More Reading and exploring with Hugh in 2025, part 2

And there's a picture from Pretoria I've been meaning to post for some time.



Pretoria Uni has what they claim to be the first exterior "green wall" on any campus in the country. Here it is; with some imagination it could be reminiscent of a damp cliff in the Magaliesberg, about an hour's drive from this spot.

>1 hfglen: This is awesome!

And Happy New Thread!

>1 hfglen:
Interesting.

Happy New Thread!

Cool!

Happy New Thread!

>1 hfglen: Very interesting to see this in place. I'd enjoy learning more about the thinking behind it. I'd never heard of a "green wall" in this context. Was the plan simply intended to add additional plant life to the environment? Was it to prove a particular concept to urban planning types?

Is this (https://www.up.ac.za/botanical-garden/article/2089863/cremnophyte-based-green-walls-and-green-roof-research-on-the-plant-science-building) part of what your shot shows? And actually, I just found this paper on the topic: https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/61145/Vosloo_Living_2016.pdf?s...

>1 hfglen: That is gorgeous. Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Hugh!

>1 hfglen: Intriguing. Thank you for posting.

>5 jillmwo: Many thanks for those. Yes, they both refer to the wall in my picture. The (relatively) new botany building -- it must be now between 10 and 20 years old -- has taken energy efficiency to the extreme; so much so that often a comfort stop involves entering a totally dark room and waiting until a sensor realises you're there and turns on the light. IIRC Jason Sampson, the garden curator, told me that wall is also supposed to reduce the carbon footprint of the building.

>2 Alexandra_book_life: -- >7 haydninvienna: many thanks for the good wishes.

>1 hfglen: Happy New Thread. I do love this idea.

Happy new thread!

>11 clamairy: >12 Sakerfalcon: Thank you both!

Peter may enjoy this story from an old newsletter (that later grew up into the magazine S.A. Rail)

A playful elephant held up a train for more than two and a half hours a hundred miles north of Bulawayo yesterday (19 August 1970). The elephant uprooted a telephone pole near Gwaai on the edge of the Wankie Game Reserve and the broken pole disrupted all communication between stations, a railway spokesman said. (Trust them to end up blaming the poor pole.)

The name of the reserve is now spelt Hwange.

>14 hfglen:. Well, clearly the elephant felt the pole was in the way. Obstructing the elephant's traffic path. But this raises a question in my head. How long did it take elephants to adapt to the incursion of the railways? Did the trains scare them initially? Did a bull elephant perceive the whistle of an engine as a challenge? A static pole that doesn't make much noise wouldn't pose much of a problem, but one does wonder how the elephants viewed the presence of a steam engine. Did some one have to warn engineers not to blow whistles unnecessarily? Serious question (and one that I wouldn't trust an AI thing to answer appropriately).

>15 jillmwo: Simple answer: I don't know. More complex answer: one might find some of this out by reading Ted Davison's book Wankie; he was the founding ranger / manager of this highly respected reserve. Otherwise Rhodesia Railways Magazine may shed some light.

>1 hfglen: Happy new thread! As always, thank you for the pictures and information.

>14 hfglen:
Great story, Hugh. Thank you.

So Few are Free is a relatively early (1946) work by Lawrence G. Green, telling tales of the West Coast (of South Africa and Namibia) in his usual easy-reading style. Good bedside reading, if you can find a copy.

Reread of Don Camillo's Dilemma and Don Camillo and the Devil. Although these stories are almost as old as I am, they have lost none of their humour. A reread is long overdue! (For those wanting to locate them a bit better, the volume of Lambrusco wine consumed suggests to me that the "big city" is usually Modena. Next thought: could the situations still be relevant today?

Re-read of V. Sackville-West's Garden Book. Not sure if the touchstone is 100% correct here. The suggested book looks nothing like my copy, but LT gives no alternative. Excerpts from her gardening column in The Observer from long ago, arranged by month. No doubt excellent if you live in Kent, interesting elsewhere (give or take that many of her plants won't grow in Durban or Brisbane).

>20 hfglen: I have three of those books and they are, as you say, delightful. The Little World of Don Camillo and Comrade Don Camillo being my favorites.

>20 hfglen:
I have a Don Camillo book that I have not read yet. Your post and >22 MrsLee: encourage me to dig it out and read it.

>20 hfglen: >22 MrsLee: >23 pgmcc: I am quite sure those titles were in the library of my high school. I don't think I read them, but I seem to recall the line drawing illustrations.

My dad had two or three of the Don Camillo books. I now regret not having kept them.

>22 MrsLee: >23 pgmcc: >24 jillmwo: >25 haydninvienna: Thank you, all! The best is yet to come.

>24 jillmwo: You've missed out! I can only suggest you remedy this lacuna (gaping crater!) in your education ASAP!

And now something to gladden @haydninvienna's heart, from the same source as #14 but a later issue. (I let myself be conned into preparing a "cumulative contents" for the magazine, which means I now have to read it!

This legal nicety comes from the Federal Official Gazette published in Bonn. "A tram-line crossing a railway line is deemed to be a highway. But tram-line crossing a highway is deemed to be a railway."

Logical, if you work it out.

The Adventure of English: the biography of a language is the companion volume to an eight-part TV series which, as it happens, is available to watch on YouTube. I evidently read this in 2011, but have clean forgotten that I did so. Suffice to say that the video series is well worth watching, though the facts are the same as in many other histories of English. However they give a small sample of Frisian (nearest Continental language to English) but not, unfortunately, the piece I learned from a Dutch ex-colleague:
"Buter, brea en griene tsiis --
Hwa dit niet sitze kan, is geen oprjogte Friis." *
A translation is hardly necessary, as all the words are common with English, Lowland Scots or Anglo-Saxon.
Melvyn Bragg comes over as much less pompous than in his weekly In Our Time on BBC Radio 4.

* All right then. Butter, bread and green cheese; who can't like those is no proper (upright) Frisian.

To my mind Don Camillo meets Hell's Angels (Don Camillo meets the Flower Children for USAnian readers) scores over the other books of stories from the little world of the lower Po valley, in that the ones in this book form a connected narrative centred on two relative newcomers, namely Don Camillo's niece, who was baptised Elizabetta, though she only ever answered to the name Flora, and Peppone's son Michele, known as Venom. Flora was the leader of a gang of urban hooligans, and Venom led the equivalent gang in the village. For most of the book they fight like, well, football hooligans, until the chips come down. When the Great River floods they get recruited by Don Camillo and Peppone (working together for once!) to gather relief supplies and deliver them where they are needed in the Delta. They also rescue flooded-out residents and move them to higher ground. Both gangs working together! In an epilogue, Flora and Venom "make the greatest mistake of your lives" and get married.

Seeing we were talking about a Zimbabwean elephant in #14, here is a herd of them, from nearly as long ago as that story.



Sinamwenda (a place too insignificant to appear on any map), on the shores of Lake Kariba, April/May 1971.

>30 hfglen:
Excellent. Thank you!

>30 hfglen: Love this!

My father had some of those Don Camillo books hanging around when I was young. I remember enjoying them immensely.

Further to Jill's note in her thread at https://www.librarything.com/topic/369642#8811139 , there may be more to this story than meets the eye at first glance. And so I offer a picture of African Penguins at Boulders Beach, Simonstown (obscurely, part of Table Mountain National Park).



Within living memory (just), penguin eggs were a regular part of Cape Town residents' diet, but this was prohibited some 50 or more years ago, due to the falling population of penguins. The population has continued to shrink at an alarming rate, and they are now recognised as Rare and Endangered. Although the Boulders Beach population is thriving. (The parking area there is where the celebrated warning sign to "Please check under your vehicle for penguins" is to be seen.)

One can imagine that the penguin was destined for a battery of health checks at the local aquarium and museum, precisely because they are so rare.

>33 hfglen: When I was much younger, there was a radio commentator named (I think) Paul Harvey. One of his regular story sign-offs delivered on air would be "And Now You Know The Rest of the Story". You just gave the rest of that penguin story. Thank you. I wouldn't have put the pieces together without this.

>33 hfglen: Thanks for the picture and story.

>33 hfglen: Aww, it's snoozing. Wait, is that little guy missing the feathers around its eye?

>36 clamairy: Now that you mention it, he does seem to be missing some.

Incidentally, on land these penguins always remind me of elderly, arthritic waiters -- all right one elderly, permanently grumpy waiter in one particular establishment in Johannesburg when I was in my teens.

>33 hfglen: Aww they are cute. Hopefully conservation efforts will turn their population decline around.

Reread of Whispers of the Dead, which loses nothing by being read several times. Indeed of all the fictional characters who populate this Pub, Sister Fidelma is pretty close to the top of the list of those I'd like to meet.

I can't match @pgmcc's white chocolate elephants, but here is a group covered in pale milk-chocolate coloured dust:



Addo Elephant National Park, Eastern Cape, 10 October 2016.

The Spider's Web. Sister Fidelma solves another far-from-clear case, bedevilled by additional murders designed to keep her from facts the murderer finds uncomfortable. One character comes quite embarrassingly close to a person in the news as I write (no names, no pack drill). A reread, and this one benefits from close reading several times.

>40 hfglen:
I love the picture.

>40 hfglen: That's such a great shot for so many reasons. But I especially love how the dust accentuates their skin textures.

Does this picture by any chance remind you of this piece of music, which was popular when I was in my teens?



Same herd, same place, same day as #40.

>44 hfglen: Great picture, I can't say it reminds me of the song though. Are the elephants usually that color? I guess the ones I see in zoos are more grey-ish.

>44 hfglen:
I love The Baby Elephant Walk. I can see how the picture could trigger that ear-worm. The piece always reminds of Dakatari because it was used in the John Wayne film in Africa that I can never remember the name of. I suspected Daktari was a spin-off from the film.

>45 Karlstar: The ones you see in zoos are clean. These are covered in dust, but I think Addo elephants are browner than the Kruger ones (though the mud in Kruger tends to be black).

>46 pgmcc: By the way, how many elephants do you see in that picture? I got to six.

>46 pgmcc:. The John Wayne movie you're thinking of is Hatari. Baby Elephant Walk was part of the film's soundtrack.

>44 hfglen: I believe one is supposed to know the difference between African elephants and Indian Elephants by the shape of the ears. Is color also a differentiator?

>49 jillmwo: The Indian elephants I saw in the circus when I was a kid were the same shade of grey as the African ones in the zoo; both were hosed down with clean water regularly. As I pointed out to @Karlstar in #47, in the wild the colour depends on where they took their latest mud/dust bath.

I believe there is also a very subtle difference in the shape of the forehead between African and Indian elephants, but as that shape also varies between African males and females, I've never thought of asking one for any ID.

>47 hfglen: Thanks for the info.

>48 hfglen:
I could only see five until I realised that either the elephant in the foreground had five legs or there was a sixth elephant behind it.

>49 jillmwo:
Thank you for “Hatari”. That makes it more likely Daktari was a spin-off from the film. I was brought to the cinema as a child to see it. I remember the scene where a baby elephant goe walk-about in a downtown shopping area with The Baby Elephant music playing.

What I remember of Daktari is Clarence the cross-eyed lion.

>53 pgmcc: I suspect many of us retain fond memories of Clarence.

>53 pgmcc: >54 jillmwo: I'd almost forgotten it!

A few days ago @jillmwo was asking about our weather in the weather check in thread. A friend has just sent me this link to a relatively fresh video of the floods at Aughrabies Falls.

>56 hfglen: That video was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. Serious wow. Watching that kind of force in nature tends to remind one that not everything in the environment can (or ought to) be tightly controlled.

>56 hfglen: Wow!

>56 hfglen: Sweet baby cheeses!

>56 hfglen: Wow, that's a lot of water! Has it receded much since?

>60 Karlstar: Receded, certainly; by how much, I don't know. The river is controlled by three vast dams, and two more plus an equally large (separate) irrigation scheme on its main tributary. Vaal Dam (on the tributary, and Johannesburg's main water supply) was reported to be 120% full a few days ago.

At last, a book! A Kentish Lad is the autobiography of Frank Muir of My Word, My Music and What-a-Mess fame; he also wrote, together with Denis Norden, the scripts for Take it from Here and many other comedy series. Surely if you grew up in the 50s to the 70s anywhere where the radio (and later TV) used BBC transcripts you absorbed his work. Think of The Glums, invariably introduced by Eth's cry of "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooh Ron" (played by June Whitfield). Every chapter has at least one laugh-out-loud moment, and the book is a great read.

Was it immersive: yes
Would I recommend it: yes
To whom: Anyone with a sense of humour and love of word-play; not only my generation (who will remember his work) but to younger folk, who can sample it on YouTube and in books.
Did it inspire me to do anything: smile, chuckle and "tak oot a memory", to quote a long-gone Scottish Honorary Aunt.

>62 hfglen: Not forgetting Eth’s idiot boyfriend Ron, played by Dick Bentley; Mr Glum (Ron’s dad), played by Jimmy Edwards …

>62 hfglen: That takes me back! I remember watching him on Call My Bluff when I was a child!

>63 haydninvienna: Absolutely, to both of those. And Ron's ma, who was only ever (in the episodes I recall) heard offstage. Though Frank Muir's book says in the earliest episodes she was in the room with Ron, Eth and Pa Glum, and had actual words to shout.

>56 hfglen: >57 jillmwo: >58 pgmcc: >59 clamairy: >60 Karlstar: For comparison, here's a picture of the falls taken in midsummer a long time ago.

Top of Aughrabies Falls, 28 December 1969

... and a view across the park from the viewing point to the restaurant and offices as they were then.

Same day as #66. Since then SANParks have built roads and accommodation, some of which is more than comfortable, in the park. It's still more desert than semi, and rather in the middle of nowhere.

>66 hfglen: An amazing difference.

>66 hfglen:
That is quite a difference.

Time for another picture, methinks. To my delight, I see this one dates from 14 May 2013, almost exactly twelve years ago.



Sable Antelope in Mokala National Park, near Kimberley, Northern Cape. It's good to see a calf in the family, as these handsome animals are rare.

>70 hfglen: I love the horns on them!

>71 jillmwo: definitely wicked looking horns! I would hate to make one of those creatures mad.

>70 hfglen:
Super looking animal. Thanks.

>70 hfglen: Beautiful.

>70 hfglen: Amazing photo! Thank you.

>70 hfglen: That is a very fine photo. Even the grass is clear and crisp. Lovely.

>72 catzteach: That may be harder than you think. I once tried to get close enough for a picture to a group in Haka Nature Reserve, almost in the outskirts of Harare (Zimbabwe). They weren't having any, and made it quite clear that they were leaving faster than I could follow. But talking of horns worth keeping one's distance from, how about these guys?



Gemsbok or South African Oryx, in Camdeboo National Park, Graaff Reinet (Eastern Cape), 2017. This is about the south-eastern limit of the natural range of the species, which is Namibia, Botswana, a small part of Zimbabwe and the drier parts of South Africa.

>77 hfglen: Those look very stabby!

>77 hfglen:
Amazing sets of horns.

>70 hfglen: & >77 hfglen: Gorgeous! They look like they should be painted on the side of a cave.

>80 clamairy: They may well be, or engraved on rocks somewhere like Wildebeest Kuil.

>78 Karlstar: Sometimes a male loses a horn in a fight, thus being turned into a unicorn. The ability of such a male to detect or befriend virgins is undocumented.

Incidentally, may I commend to Pete the image in Wildebeest Kuil's own website? Further comment is superfluous.

Clam, there is a picture embedded in the Wikipedia article that looks very like a gemsbok.

>81 hfglen: So what I hear you saying is that further research into unicorns is needed? Can we get funding?

>83 jillmwo: Research: but of course! (may be a bit hard to find a statistically valid sample of virgins, though). Funding: probably not in US; try France, which seems to be doing its best to take over good research defunded in US.

>82 hfglen:
Brilliant! :-)

There is always an elephant and it appears there always was an elephant.

>83 jillmwo:
If you persuade the current administration that you are talking about unicorn start ups you might find they have already invested in some and are happy to provide more funding. They tend to forget the original meaning of words.

>77 hfglen: Definitely some stab worthy horns! I just picture a little kid finding a horn off of one of those animals and turning it into a sword. Oh boy.

>80 clamairy: Or on the tail of an airliner, although that's a different species (Arabian oryx).

>87 catzteach: or more likely a javelin or lance.

An actual book, for a change! Not that I've been reading any less, but it's mostly been rereads, either of own favourites or unintentional ones from the library that were eminently forgettable the first time round.

The Old Inns of England was first published in 1934, and I appear to have bought a secondhand copy at some time in the forgotten past. Mine is from the 1942 printing, and bears no trace of the shoddy "war economy standard" that so often characterises books from the 1940s. The first three chapters are a historical survey, and make interesting reading even today. Needless to say, there is not and cannot be any mention of a certain Mr Hitler and his attempts at remodelling the landscape of Britain; the disastrous effects of bouts of prosperity in the 1960s and later are similarly absent. The chapter on inn names is readable, though to some extent lacking the humour to be found in examples quoted in other books. I found "The Inn in Literature" tedious, but the final chapter's notes on touring are often still relevant today, and brought back happy memories. There are over 100 black-and-white photos, which in the 21st century gain charm from the almost-empty roads and period cars they depict.

When I was seconded to Kew, the ideal weekend outing involved (usually) an ancient monument or other Important Sight, and a Real Ale Pub, usually selected from a more-or-less current Egon Ronay's Pub Guide. Our landlady was frequently surprised by the number of ways we found to combine these! Right now, I'm surprised by the number that are to be found in both books, published some 40 years apart. Maybe the one this pub would have liked most was a 15th-century timber-framed building in Hay-on Wye, that had been gently settling for 500 years, and so there wasn't a right-angle in the place -- but loads of comfort, atmosphere and good food. In present company I surely don't have to mention the daytime attraction!

>90 hfglen: That sounds incredibly interesting. I looked on ABE books and they have quite a few copies, there also appears to be a 2010 edition.

>90 hfglen: and >91 Karlstar: I agree. There are a number of reasonably priced copies available here in the States, some of which go back to the '50s.. Ooh, there's a 1934 edition! Foreword by Sir Edward Luytens (that name rings a faint bell of recognition, but I can't think why...)

>92 jillmwo: I see that 1934 edition now, but the spine is really faded on one of them.

>92 jillmwo: He was THE top British architect in the early decades of the 20th century. Probably his best-known work was the official part of New Delhi. He is famous in UK for Castle Drogo, and here in South Africa for the Johannesburg Art Gallery (which faces out on to the Braamfontein marshalling yards, just across the driveway) and the Rand Rifles Memorial at the War Museum at the top end of Jhb Zoo.

How To by the admired Randall Munroe. I enjoy the xkcd cartoons when I see them, which isn't often enough. Here we have text illustrated by xkcd-style cartoons, describing absurd ways of doing things both simple and impossible. The result is highly enjoyable humour, but heaven help anybody trying any of this!

>95 hfglen:
Sounds entertaining

It's a long time since I offered Pete an elephant, so here is a rather different one to the usual run.



Pecked engraving of an elephant, Wildebeeste Kuil near Kimberley, Northern Cape, 2003. This "art museum" is interesting, in that essentially all the art is rock engravings like this, and all the rocks remain exactly where they were left by the engravers -- out in the heat, cold, sun and rail. They're pretty well impossible to date -- maybe some time in the last 20 000 years?

>97 hfglen: Now that's extraordinary work!

>94 hfglen: Thanks for the clarification. Still can't think in what context I would have encountered him, given the 20th century architecture isn't really my thing, but I did recognize the name.

>98 jillmwo: Garden design, perhaps? He often worked with the great Gertrude Jekyll.

>97 hfglen:
Thank you, Hugh. Much appreciated.

Insider's Guide: top wildlife photography spots in South Africa. Unusually, this is a camera guide in which the technicalities are mostly restricted to the first chapter. The rest of the book is a where-to-go guide. To be sure, the old favourites like Kruger, and high-status places such as Sabi-Sand and Kgalagadi are there, in considerable detail. But mercifully, a number of treasured sites are not, such a Golden Gate, Mokala, Karoo and Mountain Zebra National Parks, and most provincial reserves. Long may that last, say I! It means that there remain places where one can see animals, plants (which get a single page in this book) and scenery (geology) with a decent chance of avoiding crowds. And his hints? Follow them and get exactly the same stereotype everybody else has. Was I inspired by this one? No, other than to be relieved that I can return it to the library and then they have to give it house room.

>101 hfglen:
Great review and I agree with the sentiment.

Dumb question that probably @Bookmarque is best placed to answer, if I may pick your brains.

The background is that Better Half and I have been binge-watching a series called Digging for Britain hosted by Prof. Alice Roberts, on relatively recent archaeological digs. They seem quite often to find high-status Anglo-Saxon jewellery, made of gold with red garnet inlay, which looks glorious. So dumb question: compared to the semi-precious stones Bookmarque uses, how expensive would the tiny garnets of Saxon jewellery be?

So...if I'm reading you correctly, you want to know how much small garnets cost today?

Absolutely right

Just checked three Raj Mahal Garnets I bought they're rose cut cabochons, so faceted on the top and flat on the bottom, fairly thin, but of nice color and clarity - two oval and one teardrop in the 15 mm range for $24. Now that's with modern mining, sorting and cutting factored in. Garnets aren't that difficult to find (I used to pound them out of rocks in my yard when I was a kid), so were used often and relatively easy to cut and polish. So not like rubies or emeralds in terms of rarity, but probably definitely a status symbol.

>106 Bookmarque: Plus they are my birthstone. :P

>106 Bookmarque: Many thanks. This is the kind of thing I had in mind, but the one we saw last night was larger, with much more elaborate knotwork decoration.

>97 hfglen: I love this! Really, there isn't some algorithm that predicts how much more the bits that have been chiseled have eroded compared to the untouched surface to figure out how long it's been exposed?

>109 clamairy: I believe there is a way, but I don't know how.

Time for a picture perhaps?



A plover on what passes for its nest, Addo Elephant National Park, 10 October 2016.

>111 hfglen: Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I used to cross the open area between the buildings of the University of Queensland toward the river (for a ferry across the river to a railway station). We were regularly dive-bombed by Masked Lapwings (another plover species) that were obviously nesting there, but we never saw anything that looked like an actual nest. The area was then just a couple of acres of open grassland.

>111 hfglen: Lovely about. Aside from the little white and black cap, that bird blends in very well. They are masters of camouflage the world over, apparently. I use my phone to take pictures of the Piping Plovers here on the beach, but then I can barely find them in the photos.

Very much enjoying catching up on the conversation about unicorns, pubs, elephants, architecture, plovers, and garden design!

>111 hfglen: Always time for a picture, thank you!

>111 hfglen:
A lovely picture. I am happy to see an elephant was involved.

In tonight's "Dust Bugs" episode I saw an idea that I would love to think would inspire @pgmcc to come and investigate. A preserved-train group called Atlantic Rail, based at Hartenbos just outside Mossel Bay on the edge of the (IMHO) drop-dead-gorgeous Garden Route, from time to time run old-train trips from there to Albertinia, just over 50 km away. And the Dust Bugs went on just such an outing recently. Why Pete should be interested is that just after crossing the Gourits River (which itself is spectacular), they went along the boundary of a private nature reserve and saw a family of elephants. From the train.

Rail nuts will be saddened to hear that although Atlantic Rail does have two functioning steam locos, for this trip they found it more economic to rent not one but three "diseaseholes"* from Transnet. The train was long and heavy, and there are steep climbs at both ends of the route.

*term coined by the late great A.E. Durrant during the demise of steam in the mid-1980s, expressing exactly what he thought of them.

Edited to supply a missing digit.

>117 hfglen:
Very interesting. There is no escaping the fact that #thereisalwaysanelephant.

Orkney: the Magnetic North (1932, revised 1937) and The Other Orkney Book (1980). Interesting to read together, two books covering almost exactly the same ground but written about 50 years apart. Only two sights appear in the younger book that could not have appeared in the older: the Churchill Barriers and the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm. Both books are definitely of their time, in that the older requires slower reading, and uses more words to be less informative than the younger. But both bring back happy memories of a very happy visit, too many years ago. The old one makes great play of the surprisingly mild climate (give or take the wind, which makes it impossible for trees to grow other than in the most sheltered places) of Orkney, warmer and sunnier than most of Britain. Sure enough, one remembers sitting with Better Half and the in-laws in the hotel TV room watching the 10 pm news one evening, watching a clip of floods that afternoon in London -- and outside there was the beginning of a glorious sunset in a cloudless sky!

Was I inspired to do anything? To "tak oot a memory" -- actually several, look at my pictures from that trip, and maybe inflict one or two on the GD.

By the way, both books mention that Orkney is home to the northernmost Scotch Whisky distillery. Happy memory of heather-scented Highland Park! (Which one can still get, for a price.) Couldn't help wondering if by any good fortune, a drop or two of this nectar from the time of the first book survived to the time of the second. Bearing in mind the real-life events that gave rise to Whisky Galore, I rather doubt it.

>119 hfglen: requires slower reading, and uses more words to be less informative Oooh. Ouch. Except that I was reading something earlier this week that fits exactly into that category.

Your reading seems to evoke happier thoughts.

The Omen Machine. Many thanks to @Karlstar for his review on LT, which expresses precisely why I quit reading the library's (unnecessarily?) extensive holdings of Terry Goodkind books a couple of years ago. I got tired of reading the same story over and over again. But this version ends on a cliffhanger, so I may be tempted again.

>121 hfglen: You are most welcome. I read some of the books that came after, until I realized they were just the same basic plot over and over and had to quit.

No elephant this time, although they were undoubtedly relatively plentiful in the area.



It's an African Grey Hornbill, sitting in a Mopane tree, Kruger National Park, May 2014.

>123 hfglen: What a cool bird :) It looks like it caught something?

>123 hfglen: Oh, awesome. Is that Jiminey Cricket in its beak? 0.0

>124 Alexandra_book_life: >125 clamairy: Yes and yes.

>119 hfglen: "and uses more words to be less informative ". Are you describing a Brandon Sanderson novel?

>123 hfglen: What >125 clamairy: said!

>123 hfglen:
Hornbills are quite amazing. Great picture.

>127 Karlstar: Maybe. I like the thought!

>123 hfglen: What a great photo!

Hugh, every summer my wife and I look forward to watching the show Alone, the survival show from the history channel. This year the show was located in the Great Karoo Desert!

https://www.history.com/shows/alone

Interesting! The Great Karoo is a rather large place, like about a quarter of South Africa. Did they mention any (relatively) nearby towns?

>133 hfglen: They didn't, they always give the impression that the zones they put the contestants are far away from civilization. Usually, that's true. They are placed along a river and a lake.

>134 Karlstar: Sounds like Vanderkloof Dam on the Orange River. There is a small town on the lake (which may be useful if they have to get someone out in a hurry), but much of the lake is pretty much the middle of nowhere.

And this week's picture



is a White-faced Duck in Kruger National Park. Some are year-round residents there, but others are known to be nomadic.

That's a great picture, Hugh, and that duck has some really interesting plumage. I may have lived in American suburbia for too long, because it hadn't really occurred to me that ducks might look different in various parts of the world.

>137 jillmwo: Thank you! The bird book tells me hat there are five different-looking species of ducks in the Kruger Park.

And a bonus picture seeing it's a public holiday here.



This lady, a Nyala, let herself be seen in the northern Kruger National Park in May 2014.

Beautiful pictures, Hugh. Thank you for posting. Nyala looks quite the character.

>139 hfglen: Wow, what a fine lady she is. Beautiful shot, thank you!

Thank you for the pictures.

>139 hfglen: I love this photo :) She has a smile!

Love the photos. What a beautiful duck! I can't help but love a duck. The their face has an innocent and friendly aspect. Unlike chickens, which are a good reminder that their ancestors were raptors. I realize that statement may raise a ruckus in the pub, but it is my opinion and I stand by it. :P

A very handsome duck! And Lady Nyala is beautiful! What an amazing photo of her.

KZN Traditional Food Recipes contains a few recipes (apparently almost by mistake) that approach edibility -- some from a considerable distance. One day I might try adapting one or two. In the meanwhile, I'm glad that housing this is the library's problem, not mine. I was unaware of this book's existence until today, and I feel that lack of awareness is no loss.

Am I inspired? No. To misquote Dorothy Parker, one can happily toss this one aside lightly. It is not worth "throwing with great force".

>149 Karlstar: LOL, love that first sentence. I've read a few cookbooks that deserve that.

>146 hfglen: and >147 MrsLee:. I snorted over that line myself!!

>146 hfglen: Great description!

>147 MrsLee: >148 jillmwo: >149 Karlstar: Thank you all. Sadly, the acid comments continue in #151 below, about a different book.

Tales of King Arthur DNF. This is supposedly a retelling of Malory's story in modern English. The editor's two guiding principles, religiously adhered to, would appear to have been
1. Never use one word when ten will do.
2. Always cram as many obsolete words into each sentence as possible.
The result is suffocatingly boring, though the illustrations from medieval manuscripts are worth a look. Small wonder this has been hiding in my TBR pile these last 20-odd years, since I acquired it. If the church has a fete with a book stall this year, they may get a donation.

>151 hfglen:. It may be of no comfort whatsoever, but I just went searching for that book on the Web to see if it was one I was familiar with (info here on LT is limited) and when I found it, I was like.."Yes, I remember that book and I too passed it on to the local library sale." I'm with you, Hugh. It wasn't a very well-handled re-telling of the Arthurian tales.

>151 hfglen: >152 jillmwo: Thanks for saving us from that one.

Winter solstice is surely the ideal time for a new thread, especially as mine tend to be picture-heavy.