The winds of Crete have been howling for two days; force six? Force seven? More? Don’t know. I only know the fir trees I see from my window are bending almost double with each gust and there’s a rattling going on on the roof that is quite alarming. Are we to lose some more tiles I wonder? It’s no wonder the old Cretan houses have their roofs held down with heavy stones. At least they are warm winds so must be coming up from the south. Hopefully they won’t bring Gaddaffi’s rain when everything is covered in yellow, almost orange coloured sand.
Yesterday at sparrowfart Douglas drove me to IKA for what hopefully will be the last blood test, in fact a double whammy! The first at eight o’clock after which I had to drink a plastic tumbler full of what could only have been slightly dissolved sugar, so sickeningly sweet I spent the next half hour trying to keep it down. Then after a two hour wait, the second blood test and the results will be known to-day after which we will know whether or not in my old age I have a tendency towards diabetes. Thinking of what Douglas’s dad went through I suppose all this checking up will have been worth it if it nips anything nasty in the bud.
Before correcting it I noticed I spelt tendency as trendency. In the Mail on Fridays they have cod words like Daftodils – stupid Dutch imports, Ginjury – too much of the hard stuff. Very witty, what? So what would trendency be – smartarsing? Americans have, or used to have, their Polack jokes, the English have their Irish jokes (do the Irish have English jokes?) When I was a youngster in South Africa the jokes were levied at the Afrikaner or at the police who were often not all that well educated and reputed to be as thick as two planks. As the police were mostly Afrikaners sometimes the jokes coincided.
Konstable van Niekirk was after making an arrest and cornered what looked like a potential criminal. He looked in his little book and came up with “I’m arresting you for loitering with intent.” ‘Intent to do what?’ the man said. So Konstable van Niekirk, not having an answer to that, went back to his little book and came up with something else. After five or six suggested offences all of which the man denied, Konstable van Niekirk said, “All right. I’m arresting you for arson. You’ve been arsing around far too much now.”
Konstable van Niekirk was on duty at the docks when a man in dire need of a pee hurried up to him and asked for directions to the urinal. Van Niekirk thought for a while and then said, “Has she got one funnel or two?”
All very well but now most of the police are black and John Lewis informs me that in Natal anyway, if not corrupt, they are so shit-scared of going against the witch doctor and his powers it truly bodes ill for law and order.
Some of the Afrikaner jokes are so racist I wouldn’t even dream of writing them down.