Garden Gnomes And Other Creatures

This post was inspired by a link my older brother found about a garden gnome that was "kidnapped" and sent on a holiday of a lifetime around the world. Photos of the kidnapped gnome in exoctic locations started sufacing on the web......but the story does have a happy ending. He was returned to his garden looking just as fresh as the day he went missing. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1043552/Gnome-Stolen-garden-elf-returned-7-month-adventure-world.html

A sneak preview of the gnome (called Murphy) is shown on the left standing outside the Sydney Opera House. But not all stories have happy endings. One gnome was kidnapperd and held for $10,000 ransom! http://bigpondnews.com/articles/OddSpot/2010/06/03/Kidnapped_gnome_is_a_pint-sized_mystery_469148.html unfortunately the article doesn't say whether the Australian couple paid the ransom or whether the gnome was returned in one piece. Read the article and see if you can solve the mystery. And it doesn't get any better than this........a google search on "kidnapped gnome" brings up a spate of articles such as: "Have you kidnapped a gnome today?" "Kidnapped Gnomes: Have you seen me?" and the best one of all "Garden Gnome meets Paris Hilton".

Tweet! Tweet!

Another type of Twitterer or Tweeter

No I have not gone completely mad, and this post is not going to be about birds either. In fact it's about how to tweet on Twitter. Try saying that quickly after a dew beers....ha ha!! Everybody asks: "Are you on Twitter?" People say you can follow TV show updates on Twitter. So I suppose there is some use in the application, my only criticism is that you are very limited in the amount of "characters" you use, for example if I wrote on Twitter the same post as here.......I would only be able to tweet the first two lines! I have two followers on Twitter, but here I have only one. I suppose it takes time to have your tweets and blogs read by people, on the other hand people probably read what you have written but have not signed up in order to be able to follow you. I actually share this blog on my Face Book profile.  I'm taking this tweeting and blog writing one day at a time, and hopefully will get more followers as I sit writing this. Did I mention I started writing a children's book? It's a sort of collection of short stories in the Harry Potter vein. I'll tell you more about it next time......

The Great Durban Street Re-naming Debacle

Who is Stephen Dlamini?

Lilian Ngoyi, Sylvester Ntuli, Dr Pixley KaSeme, Che Guevara, Problem Mkhize...........who are these people? Am I compiling some sort of list of names? No these are all  new street names in Durban. And you may well ask what these people did to deserve this recognition? Well I have no idea. If you take Gardiner Street for example it was so named after Captain Allen Gardiner, a fearless missionary. If it wasn't for him there probably wouldn't have been a Durban. And then along comes a Mike Sutcliffe who decides to rename 90 of our roads and streets without consulting us who pay our rates. There's a street renamed after Yasser Arafat.....now you tell me what did he do to deserve a street named after him? Take the photo above for example.......Who is Stephen Dlamini? It used to be Essenwood Road which every cab driver and local citizens know the location of.........but ask them where or who Stephen Dlamini is/was, and they won't have a clue. Some of the names are unpronouncable like Masabalala Yengwa Avenue which had all historians up in arms as it used to be called NMR Avenue. NMR stands for Natal Mounted Rifles, one of Durban's oldest regiments who fought heroically against the Nazis in World war 2. Masabalala Yengwa on the other hand as far as I can see did nothing much to warrant a road to be named after him. What is the purpose of all this renaming? As radio personality Gareth Cliff said "Stop renaming things. Build new things to re-name."
  I'd like to suggest to Mr Sutcliff to read a book called "Who Was Who in Durban Street Names" by David Dick before making name changes and don't forget to consult us Durbanites beforehand. Maybe he will realise the big mistake he has made before it's too late.