Category: sheffield

Stellenbosch Hills Biltong & Droewors Adventure

Posted on

This sounds like it could be fun.
Step forward PG Slabbert – winemaker and manager at Stellenbosch Hills:

Stellenbosch Hills is the first cellar to combine two proudly South African delights with their Biltong & Droëwors Adventure to be enjoyed in the cellar door. The art of drying meat nowadays is as specialised as the art of wine making. Our aim was to create a competition where three of South Africa’s most popular products – wine and biltong and droëwors – could be combined.

Wait. What? Let’s just review that again: the plan is to combine wine and biltong and droewors?
It’s only the best idea to come out of the winelands since Big Concerts decided not to have the U2 concert at Val de Vie.
And enjoying them (the food and drink, not U2) in the cellar door may also yield some small degree of protection should a Kiwi-style earthquake unexpectedly hit Stellies.
They’ve thought this through.

So what’s it all about?
Well, essentially, it’s a biltong making competition, which I was alerted to by twitter user @Tara_L_B. Good work, Tara.
And, as Stellenbosch Hills notes (seemingly with a hint of disappointment):

Somebody has to win ….

and by “win” they mean “win” the fat R60,000 worth of prizes for the biltong which best complements their 2007 Shiraz. Surely to do that though, one would have to eat loads of biltong and drink loads of red wine in the name of research?

Damn.

As regular readers will know, I’m a bit of a biltong fan and I have been rubbing my meat with spices, hanging it out, letting it dry and giving to friends and family to nibble on for several months now. In fact, only this morning, I unhung some of my best work so far.

Using Freddy Hirsch spices together with my not-so-secret Sheffield-based (or should that be “Sheffield-Baste”?!?!?! LOL!) (sorry) ingredient, I like to think I have crafted an ex-pat masterpiece, capable of beating even the most ardent of local biltong craftspersons.

So – could an outsider, a rooinek, a soutie – really slip in and nick the R60,000 from right under the local’s noses?

Usurper can like to be my middle name.

Better bring your A-game, Boland, ‘cos I’m in it to win it.
(terms & conditions apply)

Jo Flo

Posted on

Incoming from my Dad:

Did you know?

Former Blade Jostein Flo is one of very few players to have a move or specific tactic named after him. In Norwegian, it is called “Flopasning” – translated into English as “The Flo Pass”. It gained prominence during a period of the early 1990s when the Scandinavians were ranked as the world’s second best team and utilised a very basic ploy of full-back, usually on the left, sending up a long diagnonal ball up to the totemic Flo.
Though a striker, he would raid down the right using his height to his advantage by heading the ball on for a central midfielder or striker who knew their job was to dart through and test the opposing keeper. Something of a long ball tactic eschewed by purists, it proved highly effective for a prolonged period as defences struggled to formulate a plan and is still used by many Norwegian clubs.

I did, actually.

This was taken from Darren Phillips’ The Sheffield United Miscellany and holds particular relevance for me since I apparently, allegedly resembled the lanky Norway striker (and notably not his more famous younger Chelsea-playing brother Tore André) in those early 1990s. It all came about when a friend in Halls at Newcastle University looked at the poster of my beloved Blades on my wall and asked why I was on it.
Turns out that after a few drinks and in poor light, one tall blond bloke looks very much like another tall blond bloke.

I never really saw it myself – I was far more handsome.

But the nickname stuck and you’ll still see me in one of my Sheffield United shirts – or that of the 5-a-side team I play for here in Cape Town – with the name “Flo”  proudly across my back. Back then, it was very popular with fans at Bramall Lane as it was only three letters long and therefore cost less to have on your shirt. His squad number at the Blades was 12, but 21 has always been my lucky number, so I turned that around a bit.

I didn’t know this though:

Jostein Flo was a very good high-jumper during his youth and remains on his country’s list of all-time best practitioners of the ‘Fosbury Flop’ with a leap of 2m 6cm in 1987.

Use it, don’t use it…

Altruism

Posted on

Altruism:

Altruism is selfless concern for the welfare of others.
Altruism focuses on a motivation to help others or a want to do good without reward.

And today, I have a couple of examples of this selfless concern for you.

Firstly: me.
I gave my worms the once over this evening. Concerned (selflessly so) for their welfare after a stonkingly hot day, I dug deep into their rotting home, which was both uncomfortably warm and unpleasantly smelly. They need a bit of a turnover every now and again to keep their bedding (newspaper, rotting kitchen scraps and some compost) aerated and homely – in worm terms.
This was not a nice job and I think that if I wasn’t a parent and hadn’t been through all those difficult and testing dirty nappies in the recent past, I would probably not have been able to stick it out.

But despite the heat and the smell, my worms are now happily ensconced back in their breeding trays, fed, moist and happy (I didn’t actually see any smiles, but it was getting a bit dark).

Secondly: Captain Blade
It’s not all fun and games being the mascot of a sporting team. There are surely only so many kids you can wave at and hug, only so many photos you can pose for before you start wondering if there might be more out there in the world of gainful employment.  And if you put a foot wrong, you are instantly and unnoticeably replaceable. One goon inside a comical foam rubber costume looks very much the same as another goon inside a comical foam rubber costume.

So maybe Deepdale Duck, the comical foam rubber costumed mascot for Preston North End FC was looking for a little more excitement in his life when he decided to (allegedly) “put off” Derby goalkeeper Stephen Bywater by shouting at him during a penalty and was escorted from the ground. Quite why he was removed is beyond me – presumably all the fans were being deathly silent so as not to disturb Bywater’s concentration. Presumably Bywater requires absolute peace and quiet before he lets a penalty past him. (It did go in, so maybe Deepdale Duck’s actions were successful, but Preston still lost 2-1).

And those were the events that prompted Captain Blade – the Sheffield United mascot – to hold an altruistic half time sit down protest in the centre circle at Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane, charmingly described by The Guardian thus:

“Free The Preston One.” In a season of farce at Bramall Lane, we have reached a new peak. Club mascot Captain Blade has downed cutlasses staged a sit-down protest in Sheffield, holding a banner in support of Deepdale Duck, who was dragged from the field against Derby at the weekend.

That’s pretty brave of the Blades mascot when you think about it. If a foam rubber duck can be arrested for shouting during a football game, then such mascot insubordination as half time protests on the pitch should surely result in a sacking.

The thing is, we’ll probably never know if it did.

The Soutpiel conundrum

Posted on

I get called a lot of names because of this blog. Some are nice, but probably most are not. The less pleasant ones dribble limply into the metaphorical pond, like water off a duck’s back. But there’s one which is fairly regularly used each and every time I make any criticism of South Africa (that being both my home and the country where I pay my taxes) or anything or anyone South African.
That insult is “Soutpiel” – usually abbreviated to “Soutie”.
And it reared its ugly head again after the Zuma v Zapiro post yesterday.

The term is almost exclusively used in a derogatory manner, but when I actually looked up (or asked someone, can’t remember) what it meant several years ago, I almost burst out laughing.
A quick look at the wonderfully-titled Wikipedia page “Alternative names for the British”, tells us:

Another common term in South Africa used mostly by the Afrikaans is Soutie or Sout Piel. This is from the concept that the Brits have one leg in Britain and one leg in South Africa, leaving the penis hanging in the salt water. Sout Piel means Salt Penis (or rather “dick”). However, this term refers more specifically to British people who have settled in South Africa, as they are more likely to be imagined as having one foot in each country than a Briton who is simply visiting as a tourist.

Is that really the best that you can do?

Let’s look at the logistics of this. The distance from South Africa to the UK is about 6000 miles. Don’t ask me how I know that off the top of my head. It’s just a unique talent I have around memorising numbers.
Thus, in calling me a Soutie, you are inferring that when I stand, my feet are about 9656km apart. A ludicrous suggestion, I know, but this is your mind at work here, not mine.
And then, let’s suppose that in standing firm, one foot in Cape Town – possibly Greenmarket Square, I don’t know – and the other in Sheffield at the top of Fargate (next to the Yorkshire Bank), my legs are each at a sturdy, safe angle of 60° to the ground. In your mind, you now have a massive, massive equilateral triangle.
My legs are each stretching 9656km into the sky.
To put that in perspective, the International Space Station is orbiting around my ankles.

Your mind, remember?

The next bit might not be so nice to imagine – depending on how you like to butter your bread – it’s my “piel” and it is – for geometric purposes you understand – descending directly from the apex of the huge triangle created by my legs and the surface of the earth, which I have conveniently assumed is flat. The eagle-eyed mathematicians among you (those that haven’t fainted at the sheer scale and might of what stands before you) have just realised that we now have a right-angled triangle and we can bring our friend Mr Pythagoras into play, theorem in hand.

I hope that you can all remember that Mr P told us that:

(Piel² + 4828²) = 9656²

Which I will helpfully rearrange and solve for you using just a simple pen, an ordinary sheet of A4 paper and a Casio fx-85WA calculator.

To sum up, what you are telling me when you call me a “Soutie”, what you are saying is that
my member is 8363.341km long.
But, you know what they say: “size isn’t important”.  That’s what they tell you, isn’t it? Hmm?

Hmm?

But that’s not all.

While we’ve had a long, hard (careful now) examination of the “piel” portion of the word, there’s still this issue over where my prodigious organ is dangling and getting salty.
There is no ocean between Cape Town and Sheffield. Your only briny options are the horizontal slivers of the Mediterrenean and the English Channel. And my mighty manhood isn’t landing anywhere near either of them.

In fact, consulting any accurate map or globe will show you that it actually comes to rest somewhere close to the city of Tahoua in sandy, landlocked Niger, where it would probably nestle happily amongst the population of just under 100000 and be used as some religious monument or record-breaking sundial.
The closest you come to any saltiness is the fact that gypsum and phosphates are mined in the area.
It sounds like Brakpan. Not great.

So next time you want to come up with a first class insult to put me firmly in my place, I would steer clear of “Soutie”,  if I were you.

It really doesn’t work.

Sad.

Posted on

All the way from Cape Town to London. But no further.

It’s sad that after all the anticipation, all the planning, all the trials and tribulations, that the final photo I managed to get on my trip up North was this one:

But it does speak volumes about my last few days in the UK. Taking photos inside the airport – even if you were in the mood to do so and there was something worth recording – is frowned upon by the Sussex police and their big guns. And the view from the windows was grey, industrial and limited by poor visibility.
That pic was taken on my arrival at Gatwick on Wednesday afternoon. The following morning, I trekked 4 miles up the A23, towing my suitcase. To put you in the picture (not literally), this is the the major route that leads in, out and around Gatwick airport. It’s a major road, a busy dual carriageway. Usually, anyway.
This was it on Thursday morning at about 9:30am:

This was just before I hitched a lift with an aircraft engineer called Brian, who was trying to get into work and who had been on the road for over an hour, despite living only 6 miles away. He told me that the ground staff had cleared over 160,000 tonnes of snow off the runway in 8 hours the previous day. I wondered why the person weighing it was bothering – the numbers are meaningless when you’re fighting a losing battle anyway.

And so, with Gatwick cut off from the outside world – no planes, no buses, no taxis, no hire cars, no nothing – in or out for over 24 hours and with reports of the weather rapidly worsening towards the west of London, when a single (and I mean a single) bus did become available to Heathrow, I jumped at the chance, got to T5 and moved my flight home forward by 48 hours. And thus, I found myself – ironically, left without a reason to stay – checking in for a flight back to Cape Town at just about exactly the same time a-ha would have been coming onto the stage at the Oslo Spektrum.

Utterly heartbreaking and a disastrous end to my trip. I didn’t see the friends I wanted to see, I didn’t get to Oslo and I didn’t get that last opportunity to see Morten et al doing their thing for the last time. At least for my part, I did everything I could.
There were the usual, annual reports in the papers about how badly Britain had coped with the snowy conditions, but this was exceptionally bad weather: the worst in living memory in Sheffield, as you can see from this photo of my parents’ road – yes – it is there somewhere.

Back to Cape Town and normal life (such as it is), then.

Which actually isn’t such a bad thing.