Two Bits – 27 November 2015

In another life, I worked in Fleet Street, the legendary home of British journalism.
It had been a lifelong ambition to get there, to stand on that hallowed ground. After a long apprenticeship in this country, I was presented with the opportunity of working in London and I can say quite unashamedly that I trampled over a few bodies to get there.
S’funny how your imagination can lead you astray. I’d imagined that in the Street, everything would be of the best. Turned out that the office I worked in was almost Dickensian it was so grungy, a few yards off Fleet St in the quaintly-named Shoe Lane, up the back stairs of the Telegraph building.
Over the street were the shiny curves of the Daily and Sunday Express (also known as the Black Lubyanka) and a few yards further along was the Mirror Group building. Across Fleet St, the fine Reuters building and another few yards away, the grey halls of The Times. This was the centre of the English-speaking universe, at least as far as journalism and newspapers were concerned, and I felt I had arrived in heaven.
It didn’t take long to realise that the people especially were a lot like everywhere else, but on a grander scale. Fleet St was also known, by people snickering behind their hands, as the Street of Shame, mainly because of the lurid stories in the News of the World and The Sun. It actually takes its name from the river Fleet, which runs beneath the eastern end of the street but is now a sewer, a nicety appreciated by the journalists who worked above it.
All the big newspaper houses moved out in the early 90s, but there are still a few landmarks that stand as reminders of the old times: St Bride’s, the journalists’ temple where Samuel Pepys was baptised, and a sprinkling of hostelries where we spent many a happy hour – El Vino’s, the Punch Tavern, The Olde Cheshire Cheese and The Albion down at Ludgate Circus.
What reminded me of all this was a visit to Winterton, that tiny dorp in the Midlands, there at the mouth of the Champagne Valley between Estcourt and Bergville. What on earth could have reminded me of Fleet St, thousands of kilometres to the north, you might ask?
You’ve heard of Sweeney Todd, haven’t you? The movie Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet St has been made many times, the latest with the delightfully dippy Helen Bonham Carter and demonic Johnny Depp.
Todd was reputed to be a barber who had a shop next to St Dunstan’s Church in Fleet St in the mid-19th century. While shaving customers, Todd would slit their throats with a straight razor then pull a lever that dropped his victims into the cellar, where his lover Mrs Lovett would dispose of his victims by baking their flesh into tasty meat pies, which she sold from her pie shop next door.
Some say Todd lived, while others believe he was an urban legend. Mind you, I’ve had some pretty ropey pies in my time, but let’s not go there.
What caught my eye in Winterton were these two shops, pictured here. There are not many shops in this little town, I must say. Butcher and baker (mostly in the Spar and OK), candlestick maker, and . . . these two specimens!
Baker & Baker first caught my eye, as a decidedly unlikely name for a funeral parlour. More like a place for fresh bread or, oh no! . . . a crematorium! Send your loved ones to Baker & Baker to be freshly baked? I wonder if black smoke issues from their chimney late at night, when all good folks of Winterton are sound asleep in their beds?
Well okay, let’s not be too hasty here, I said to myself, it’s just that Mr Baker started a funeral parlour. Maybe there wasn’t a big call for bread a long time ago, if he really was a baker, so he had to turn his hand to whatever brought in the dough (the dough, geddit?). And now he’s brought in his brother, so what else is he going to call the shop? If he was joined by his son, he could have called it Baker and Son! Anyhow, his name isn’t his fault and they have to earn a crust somehow.
I walked on a little, only a few steps really, and a few shops away there was Chris’s Biltong and Braai!
Eyyeewwww!
Now I’m really sure that Mr Baker Snr and Mr Baker Jnr and Chris Whatsisname are really nice guys and wouldn’t dream of what I’m thinking, but I couldn’t help thinking, “This is straight out of Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street!”
To make biltong you need meat. This is not really cattle country. Lots of meilies, a bit of wheat, rye here and there, a few milk cows, but not really beef herds. Probably a few rietbok in the vleis, a few rabbits, but to think of a steady supply would be stretching it.
Look, I’m not really saying anything here. Nothing at all. But I want you to know that I can’t tell you anything about biltong in the Champagne Valley. I’ve never bought any. Heard it’s great, but I’m not such a big fan of biltong anyway. No sir, not such a big fan of biltong. Not even freshly baked, umm, cured.

* * *
An elderly Umhlali pensioner called the cops to report that her car has been broken into. She is hysterical as she explains her situation to the constable: “They’ve stolen the radio, the steering wheel, the brake pedal and even the accelerator!” she cried.
The constable says, “Stay calm. An officer is on the way.”
A few minutes later, the officer radios in. “No worries, man.” He says. “She got in the back seat by mistake.”