Rob in the ‘Hood: ‘It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack’

Greetings friends. Still here, hanging in, fighting fit, ready to take on the world, which is changing fast, a-plenty. The bad news seems to be coming in thick and fast, but we’ll come through, always do.

ALSO READ: Rob in the ‘Hood: ‘It’s May, it’s May … the merry month of May’

The pop song of the week seems to be ‘We’ll Meet Again’, to commemorate VE Day (Victory in Europe Day on May 8, signalling the end of World War Two), which ‘old’ South Africans and Brits will remember. Sadly, perhaps understandably not so for today’s generation, who have enough on their plates just trying to survive.

The good news is that I have been re-invented. I am no longer the Uvongo scribe, I am now Rob in the ‘Hood, which has a nicer ring to it. I can now ‘rob the rich to feed the poor’.

All we need now is a sheriff of Nottingham to play the villain in our current pantomime state of affairs. No names, no pack drill. Our version of the St. Vitus Dance bug has seen an epidemic of messages on our WhatsApps; many hilariously funny, others taking a poke at the world-wide pandemic.

The majority of messages, from around the world, give us a laugh, and a lift to our locked-down lives.

Hopefully, the main heading this week will bring back memories of yesteryear for some of you. In the late 1960s, Four Jacks and a Jill, with lovely lead singer Glenys Lynne, were fond favourites, regularly appearing nightly at a long-gone hotel in Cape Town. As a younger man, I was spellbound with Glenys Lynne, with her good looks and wonderful singing voice.

‘It’s a Strange, Strange World We Live in, Master Jack’ was one of their hit pop songs, along with ‘I Love You, Timothy, from the Jamie Uys movie ‘The Professor and the Beauty Queen’. Confession: just for a very brief period, my affections strayed from a certain English football team to a South African beauty rose.

The last time I saw Jill and her Four Jacks was in Chipinga, Zimbabwe, circa 1976, doing a ‘troepie’ show in the local hotel. I went up to Glenys, re-introduced myself, to remind her of those halcyon days in Cape Town. Strange: she had no recollection of me whatsoever. End of love story.

Rumour has it that all this lockdown stuff is making most folks feel miserable, isolated; the memory cells going one way, fast. So, to keep the home fires burning, and alleviate the boredom, just for a moment, think about the things in everyday life that don’t make sense.

Hopefully, it will polish your marbles. Good luck.

DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?

1. If poison expires, is it more poisonous; or is it no longer poisonous?

2. Which letter is silent in the word scent? The S or the C?

3. Do twins ever realise that one of them is/was unplanned?

4. Why is the letter W called ‘double U’? Shouldn’t it be ‘double V’?

5. Maybe oxygen is slowly killing you, but it takes 75-100 years to fully work.

6. Every time you clean something, you just make something else dirty.

7. The word swims upside down is still swims.

8. A hundred years ago, everyone owned a horse and only the rich had cars; today, everyone has cars and only the rich own horses.

9. If you replace the letter ‘W’ with ‘T’ in what, where and when, you get the answer to each of them.

See you, Rob.

HAVE YOUR SAY

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