... Give ‘em Air ...

The smokin’ boys
With the chokin’ fish
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air!

Foot-pump lyin’
Animals dyin’
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air!!

Wide-eyed torture
Pavement slaughter
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air!!!

Severing thud
Pavement blood
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air!!!!

...... But, there’s more than one way to kill a karp ......

Ancient tradition
From the bath to the kitchen
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air!!!!!

The season’s pet
To eat while wet
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air !!!!!!

Christmas’ habitual
Murder ritual
Give them air
FUCKHEADS
Give them air!!!!!!!

A Czech deviation
Horrified frustration
Fuck those
AIRHEADS
Fuck them!!!!!!!!

...... I just don’t get it ......

I love the Czech Republic, and Christmas in Prague is something everyone should experience. But it’s not all pretty spires, medieval alleys, snow and mulled wine on the Old Town Square. There’s a Festive Season tradition that’s unique to the region and that never failed to transfix me for the eight years that we lived there. And it has to do with fish!

Raising carp has a long history in the Czech lands. The first written accounts of fish pond construction date back to the 11th century, when monasteries maintained the ponds for raising carp, which was an important food for Lent. These days it’s big business at Christmas time, and the practice is as follow:

1. Families buy live carp from a street vendor a few days before Christmas. Then there are a couple of options…
2. Either the new pet is kept in the family bathtub till Christmas Eve, at which time it is slaughtered…
3. Or the street vendor provides the service for you. This is becoming increasingly popular and the gruesome process takes place on the sidewalk, in full public view. The gutters run red with thick, red carp blood.
4. The bottom line - Christmas Eve dinner of fried carp, potato salad and fish soup.

I desensitized over the years, and got used to the sight, sound and smell of this process, but it shocked me in December 1995 when I’d only been in the country for two and a half months. I remember watching punters selecting their fish before the hapless creatures were weighed, stunned with a wooden club or mallet and killed with a sharp blade to the spinal cord, before being gutted and handed over to the Christmas shopper in a recycled plastic bag. Sure, that was brutal but, as a carnivore I think outrage is somewhat hypocritical as it’s essentially the same process for all the meat we eat. In most countries we just don’t get to see it on street corners.

What did piss me off was watching the fish in their tubs on the sidewalk, starved of oxygen, frantically gasping and slowly drowning in the hypoxic water. Yes, the majority of vendors had foot-pumps to bubble some air through the water but, as things got busy and the blood and intestines were flying, pumping air to hypoxic fish was forgotten. Hence my appeal “Give ‘em air, fuckheads”!

I had just bought my first digital camera back in the autumn of 2000, and memory cards were small and expensive (8mb – 32mb). Consequently, the three video clips below are short, but will give you a sense of the annual carp slaughter.







Penned (during the deep freeze of the coldest winter in 75 years) between December 20, 1995 and January 5, 1996 at Janovského 36/919, 170 00 Praha 7 - Holešovice, Czech Republic.


Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

LM in Pretoria

Back in the 70's and 80's, Mr Costa Velonis owned the best Portuguese style seafood restaurant in Pretoria, South Africa.

It was called "Toureiro - LM in Pretoria", a reference to the former Portuguese colony of Mocambique and its capital, Lourenço Marques (now named Maputo).

It was world famous north of the Boerewors Curtain, and renowned for its amazing Piri-Piri Chicken Livers (with Portuguese bread) and its prawns.

In all the years I went there, I think that's all I ate, other than a Portuguese Salad and excessive amounts of alcohol (including litres of Graça, the best-selling white corked wine in South Africa, constantly selling more than 2 million litres per annum).

Toureiro was at 314 Church Street West in Pretoria West and, over the decades, that part of town deteriorated, succumbed to urban decay and was not the kind of place you'd really want to go drinking late at night! Nevertheless, as students at the University of Pretoria between 1982 and 1988, it served us well as one of the best value for money seafood meals you could find, and the drinks were comparatively cheap. So a group of us went there regularly and indulged in copious consumption. Drink drive enforcement in South Africa was a joke in those days!

This particular group of five mates and their partners dubbed themselves "HPLK", an acronym that will remain undefined, to protect innocent people involved ;-) It was May 2, 1987 and most of us were working and in the second year of our Masters of Commerce degrees. On this particular evening, one of our ranks had declared "LM in Pretoria" as being too dangerous and/or below his status, and decided not to join us. The other four couples had a great time, racking up a monstrous bill of ZAR213.64. At the exchange rates of the day, that was approximately £37.67 or $58.62 or €44.99 for eight people, wining and dining. But considering that my gross salary at the time was about ZAR450.00 (£79.31 or $123.48 or €94.76), my slice of the tab cost me 12% of my salary!



As cash was scarce, we each paid our share, and made the calculations on the back of a paper napkin, that we duly signed and dated. A nice little memento of our life in LaLa Land, living under the Apartheid regime's State of Emergency. I finished my Masters degree in 1988, graduated in 1989 and left the country later that year. But the good friends remain...as does the Toureiro. Costa Velonis's son, Anthony, has reincarnated it in the leafy surroundings of Pretoria East, spitting distance from we all used to (or in some cases, still) live. It's now called "LM in the East" and still does killer chicken livers and prawns. Although the portions are half what they used to be, and prices are up by almost a factor of ten, I still eat there at least once every trip I make to South Africa. It remains a tangible and sensual link to a time long, long ago when lifelong friendships were forged.



Also see my folder on Flickr.

I Ate At McDonald's

Putrid bile, vile heartburn shit.
Oily, greasy tasteless crap.
Insipid, limp-wristed rain-forest destroying cow-pat.
Artery clogging, cholesterol saturated cud.
Cloying, soul destroying, denatured cardboard indigestion.
Silicon coated, Teflon tainted American plastic.
Have a nice day.
Vomit warmed up, spewing forth, choking unable to breathe.
Sandblasted, sanitised French Fries from hell.
Dizzy spells, packaged smell, feel unwell, puke.
Why the fuck did I go back to Mc Donald's?



I wrote this piece at the height of a bitterly cold winter in the Czech Republic. My company did not have company (or pool) cars back then, and I could not afford one, so I had caught a lift (in a Škoda 120) to Brno where I spent the day working at a campus recruiting event. I had only been in the Czech Republic for two months at that stage and the only way for me to get back to Prague was to brave the deep snow in a frozen bus from Brno to Prague. I was a 210km trip back home, it was the worst winter in 75 years, I was feeling pretty miserable and was hungry.

I believe the coach dropped me at the bus terminal at Praha hlavní nádraží (the main railway station) and from there I made my way down Václavské náměstí (Wenceslas Square) where I was going to catch a tram back to my apartment in Prague 7, Holešovice. At the time McDonald's did not have any restaurants in South Africa (where I had relocated from) and I had only tasted my first Big Mac about a month earlier...and it had been a far from pleasant experience. Nevertheless, it was dark, the snow was deep, I was frozen and there was probably very little to eat in my apartment, so I took the convenient way out, and returned to McDonald's for my second attempt at a Big Mac. On the tram home, I scrawled my less than complimentary assessment of the meal on the back of a graduate interview form.

Penned at breakneck speed on December 8, 1995 (in the freezing cold) on Tram 14 to Náměstí Republiky (Republic Square), Prague, Czech Republic.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Rolling for PW

On Thursday, August 28, 1980 (while nursing a blend of conjunctivitis and flu) I had a major motor accident. At the time I was a conscript serving with the 7th SA Infantry Battalion, had returned from Ondangwa in the South West African "Operational Area" on June 28, and was posted to 7 SAI's base camp in Phalaborwa before returning to "The Border". A very pleasant chap by the name of Johann Grove had just returned to Namibia, and asked me whether I would drive his car home to Johannesburg for him. I agreed and was joined by Ingo Eggers and Jan Viljoen who shared the fuel costs with me. On that fateful Thursday we left Phalaborwa, heading for Pretoria, and my diary picks up the story on the R101:

Pass. On a detour road between Nylstroom and Warmbaths I got blinded by a truck's headlights, misjudged a right-hand corner, drifed, corrected, drifted across the road, hit an irrigation ditch and rolled the Mazda 323, 1300cc four times. Landed on the roof. Three of us OK. Car a total write-off. Lucky to be alive. Hiked home (accident at 06:10 pm).



Incredibly, we hitchhiked back to Pretoria in full military "step out" uniform, covered from head to toe in petrol, squashed banannas, mashed avocado pears, lager beer and red Transvaal dust. My neck has never been the same since, and I apologise to Ingo and Jan if they have had any long term side effects. Sadly for me, this was not to be my last accident for the weekend. Two days later, on the night of Saturday, August 30, 1980 I was a passenger in another rolling car on the corner of Crown Avenue and Lawley Street in Waterkloof, Pretoria. But that's another story...



I took these photographs on Monday, September 1, 1980 at the Warmbad Scrap Yard at 1 Industria Road in Warmbaths on my way back to base after an insane weekend. FYI, here's the route of the R101 between Nylstroom and Warmbaths.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

The Back of the Moon

The Back of the Moon was one of the best Motocross tracks in South Africa back in the late-70's and early-80's. It was situated in Baviaanspoort, to the north of Pretoria and to the south of the Roodeplaat Dam. Although racing was way beyond my budget, I spent many fine weekends out there with friends who had the wherewithal.



Apparently I misspent a little bit of my youth there on Saturday, October 13, 1979, just over three months into my two years of compulsory military conscription. My diary for the day reads as follows:

Kohler's in morning. Gary there. To his place. Loaded bikes - 2 x RM 250 and 1 x KTM 250. To "Back of the Moon" MX track. Races: Gary won 1st race and came 2nd in 2nd race. Peter wiped out. Anton 3rd overall. Twelve ales!! Lisa George there. To Peter's. Home. To Fischers ± 20 people there - all to Boogies. Substance abuse. Beer, brandy, Southern Comfort, tequila and rum!! To Monastery Disco at 10:00pm. Everyone there. Took Nikki Ashton home. Zeller, Barker, two others and I to Johannesburg at 11:30pm. To Carlton Centre and Hillbrow. Zeller, Barker and I passed out in cab. To Fischers. Took Zeller and Barker home. Bed at 03:30am.

Those were the days! Phew - I'm exhaused just reading that ;-)

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

15 Albums

On September 3, 2010 my old connection from Pretoria, Helgard de Barros posted a challenge on his Facebook page:

15 ALBUMS

THE RULES: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. Copy and post to your profile. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what albums my friends choose*. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note).

Phew - tough one! The 15 albums that have defined me. Hmmm....

So I created a list in under ten minutes, off the top of my head. A few hours later, I created another. Tonight two more! For future reference, here they are:

1. Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Hole
2. Black Sabbath - We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll
3. David Bowie - Space Oddity
4. The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland
5. Nirvana - Nevermind
6. Bob Marley & the Wailers - Exodus
7. The Asylum Kids - Fight it With Your Mind
8. Bernoldus Niemand - Wie Is Bernoldus Niemand
9. Echo & the Bunnymen - Crocodiles
10. Gary Numan & the Tubeway Army - Replicas
11. Nina Hagen - Nina Hagen Band
12. Dead Kennedys - Frankenchrist
13. Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
14. The Clash - Sandinista
15. The Doors - The Doors

1. Rodriguez - Cold Fact
2. Golden Earring - Moontan
3. Uriah Heep - Magician's Birthday
4. The The - Infected
5. Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat
6. The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues
7. Frank Zappa - Live in New York
8. Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out
9. Pretenders - Pretenders
10. Blondie - Parallel Lines
11. Kate Bush - The Kick Inside
12. David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
13. Patti Smith Group - Easter
14. Depeche Mode - A Broken Frame
15. System of a Down - Mezmerize

1. Peter Tosh - Equal Rights
2. Joe Jackson - Look Sharp
3. The Beat - I Just Can't Stop It
3. Elvis Costello - Armed Forces
4. Spliff - 85555
5. Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft - Alles Ist Gut
6. Stan Ridgway - The Big Heat
7. T-Rex - Electric Warrior
8. The Selecter - Too Much Pressure
9. Violent Femmes - 3
10. Public Image Ltd - The Flowers of Romance
11. Koos Kombuis - Ver van die Ou Kalahari
12. Gereformeerde Blues Band - Eet Kreef
13. David Bowie - Lodger
14. The Clash - Combat Rock
15. L7 - Bricks Are Heavy

1. Kraftwerk - Das Model
2. Joe Jackson - Jumpin' Jive
3. Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti
4. David Bowie - Hunky Dory
5. Die Antwoord - $O$
6. Linton Kwesi Johnson - Forces of Victory
7. The Doors - An American Prayer
8. Tribe After Tribe - Power
9. Einstürzende Neubauten - Haus der Lüge
10. The Specials - Specials
11. The Jam - All Mod Cons
12. Echo & the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
13. Queen - Queen II
14. Alice Cooper - Love It to Death
15. Type O Negative - Life Is Killing Me

1. Metallica - The Black Album
2. Kiss - Alive
3. Ian Dury & the Blockheads - New Boots & Panties
4. Jethro Tull - Aqualung
5. Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel (no. 3, 1980)
6. David Bowie - Pin Ups
7. The Doors - LA Woman
8. Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel - Nail
9. Rammstein - Sehnsucht
10. Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper - Root Hog Or Die
11. AC/DC - Let There Be Rock
12. Soundtrack - The Rocky Horror Picture Show
13. Soundtrack - Jesus Christ Superstar (Original London Cast)
14. Soundtrack - That Summer!
15. Status Quo - Dog of Two Head

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Karibou - Waka Waka (1992)

In 1992, my girlfriend and I went to the Comores for a week of cocktails, food, fornication and scuba diving. The resident band at the La Galawa Beach Hotel was called Karibou, and they did a fantastically funky song called "Waka Waka". I still have the cassette tape, and this is a scan of the cover...



Flash forward 18 years. Tonight I was watching the concert hosted in the Orlando Stadium in Soweto, South Africa on the night before the opening of the 2010 World Cup of Football. Colombian artist Shakira was one of the performers. To my surprise, she did the "Waka Waka" and , by all accounts "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)" is the official anthem and dance of the World Cup!



This got me thinking about the origins of the song, and I found an article called Waka Waka For Africa in the Kenyan newspaper The Standard:

The vuvuzela and makarapa mad nation is all jiggy to Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) World Cup — a chorus borrowed from the Cameroonian 1986 hit military song Zangaléwa (Zamina mina), which means "who asked you to come", performed by the group Golden Sounds.

It is interesting that the _original song was such a hit for Golden Sounds that they eventually changed their name to Zangaléwa. They released four albums — the one that included Zangaléwa was awarded Record of the Year in Cameroon. The group was formed in 1984 by a group of presidential guards who wrote the song for the troops. They even sung part of the song in Beti and Fang, dialects from Cameroon.

Soldiers used the tune as a motivational anthem. Critics have it that the song mocked African soldiers back then and does not glorify Africa.

The original lyrics, which are in Fang goes like this:

Za mina mina eh eh
Waka waka eh eh
Za mina mina zangalewa
Ana wam ah ah
Zambo eh eh
Zambo eh eh
Za mina mina zangalewa
Wana wa ah ah

But only hours after two new versions of the up-tempo track, Waka Waka which means "Do It", was released on YouTube over 400,000 viewers had already been hooked to the video by Tuesday — and local Kenyan stations were cashing on the hit.

Shakira shakes

The song is infectiously groovy and has an African touch from traditional African beats fused with modern instrumentation as Shakira’s lead vocals does wonders. And that’s not all as the Africanness of the song is brought out by Freshly Ground back-up vocals. The South African group creates the South African melodic feel recognisable in African music scene.

One of the videos, which come with spectacular sights and sounds of savannah with wild animals celebrating the soccer spirit, brings the feeling even closer home. A cameo appearance of South African popular group Ladysmith Black Mambazo is inspiring".

Fantastic!! I'm proud to have been grooving to this song almost two decades ago :-)

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

My Wife (For Debs)

"It's good to get away..."
Into this sea of seething sex,
Red hot Czechs...
But I really miss my wife.

"I'm going to have a jôl..."
Trying to fuck these fantasy femmes,
Dobre dens...
But I really miss my wife.

"Prague women are so cool..."
Erotic mincing in micro minis,
Fur bikinis...
But I really miss my wife.

"It's so easy to get laid..."
Worshipping tits and tweaking twats,
Body shots...
But I really miss my wife.

"I'll be coming round the mountain..."
Suck and caress a creamy clit,
Give a shit?...
But I really miss my wife.

But let's face it.
This is all bullshit, a dream, it does not exist.
It is non-reality, forgoing all pretension toward significance,
inspiration, complexity and profundity.
There is only one reality.

I honestly and truly love and miss my wife.



At the end of September 1995 - six months after getting married in South Africa - I relocated to the Czech Republic, pursuing my dream job but unfortunately leaving my new wife behind in Pretoria. I found a wonderful apartment in Holešovice, Prague that had the most magnificent pale green carpets.



As anyone who's lived there will tell you, Prague is a hotbed of temptation for a single man, but I'm proud to say that I didn't succumb during my 12 months of married bachelorhood. But I can't say it was easy...as this amateurish effort reveals. I wrote this piece on a frozen bus, in the deep snow on the road from Brno to Prague. My company did not have company cars back then, and I could not afford one, so I had caught a lift (in a Škoda 120) to Brno where I spent the day working at a campus recruiting event. The old run-down bus was the only way I had to travel the 210km back home, it was the worst winter in 75 years, I was feeling pretty miserable and was really missing Debs.

Penned very quickly on December 8, 1995 (on a frigid bus from Brno to Prague, Czech Republic).

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Twenty Year Touchpoints

In 1989 I left apartheid South Africa and spent much of the next year travelling Europe. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989 at which time I was somewhere between Turkey and Italy. I was heading for Berlin and on December 4 I hitch-hiked from Stuttgart to Mannheim, heading for Bonn where I was going to be staying with Dr. Marcella Rietschel (a Research Fellow at the Institute of Human Genetics, University of Bonn) who I had met in Istanbul in October. This is a recent picture of her:



It was freezing cold and snowing out on the road, and by the time I reached Mannheim, I had had enough and headed to the Hauptbahnhof. After a cup of steaming coffee, I bought a ticket to Bonn, boarded the milk-train and continued the journey north.

It was now evening and I was deeply engrossed in my book when the train stopped at a local siding south of Frankfurt I looked up lazily, and saw the name of the place - Zeppelinheim. Zeppelinheim? ZEPPELINHEIM! I knew someone who lived there! Who, I could not remember, but I definitely knew someone there. Snap decision - frantically I packed my stuff, grabbed by bags and jumped off the train. Just in time. So there I was, in the snow in the middle of "nowhere", with no place to go! There was basically nothing at this railway siding, other than a prefab bar, and so that's where I headed. Over a beer, I flipped through my address book in an attempt to figure out who I knew in Zeppelinheim! Oh shit! Sure, I had an address in Zeppelinheim, but it was for the parents of Ulrike Cowan, the girlfriend of my best friend in South Africa, Hartmut von der Ohe. I had never met them, and they had no idea who I was! But I was committed - I was cold and the train was long-gone.



I fed the public phone in the humid, prefab bar, got Johan Cowan on the line and explained the situation. Amazingly, Johan was incredibly welcoming, drove down to the railway siding to pick me up, and insisted I stay for a couple of nights! Mr. and Mrs. Cowan were incredibly gracious - they set up a bed for me in the basement, wined and dined me, and took me shopping in Neu-Isenburg. I also had the opportunity to go into Frankfurt where I got to see Debbie Harry (and Chris Stein) in concert from the front row of a venue called Batschkapp. A wonderful (and eventful) concert, but that's another story!



But probably the highlight of my couple of days in Zeppelinheim was meeting Ulrike's sister, Kati. It's 20 years later and we're still in touch, so I guess that says something. The picture below was take in the basement at Vogelring on the night of December 6, 1989 as I packed up to leave for Bonn the next morning. The following week she was admitted to hospital to have her appendix removed...and there she contracted measles! How do I remember this stuff?? Anyway, it was a restful two days after a crazy couple of months on the road. But East Germany, Berlin and the crumbling Wall lay ahead, and what an experience that was!



FOOTNOTE ONE - while reading the Wikipedia entry for Zeppelinheim, I noticed that it is twinned with the Borough of Dacorum in Hertfordshire. I now live in Hertfordshire, and Dacorum is a mere 15km from my front door. Serendipity.

FOOTNOTE TWO - Kati Cowan has excelled over the past 20 years and is now doing noble work with Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

FOOTNOTE THREE - Dr. Marcella Dominica Rietschel is now Professor of Genetic Epidemiology in Psychiatry, University of Heidelberg, Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany. A fantastic achievement - and a long way from October 26, 1989, the Ümit Restaurant in Istanbul, a backpack of blood samples, a little food and way too many drinks!



Holy Darwin - I've travelled an interesting road, crossing paths with some amazing individuals in the process :-)

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Pautz Sprouts Afrikaans

As I have repeated ad nauseum, my late father, Beaudry Glen Pautz, was a naturally gifted writer who made a living from his command of the English language. However, although he lived his entire life in multi-cultural, multi-lingual South Africa, he never confidently mastered a second language. Sure, he could understand and communicate in Afrikaans - the language of authority and government of the day – but I had never found anything written by him in Afrikaans. Until recently.

Well, I hope it was written by him – it’s in his handwriting, but could have been transcribed from somewhere else. However, knowing his sense of humour, and his talent for penning bawdy limericks in the “seaside postcard” style, I’d like to think that these are his! I found these two humorous pieces of unpolished prose jotted on a piece of cardboard among some of Beau’s stuff at my mother’s house in Pretoria in 2008. Difficult to say when they date from, but as they are written in ballpoint pen, and as my father moved into a more Afrikaans speaking work environment in 1965, I would guess that these pieces come from the late-60’s. If you speak Afrikaans (or Flemish), please enjoy...


__________________________________________________________

Daar was gebore ‘n man – Jan Magiel,
Die enigste man met ‘n kurktrekker piel.
Hy het gesoek in die noord, suid, wes en oos,
Vir ‘n vrou met dieselfde tiepe van doos.
En toe hy haar vind, slaan hy dood neer op die daad,
Want die vrou het gehad ‘n linksom draad.
__________________________________________________________

Daar was ‘n man van Australieë,
Hy’t sy gat geverf soos ‘n daliah.
Die kleur was mooi, die patron was pragtig,
Maar die geur, O my God allemagtig.
__________________________________________________________



Ja swaer...good to see he had a sense of humour in a couple of languages :-)

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©

Postscript: On Kruger Day (October 10, 2009) my mate, Schalk Vorster, sent me a link to the strange vintage corkscrew image above (French c.1900), as well as an English poem that could have served as the inspiration for the Afrikaans effort:

Here lies the bones of screwy Rick
Cursed at death with a corkscrew dick
Spent his life in a futile hunt
To find a girl with a corkscrew cunt
He found that girl, but now he is dead
The no account bitch had a left-hand thread.

In a bar long since closed in Greensburg, PA