department headed by Professor Fanie Phello.
The prof stands scratching his brainbone. He is dwarfed by a mountain of paper – cuttings, tear sheets, lists headed “things to do” and inscribed, “fix back door, replace hall light, sharpen knives, get Band Aid, get car serviced; cholesterol check; pick up post; Marmite; cheese; superglue; fix kitchen tap…”
Prof Phello speaks to his assistant, Thola Izibi: These lists of ‘things to do’ are endless and obviously he never got around to doing them. Take ‘Fix kitchen tap’ – it appears on lists spread over many years.
Izibi: Over here are drawers and drawers of papers and boxes all labeled “M”.
Prof: Yes, that would be his secretary, Threnody Higginbottom whom he insisted on calling ‘Miss Smith’. She filed everything under M for Miscellaneous.
Izibi: Well it’s mostly letters from readers whom, I understand, used to write his column for him. And lots from medical aid.
Prof: Medical aid? That could be interesting – they might tell us something about his health.
Izibi: The letters are mostly to inform him that his medical fund is not prepared to pay his Wine Club bills and that he must desist from trying to claim them each month. It appears he read somewhere that red wine was good for the heart and he felt it should be considered as “chronic medicine”. He also used to send them his bills for All Bran and …
Prof (interrupting): Ah, what have we here? A letter from Buckingham Palace! It’s from the Queen’s assistant deputy private secretary, Sir Percy Snodfellow, begging Clarke to stop asking the Queen to write a foreword for his proposed book titled Prince Charles and me,(or I). It appears he once met Prince Charles and shook his hand and said “How d’you do?” That, for a journalist of Clarke’s calibre would have been the basis for a thick ganglion-flattening book.
Izibi: We must surely find something that gives an insight into what sort of fellow he was. He rose, after all, to head the biggest society in South Africa – Densa, the club for those too stupid for Mensa, the society for the highly intelligent.
Prof: Yes, that figures.
Izibi: But, Prof, Densa had some great ideas. Imagine if Densans had taken over South Africa! Who knows – traffic lights might have worked again; traffic cops would have come out from behind the bushes to help motorists for a change.
The cops would have arrested bad taxi drivers and sentenced them to filling in potholes.
The government would have introduced capital punishment for anybody caught putting up posters on suburban trees… or saying “isit?” every time somebody told them something.
Prof: You seem to be impressed by Densa.
Izibi: (Cough. Cough.) My grandfather was a closet member.

Aunt Prudence strikes again

Few readers know it but The Stoep Talk Organisation – the holding company for the Stoep Talk Column – has a rich history of helping people and at one time ran an agony column by “Aunty Pru”. Readers were invited to send her their problems.
Mindful of how some agony columnists are said to make up their own questions – something Stoep Talk (as everybody knows) would never do – we employed Miss Prudence Subtle-Boozer.
She wrote part time while running a home for fallen women in Ventersdorp. She was later matron at Stilton College, a well-known maximum security boys’ school in Natal and had enormous experience solving irritating personal problems such as bad breath and criminal insanity.
Aunt Prudence, in her sensitive columns, saved many a couple from the marriage yoke and set many an acne-tortured teenager on the right path (to lovers’ leap, mostly).
Some who responded were trying to strike up a relationship with a boy/girl/their mother/a Maltese poodle – others had problems such as itchiness or self-actualising and how to neck when one has a heavy cold.
This was 11 years ago and Aunt Pru is still around.
But the day we launched we were inundated by three letters:
Dear Aunt Prudunce,
(Please ecxuse my typing) Accordinh to my stars – I am Pisced by th way – I am abour to meet a tall, dark, hangsome man yet I am enfaged to a short, bald fat man who plays with model trains. He even maks me imitate train tooting becasuse, he say, it turns him on. Should I (at 43) wait for the TDH man or marry what’s in hand? Deepl:y Troubled, Tonteldoos, Ext 3.
Dear Gertie, you say you are Pisced. I do hope you meant Pisces. (If not try switching to low alcohol beer.) I would certainly give that frustrated would-be shunter a final shunt. You’ve waited at least 20 years for the right man so why not hang about a bit longer because, in the new South Africa, tall dark handsome men are, these days, going places fast?
Dear Aunt Prudence,
I cannot bear my fiancee’s name – Monica Piddlington (but please don’t use this as her mother will murder me) – yet she flatly refuses to change it. I have suggested Brunhilde (I am German). Piddlington will, of course, fall away when we marry and become Von Kimmelling-Berscheshagenoffenbach. What worries me is that if she won’t do little things for me now – like changing her first name – what about when we get married and I might require bigger things? For example, she will need plastic surgery to change her face so that it is in keeping with what I expect of a wife. Werner, Dinwiddie.
Dear Werner, women can be very unreasonable and stubborn. Monica’s mother might be a problem too. If you really HAVE to marry the girl – on account of, say, her money – why not let her keep her name Monica on paper but call her Brunhilde in the house? She’ll soon warm to it.
Dear Aunt Pru,
I am 18 and all my friends have dates except me – all I seem to have is acne. What can I do? Tearful, Midrand.
Dear Tearful, there’s nothing wrong with going out with acne. I accept that acne isn’t going to pay for your cinema ticket or a meal in a fancy restaurant but it will always be there next morning which is more than your girlfriends can say about their boyfriends. From your picture you have a particularly hideous case of acne. Try wearing a bag over your head. Boys love a mystery.

Marking secretaries’ day

What with the strike in the public service and Secretaries’ Day coinciding last week, business fizzled and telephones went unanswered throughout Gauteng.
It was no different at the headquarters of the Stoep Talk Organisation. Threnody Higginbottom, my private secretary whose name we pronounce as “Smith” and who files everything under “M” for Miscellaneous, had conspicuously circled Secretaries’ Day on her desk calendar when it was still barely mid August outside.
I pretended not to notice. I like her to think I can remember special days unaided.
Halfway through Wednesday I said, “Happy Secretaries’ Day!” and from behind my back I brought out a surprise in an envelope. She opened it and exclaimed, “But it’s a Christmas card!” That was the surprise, I said.
Oh my, how we laughed.
Well, I certainly did.
It’s always nice to give a little surprise on Secretaries’ Day. Last year I surprised her with an expensive (and hardly used) “Get Well” card. The year before it was a birthday card.
Every boss should have a sense of humour.
I fully realise it is also incumbent on the boss to do something bordering on the generous on Secretaries’ Day otherwise you get tea slopped in your saucer for months afterwards. So I took Threnody, once again, to lunch at Bobo’s where, I was pleased to see, they’d installed seats at last. It made it a lot more comfortable than having to stand at the counter admiring the back-lit blown-up photographs of sausages and chips.
“This is your day,” I told her, “and you may order whatever takes your fancy! Spare no expense! Even the ‘Special’ – a ladies’ steak and chips, if you like.”
To be frank, this annual lunch requires a very real sacrifice on my part. It’s not just the money it’s that Threnody is so very reserved. She sits up very straight and tense while I tend to be an exuberant eater, waving my fork around and dropping things down my tie which, when I get home, I often dig straight into the compost heap.
I allow her to drop the “Mr Clarke” and just call me “Sir”. I call her “Threnody” although, in the office I never address her as anything but “Miss Smith”. Threnody ordered a small hamburger, with chips. I ordered just a cold drink for myself but told her not to worry about me. “Just relax,” I said. To show her that I was perfectly at ease and that there was no need for her to hurry the meal, I tapped a little tune on the table with my fingers.
The conversation, as always, comprised mainly of little fits of coughing.
Cough, cough, cough she went and then she said how long it had been since she’d had a salary increase. Naturally, I was curious. “How long?” I asked.
“(Cough. Cough.) Four years.”
She confessed she’d actually prayed for a rise. I was shocked that she should have gone above my head and said if she wanted a rise she must say so.
“(Cough. Cough.) Well, I do!” she said.
Then I too went into paroxysms of coughing and subtly changed the subject: “How’s your mother?” I asked. (A lot of bosses don’t care about their secretary’s family.)
“Fine,” she said.
I asked her if she liked my “surprise” card. She said “Yes.” Then I reminded her of last year’s “Get well” card and we had another jolly good laugh.

Hey, Did You See What Obama did?

President Obama swatted a fly during a televised interview a few days ago. And then he congratulated himself on his quick reflexes.
The fly, which as far as I could make out had done nothing wrong except settle on the presidential knee, lay there on the carpet twitching in its death throes for all the world to see.
Yet the media have been shamefully silent about the morality involved in this spontaneous act of violence and has given not a thought to the probable impact of the President’s action on impressionable minds.
Isn’t the world violent enough already? (Answers on a post card please).
Thank heavens then for Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Its members don’t wear leather, they don’t eat meat – they won’t even drink milk because that would be exploiting cows. And they certainly don’t go about swatting flies and mosquitoes. They all walk funny but that’s only because they have to avoid stepping on ants.
Peta is yet another forthright and courageous animal rights group in America and it has demanded an apology from the President.
As President for Life of Densa, the club for those who haven’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting into Mensa (the society for those with high IQs) I want to congratulate Peta and offer it my full backing. Peta! I am right behind you marching shoulder to shoulder.
Densa firmly believes flies have rights just as cockroaches, slugs and politicians have rights.
Flies have feelings (otherwise why was this one twitching?) and flies are sensitive towards other creatures. Do you ever see a fly eating a LIVE animal? No. They wait until an animal is stone dead and, just to be sure, they even hang around until the carcase is rotten and suppurating and stinking.
And did Obama give a moment’s thought about whether this fly was perhaps a daddy fly with 4677 children (now tragically orphaned). Children now without a bread-winner (OK. Yes. I should have said, “now without a green meat-winner”) and 89 500 grandchildren and 1 456 000 great grandchildren crying themselves into their pillows at night?
And yet, as I say, the media has not seen fit to criticise the President. Is this because they are a bunch of liberal pinkos who believe Obama is the new Messiah?
After all, what did this fly do? He, or she (She? OMG. What if this fly was a mummy fly about to fly home to feed her 40677th baby?) … he or she merely sat on the presidential knee.
Maybe he (or she) wanted to impart a vital message from the insect world?
Even if it merely wanted to impart a tiny globule of fresh dog’s dropping – maybe from the White House lawn itself, left there by the President’s dog, Bo – did it deserve to die for THAT?
It was an abuse of power.
What if George Bush (remember him?) had settled on the President’s knee – would Obama have, with one blow sent him sprawling to the floor? On television?
By viciously striking an innocent creature 1/10 000 000th smaller than himself Obama showed a facet of his character that must have disappointed many. Yet the media have shown no sign of outrage.
The Stoep Talk Organisation wishes to distance itself from The Star which, like all the other newspapers, has not even raised an editorial eyebrow. Yet look at how indignant it was when B52 bombers swatted Iraq. And look how, only a month ago, it roundly criticised North Korea because it threatened to drop atom bombs on people’s heads.
Is it that size counts after all?

Why I was so heavy as a kid

An old friend, Adrian Steed, emailed to say, “Congratulations to all who were born between the 1930s and early 1970s.
“We survived despite there being no childproof lids on medicine bottles; riding our bikes without helmets; spending babyhood in cots painted with lead-based paints…”
Stop right there.
Don’t joke about our lead-contaminated world. We might have survived in that we are still breathing in and out but what did all those heavy metals do to us mentally?
Of all brain-damaging pollutants lead is the worst.
It might well explain why today we do mad things like shrieking in lunatic ecstasy at pop stars cross-eyed with drugs and who earn more than state presidents; like buying and selling soccer players for more money than it cost to build ships; like blowing those stupid horns non-stop for 90 minutes at soccer matches.
We who lived in the lead-polluted world of last century must be full of it and as sure at nuts (if you’ll forgive the expression) our head filler is severely damaged.
Even the aluminium pots of yesterday are now believed to have contaminated food to the extent that it caused the sudden prevalence of that disease that destroys one’s memory. Eizenhammers? Alpiners? I’ve forgotten.
And mercury. In my boyhood we would play for hours with beads of mercury, breaking them up and watching them coalesce again. Today mercury is known to scramble the brain just as surely as opening up the skull and inserting an electric eggbeater.
Look how toxic smoke poured out of factory chimneys like toothpaste. In my childhood in the English Midlands the air was filled with sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, phenols, chlorofluorocarbons and heavy metals like cadmium and German bombs. All brain damaging.
And there was lead. Ah yes, lead. Lead from vehicle exhausts; lead from water pipes and, as you say, lead from our cots which health authorities infer we must have eaten though I don’t recall doing so.
Water passing along lead pipes becomes contaminated – hence the expression “heavy water”.
As kids we played with lead soldiers and then ate sandwiches with lead-blackened fingers so it went into our stomachs from where – although I’ve never understood how – it leaked upwards into our brains. Maybe little bits dropped down each time we bent to tie our shoe laces. Maybe those who went around barefoot are today less brain damaged than we are.
We even looked for scrap lead to melt on the kitchen stove and pour into sand moulds so that our homes became filled with lead fumes. Whole families ended up sitting cross-eyed in corners, giggling and nudging each other until the authorities arrived to take them away.
I recall melting down some broken lead soldiers over the kitchen stove, pouring the molten metal into a mould and fashioning a model boat hull and trying to sail it in the bath. Any parent seeing their child engrossed in trying to float a lead boat should immediately start asking it questions like, “How many fingers am I holding up, son?” and, “Can you tell me your name?”
As a kid I might have been small, but I was heavy. Not surprisingly I was a poor swimmer.
When I and my lead-befuddled friends leapt shrieking with joy in to our local municipal swimming bath our lead-filled heads acted like breeze blocks anchoring us to the bottom. Lifesavers were constantly on the look out for feet sticking up above the surface so they could pull us out.
Today’s cheap plastic playthings may be, after all, the best bet.
Certainly plastic armbands are better than lead ones. So are plastic beach balls.

How to Kill your Husband (nicely)

The lunchtime topic was “How to kill your husband”.
Ronnie Whitaker, a Durban wife, mother and author has discovered a nice way to do it.
She claims to have “a successful marriage” and I gathered the secret lay in what Ronnie and her husband call each other. They call each other long distance. Ronnie’s husband lives 10 000 km away in England.
The lunch was at the New Chapter Literary Luncheon Club at Sandton’s Hilton Hotel. The club arranges for authors to talk about their latest books and sell some at the door. The club has launched some of mine but the preponderantly female members have never fallen upon myh books with the salivating enthusiasm that they displayed for Ronnie’s “How to kill your husband” (published, appropriately, by Spearhead).
Ronnie says, “Women place for too much emphasis on being married – and not nearly enough on being widows.”
She advises women to make sure they get what is rightfully theirs – the old man’s life insurance.
She says she likes men, but that some are nicer dead.
Oh yes, I laughed and laughed. All we males laughed. Sort of high-pitched stuff.
And we dropped our food more than usual.
Ronnie was a little nervous of public speaking but as she warmed to the subject she began to appear more and more like Charles Adams disguised as a fruit sundae.
“I’m terrified of public speaking,” she said. “A recent study showed that 90 percent of people say public speaking is their greatest fear. Death came second.
“So there you go, people would rather die than stand up and speak. It figures, therefore, that the men affected (by the advice in her book) are lucky. All they have to do is die while I must stand up here and speak.”
Ronnie’s book is just like Ronnie herself. There’s a cynicism that is very very funny. There are recipes for “killer food”; recipes that are practically guaranteed to give the old man a heart attack, in good time. It’s not cold-blooded murder, you understand. There’s no blood involved. It’s good fun all round.
She said, “When my husband had a heart attack we weren’t prepared for it – he didn’t have enough insurance.” After virtually saving his life she got him to step up insurance payments.
“I agree, heart attacks are no laughing matter,” she says. “Well, at least, not until the estate is wound up,”
She says a woman spends 30 years of her life looking for her man’s lost socks and taking all his nonsense only to see him stricken by the “lolita syndrome” and go off with his 22 year old secretary. “And he doesn’t even wear socks any more. It’s slops and Bermuda shorts. He looks ridiculous. But she gets the money.”
She sounded almost serious when she said a wise wife ignores her husband’s affairs – “and certainly don’t divorce him because then the Viagra popping nymph chaser will give all his money to the bimbo”.
Affairs are stressful and stress is good for heart attacks. And nearly all men who die having sex do so while with the other woman.
So, she says, encourage stress and invest in lethal puddings. She offers some serious super-cholesterol killer recipes such as:
“Healthy Mangoes Ha Ha – liquidise a large mango with 125-150 mg mascarpone cheese. Layer between liqueur-soaked sliced mango and top with whipped cream!”
The funeral can be a tonic…
A drunken abusive husband died and the hired minister exaggerated the man’s almost non-existent good points so ridiculously that the widow began to giggle and eventually she and all her friends folded up in helpless laughter.
But I must go. My wife is cooking a huge eisbein – with chips followed by bread-and-butter pudding – again.

Shedding more light on Darkest Europe

Maybe we are getting older. The Tour de Farce team I mean. We who took part in this month’s Tour de Farce VIII expedition in France are all over 40 y’know. Yes, all right, over 50. OK, over 60…
But once again, we did it: 1000 km across France. Well, OK, let’s say 800. Mind you, it might have been only 700. Certainly we cycled more than 600. Oh yes. Definitely more than 600. Even 620.
We always go in the Northern Hemisphere’s spring.
As many readers know, the annual Tour de Farce is when, ever so intrepidly, six of us set out from Africa to explore, on bicycles, Darkest Europe and bring back tales of the natives there.
There were only four of us this year – two having been temporarily stricken by problems that typically afflict the over 40s such as ones spine crumbling like a cheese straw or ones hip joints running out of axle grease.
They’ll be back next year.
Our difficulties began right at the start, at the railway station at Paris’s Charles de Gaul Airport. Peter Sullivan (who normally takes charge at stations and airports) asked for tickets to Haute Peronne 100km north in the Somme valley.
Explorers such as Marco Polo, David Livingstone and Bartholomew Dias would understand what I mean by “difficulties”.
“No station at Peronne,” said the ticket man.
“But it says here we must take a train to Haute Peronne,” said Peter.
“No train. Go to Amiens and catch a taxi.”
At this stage, as expedition leader, I took command. Bearing in mind that one has to speak loudly when speaking English in France, I waved our instructions, explaining that there were people waiting for us at Haute Peronne station. I added, “Très important people”.
He shrugged in that dismissive way that Frenchmen learn at shrugging collièrge.
Then he said, “Ah, Péron! Bourgogny!”.
“Non. Non! Picardy.”
“Ah, Picaaardeee! Oila!”
Next thing we were getting off the train at Picardy’s tiny station where we were greeted by two young ladies from the Somme Tourist Board who were providing the bikes for the first leg of our heroic ride. They whisked us by car 9 km east of Peronne through villages whose names we could not pronounce.
We stayed in Buire-Courcelles on Joel Bleriot’s ancient endive farm, Moulin de Binard. This beautiful farm is set amid deep meadows sparkling with daisies and buttercups. Below is a shady stream that emerges from dense woodland whose branches accommodate a full choir of birds.
Just as the Pilgrim Fathers opened up America for those who came later so it was our bounden duty to open up this area of France to future cyclists – families, groups of friends and so on.
People ask us: Is it safe? Is it expensive? Is the terrain challenging? Is it interesting? Do you need to move your own luggage each day?
The short answers are: yes, no, yes, yes, no.
We spent three days cycling in the Somme Valley though not as far as its huge estuary famous for its waterfowl. That would b a great ride – via Amiens and Abbeville.
Occasionally we found ourselves on busy highways yet with careful map reading (something that eludes us) it is possible to pick ones way clean across France using only quiet, almost traffic-free country roads. But with four of us reading individual maps and all four possessed of 100 decibel voices we were inclined to shoot off at different angles shouting contradictory pieces of unheeded advice.
The next two weeks took us down the Somme with its lakes and streams, along the Normandy coast and then across to Burgundy for the final week – all to unveil, for the people of Africa, yet another corner of Darkest Europe.

Japlish and Chinglese – irresistible

It is, of course, rude to laugh at the efforts of foreigners trying to write English – especially people from the Far East. How can somebody, like me for instance who knows only two Japanese expressions (“saki” and “Tokyo Sexwale”), have the cheek to laugh?
Well, like chocolate digestives and kicking car tyres, I can’t help myself – and suppressing the temptation to laugh at Far Eastern instruction leaflets can lead to stress fractures in the lower abdomen.
Some time ago C L Voges of Lakeview, Florida, sent me the following instructions for a Japanese keyboard:
The audio speaker is so construction that a sound of volume will come out of it when a key is depressed due to the finger. This is due to an electricity of alternate flowing in the coil in it.
And how was this? – it came with a calculator.
The batterys must position so that the poles are to correspond to the like poles mark on the device. This will failure or damage device if not done so correctly.
Les Caroto sent me a letter he had received from a Taiwanese corporation:
Dear Sirs, we hereby to recommend a most practical invention, Ribbon Inker, to you. Instead of renewing a ribbon from time to time, Ribbon Inker makes it can be re-used over and over. Spenting just a little money you’ll have unexpected effect.
This machine can make the ribbon use again and again and don’t need to renewing so soon and re-used the ribbon over and over to protect the earth to increase rubbish.
All of us think that this new item will be come most necessary and most popular in the latest.
More information will be supplied at your comments. Please contact with us earlier, we assure you of our best service and quickly reply.
From an unnamed source I received these instructions which accompanied a Taiwanese-made sponge purporting to be German-made:
SPONGE SQUEEZE – please put sponge in water about 3-5 minutes to soft before use. Attention to always keep wet.
Wash the dirt, draw the handle a few times and dirt water will quick off the sponge.
NOTE: The Germany sponge features – don’t need sunburn and always keep wet after use for available. If a long time didn’t use it will dry out, please put in water again, for useful and long life.
And on a peanut packet:
GOOD EDIBLES – It is a famous local product refined with the peanuts in a special grade as raw material which are in even granule and thick in nut but thin in skin by a traditional direction in an advanced scientific method. It is a kind of good edibles which is suitable for young or old people with the special taste causing your favourite.
The Chinese use insensitive computer programmes to translate Chinese into English with sometimes hilarious results.
It prompted sports journalist, Jane Bramley, to tell me about a yoga mat she recently bought and how the instructions “nearly caused me to twist myself into a knot because I laughed so hard reading them”.
Jane then quotes:
The yogo mat is made of OVC foam materials which make it exceptionally durable, not adhinit dust, no poisonous, no sapor, block burn, defend avulsion, you can seat on the floor to practice the yoga, you can feel more comfort, act to the moment because of the yoga mat.
The rubber foam materials can greatly strengthen the resist the pull, make the action slowly, protect your body to get hurt.
Product characteristics: Flexible, comfort, touch the ground well. Excellent endure climate, protect the color. Withstand avulsion well, bear the low temperature. Good flexible, not easy to distortion
Soft chest expander. The soft chest expander is an exercise tool used to strengthen health. Its ergonomic design allows for ease of use while reducing the risk of possible injury. It’s well suitable for the length, the strength, the handgrip with the rubber foam, the pulling well, flexible comfort, antiskid good, the safe coefficient is high, it’s convenience for you stretching at home, it not only eliminate the proud flesh on the arm and the shoulder, but can also promote health develop of strengthen chest, it should exercise plump, goodliness of chest lines.
Avulsion? Like the tearing off of a limb.
Hmm. I need to exercise the plump. Maybe I should get a yoga mat and eliminate the proud flesh.
Imraan Geedat of Springs sent me the instructions for a “Magic Cube”, an elongated version of the Rubik Cube:
Exotic snake is an itellicence test to gain creativity cubic configueation and space master spilts, by spinnting the 24 bricks contionusly.
We can create thousand kings of different gitapes. This smain brochure coneats the picture created by exotic snake, please master these picture first, if you have done this then make your own pictures.
I received anonymously the instructions for a Hamanaka Pencil. It is for drawing on fabric. “For all clothes – Just only draw. You can dye”.
In case you made a mess of things it suggested: “You can clean up the colours on your hand and/or foot easily with soup.”

Polly’s gone crackers

A Chinese man walked into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The barman asked, “Where’d you get that?”
The parrot says: “In Asia there are MILLIONS of them!”
I am not sure why parrots feature so much in jokes but they do. Here are a few samples some of which you’ll know but a good story, like good music, bears repetition…
A woman bought a female parrot without realising it had spent its formative years in a brothel. All it would say was “Hi guys! You wanna good time?”
This often proved to be very embarrassing and the woman asked her local priest what she should do.
He told her he had two male parrots who spent their days saying the rosary and praying quite fervently and he suggested she put her parrotess in with his two males.
When the female parrot entered the cage there was silence at first. Then the new arrival said, “Hi guys! You wanna good time?”
One of the male parrots said to his companion, “Hey Cecil, you can stick those beads away. I think our prayers have been answered.”
Then there was this one which I frequently receive:
A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. It had a bad attitude and its language was profane and vulgar.
John tried in vain to clean it up.
He yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. In desperation he shoved the bird into the refrigerator. The parrot squawked and screamed. Then, suddenly, silence.
John quickly opened the door and the parrot stepped out onto John’s outstretched arm and said: “I have offended you with my rude language and I apologise unconditionally. I will never swear again.”
John was stunned and was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change when the bird continued, “May I ask what the chicken in there did?”
Then this corny one:
A woman brought a very limp parrot into the surgery and the vet pronounced it dead.
She wailed, “You haven’t even tested it.”
The vet brought in his Labrador. It sniffed the dead parrot and then looked at the vet with sad eyes.
Then the vet brought in a cat that looked the parrot up and down and left the room.
The vet said, “It’s definitely dead.” He handed her a bill for R400. She was outraged.
He shrugged. “If you’d taken my word for it, it would have been R60 – but what with the Lab test and the cat scan…”
My favourite:
A magician was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The audience would be different each week, so the magician could safely repeat the same tricks.
Just one problem: the captain’s parrot saw the shows every week and began to understand what the magician was doing. He took to calling out in the middle of the show: “Look, it’s not the same hat!” and “He’s hiding the flowers under the table!”
The furious magician could do nothing because it was the captain’s parrot.
One day there was a terrible storm and the ship was wrecked. The magician found himself on a piece of wood in mid ocean, the parrot by his side. They stared at each other with hate, but uttered not a word. This went on for several days.
Finally, the parrot said: “OK, I give up. What did you do with the ship?”
And this one which I used some time back:
After carefully “casing” a house for several hours and watching the residents depart for a night out, a burglar entered and in the dark felt his way around from room to room.
On entering what he considered to be the living room he heard a quiet voice say, “Jesus is watching you!”
He froze. Then he continued to cautiously feel his way further around the wall and the same voice, somewhat louder now, repeated the message: “Jesus is watching you!”
Again he stopped. Silence.
He continued around the room for a while and a loud voice from immediately in front of him said, “JESUS IS WATCHING YOU!”
He took out his torch and shone it on a beautiful parrot sitting in its cage directly in front of him.
He laughed with relief and asked, “Is your name Jesus?”
“No,” said the parrot, “My name is Percy.”
After a stunned silence the burglar asked, “Who on earth would name a parrot Percy?”
“Well,” said the parrot, “that would be the same person that named the Rottweiler that’s walking behind you, Jesus.”