Half of Tom Eaton is Missing!

I speak in my capacity as Tom Eaton’s Number One Fan, and on behalf of all lesser fans, when I say that the Mail & Guardian is a heartless creature. It gave us last Friday’s edition without Viva Gazania and didn’t warn us first. No sky-writing bi-plane, no complimentary gold Lindt bunny by way of apology, no little sample packet of valium stapled on, just a very missing column. Does it have any idea what this does to people? It’s like when you’ve ordered a pizza and they’ve left out the base and the tomato and the capers, and all you get is a mozzarella pancake stuck to the bottom of the box. Or when you’ve gone to get Master and Commander on DVD and get home to find disc 3 of Lost 2 in there instead. Well not exactly like that, because there’s still his cricket column, which is vitally important, but we really need to be forewarned if we’re only getting half of our weekly Tom Eaton.

To cheer myself up a bit I thought I’d transcribe the previous week’s Viva Gazania in here, and was three-quarters of the way through doing that when I discovered that I could just link to it instead, like in the old days. How odd. I remember moaning about it being unfair that one had to subscribe to the M&G in order to access it online. Well, it turns out that I was either hallucinating or being incredibly thick, because it isn’t true now. I don’t know if it ever was. Maybe they’re just messing with my head. Whatever the case, this is a good time to point out that you should not believe everything you read, especially if I wrote it.

- Here it is: “Boetie Gaan Boardmans Toe”, about Ragnarök; and cucumber slices at the Heilbron Spa. http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=301453&area=/columnist__tom_eaton/

Until recently I had neighbours who are actually living this legend, fervently. They’re gone now, to an encampment somewhere, to sit out their uhuru, time is short they say, and I can’t say I’ll miss them at all because they were… challenging, in many ways. It’s difficult to believe that these people are for real, but I can say from personal experience that they absolutely are. They are as real as the Heilbron Spar, which is deeply depressing. I was googling for news of David Bullard after I heard on the radio that he’d been shot, and among the first of the online ‘articles’ to appear was one from a blog called “Why South Africa Sucks”. It’s manned by someone who calls himself the Uhuru Guru. I’m not sure that Mr Bullard would appreciate being a poster boy for this cause, so I hope he hasn’t noticed.

Lucky Packet

Intergalactic Tabloid Headlines, 2065: “Humans Fail! Parktown Prawns Rise to Claim Earth!”

I missed a great many things last week, partly on account of being busy helping an old lady to cross the road (no, really. She was moving house and had been standing in the queue at the municipality being ignored by the cashiers for a fortnight. Whether that’s just the MO of municipality cashiers, or whether it’s because she’s really short and can’t see over the counter, I don’t know) but mostly on account of suffering from Chronic Futility Syndrome (see Intergalactic Tabloid headlines). This always makes me retreat into Terry Pratchett. So I spent most of my time hanging out with Johnny in Only You Can Save Mankind, and also with Tiffany Aching and the Nac Mac Feegles, and I had a lot of fun. Fiddling, while Borneo burns, but anyway.

Most sorely missed-out on, though, was Mr Eaton’s column in the M&G, which was a Poem about sheep and toy poms and crocodiles, and other animals, and would have gone down a treat in these parts. Unfortunately I can’t link to it because the M&G has gone and pulled a “Subscribe to view” trick on us. This is fair enough but also unfair to those of us who buy our papers the retro way while also relishing the copy paste option, for the simple reason that a stapled sixty page document of favourite columns is easier to read in the bath than is its equivalent in newspaper clippings. Bah.

This week, Mr Eaton has gotten hold of Mbeki’s Secret Travel Diary. I don’t know how he does it. A snippet: “…it was discovered by our interpreters that [our Chinese hosts] are referring to us by our exports rather than our names: apparently Nigeria’s Obasanjo is “Honourable Diamonds and Shit Movies”, while I am known as “Honourable Gold and Afrikaans Engineers”. Mugabe is known simply as “Mr Refugees”.”

Have I ever mentioned the fact that I am his Number One Fan?

And, speaking about Spud (no, I know we weren’t, but Mbeki was, in his Secret Diary), I wonder how Dan Brown feels about being so solidly overthrown by John Van De Ruit on the Sunday Times top 10 fiction booklist. And how John feels about being single-handedly responsible for the ten-year waiting lists at SA boarding schools. Who knew that so many teens were actually reading, in any case? John, please can your next novel be about how cool it is to tidy up your room?

The Afghans scrub carpets with stones, to make them look older. I bet it makes the carpets look older, too.