To MyPoP but not for a “packet of peanuts”

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

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

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