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www.thevillagenews.co.za
1 July 2020
FROM THE EDITOR
Do not be a Covid-iot – be safe Slowly but surely small aspects of normalcy are returning to our daily lives as more and more businesses are opening their doors and some semblance of economic activity is returning to our towns.
The next edition of The Village NEWS will be available on 8 July 2020. The NEWS can be found at over 300 distribution points in the Overberg.
At the same time, however, the rate of infections in all our towns is climbing fast.
De Waal Steyn PUBLISHING EDITOR
It is obvious that there is a correlation between more activity and increased infections. While we need people to spend money at our businesses, we need the infection rate to be under control at the same time. This almost
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invisible enemy that can and will be conquered, depending on how seriously we take our responsibility to help curb the spread of this insidious virus.
The answer to that question is straight-forward. We need to bring the pandemic under control before we can stabilise the economy. We cannot risk undoing the hard work we have put in over the past three months.
The most effective defences we can employ against the virus are the simplest. Wear your mask when you leave your home, maintain social distancing, sanitise your hands regularly and stay home as much as possible (do not shop if you don’t have to).
We are at war against the Coronavirus and there is no denying that we need to act like it. We are fighting an
We are all sacrificing so much. We have lost businesses, we have lost jobs, we have lost lives. We owe it to
ourselves and to those around us to be more vigilant than ever, to rather err on the side of caution when it comes to practicing social distancing, wearing masks, and washing and sanitising our hands, our workplaces and homes. We need to build a reputation as a destination that is safe to visit. To do this, we need to show that we are taking the virus seriously and that we have the capacity to manage it. The future is in our hands. Let’s not waste this opportunity. This is the good NEWS – Ed.
Dubious deliveries, weird word-play and dicey devices
CONTENT EDITOR
ONLINE EDITOR
seems like an impossible task. Which begs the question: which is more important – bringing our economy back from the brink or decreasing the infection rate?
By Murray Stewart murray.stewart49@gmail.com
loose with her vowels, she launched off pompously: “Well, factually...” “Whaaat?” exploded the dagger-starer. “How do you know my name’s Julie?”
I
f people ask, ‘Where do you find these amazing stories?’ please feel free to mention the column, For Fact’s Sake, but make sure you pronounce it clearly. Incontinent vowels Last week, a bit of a rumpus broke out among contestants during the annual Overstrand Koeksisters by Kerslig Kompetisie held in a huge marquee overlooking the Old Harbour. It all started with the answer to the above question. Pansy Visser, Captain of the Bredasdorp Bakkers was ‘misheard’ when she slightly dramatised the name For Fact’s Sake to her teammates (quite loudly in her quaint platteland accent, apparently), without paying too much attention to her vowel sounds. Suster Julie Joubert from the parish next door was passing by their display table and froze in her tracks. “She shouted the f-word!” yelled the horrified Julie, spinning round and staring daggers at Pansy. Being the Bakkers’ captain though, Pansy wasn’t the type to back down, and still somewhat
Then things got a bit ugly. Curses, koeksisters and crockery flew about as tempers flared, but once the tables were overturned and chairs took to the air, the police had to be called. 720 koeksisters were lost in the fire. So apart from minding your Peas and Queues, please mind your Ays and Yous. But moving on... Palindromes Some people spend their lives pursuing the strangest of topics. Words, from their diverse origins to their continuous evolution, have always interested me, but I wouldn’t spend years researching and fine-tuning just one specific aspect of the subject for fun. Not so with Peter Norvig though... As we know, a palindrome is a word, phrase or number that reads the same backwards – ignoring capitals, spaces, punctuations etc. (from the Greek word meaning ‘back/again run’). Single words are pretty common, like racecar, madam or level. But
intrepid word nerds like our Peter feel compelled to create the longest palindrome their grey-matter and computers can conjure up – not only words, but phrases too. Out of morbid interest, the longest recorded, real, single-word palindrome is the Finnish for a soapstone vendor, and it deserves a plug – all 19 letters of it: saippuakivikauppias. This keeps Pete enthralled for hours. Some better-known phrases are: A man, a plan, a canal – Panama, or Eva, can I stab bats in a cave? And also A Santa lived as a devil at NASA, or maybe sit on a potato pan, Otis. Fascinating stuff nè? As for numbers, the second of February this year was a once-off palindrome: 02/02/2020, but no one was injured. Anyway, Peter isn’t satisfied with only unearthing new palindromes, he creates Apps for the various versions of his Word Palindrome computers, which can store up to 21 000 usable word/combinations. So, thanks to Pete, this is ideal for a rainy Sunday afternoon when you suddenly feel the urge to palin your drome. Can’t wait. Physician, heal thyself Devices of dubious medical worth, and without any real research were
designed to solve all sorts of physical or mental ailments during the last few centuries. The Psycograph for example, which was plonked onto the patient’s head, can only be described as a colander with 32 prong-like sensors sticking in and out of it. By adjusting the prongs, the ‘quack’ could determine the undulation of natural bumps/ grooves on the patient’s cranium, and by calculating their amount and height, he would furnish a comprehensive diagnostic analysis of the patient’s personality – for job applications. Then there’s the ‘therapy chair’. The patient was strapped into an electrically powered dentist’s chair which would judder and shake violently at sporadic intervals. This was claimed to cure constipation. Some USA shoe shops in the 1950s boasted foot X-ray machines which showed shoppers images of their feet inside the shoes for accurate sizing, but all the while leaking serious radiation. They were only banned in the 1970s. More contraptions, similarly weird, are displayed in the Minnesota Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, if you’re passing by.
WEEKLY WEATHER & DE BOS DAM LEVELS
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Ilana van der Merwe GRAPHIC DESIGNER E: ilana@thevillagenews.co.za
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De Bos Dam 38.57%
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Last week 37.73%
Last week 1mm
WEEKLY TIDE TABLES 11 208 audited weekly circulation
HIGH LOW HIGH LOW
06:20 12:31 18:31
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00:47 07:15 13:26 19:26
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Tides sourced by www.sanho.co.za
01:39 08:03 14:15 20:17
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02:27 08:46 15:00 21:02
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03:11 09:26 15:42 21:45
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03:52 10:04 16:22 22:26
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04:31 10:40 17:00 23:06
