More Reading and exploring with Hugh in 2025, part 4

The South Eastern and Chatham Railway is one of several books I borrowed from the Railway Society library in the hopes of shedding light on family history? I discovered some time ago that great-grandma's little brother was a train-driver with this outfit. I was hoping for a clue as to whether he was with the South Eastern or the London, Chatham and Dover before they combined in 1899. No joy -- they both seem to have had major sheds in Strood (near, and now a suburb of, Rochester in Kent) where great-great-uncle James lived. What struck me as strange about this history is the way O.S. Nock keeps banging on about the steep gradients on the line, some as much as 1 in 100 (1%); every time he did, my mind was irresistibly drawn to the nearby Natal Old Main Line, whose ruling gradient is 1 in 30 (3.3%). No wonder the SEC's locomotives seem so small, even compared to Umgeni Steam Railway's (branch-line) Class 19D, which in turn is much smaller than an American "Big Boy". Otherwise, a workmanlike job and worth remembering for those who need to know about Victorian or early 20th century rail in Kent.

Happy New Thread.

>2 pgmcc: Thank you!

And, to start off the pictures in this thread, one of Peter's friends.



Kruger National Park, May 2014.

Happy new thread, and that elephant does not look friendly

Happy new thread!

1% is not very steep!

>6 Karlstar: My point entirely. In the stretch the USR uses, a 1% slope would count as near enough level to be relaxation!

>4 hfglen:
I love it.

>4 hfglen: That looks like a baby elephant to me. Or at least not more than a pre-teen. Happy new thread!

Happy new thread! Thank you for the elephant!

Happy New Thread!

The elephant is cool.

Happy new thread!

I think this elephant has struck a thoughtful pose. He's weighing his options.

"If you think the elephant preposterous
You've probably never seen a rhinosterous."



May 2014. No prize for guessing the poet and sequence quoted.

Sounds like Ogden Nash to me.

>14 jillmwo: You're halfway there. And the context?

I ended up cheating (Googled it), but I found the answer. I never knew about Nash and the Carnival.

Well done! Now you can enjoy the rest of the set.

The World the Railways made. The information I wanted is quite compactly stated in the last third of the book, which makes getting there less than pleasant. This edition definitely needs more proofreading than it had, and it would improve his treatment if he were to look at a map of the area. The former ZAR (Transvaal) does not share a border with Angola and never has -- the two are some 3000 km apart. He was evidently talking about Kruger's Oosterlijn, which goes to Mozambique, and their side of the border is relatively well-watered woodland on semi-consolidated beach sand, not a desert. But his facts are, apparently, more accurate in the northern hemisphere.

Happy New Thread! Sorry I'm late, but I'm still catching up.

>19 clamairy: Thank you! And much success in the catching up.

The Age of the Railway, which I found in the Railway Society library at Inchanga, is a history of how the railways affected society. At least that's how it starts, and the first few chapters include accounts of how good roads were made un UK in the late 18th century for the first time since the Romans left, and why canals were made, and how railways worked better in the 19th century than both of those ideas. Also how railways generally reduced the cost of living, at least in major centres, while improving the freshness, quality, hygiene and variety of food available in those same towns and cities. Unfortunately, towards the end it descends into a political account of railway trade unions.

>21 hfglen:
That sounds interesting.

>22 pgmcc: What @pgmcc said.

>23 Karlstar:
I tend to mean what I say. :-)

>24 pgmcc: So you're saying we should get a group read together of The Age of the Railway?

>25 Karlstar: It looks to me that you and Hugh are executing an pincer movement Book Bullet attack on me. My defences are strong. Also, I am still catching up with @MrsLee's memorial reading notes. Trying me some time in the future, and I do not mean in five minutes. :-)

ETA: I have just looked at its availability and am informed "Usually dispatched between 6 and 7 months". I might give it a miss for the moment.

>25 Karlstar: >26 pgmcc: Personally, I'd consider a group read of The Age of the Railway to be a lousy idea. Rather find a library copy to read or at least skim before parting with money for a copy.

>27 hfglen: I will look that book up at the library, but I hope both of you knew I was joking about the group read.

>28 Karlstar:
I was checking my diary for suitable dates; how is 2034 for you?

>29 pgmcc: I wonder if google calendar will still be around by then.

It's Sunday, which means time for a picture.



Ceropegia sandersonii, parachute flower, in a nursery out in the country not all that far from here. It grows wild in the bush from the South Coast just into the Eastern Cape northwards to eSwatini and southernmost Mozambique.

>31 hfglen: What a fascinating flower! Is it carnivorous? It looks like it's designed for insects to get lured in and then trapped.

>31 hfglen: It is very unusual looking. I second >32 Sakerfalcon: 's opinion.

>31 hfglen:
It looks fascinating. I feel the same way as >32 Sakerfalcon: & >33 clamairy:.

>32 Sakerfalcon: >33 clamairy: >34 pgmcc: Not in the way a pitcher plant or a Venus flytrap is. But, like many other members of its family, it's fly pollinated, and some of them have a fully functional dirty-tricks department. For one example, Araujia sericifera from South America (bladder flower, known here as moth catcher) attracts moths, and the local ones don't quite fit, and so get caught in the innards of the flower. Our local Stapelias have a trick that the flower in #31 probably plays too: the flowers only last three days, and smell deliciously (to a fly) of carrion, so they lay their eggs on the flower, which disintegrates before the eggs hatch. What did they say about "nature red in tooth and claw"?

To amplify the last sentence of my reply above: here is a plant of Stapelia gigantea I saw in a friend's garden on a smallholding near Boksburg, East Rand, in 1968 when we were both undergraduates.



The beer can may be unsightly, but it is a very convenient scale -- the flower is about 8 inches across. The flies visiting it are easily seen. (To be continued in a moment)

Edit: the 8/* key on my keyboard is showing its age!

and a close-up of a fly on the flower



The hairs and colours look like a bit of rotting animal hide if you're a fly.

and the eggs the fly laid.



The flower was dead two days later.

Wow! I find these sorts of plants fascinating, and so alien in their appearance. That Stapelia is incredible!

>36 hfglen: Wow. I'd have sworn that was an undersea creature and not a flower lol

>37 hfglen: Incredible! So it is effectively a fly killer, or do the eggs hatch anyway?

>41 Karlstar: AFAIK the eggs hatch and the grubs then starve.

The Great Eastern Railway. Read because I have a group of ancestors who lived in Essex, and this is the history of rail transport in East Anglia. By the time the railway reached Bishops Stortford, about the nearest place to the ancestral village that still has a functioning rail connection, they were already in South Africa. So it wasn't overly helpful. A decent read, apart from that.

Sunday is picture day! (when I remember)



This is a half-grown Euphorbia cooperi, one of the Transvaal Candelabra Trees, seen at Wonderboom Nature Reserve, in the northern suburbs of Pretoria, on 20 August 1967, almost certainly on a Tree Society outing led by Dr A.O.D Mogg, who was 80 at the time. Now, this species is noted for its exceptionally poisonous, caustic latex -- if any Dragoneers ever visit this mad and sunny land, please take good note of this picture and the story that goes with it. Dr Mogg told the group on this outing that he's been on a survey a couple of hundred kilometres north of where we were at the time one summer about 1923. He collected a specimen of this species with, he thought, due care, but he must have caught a droplet of the latex on his sleeve. It's very hot on the Tropic of Capricorn in midsummer, and so he sweated freely. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, as one does, and the next load drained a minute amount of the latex from his sleeve into his eye. He was blinded for three days.

>44 hfglen: Don't give Jill any more sources!

>44 hfglen:
I second what >45 Karlstar: said.

>36 hfglen: Fascinating! I thought exactly what >40 Narilka: said.

>44 hfglen: Filing this bit away for subsequent use.

>48 jillmwo: I'd be most surprised if you can find it in Philly. It hates being cold and wet -- don't you get snow in winter?

The bicentenary of the first public, steam-hauled railway was last month, which set me thinking about the elements that go to make a railway. Product of the thinking so far is about 96% of a talk for the Railway Society. One picture I found came with a tag that smelt to high heaven of rat. Here it is:



Self-evidently an aerial view of a ship leaving Durban Harbour (believe me, there is a reason for wanting this picture in this talk). Now the bit I couldn't swallow was the tag that claimed it was taken in 1875. The less obvious reason why this has to be wrong is that until it was dredged away in 1904 and pretty well continually ever since, there was a sand bar across the mouth closing it to ships this size. So a brain-teaser for all the Sherlock Holmeses in the pub: when was it taken?

Answer in a week or so.

>49 hfglen:
@jillmwo is very resourceful. Do not set her a challenge. You might regret it.

>49 hfglen: and >51 pgmcc:. I didn't say I was going to grow it locally. (Because yes, we do occasionally get snow in the region.) But it might be useful information to have if one were to be reading or writing a murder mystery.

>50 hfglen: Excellent reason why it wasn't taken in 1875: it's an aerial. It might have been taken from an aircraft (most likely), a kite (unlikely, given the location) or a balloon (also unlikely). Aerial photography from kites or balloons dates from the 1880s, and from aircraft, from the First world War. If it was taken from an aircraft, I'd guess 1920 at the earliest.

>53 haydninvienna: I was going to bring up the post-WWI ship architecture, but I think you've hit on the most likely answer and reasoning. I'd go 1925.

>54 Karlstar: Yeah, i noted the ship architecture too, but I thought the point about it being an aerial photo was a showstopper. 1925 looks about right to me too.

>53 haydninvienna: >54 Karlstar: >55 haydninvienna: Precisely. It was the aerial view that set of alarm bells for me. For the record, balloons were first used in the Boer War 1899-1902, and the first large-scale aerial survey of this country was 1937. The local experts tell me the state of the coaling wharf points to late-1930s. We all think the ship is RMS Arundel Castle or RMS Windsor Castle (there's no way that Dragoneers could be expected to know that), both built in 1921 and withdrawn for modification in 1936, which reduced them from four funnels to two. That gives me 1935-36 as most likely.

>56 hfglen:
That is a good bit of deductive reasoning, Mr Holmes.

Churchill's Empire is a partial biography of Winston Churchill of WW2 fame. Partial in that it focuses almost exclusively on his effect on the British Empire and its effect on him, from his schooldays to his retirement at a very advanced age. Interesting as far as it goes, but the excision of almost everything not directly and fairly narrowly relevant to the empire theme does leave some uncomfortably torn and bleeding edges to the narrative. On the other hand, to include enough other facets of Churchill and his times would have meant a book at least three times the size of this, and it's already heading towards being a doorstop. That said, I don't for a moment regret any time spent reading and thinking about this book, and admire the author (Richard Toye) for his scrupulous fairness to all concerned.

Early Railways at the Cape. History of the development of railways in the Cape Colony from the first time the idea of building one was floated there (in the railway mania of the 1840s) up to the time of Union in 1910. The author, Jose Burman, was a dyed-in-the-wool Capetonian, and so the more-or-less simultaneous development of railways in Natal is airbrushed out of the narrative, especially the fact that Natal's first functioning steam railway started operation six weeks before the Cape's. Nor will you discover from here that Durban had a fully-functioning, wooden, ox-drawn trackway (just like many British and German mine lines of the 16th to very early 19th centuries) hauling stone from a quarry to a breakwater under construction in the mouth of Durban harbour -- in 1856, while the Cape was still arguing about money and routes. But what's here is accurate and written in Burman's usual easy-reading style. Many of the pictures are gems from the collection of the Transnet Heritage Library, and fascinating for many reasons.

Did it inspire me to do anything? Yes. I need to rewrite part of a chapter of my family history to take into account the effect of the expansion of the railways on Port Elizabeth, where three generations of Glens lived starting in 1859 (PE got its first railway in 1875).

Remarkably, the name of this kind of bird is a White-backed Vulture -- the back is at best pale brown. It's listed as an uncommon resident of the Kruger National Park. Seen at or near the banks of the Sabie River a few km downstream of Skukuza on 23 May 2022.

>60 hfglen: oh he's amazing! I love vultures, they are so interesting. We have turkey vultures and black vultures here but they aren't so large.

>60 hfglen: What a cool looking bird!

>60 hfglen:
The picture reminds me of the vulture scene in the 1960s Jungle Book film.

>60 hfglen: Living in a country where we have no vultures, I find them so fascinating when I do see them on my travels or in photos. Amazing birds, and an essential part of the ecosystem.

South Africa's national bird is the rather rare, if quite widespread, Blue Crane, seen top left in this lousy, hastily snapped picture. More unusual is to see them in the company of other birds, here part of an immense flock of Crowned Cranes (pale grey birds across the middle) and Hadeda Ibises (dark brown). One wonders what the farmer had done to bring out the insects the birds were feasting on. near Matatiele in the southern Drakensberg foothills, 16 October 2016.

Early Motoring in South Africa. Lots of fascinating pictures -- over 400 of them! -- give a detailed feel for what the first four decades or so of motoring in this country were like. Some things I can just barely remember; my mother's uncle had a 1937 Studebaker, possibly one of the consignment in the picture no. 400. It was a favourite with small boys when the uncle was overseas! Other pictures bring a tinge of regret that parents weren't exactly adventurous when planning holidays; wouldn't it have been marvellous to go to Serengeti or Amboseli when one could, before they became exorbitant. After all, we had (I still have) a copy of Trans-African Highways, which I still credit with introducing me to the joys of reading, and teaching me to read a map. The text in Early Motoring is minimal, but sufficient.

>65 hfglen:
The crowned cranes look great.

>60 hfglen: >65 hfglen: Great pictures! Thanks for the commentary, too.

A picture just for fun, and because the caption below it floated into my mind.

The lion is the king of beasts
And husband of the lioness.
Gazelles and things on which he feasts
Address him as "Your Hioness"...

No prize for guessing the source.

>69 hfglen: I like the photo and rhyme both :)

>69 hfglen: Great photo, great caption 😁

>69 hfglen:
Great picture and quote.

>69 hfglen: Excellent!

>65 hfglen: & >69 hfglen: I love these.

The Forgotten Man tells us that Roosevelt's New Deal was not, in fact, all one was taught in school, and contributed to the Great Depression in the U.S.A. lasting until they entered World War 2. Surely in UK and here the depression was over by the mid-'30s? This history is well researched and written, but (possibly understandably) didn't have much to say about how the rest of the world weathered the storm. So good book, but not the one I was looking for.

It's about time we had another picture.



It's an Ant-eating Chat, and for once not a resident of the Kruger Park. I saw it in 2013 in Karoo National Park, which explains why it's sitting on a mesemb. AFAIK all Chats are insect-eaters, and the Book of Words tells me that at the time of the Great Trek (about 1838) one species gained a degree of notoriety for eating the grease around the axles of wagon wheels.

>76 hfglen:
Lovely bird.

>75 hfglen: It would be nice to have a global view on the Great Depression. Unfortunately, we'll never get a clear answer on what policies might have worked as WW2 changed everything.

>76 hfglen: Fascinating!

>76 hfglen: Very nice! It's always a treat on the rare occasions when I see a Stonechat here.

>77 pgmcc: >78 Karlstar: >79 Karlstar: Thank you all very much!

Good Heavens! The library has some new-ish books, something that hasn't happened for two or three years. One such is Diddly Squat, in which Jeremy Clarkson, formerly of Top Gear fame, chronicles about eighteen months on hiss farm in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds. The book is a collection of his newspaper columns on the subject, and every bit as hilarious as one might expect. It's a short (200 pages), quick read, and none the worse for that. Recommended.

If you have Amazon Prime you can watch Clarkson's Farm which I think has four seasons in the bag. It's hilarious because Clarkson is naturally funny, but is also so inept.

>83 Bookmarque: Thank you. I don't have Amazon Prime, but there are fragments on Youtube. At least one will be part of this evening's viewing.

Prisoners of Geography. Hmmmz. This one demands some thought. It's eminently readable, and goes up to early 2017. However I found myself wondering about Trump 2.0 almost every time he mentioned the U.S.A..

>85 hfglen:
I read that book and enjoyed it. I have been tempted by other books he has written but wonder if they simply repeat the same content. My concern was his close work with the military and how much his words can be totally reliable. Still, an interesting book with logical conclusions based on pretty obvious geography.

>76 hfglen: What a lovely bird. Thank you.

While I was looking for something else, I came across this picture of two Eland bulls studiously ignoring each other.



Eland are our largest antelope, about the size of a cow. They are difficult to keep in captivity, as they can and do clear an 8-foot fence without hesitation from a standing start. They were sacred to the San people, the earliest inhabitants of southern Africa, and so they are the animals most often depicted in Bushman cave paintings. These were seen in 2017 on one of the hills enclosing the Valley of Desolation in Camdebo National Park; the hills overlook the historic town of Graaff Reinet. Eastern Cape.

>88 hfglen: Thank you for this photo :)

>82 hfglen: I just added that Jeremy Clarkson book to my wishlist. He even narrates the audio version.

>88 hfglen: Great photo, thanks for sharing.

>88 hfglen: I love the photo of your Eland antelopes. Your squibs describing the local wisdom surrounding the animals and places you've seen are truly engaging!

Your photos are marvelous, so exotic to view from this other part of the world. Thanks for showing them.

>89 Alexandra_book_life: >91 Karlstar: >92 jillmwo: >93 Meredy: Many thanks for those kind comments!

>90 Narilka: Enjoy it when you get to it! There are more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. Though, Better Half being a farmer's daughter, one reads the Clarkson book and shakes one's head, marvelling from time to time that anyone could be that dim.

On the other hand ...
there's an equally halfwitted reason why I've been silent all week. On Saturday I went up to Inchanga to work on the Railway Society (@Railwaysoc) library, which necessitated taking my computer up there. Packed up after a tiring day's work, went home the scenic route (no 18-wheelers!), unpacked the computer at home . . . to find I'd left the power cable behind up there! Fortunately, thanks to the good offices of a friend, computer and cable are reunited, and I am back "on the air".

>94 hfglen:
Glad to hear your computer and cable have been united.

>95 pgmcc: Thanks, Peter!

The library yielded a new edition of Last Chance to See; the style reminds me why the Hitchhiker's Guide series was so popular. This edition has a foreword by Richard Dawkins and a last chapter updating the doom and gloom of the main work. With the exception of the late lamented Yangtze Dolphin, the other animals treated seem to be recovering from their rock-bottom state at the time of the first edition. That is good news.

Reread of Churchill's Wizards. Just as fascinating as last time, which was 8 years ago.

>96 hfglen:
I read the first edition of Last Chance to See and I loved it. I cannot remember if it was a library book or whatever. I do not believe I have it in the house. If I owned it I must have leant it to someone.

>97 hfglen:
I have that one but have not read it yet. It appears I have had it for some time.

>97 hfglen: You have not added it to your library?

>100 Karlstar: It comes up correctly when I query "Your Books", so evidently I have. Or were you asking Peter?

>101 hfglen: When I click on your touchstone, it says zero members and doesn't show work details, nothing but the overview. When I search your collection, it doesn't come up.

Reread of The Knysna Story, and reading my catalogue I was, after several idle clicks, directed to what I said about it eight years ago. It's still awful. But I wanted background against which I could understand a great-aunt who was the local estate agent in Plettenberg Bay (just down the road) in the early 1950s. Found the relevant microfacts and verified them in Timber and Tides, so no harm done or at least not much.

It's a long time since we had an elephant for Peter, so here's one to break the drought.



northern Kruger National Park -- the trees are Mopane, which is dominant there -- 4 June 2012.

>104 hfglen: This is a great elephant! 🥰

>104 hfglen:
Thank you for the elephant. An elephant is always welcome. Just as well there is always an elephant.

Inspired by several BBs from the MrsLee Memorial Group Read, I have struggled through The Nebuly Coat in Internet Archive. Phew! Falkner never seems to use one word when ten will do. The story is glacially paced, and the author is immensely long-winded. (Do you get the impression that one reader was bored out of his skull?) Yes the characterisation and atmosphere are there in spades but ... I can see where the plot inspired Ms Sayers for The Nine Tailors, but she showed how to use the idea properly.

ETA: copied into the MrsLee Memorial Read thread.

>104 hfglen: What a magnificent beast!

>107 hfglen: I'm sorry you weren't enthralled with it. And I don't deny that the author was in places "long-winded". But as Peter has noted, it's the diversity in reading tastes that makes this group interesting. Hopefully, your next selection will be a more pleasant experience.

>109 jillmwo: I fully agree about the importance of diversity in this group, but honesty compels me to record my take.

A history of the of the English-speaking Peoples since 1900. A veritable brick at 650 pages plus notes, references and index, but readable nonetheless. For all that one should be objective and even-handed, the author's standpoint shines through clearly on early every page: centre-right at his most liberal (which isn't always), and English speakers have more going for them than anyone else.

It's the weekend again, and I need a break from writing up life in Johannesburg for a family history!



This pond is in the De Vasselot campsite in Nature's Valley, in the Tsitsikamma National Park (seen on 14 January 2009). Who was De Vasselot, and why commemorate him? He was Comte Médéric de Vasselot de Regné, who was the first forestry professional employed by the Cape Colony government, in Queen Victoria's glorious days. This part of the National Park was run as a reserve by the Forest Department for decades before SANParks took it over. The campsite is also the end of the (one-way) Otter Trail, a strenuous four day hike that is permanently fully booked.

Stray thought: my Feline Overlord has developed a passion for cheese in general, and in particular he insists on sharing the wedges I like. He'll go on licking the wrapper until the dull side of the foil is almost shiny! Maybe instead of remembering Old Possum and calling him Mister Mistoffelees, I should have remembered the animated movie A Grand Day Out and called him Gromit.

>112 hfglen: Nice photo! Thank you for letting me look at something green :)

>113 hfglen: Gromit! What a great cat name :D :D :D

>112 hfglen: Thanks for the picture and information. Our cats have also been liking cheese lately.

>113 hfglen:
“what’s wrong with Wensleydale?”

>114 Alexandra_book_life: Thank you! If you're short of greenery at this time of year, may I offer you another picture from almost exactly the same time and place?



If you were to drop everything, take the first available flight to George (Western Cape) and brave our execrable driving to get to Ebb and Flow rest camp, 27 km away, you'd find several paths like this right there -- and loads of others elsewhere in the forest. You could also enjoy a beautiful (IMHO) beach, pleasant temperatures, sunshine and a good farmers' market on Saturdays. The forest counts as evergreen temperate rain forest, but I have to admit it's not as beautifully pristine as when the botanical explorers Thunberg and Sparrman saw it in the 1770s. It's been over-logged, and parts almost wiped out by devastating fires in 1869 and 2016. But it's recovering, slowly.

>88 hfglen:, >104 hfglen:, >112 hfglen: & >118 hfglen: All lovely. Thank you

I love all your pictures!

>118 hfglen: That's lovely, thank you!

"If you were to drop everything..." Don't tempt me 😆

>121 Alexandra_book_life: Awww gee! You mean I'm not allowed to warn you off this beach?



This is Lookout Beach, Plettenberg Bay, about half an hour's drive west of the previous picture. Why avoid the place? Because it's the playground (this picture was taken a week after schools re-opened in January 2009) of the Gauteng ultra-rich, and everything costs twice as much here as elsewhere on the Garden Route.

>122 hfglen: But isn't the sand at Lookout Beach extra special if it's a beach for the ultra-rich?

>123 jillmwo: The sand at Wilderness, Sedgefield and Brenton-on-sea is just as good, and the nearby facilities are more humanely priced. Likewise the whole of the KZN South and North Coast. And if you go up as far as Ponta do Ouro, you get prawns and chicken piri-piri as well!

>122 hfglen: Nice beach!

>122 hfglen: Consider me warned 😁

It looks very nice, though!

Seeing many of you appear to be suffering something akin to blizzards, here's some snow from the "top half of the world".



Snow on the ridge behind Glen Reenen rest camp in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, on 7 June 2013.

This seems to have been mainly a year of re-reads. I only added 28 books this year! Earliest date is The Nebuly Coat, 1903, and the latest is Diddly Squat, 2021. The most expensive is, thank goodness, a library book: Imperial Marriage, at a list price of $50 -- review still coming. The good thing is that the newbies would only fill 1.20 U-Haul boxes, and inconvenience 2.54 adult badgers.

I'm curious about Imperial Marriage although it doesn't seem (from the marketing blurb} that it's a happy-ever-after kind of story.

No indeed. It's a biography of Edward Cecil, a younger (4th of five) son of the third Marquis of Salisbury and his wife, Violet Maxse. It wasn't the world's greatest marriage, possibly helped by Edward spending most of his married life in Egypt, running their government finances, while Violet stayed home and brought up the children; their son died about a week into the First World War. In the Anglo-Boer war Edward was Baden-Powell's no. 2 in Mafeking, while Violet spent most of the war in Cape Town, some 1300 km away. There she met Lord Alfred Milner, whom Afrikaans-speaking South Africans to this day love to hate, though this account portrays him as hard-working, bright, and mostly making good decisions. Edward died of TB in 1918, and a couple of years later Violet married Milner. They revisited South Africa in 1925, but he died later that year. Violet spent the rest of her life socialising and restoring her house in Kent.

I love our Feline Overlords. I took a rotisserie chicken out of the fridge, intending to turn a slice or 2 into my lunch. Instantly two cats descended on me with a long and totally untrue tale that they were starving, they hadn't eaten for weeks, they were faint with hunger and would only be revived by copious applications of chicken. And if I wasn't buying that one, I wouldn't get my lunch until I'd paid the Kitty Tax they'd just dreamed up. So they got half a slice each. I think they're spoilt rotten!

>131 hfglen: I think I've heard that story before too. They can't survive without the chicken! It seems to be particularly important to older cats, at least at our house.

>131 hfglen: One of mine once stole an entire frozen chicken that was thawing on the kitchen counter and tried to drag it out of the room.

>133 clamairy: Unkind thought occasioned by a bottle of Zimbabwean hot sauce I bought recently. Now 1/2 teaspoon or less of this stuff (I'm sure it's hotter than Tabasco) mixed with a dollop of mayo is plenty to liven up a chicken prego roll. The recipe on the bottle recommends marinating a whole chicken in half a bottle (1/4 cup) before cooking the bird on an open wood fire to make chicken piri-piri (Mozambique's contribution to the world's culinary bliss -- happy memories of snow-white beaches, blue sky and sea, delectable chicken and Portuguese vinho verde!). What if kitty had tasted the marinade while steaking the chicken?

Some almost-winter scenery for northern-hemisphere Dragoneers!



A view of the Tandjiesberg, Eastern Cape, with Cape Mountain Zebras in the foreground; yes this is the Mountain Zebra National Park, near sunset on 26 May 2013.

The reserve was proclaimed in 1937 over the objections of the Minister of Lands, who showed his lack of fitness for the job by vociferously failing to see the point in conserving "donkeys in Griquas rugby jerseys". He is pushing up daisies now, but still hasn't lived that one down. At the time there were only six of these zebras in the reserve, but in 1950 a local farmer donated a herd of 11; there are now hundreds at least, enough to restock other reserves where they used to occur. For many years the reserve was closed to visitors, but it now boasts a comfortable rest camp, camp sites and roads for sightseeing. The other day the camp restaurant posted their Christmas menu, which I now can't find; it looks delicious, and is not exorbitant.

Cradock, the nearest town, has literary associations: it is one of several Karoo town where Olive Schreiner (who, by all accounts was "related to the dragon rather than St. George") lived, and has a museum dedicated to her.

>135 hfglen: Amazing.

>135 hfglen:
I love the story and the picture. The layered mountains look stunning, as do the the donkeys in Griquas rugby jerseys.

>135 hfglen: A stunning photo! I loved the story.

"...failing to see the point in conserving "donkeys in Griquas rugby jerseys". This puts me in mind of the news story here in the U.S. a year or two back. Half a dozen zebras had gotten away from a reserve of some sort and were running around free in the wilds of the state of Maryland. They got the first five within a day or two, but the sixth zebra eluded capture for quite some while. We were worried because (a) television journalists informed us that zebras are skittish and not readily amenable to be captured and (b) they apparently like company of other zebras. By and large, once the other five got caught, it seemed as if the uncaptured one might end up being very lonely.

>131 hfglen: Just reading your post to The Husband got our older cat interested. :D How do they all know the same story?

>135 hfglen: I love this photo.

>139 jillmwo: In the 1880s-1890s there was a man called Zeederberg who ran a coach line on routes where there was no railway (basically, all of the Transvaal). As the lowveld was a hotbed of diseases, horses, cattle and humans tended not to survive for any length of time there. So he tried to have his coaches on the route between Pretoria and Lourenço Marques drawn by a team of zebras, which are immune to nagana (sleeping-sickness). It didn't work. Later, Lady Phillips, the flamboyant wife of one of the Randlords, was famous for he zebra-drawn coach. That also didn't work, again for the reasons given on your TV.

A very Merry Christmas or anything else you celebrate, and a prosperous New Year to all Dragoneers.

>134 hfglen: I suspect Kitty would have learned a valuable lesson. Or perhaps not ...

>135 hfglen: What a gorgeous photo.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Hugh.

>143 hfglen: Merry Christmas, Hugh! I hope you have a great holiday and weekend.

>143 hfglen: Merry Christmas! Have a wonderful holiday!

A Christmas present for Peter:

Elephants are useful friends
Equipped with handles at both ends.
They have a wrinkled, moth-proof hide.
Their teeth are upside down, outside.

>144 clamairy: Merry Christmas!

>147 hfglen:
Thank you very much, Hugh. It is very much appreciated.

Have a wonderful Christmas and I hope the New Year is excellent for you and yours.

That is a splendid gift to send to >149 pgmcc: And I do like the little bit of verse that you included with it. (I don't know who wrote the verse, but I did find it amusing.)

And I do hope your holiday was a pleasant and festive one!

>147 hfglen: ...
If you think the elephant preposterous,
You’ve probably never seen a rhinosterous.

And:

The kangaroo can jump incredible,
He has to jump because he is edible.
I could not eat a kangaroo,
But many fine Australians do.¹
Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs,
Prefer him in tasty kangaroomeringues.

¹ I have some "rooburgers" in the fridge right now.

>150 jillmwo: If you or anybody else really don't recognise the source, go here and listen to the whole thing, recited by Noël Coward, and Saint-Saëns's music.

>147 hfglen: Wonderful!

Just adding a bit of piffle to your thread:

How quickly the future comes upon us, he thought. He always suspected the poetic description of Time like an ever-rolling stream. Time, in his experience, moved more like rocks . . . sliding, pressing, building up force underground and then, with one jerk that shakes the crockery, a whole field of turnips has mysteriously slipped sideways by six feet.

It's from The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. Happy New Year!

Happy new year, Hugh!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! :)

Happy New Year, Hugh!
I am looking forward to more of your photographs.

>159 pgmcc: Your wish is my command! in the 2026 thread/s.