Great story, this – and one that I’m sure you’ll be able to read on 2oceansvibe in the ever so near future.

It concerns Paul Yarrow, who seems to be cropping up on British TV an awful lot.
Not heard of him? That’s because he’s never credited – he is always DA DA DAHHHHH! Background Man!

Here he is at New Scotland Yard. He’s on the phone and he’s on ITV news:

And then in “Central London”, not on the phone but on the BBC:

And on the phone again outside the High Court.

You can almost hear the reporter saying to her cameraman:
“The fat bloke in the off-white top… He’s behind me again, isn’t he?”

But this is just a tiny, tiny part of Paul’s existence as Background Man: he’s also been behind reporters on Sky, Al Jazeera and Channel 4. He even managed an appearance (in the background, obviously) on Antiques Roadshow. Kudos indeed.
How on earth are we ever going to be able to keep up with his exploits? Well fortunately, this being the internet, someone is busy collating his numerous appearances.
That someone is Steve from fidgetwith.com.

So if you see Pau… if you see Background Man, please email him, not me.

They’re at it again.

No sooner had we brought you the Spar/Nestlé Ricoffy erratic supply and demand debacle than another drama involving those two same protagonists has emerged. But this time, it’s not ditchwater, it’s something far more important.

This time… it’s chocolate. And the Spar printer has been set to work again.

There have evidently been some issues over the Current promotion, but the Spar management has swept away any confusion with this note. I think the lesson for us all to take away from this is that while the Current promotion includes Nestlé Bar-One 55g, Tex Large 40g, Smarties 40g & Kit Kat 4 Fingers, It DOES NOT INCLUDE CHUNKY.

Thus, when you are wanting to make use of the Current promotion, there’s no point in taking CHUNKY to the checkout and attempting to include it in the promotion. Clearly, the Current promotion, It DOES NOT INCLUDE CHUNKY.
(Feel it, it is not part of the Current promotion.)

What CHUNKY did to warrant this exclusion is immaterial. If you want CHUNKY to mask the taste of your unavailable Ricoffy, then it will not be as part of the Current promotion. OK?

I have no idea what the Current promotion is, because it wasn’t advertised anywhere. Only the fact that It DOES NOT INCLUDE CHUNKY.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Another reason why brianmicklethwait.com is always top of my morning reading.

Unerring (and amusing) narrative honesty. Brilliant.
There’s even something symbolically wilting about the plane in the photo.

UPDATE: Brian’s recovered and has blogged the air show in typical BM.com style.

Drama! As spotted at a local Spar.

Obviously, I was only passing by the Ricoffy section on my way to the real coffee section.
For those of you who are unaware of what the product entails, it’s basically granulated ditchwater.
It’s bloody awful.

And now they can’t make it anymore, though quite what the “erratic supply of coffee” has to do with this is beyond me. I never realised that coffee was involved in the manufacture of Ricoffy.

But then I looked again. And I read more carefully. And they’re only halting the manufacture of the 500g products.
How bizarre.

Will this really affect the average Ricoffy consumer? Did it really warrant a SORRY with two exclamation marks?
Surely one could always share a couple of 750g tins with two other people? Or if you’re more independently minded, just double up on 250g jars.
Apparently, Ricoffy 100g will be produced in very limited quantities – namely 100g – so five of them would work nicely as well.

But the smart choice is still to buy none of any of them.

P.S. “Ricoffy Decaf”? Zero squared…

This from yesterday. Sadly the original online version is hidden behind their silently ever-expanding paywall so I will faithfully and accurately recreate it for you here.

It relates to the biggest thing to come out of Cape Town since the Holland v Uruguay World Cup semi-final: that already infamous collision between flying whale and sailing yacht. The question now being asked is whether the whale had been “harassed” by boats before the incident occurred.
Nan Rice, “Marine Activist” and CEO of the Dolphin Action Group (thought – is there a Gramps Rice as well?) is looking into those claims and, almost as an aside, has these wise words for us:

On behalf of the South African Whale Disentaglement Network (SAWDN), I would warn members of the public not to try to disentangle large whales.

I think we have all learnt something there. Many of us routinely try to disentangle whales of all sizes, without even pausing to think about it. I tried to disentangle a couple last week in Kirstenbosch Gardens. And one the week before in the Canal Walk shopping mall.
Now I find that I shouldn’t have done it – although Nan Rice doesn’t explain why.

I feel so ashamed.

There are a couple of other questions I have to ask though. What exactly constitutes a “large whale”.
Surely this is elementary tautology?
When was the last time you saw a small whale? Even the damn calves are 6m long at birth. That’s not small, unless you’re comparing it with a skyscraper. And when was the last time you saw a whale calf next to a skyscraper for easy comparison?

I think you get my point.

And then who came up with the bright idea of having a whale disentanglement network? Surely that makes them just get more entangled? Why not a whale disentanglement group or society?
But no, volunteers (specifically trained personnel, not just members of the public, obviously) arrive on the scene of a “large whale” which is entangled and presumably rather distressed and introduce themselves to the stricken cetacean.
But whales (even “large” ones) don’t understand a huge amount of English and thus, all they hear is:

Blah blah blah blah blah whale blah blah blah net blah.

With friends like those, who needs enemies?
Is it really any wonder they’ve started chucking themselves at our boats?

UPDATE: And now there’s video of the allegedly harassed whale doing its thing.

With the World Cup over (feel eet, eet is gone), it’s time to move on to other things and I need a project to keep myself occupied now that there isn’t live football available 24/7 (at least, until the new football seasons start in a couple of weeks).

So I’m turning my attention to my little end of year jaunt to the Northern Hemisphere and I have decided that this one will be entitled The Last Hurrah: after a-ha’s final single and in keeping with the bittersweet purpose of the trip. There will be tears.
Given that there will be just 180 hours between my outbound flight touching down at T5 and my inbound flight leaving the same – and with approximately a million people to see in the UK plus 3 blokes in Norway – this will be no holiday and organisation will be key.

There are some obvious items that are set in stone and flights and hotels need to be booked for those (cough, Big Ant, cough), but the rest is all just in my head. The only issue is that in there, it finds itself competing for space with thoughts of lobsters, christmas trees and external hard drives (don’t ask) and thus requires documenting here in some sketchy form or other.

Cape Town | Sheffield | (Newcastle) | Sheffield | Gloucester | Oslo | London | Cape Town

Obviously, these are just the bare bones. You can’t fly directly from Cape Town to Sheffield (nor from Gloucester to Oslo) and there will be no overnight stop in Newcastle – but it will be visited.

The emphasis (indicated above by the use of italics) in the case of Newcastle is important because it will be my first trip back there since leaving University back in 1995. I’ve often promised myself that I would get back up to The Toon, but either money, time or (now) distance has prevented it. On this trip, I’m determined to make a day of it up there – if only to see what remains of my old haunts.
Sadly, as far as they go, I suspect there won’t be much left to see: 15 years is a long time when you’re considering cities in Northern England and the throes of rejuvenation.
I hope that green bridge is still there.

So anyway – there they are – the best laid plans of me.
And surely the only things that can ruin them are a BA strike or an errant Icelandic volcano.

There you are – happily sailing away in Table Bay, the most intrepid part of your day being the name of your yacht and then:

Boo!

Yep. That would be a Southern Right whale (probably a calf) jumping  - or breaching, to be technically correct – onto the yacht belonging to the Cape Town Sailing Academy.

No Photoshopping here folks – this is the real deal, as reported by Joyanne’s SA Portfolio Travel blog and local newspaper Die Burger (which might be a bit Afrikaans for some readers).

The result: No injuries to crew. No apparent injury to whale.
R150,000 ($20,000) worth of injury to yacht.
Ouch!

UPDATE: And now there’s video of the allegedly harassed whale doing its thing.

The sage Brian Micklethwait tells us:

I try always to take my camera with me whenever I go out, because I never know what interesting thing I will encounter, and because I have a superstitious fear that on the one day when I don’t take my camera with me when I go out, that will be the day when an Airbus A380 flies over the middle of London, much too low, with one of its engines on fire, just when I have a perfect view of it.

And once again, he’s right. I take mine everywhere (except bed – Mrs 6000 won’t allow it in case I accidentally slip my zoom lens out while she’s asleep) for exactly that reason.
Well, ok, not exactly that reason. Not having my camera immediately to hand when an Airbus A380 flies over the middle of London, much too low, with one of its engines on fire won’t do me much good because – despite what I tell my wife – my telephoto isn’t actually that long.

So far, my constant companion hasn’t yielded anything hugely unusual, but you’ll be amongst the first to know when it does.

Quota music for a Sunday evening, as little Miss K-pu (now to be known as K2, thanks to Helga Hansen‘s imagination and ingenuity) has been celebrating her birthday by contracting an ear infection [now actually confirmed as tonsillitis] and vomiting copiously and fairly regularly.

Therefore, a bit of AFI which has a piano, a bit of old skool rock, some arty shots of Prague in the early morning light and a stolen BMW.

A veritable plethora of boxes have just been ticked. Awesome.

[temporary video installed until YouTube gets its arse in gear]

And he/she explains it in a letter to the Cape Times today.
Over to you, JD Bryce of St James:

The tirade against Bakkies Botha compels me to defend him.

Ti•rade [tahy-reyd, tahy-reyd] – noun; a prolonged outburst of bitter, outspoken denunciation.

Ok – I’ll give you the denunciation bit – and maybe a hint of bitterness because he was an idiot.
But prolonged?
He only did it 6 days ago (and therefore a maximum of 5 days before you wrote your letter). Prolonged is when something goes on for longer than it really should – like discussion over Luis Suarez’s goalline handball (which I’m still in awe of) or whether Jacob Zuma should have stood trial for corruption (still raised most days on Cape Talk).
And outspoken?  No. Everyone (including Bakkies) realises that it was a bloody stupid thing to do. Apart from you. But apparently, you are compelled and have a compulsion to defend him.

So I’ll let you continue, despite your initial foolishness and inaccuracy, because I’m nice like that.

I believe the real reason for his action is the New Zealand Haka.

Ah! Sorry – I misunderstood! This is a sarcastic letter. Amusement! Satire! Hilarity!
Go for it, JD!

The Haka is nothing more than a barrage of abuse in which the All Blacks threaten to beat the other team to a pulp and sever arms and legs. This raises the their [sic] adrenaline levels and creates a dominance over the other team.

Nice build up – and now deliver that punchline!

I believe Bakkies probably had a smouldering resentment to this.
His reaction is understandable.

Wait. What?
Is that it? Are you having a laugh, JD? Are you, perchance, “extracting the Michael”?

I have done some rudimentary calculations and seventy-four points as to why you are an idiot for writing this letter come to mind right about now. I will, henceforth and forthwith,address some of these below.

First off, Bakkies was not alone in facing the All Blacks’ Haka that day. There were 14 other players alongside him as the New Zealanders shook their little asses before kick off. If each of those 14 also harboured a smouldering resentment to the dance troupe, they hid it rather better than Bakkies did. And what’s with this “smouldering” stuff, anyway. You make it sound like he hid this supposed resentment rather well, when in fact he chose to smash himself headfirst into the back of Jimmy Cowan’s head.
While he was lying on the floor.
His reaction in this case is clearly not understandable.

Next up, a quick look at his Springbok Hall of Fame page, indicates that Bakkies had played for the Boks against New Zealand on 12 occasions prior to Saturday’s game. That’s 12 previous Hakas he has face without going completely LooneyTunez 2 minutes later. There was also a match against the “Pacific Islands” in 2004 which probably included a little dance up-front as well, because Pacific Islanders like doing that kind of thing.
Given this information, surely no jury would find that the reaction of Mnr Botha was “understandable”.

And then there are “other incidents” involving Bakkies, where he has tried to break players who haven’t even done the Haka. Gio Aplon of the Stormers, for example. Mind you, that was a long while ago – well, two months ago, anyway – in May this year.
I was there that day and watched as Gio (who weighs a mighty 75kg) was illegally taken out of a ruck by Botha (120kg) and was quite broken. Although, he got better.
But Gio hadn’t been dancing and threatening to beat the Bulls to a pulp. His only crime was to be on the end (corner?) of Bakkies’ shoulder in front of the Railway Stand at Newlands.
Maybe Botha had got him confused with one of the cheerleaders, who did have a quick boogie on the pitch before the teams came out.
We’ll probably never know. But since there was no Haka involved, his reaction in this case was far from understandable.

And what of this Haka and the threats and abuse it brings with it, anyway?
Have the All Blacks actually ever beaten anyone to a pulp during a Haka-prefixed game? Only on the scoreboard, methinks (32-12 last weekend).
And is there really any evidence that arms and legs – (is it ok if I use the collective term “limbs” here, JD? Is that alright?) – is there any evidence that limbs have been severed during an All Black game?

I’m no expert on rugby, but I can use Google and I can find no record of traumatic amputation of any limb during an international rugby match involving New Zealand. And that’s 462 games.

Ignoring replacements players and the complications that they would bring to the calculation and therefore working on the basis of 15 opposition players per game (and a rather obvious 4 limbs per player), that’s almost 28,000 limbs that the New Zealanders have – through the medium of dance – allegedly threatened to amputate during rugby matches and a grand total of zero that they’ve actually managed to tear off.

If you or Bakkies had actually done the maths, you’d surely realise that this Haka thing is obviously just an empty threat and nothing to get all wound up about. Sadly, that does mean that his reaction is anything but understandable.

I recognise that this blog post may seem to you to be part of the “injust” “tirade” against Bakkies, but it’s actually not. It’s simply a reasoned response to your foolish action in attempting to explain his foolish action.

And so, JD Bryce, your letter to the Times is therefore declared null and void and you are banned from 9 weeks from writing anything remotely involving rugby to any newspaper.

Save maybe for an apology.