The media told Denis Beckett that Libyans hate their tyrant, but Google seems far from sure of that.

 

In London in 1989 South Africa’s conflict was big TV news. One channel had a pulsating flashpoint logo with the day’s death count. Every night showed flashing flames with a place name and a race scorecard. “Stilfontein - 1 White, 3 Blacks”; “Lusikisiki - 4 Blacks”.

Denis gets put off his breakfast by a bit of passing people-clubbing, a la seal-clubbing, and turns his mind to how D2 might impact on this quadrant of human affairs.

Dawn is rising over Wanderers Street and my OWJ lobe is in nostalgia mode. Nostalgia is the birthright of we Old White Joburgers; we’re world captains. Other cities have changed, I do not begrudge, but none like ours. Especially round Wanderers Street.

On Rapallo Corner I get déjà vu. 1960s, half-term dinner on pass-out from boarding house. Artificial grapes over artificial beams gave a Riviera flavour. The violinist did his best with Elvis and Lonesome Tonight, spoiling a boy on a special occasion. Afterwards we ambled quiet streets, mom in a hat, dad and I whoops-a-daisying my sister. Nostalgifest.

On the pavement, surrounded by a tangle of pruned rose branches that would defy a tank, our cousin, Di, has nearly finished a day of rose-surgery. They’ve been mega-bushes, climbing our wall. I’ve just got home. I’m awed. I’m saying “Di, can I get you tea, can I get you coffee, can I get you a whiskey, can I get you band-aid...”

Keen is fine. I’m in favour of keen. We can use more keen. Give us keen!
When you find keen, you do not lightly stomp on it.
But the car-guard was over-keen, he was beyond keen. He was as frenetic as a trainee manager on a team-building junket.

Our local Community Police Forum asked me to speak at their AGM, and wanted me to propose a topic. I said I’d like to address why, in this crime-obsessed society, the annual meeting of a police precinct containing some 50 000 adult people would not have more than 0.03% attendance. I got keen on that question, as I thought round it, and I’d like to submit to Moneywebbers a condensed version of the speech:

 

Why is Joburg’s mayor blamed for a terrible speech that he didn’t make? And what does this say about how we progress to the era of the sound political foundation?

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This article was done for Moneyweb in February. I discover July 15 that half of it (the D2 lecture) evaporated into cyberspace when it got imported here. Beg pardon, of the 270 people who read it and wondered "what?" It did have a point, I think/hope, now reinstated. Denis