Two Bits – 24 July 2015

Visiting the beach with my mother was an (almost) embarrassing experience, particularly as a teenager – but then almost everything one’s parents did when you were a teenager was embarrassing, wasn’t it.
She would pick up every piece of plastic and rubbish and haul them to the nearest refuse bin, with me and my siblings trailing a respectable distance behind, so as nobody would think we were related!
It is said that men chose a wife like their mother, so it should come as no surprise that my wife takes after my mother in this respect. You can’t walk on the beach with Rose without accumulating a pile of plastic, bottles, discarded fishing line and floats. She sometimes even goes so far as to take a plastic bag with her, so that she can collect more. I tell her people will call her the Bag Lady of Shaka’s Rock. She loves the idea.
The urge to pick up litter and place it in a refuse bin is a trait that must be nurtured at your mother’s knee. Some people will take great pains not to throw their litter about, others don’t give a second thought to throwing rubbish down where they stand – or drive past.
The refuse bins along our beach front have taken a turn for the better lately. They used to be steel drums, but they rusted away almost before your eyes. Now they are made of bright blue plastic, which has two advantages: they won’t rust and even the partially-sighted should be able to see and hopefully use them.
Some fishermen – not all – who like to fish in front of my house at Catfish, and enjoy a little drink while enticing the shad out of the water, just drop their bottles and tins in the sand right where they have been sitting. This while a refuse bin is no more than a few metres away.
Mica at the Lifestyle Centre have sponsored about 200 of the blue bins, which have been placed on our beaches and at various other strategic points around the Dolphin Coast. Good for them, and for advertising their business in a constructive way. Please use them and grow the habit in your youngsters of placing rubbish – even if it’s somebody else’s – in the bins.
I am delighted to hear that Mica has also sponsored information boards advising bathers how to spot and avoid rip currents. At least three people have drowned along our coast so far this year after being caught in rips. With a little education and by being observant, they are easily avoided – or if caught in one, escaped from.
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The practice of “67 minutes for Mandela” has already become a cliché. Nelson Mandela was a great man who was the father of our new South Africa and a shining example to the whole world for his compassion, wisdom and readiness to forgive.
He once said: “It is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it.” Some people make an effort to mark the 67 minutes, but very few set aside the whole day in his memory. Or better still, honour him all the time.
Too often I get the impression that people are ‘giving back’ to make themselves feel good, not the people they should be helping. And having performed the act, we go back to their comfortable lives while the other person still struggles for regular meals, to buy shoes or go to school.
If you are lucky enough to have done well in your life, give something back every day in memory of Mandela, not to make an impression but because it’s the right thing to do.
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When I took the entrance exam for medical school, I was perplexed by this question:
“Rearrange the letters P-N-E-S-I to spell out the part of the human body that is most useful when erect.”
Those who spelled SPINE became doctors. The rest are in Parliament.