I CAN’T RECALL EXACTLY WHEN, BUT somewhere about 1936 when I was eleven-or-so years old, here in English Middle-Class Colonial Natal, we were all told at school to be sure to listen to the wireless at eight o’clock one certain night because the King was going to speak to his Empire.
It was a great day, but listening had to be at night because that’s when the newly discovered Heaviside Layer became activated a hundred-or-so miles above the Earth, you see. Nobody knew what this layer was made of, some said it was factory smoke, some that it was Marie biscuit crumbs, but it allowed shortwave radio signals to bounce off back to the ground far away over the horizon. Other waves just vanished into space.
Be that as it may, the SABC did a heroic job and captured all the shortwaves and rebroadcast them as medium waves and now we could all huddle round our wireless sets with great big glowing hot valves set at the 42-metre wavelength and hold our breaths in expectation until suddenly there he was! The King himself! In London! It seemed he was speaking in bed with blankets pulled over his head and a finger up his nose, but it was him, I mean he, all right, talking to us straight in real time!
Bu hikaye Noseweek dergisinin November 2018 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Noseweek dergisinin November 2018 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
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.
