The world, including South Africa, has spent billions over many decades trying to stamp out dagga, otherwise known as marijuana, pot or weed. Those billions have been wasted. Worse still, they have diverted resources away from more important priorities. Happily, politicians in many countries and many states in the USA have come to their senses. It is …
A different time, A Different Country
Half-watching TV - an e.tv programme called A Different Country is on and it's about a bunch of SA kids going to a private school in England called Stowe. My ears prick up. My dad went to Stowe. He was born J.E. Mansfield (known as Roly) about 100 years ago (am 76). He must have …
Crisis in education: are we teaching our kids the wrong stuff!
The matric results are out. Educational and government spokesmen are blowing their own cracked trumpets and opposition parties are criticising the cracks in the trumpets. Government and opposition alike are focusing on a long outdated educational system. Very few are asking: are we teaching the skills (at schools and universities) our children and grandchildren are …
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Experiences from hell – male urinary catheters
Penises have a number of uses. One of them is to pipe urine from the bladder out of the body through a tube called the urethra. The urethra has a one-directional valve which regulates the flow of urine out of the bladder enabling most people to control their bladder and thus avoid a continuous 'trickle …
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Holidays at Umngazi Mouth – the Bungalows – in the 1950s
In the late 1940s and much of the 1950s, we lived in Johannesburg. Most of our friends' families took them to places with exotic-sounding names like Durban, Cape Town, Southbroom, Margate and St Michaels, but our family almost always went to The Bungalows at the Umngazi River Mouth. As children, we used to envy our …
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Helping to make apricot jam
I recall I am helping my grandmother make apricot jam. I am about six years old. She is doing the preparing and cooking. I am sitting on a kitchen floor helping by cracking the apricot pips to get to the soft kernels (seeds?) inside. The pips are tough. I am hitting them with a hammer. …
On writing a blog – what I have found
There is an unforeseen benefit to writing a blog about memories: the act of writing stirs long forgotten memories. As I type they drift in from the mists of time, initially sometimes as just a word or two, or in the form of a smell or a taste, and then a whole scene comes into focus. One challenge I …
