EVERYONE IS ASKING: WHAT HAS happened to Harold? After June (nose236) nothing.
Harold Strachan’s Last Word has been the favourite read for thousands of our regulars ever since nose26 back in 1999. The lamentable news is that at the age of 93 he has finally opted for retirement, departed his modest flat in Durban’s Berea and taken up residence in a care home. From which a message via matron emerges: “The only thing I am good at right now is lying down”.
However, the matchless scribe promises to “write the occasional piece when I feel up to it”.
The moment brings to mind an excerpt from his column in February 2018 (nose220), recounting his first solo flight in a Tiger Moth at 18, fresh out of Maritzburg College and in pilot training at SAAF No 8 Air School in World War II.
“You drive this aeroplane like a shitcart,” says Bertie. “I’m getting out. Taxi back to the fence here.”
At the fence I stop and he dumps his parachute pack on the grass, plants his fat bum upon it and lights a fag. I sit there in the Tiger and look at him. He waves me away soundlessly, telling me to voetsak. Which I do.
It seems this Tiger hates waddling around on the ground, but we’re soon at the downwind end of the field. I turn her into the wind and open the throttle wide. In a few seconds her tail is up and she’s nipping tiptoe over the tufts of grass and my ears are filled with the loud hollow drumming of it, she’s resonant as a guitar with her wood-and-fabric construction. Then abruptly the drumming stops and it’s really happening: I’m flying solo! I nudge the stick back at forty-five knots and without Bertie’s freight of flesh aboard she springs so wildly into the air that I have to push her down again and hold her just off the grass, then pull back slowly, and elegantly she sails up
to a thousand feet as if she has just risen from the hand of Noah.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2019 من Noseweek.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 2019 من Noseweek.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.
