Monthly Archives: October 2008

To MyPoP but not for a “packet of peanuts”

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By Louis the Scooterer

MyPoP here I come, and as I leave my driveway I see the giant advertising boards for the new highrise
being built next door being offloaded and stacked against the old broken down metal wall

Oh dear…then the usual hair-raising couple of kms to MyPoP with never a moment without a bad driver near me .. that is.. either in front of me or behind me or coming toward me..BUT in this instance she drove out of her driveway into the traffic without a second glance.

Lucky for me that I “second glance” for every driver in my vision so I’m glad to say I’m still alive and arrived safely..to sit and watch the sea and drink a quiet coffee.

A few times I have met young folk who are hikers and walkers, who walk across Israel on a specially made route called “Israel Track”… that begins in the far north and winds across mountain trails and tracks and some places have proper tar roads built (but not for vehicles.)

I have scooted several kilometers at different places on the Israel Track, and have even walked a few kms at a few places. The young people carry all provisions and everything they need in heavy backpacks and go.

Mostly they take a few days to do the full trip. But more will do the trip in short portions and take whatever time it takes. Also older people will do a short section every weekend and after a few weeks they may complete the track.

A very lovely idea and in certain areas there are places to light fires for barbeque and playgrounds for young children…and many kms are through beautiful countryside next to a river or in the valleys or a rough track in the mountains or in the desert.

The several hikerwalkers that I have chatted all told me interesting stories and most carry maps and follow the colored tiny flags painted on rocks and poles and special posts. Soon I will venture to do a longer walk at a section that I have not seen before.

One young chap told me about the “Israel Track Angels”..certain families who live on or very near the track and have a separate room or outside veranda, will invite hikers to “stay-over”..and provide a small fridge with milk and cheeses, and kettle, coffee tea etc.

Often they travel hike in small groups with understanding that if one needs to slow down..then the others must continue…and then the straggler can stop the hike and wait for a bus somewhere ..or call a family member or friend to collect.

A few days ago, one young fellow hiking alone after a disagreement popped into the supermarket up the road where I was shopping ..we spoke for a few minutes ..then he froze..he couldnt find his celphone..and halfheartedly “unpacked” part of his backpackbag, pulled out some stuff and was preparing to walk back about 8 kms where he last used the phone.. I begged (instructed) him to calm down and empty everything and sure enough he found the fone which had tucked itself inside the plastic cover of his big diary..(he then called me “the Israel Track Supermarket Angel).

(I was first told about this track about 40 years ago when I was friendly with a young Johannesburg fellow (Eric) who made aliya and did the track..and when he visited S.A. later he described casually his experiences…at that time it had no meaning for me at all.)

Each person I speak about it tell me of their experiences…including the 3 seniors all in their eighties who do a few kms each Saturday..taken to a spot and fetched a few hours later a bit down the track.

So on the ride home I only dodged out of harms way, at least 10 times and near my apt a female driver in a new SUV did not stop at stop sign and almost ran me down..this time I have a picture on my computer and also the entrance gate where she parks “her horrible hateful dark color big ugly SUV”..(watch this space !)

And outside my building some of the signs were in place.

Please feel free to email me louisdrinkingt@013.net

The Green Shave

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By Jeffrey the Barak

How would you like to spread Napalm on your face while releasing questionable propellants into the ozone layer, and then put a stack of eternal plastic into a landfill?

Doesn’t sound like something you’d want to do does it? And yet if you use aerosol shaving gel, it contains the very same naptha and palm oil as Napalm, that cruel and unusual weapon used in the flame throwers of wars past. This is palm oil that comes from plantations that are gobbling up the habitats of endangered orangutans.

And this convenient chemical cocktail is being helped out of the pressurized, plastic lined can by a propellant gas, which in many countries still contains ozone-eating CFC compounds.

The 2, 3, 4 or 5.5 tiny blades on your razor cartridge are surrounded by, and packed and wrapped in, ounces and ounces of disposable plastic also.

Surely this is not necessary? Of course it’s not!

Just ask your father or perhaps your grandfather. A good shaving brush and some shaving soap can give you a better lather than anything in an aerosol can, for a fraction of the price, and with zero waste. And used properly, a double-edged safety razor, made entirely of steel will give you a close enough shave without irritation or cuts, and that razor blade contains no plastic. It’s all steel. While most come in a plastic box complete with a disposal slot in the back, you can easily find them individually wrapped in paper and then packed into a paper box of 100. Zero plastic.

So if you think you are going green but still use Edge gel and a Fusion razor, think again Mister. It’s time to get into responsible shaving, while saving the planet, and also saving my friends the orangutans, (who never shave).

Jeffrey the Barak shaves….often and repeatedly.

Errol Flynn’s Barnes Period

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By Ajax Bardrick

BARNES` LOST HOLLYWOOD CONNECTION UNCOVERED

A handful of sparkling stardust from the glamour of old Hollywood fell on an obscure corner of South West London this week with the solution of an enduring mystery of the film actor Errol Flynn`s early life in the district.

Flynn was the biggest star in Hollywood in the late 1930s and early 1940s, achieving fame through films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Sea Hawk, which made him the heroic swashbuckling buccaneer of Hollywood`s golden age. However, 10 years before his arrival in Hollywood he had been Leslie Flynn, a wayward 14 year old from the other side of the world in Australia who had shipped over to London with his father dragging him along to the capital on some business that he had to conduct there, wondering what he was to do with the boy who found himself being transported from the exotic surroundings of his childhood years on the shore of Tasmania, with the roar of the sea where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet coming off of the South Pole, to board in a small shambolic boys` private school in the Putney district, which he described as drab, grey and grim looking. It has been known for a number of years since the publication of his autobiography My Wicked Wicked Ways, shortly before his early death from exhaustion in 1959, that the silver screen star had spent a part of his youth in a school in the locality which he called ‘South-West London College’, but its actual location was obscured by his siting it ‘off Putney Common`, with the vague location as ‘somewhere between Putney & Hammersmith.’

The puzzle as to its location has defied writers and historians studying the screen actor`s origins before he tore a blaze across the Hollywood firmament, leading some to speculate as to whether it existed at all as Flynn described it, but it has now been solved by a dusty half-forgotten old trade directory from the mid 1920s stored at the Wandsworth Borough Archive on Lavender Hill during research into the star`s early years. In the frail pages of an obscure small business circular called the ‘Wandsworth Directory 1925’, listed in between ‘Sanitary Engineers’ and ‘Servants` Registry Offices’ under ‘Scholastic’ was found an entry for ‘South West London College (Mr. E.H. Burbidge, Principal), No. 99-101 Castelnau’, confirming the veracity of Flynn`s account and locating the long gone school amidst a line of regency villas on the road leading up on to Hammersmith Bridge.

Although expressing no other feelings in retrospect than the misery of his time at the school which he said were two of the most dismal years of his life, he devoted several pages of his autobiography to provide a carefully drawn portrait of it, describing how its cheerlessness was indicated by window-ledges lined with empty flowerpots and matched by the meagre fare at meal times, and how the boys were crammed into the dormitories for want of space. He also left vivid portraits of the staff such as the Headmaster, Mr. Burbidge: … old, fat and terrifying and glaring at you like a toad; and another teacher who had: sloppy clothes and a kipper-footed gait and spent most of his time stalking the school`s better looking boys (who were in turn anxious to stay one step ahead of him) with an ominous intent and a lecherous smile, who would leave the school`s employment under a cloud after having shown an unhealthy interest in the boys in the school`s cricket team for reasons other than cricket. Flynn further described parading from Barnes across the bleak wasteland of Barnes Common into Putney and through its streets as the boys went off to church each Sunday in a 2 by 2 column, creating a colourful sight in their uniforms of striped trousers and blazer, with straw boaters for the Summer months being replaced with top hats in the Winter; and also the subsequent loneliness that he experienced in a strange place far from home when finding himself discarded by his parents and left in the school alone with all of the other boys having departed for the holidays, and he found himself with nothing to do but wander around its empty class-rooms; and how this abandonment and the resentment that it caused would mark his character in his future passage through the world.

He left the school after 2 years in 1925, and headed back to Australia and a subsequent meteoric future that awaited him of fame and wealth at the summit of Hollywood before he would burn out in a self-destructive pursuance of sensual excess; but the building, which today makes two private houses, that encompassed South West London College remains with its own memory of its role in the life of one of cinema`s icons.

Ajax Bardrick,
London, 14.Oct.2008

Scooterer Stories, Part Twelve – In the North

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Scooterer Stories
By Louis the Scooterer

The travels of Louis the Scooterer, a retired former South African who has found an unusual way of getting to know Israel.

Part Twelve – “A little north, a little west, a little east…then a lot north”…then sunset, then night time.

After leaving hydro electric plant we are back on main road going north pass industrial areas and a couple of kibbutsim which we won’t visit now.

As we see the south end of Lake Kinerret (Sea of Galilee) for the first time in front of us… I notice a tourist INFO office in a shopping complex, and make my way to that..while all my passengers ran to different restaurants and kiosks to buy something to eat..I collected a handful of interesting brochures and deciding immediately that we will go first to Moshav Kinerret on opposite direction to our main plan.

We will pass several important kibbutzim on our left side and several venues on the water edge, and arrive at the bridge where Kinerret flows again south as Jordan River,..and make our way to the area known as Yardenit, on the Jordan River..
supposedly for a coffebreak and relax on the quiet river edge in beautiful surroundings..with high trees and ducks in the water and birds all around.

But wait..hey..wow ..theres action in front of us as many worshippers dressed in white robes are making their way down a series of steps to enter the water preparing to be baptised..in the Jordan River..this is incredible luck for us to find this event as we arrived…

After reading the various posters about the place, and watching the ceremony and each participant being dunked in the water ..while onlookers and worshippers sing hymns and pray together with the various religious leaders among them..

and many pics are taken by everybody including me..

After a while and a coffee on the large terrace we make a quick visit into the “tourist shop” crammed with thousands of religious objects and ornaments and watch as tourists select and then wait in line at the cashier counter..to pay..

I guess we could call the place “a religious artifacts supermarket”.

Time to leave ..lets go before the buses start pulling out and clogging the narrow road back to the bridge….(many things to see and places to visit in the immediate areas on future travels…like the date plantations and driedfruit minimarket for tourists just up the road.)

Continue to the west up route 98, a lovely scenic drive with neighbouring Jordan on the other side of the fence, we get to Khamat Gader and condense our stay, to enjoy some swims in the various hot and cold water swimming pools and some relaxing in the sun..

http://www.hamat-gader.com/hamatVirtGalleries.php?linkOrder=41 (or google to other sites)

then maybe a coffee n snack and take a walk to see the crocodile farm.. and then move out. It would be very easy to spend a couple of days relaxing in this incredible place.

On to the uphill winding scenic road we make several short stops to see views and take pics..(Hamat Gader now way down below us !)..then on top of the plateau the road straightens out and we begin to see glimpses of Lake Kinerret, and when we drive into Kibbuts Mevo Khama..we are in for a unique experience.

On my very first scooter visit here I met Elaine who works in the office at plastic factory..

and when she and the security were satisfied that I was a scooterer visiting everywhere, she invited me to drink tea with her and some staff at the large plastic factory on the kibbuts.. then… she pointed me to go to the back of the kibbutz, to find a special spot on a metal platform, from where the entire Kinneret can be seen

Surely a unique experience from that unique spot..thanks Elaine…and as luck would have it that was a perfect haze free day..thanks again…and for the plastic gifts.

A quick stop a bit further and another view from Shalom observation point viewsite..in Kfar Kharuv, a place that caters for b/b and every Friday will be full to capacity.. and empties out late Saturday until the following Friday.

Through to Afik kibbuts..here I met a young woman working in reception, where on the wall is large photo of Afik holiday cottages. While doing her time in the army.. she was a leader at Sar-El, so we had much to talk about..she sent me to a viewsite that is also magic..sighting the hills n valleys bordering Afik..every old building and monument has interesting stories and I guess a one night stayover will be many hours of adventure with someone from the kibbutz able to tell about the places.
Then down the road to a winery at Eliad,

where we were invited to view the current art exhibition and taste wines.

(I had visited on previous occasions, once having been invited to a tour of the winery and lunch with a few other important guests…that was a marvellous invite, where again I felt embarrassed, as me and my scooter were discussed more than the wines and grapes. I have been back a couple of times to chat and take lunch with the owners and workers.

More quick decisions as to which route to take next.. and I decide to go to Gamla..(I can envisage that we will be in these Kinerret areas for several upcoming chapters) and will try not to backtrack where we have already visited.

It is not possible to stop at every kibbuts and industrial area on our route to Gamla..(altho I have done that on my scooter..scooted in and around and often do not see another person to ask ..Often I have done those rides on a Saturday when many areas are seemingly deserted.)

On one occasion I scooted into a kibbuts Avnei Eytan and rode around. I saw a summer-holiday-camp that had been closed after the season..sleeps a few hundred people in Red Indian style tepees ..but the guard spoke no English..so no explanations. And at the same time, a little further on, I came to hot-houses where flowers and fruit are grown, and the man in charge showed me around and althoogh he spoke no English ..we communicated ?

Drive into Gamla Nature Reserve and receive brochures and learn something about the place..

visit http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3373998,00.html ( or google to other sites)

A happening way back when Romans attacked the city built on a hill..the remaining fighters would commit suicide rather than being taken prisoners into slavery (similar to Masada). There are some great drives, and walks to see the vultures and eagles building nests on the high cliffs and rangers to give info..at the viewing stations built across the way from the nests…then there is the waterfall that must be seen while we are here,
and after a break and snack at kiosk..time to move along.

So after watching incredible sunset, with Tiberias in the background and the Kinerret in front… and as dusk falls and we can no longer see anything we drive to the north end of Kinerret to Kare Deshe Youth Hostel to sleep over, and look forward to a marvellous breakfast.

(unplanned at this time.. we will be staying several nights, as our base for trips to far north and areas adjacent.)… so watch this space… and please connect with me at email louisdrinkingt@013.net

Louis the Scooterer is 69 years old and it sounds like he’s just getting started.

The least continental place

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Nake Island, Kiribati, is the closest point of land I could find after moving the Google Earth globe around to a spot that showed the least land. The only significant continental land visible at the edges of this hemisphere is in either North America or Eastern Australia, and New Zealand and Mexico are the only two very large countries which are entirely within this hemisphere.

But this spot may not be the most oceanic. I may have missed the mark. Does anyone know the coordinates of the place in the Pacific ocean that is dead center of the most watery hemispherical view of Earth?

If so, please comment on this article. I’d be most curious to know where the least continental place really is.

Station Wagon is a dirty term.

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Above, a sensible medium sized station wagon...er...crossover.

Once upon a time, car drivers who occasionally hauled around a lot of stuff and/or large objects from place to place, bought station wagons. In Europe these were called estate cars, and still are, but in the United States, they were called station wagons, presumably because they transferred goods to and from a railway station terminus.

Basically a station wagon was the same as it’s passenger car cousin, except the trunk, rear deck, parcel shelf and back window were replaced with a compartment the height of the roof, and they had a tailgate of some kind (a rear door). The rear seats folded flat to provide the functionality of a small van, in a car’s body.

During a temporary period of low fuel prices starting in the 1980′s, Americans reverted to their 1970′s habits and began to use vehicles that were larger than they needed to be. Many a ninety pound woman uses a five liter V8 powered four-wheel drive “sport utility vehicle” to drive a mile to the local Starbucks with no passengers or luggage.

In fact, SUV’s became so ubiquitous in the USA that normal cars were considered dangerous and vulnerable to devastating impacts if involved in collisions with “normal” SUV’s.

But underneath the wood veneer and leather seats, an SUV is just an unstable truck with similar build design to a car of eighty years ago.

Eventually the American market opened it’s minds to the station wagon format again, except by now Station Wagon was a dirty term that would surely spell marketing death for the car makers.

So they made up a new word, “Crossover” which presumably means a mixture of a normal car and a giant four-wheel drive sport utility vehicle. A Crossover has a car-style unibody construction and can have all the latest technology. Due to the better maneuverability, stability, controlability and crumple zones, the Crossover is as safe as a sedan and much less likely to become an out of control 3 ton missile rolling over and over and reducing the occupants’ spines to pulp in the process.

A Crossover is….. a station wagon, except without the guy in the plaid jacket smoking a cigar.

But to really understand the difference, there is a simple formula, and it is as follows:

Crossover = sensible design.
SUV = fucking stupid.

Why you shouldn’t keep goldfish

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Oscar Night (the goldfish)

I once worked as a “cubicle farmer”, in an office. To provide a soothing distraction, I raised a couple of batches of “Sea Monkeys” and at the peak of their success, I was able to project their shadows onto the wall and enjoy their company for a very brief time.

Following that experience, I bought a single Comet Goldfish for a dollar and a simple plastic bowl. He (or she) was an exceptionally attractive goldfish with large spectacular fins and tail, and it was only a matter of time before escalation took place with progressively larger tanks and filters and other fishy friends for Oscar Night, as I called him.

In the end, my office desk sported a 30 gallon aquarium with a large canister power filter system under the desk. Water changes and tank cleaning took up many hours and it was a lot of work, but I feel that Oscar Night made the years spent inside a cubicle for forty hours a week much more bearable, and he provided mood enhancing entertainment for dozens of fellow employees who passed by my partitioned universe.

I like goldfish. They have faces, they have intelligence and they have personalities. Tropical fish, albeit sometimes quite beautiful, are wild, and they are the eat-or-be-eaten type of animal that you never really get to know as friends.

A goldfish is a poor man’s koi.

But knowing what I know today, I would not recommend keeping goldfish as pets unless you can promise that each fish will have twenty gallons of water, and that you can commit to keeping the tank clean, the water properly balanced and will be able to maintain a proper feeding, cleaning and water-changing schedule. Anything less can be cruel to a fish. And if you follow the recommend cruelty-free ratio of water to goldfish, then you will have a largely empty aquarium to look at. After all, if you add gravel, rocks, plants and decoration, then the thirty gallon tank may only have room for twenty five gallons of water. One large goldfish!

A goldfish might survive for a long time in a bowl, if you change the water once a day or even twice a day when it grows, but after two years, that pet store goldfish will need a large body of seasoned water to swim around in while it survives on it’s way to becoming an old foot-long friend over the years. And since they are social animals, it is only reasonable to keep a minimum of two pets, so they can interact with each other and remain sane while you are away from the other side of the glass.

That’s right, experts recommend a big, empty forty gallon tank with a large external filter, for a pair of humble goldfish. It is unlikely you will ever find any goldfish enjoying that kind of volume.

If you start with a jar and you love the fish, you better have a plan to set up a large pond someday. That one dollar goldfish might cost you a couple of thousand dollars if he makes it through the years.

Or you could plan on constraining the escalation, and stopping at the goldfish-bowl level, at the expense of the fish’s well-being and life-span. Perhaps if you rescued a doomed “feeder fish” you can justify that.

Jeffrey the Barak is the publisher of the-vu.

Scootering to MyPoP

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By Louis the Scooterer

Reminder of what MyPoP is, it’s not “my plate of popcorn”, it’s… MY Piece of Paradise.

Before I forget, let me show a few pics of my favourite transports from way back.. I show only 6 here coz there are more than 40 favourites already in 6 chapters written elsewhere.

Lancia Fulvia my all-time favourite 2 door sport coupe.

Lancia Flavia 2000 my favourite 4 door sedan…here you can see front and back.

Lancia Flavia 1800 another favourite

My Honda motorcycle to ride through the fields to get to the stables..to my horse.

My first Vespa scooter

My first car, an MG-TC chassis and engine with custom bodywork.

On my route to MyPoP there is a very bad stretch of badly maintained tarmac on this dangerous curve. The curve I have written about where so many female drivers have decided to speed-up at that point to overtake me on my scooter..simply to get in front..no matter-what!


SO..the story:- Many years ago I was riding all around Netanya on my bicycle (yes my 2 wheeler pedal Trek bike,) and I decided to “go-a-little-further” than usual, so I rode on my bike passing that curve, and when the road became a slight uphill I pushed the bicycle while looking at the sea.

A man who was climbing up the dunes towards the road arrived at the spot where I decided to stop-n-stare at the view. He asked me (in slow English ) why I was pushing my bike on the wrong side of the road ?..when I told him that I loved looking at the sea..he invited me to his home across the road to drink coffee and chat.


I, at that time knew no Hebrew and his English was very low key..so as we sat down on the veranda overlooking the Med., and Avraham fetched his Hebrew/English dictionary and we began communicating..slowly…and carefully, and we became friends.

I visited often and was always invited to stay and drink a coffee or eat a meal with them..or go with to a picnic in the dunes where Avraham proved to be an excellent chef and organiser of picnics..usually attended by his adult children and some young grandchildren.

OKAY..a few days ago he told me this story..about the road that passes his and several other houses..carrying heavy traffic of buses, trucks, cars motorbikes and whatever..many large vehicles change gears outside his bedroom window..and many drive at high speed, and honk horns, and at times park illegally on the side of this narrow neighbourhood road to walk down to the beach below..and for many years they approached the authorities with no hope.

Recently the court ruled in favour of the neighbourhood and determined that the “curve section” of about 150 meters was an “illegal through-road”, and should be re-designed to be a new short section which would arrive at the Highway #2..through an undeveloped field.. and no longer passing those homes a little higher up.

A few changes would need to be made ..like re-siting a few bus-stops..

and closing the illegal section completely…at that curve.

I would surely welcome the demise of that dangerous badly maintained curve..and take the new short-cut to a point where the existing road will again become a “quiet-neighbourhood-road”.DO-IT-PLEASE before I become an old ager scooterer using my scooter to scoot from the lounge to the dining room in some retirement place.??

I took a short scoot to take pics but was a holiday and altho heavy traffic on highways, there were few trucks and hardly any big buses around..what did amaze me is the amount of high priced large SUVs of every make ..but thats another story written elsewhere.

D, who is another “do-everything-man” at MyPoP also made time to explain to me about “rainclouds” and pointed to what I saw as beautiful clear blue sky. He explained that the area between the sea in the horizon and the high white clouds.. are “clouds holding water”.. and if the wind remains blowing in from the sea..then rain would fall a few hours later. I could see no difference at that time.. (it was about 2-00p.m.) and I went home.

Certainly the wind did not change, and later it became dark then darker and then heavy rain fell..WOW he got-it-right..(now I can see what he meant !).. well done D. Surely you will give me lessons about other “things”, and a BIG thank-you.


I never take my laptop to MyPoP, so please, leave comment OR email me louisdrinkingt@013.net