This is a British scandal which animal rights activists have been powerless to stop. It’s the equivalent of let’s say, China butchering all of its Giant Pandas. The man responsible for propelling the policy forward – a crime against British wildlife – is none other than Tory Chief  Tosser Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State for the Environment. May he rot in hell. But meanwhile you can write and tell the pen pushing prick what you think of him:

Owen Paterson MP, House of Commons, London SW1. It’ll cost you about R4 to send the letter.

The 40 acre site was at one time used by no fewer than 30 sports clubs and had enormous social use-value.  It included facilities for tennis, bowling, and football. Here’s the rub. The land, owned by an offshore developer, is now strewn with large heaps of building rubble and sealed off to a furious public. Plans to turn the site into a development of over 200 homes were rejected by the local district council. The land owners are unperturbed and ‘considering their options.’ As Brits have seen elsewhere to their cost (in terms of disappearing facilities such as this) the landowner can and probably will sit on the empty site, and continue to dump on it until it is so dilapidated that planners give up on it and effectively give way to developers’ greedy designs.

This is precisely the tactic employed by well known developers in Knysna, who have, over several years, continued unimpeded, with the destruction of precious wetlands on which they wish to build. It seems if you’re rich (and patient) enough, you’ll always get your way. And such ‘development’ is made all the easier by both acquiescent Municipality staff in key decision making roles, and a largely ‘couldn’t give a damn’ public attitude. Sad for Knysna eh?

Questions need to be asked. Most obviously, how did the fire start? I wonder if the Fire Department (FD) have reached a conclusion on this? There is believable speculation that the cause was a carelessly tossed away cigarette end at Margaret’s Viewpoint. If this was indeed the case, then the culprit either drove off without reporting the fire or was oblivious to the terrible damage he/she was about to inflict.

The fire destroyed the entire hillside above Belvidere, and doubtless with it, a significant number of tortoises and other wild life. Knysna weather had been unusually dry for the time of year and Friday was a very hot day. Conditions were tinder dry. Ripe for fire. The devastated, now charcoal grey hillside reveals that thoughtless people have, over a prolonged period, used Margaret’s Viewpoint as a dump for glass bottles too numerous to count. Another possible cause of the fire could have been intense sunlight reflecting upon one or more pieces of that glass. The glass needs to be cleared up and action taken (see last paragraph below) to discourage further pollution of what ought to have been a pristine fynbos environment.

The most important questions however, concern the fire crew, the time it took for them to mobilise and their decision making. They may well have been on the scene relatively soon after the fire broke out, but it was clear from observation of their attempts to extinguish the blaze, that they were seriously under resourced. At about midday I rang the emergency number of the FD and asked if they were aware how serious the fire had become, and why helicopters had not been brought in to help deal with it. I was told that the crew on the ground had yet to make this request and the FD was awaiting their report. Half an hour later I rang again (in desperation) to advise that flames more than twenty feet high were less than thirty meters from Belvidere houses. Property was seriously at risk. Only then was I told that a helicopter was on the way. It took until well after 1.00pm (almost four hours after the start of the fire) for this to arrive.

When it did so, accompanied by a spotter fixed wing aircraft – both flying continuously through thick smoke – the pilots and their airborne teams did an excellent job. They worked tirelessly. The danger to property was averted (if by a narrow margin). The Belvidere community is most grateful.

With regard to the on-the-ground crews, an example of their under-resourcing was use of only a small water bouser and diesel driven pump to tackle the flames adjacent to houses. For this action, they worked from the south side (ie from within gardens). As far as I’m aware, a fully equipped fire engine was not deployed along the railway line itself as a front line defense against the fire’s rapid progress (though I’d be pleased and reassured to be corrected in this respect). Nevertheless, thanks are also due to the firemen who were not only on site well into the evening, but also in the early morning hours as well.

We are fortunate, by the way, that TRANSNET had just finished cutting overgrown/neglected vegetation away from the vicinity of the railway line. Had this job not been done when it had, then the fire would far more readily have leapt across the line to the adjacent houses. This then is a reminder, if one is needed, that TRANSNET must be required to undertake this work on a more regular basis.

It will take a long time, probably a couple of years or more, for the hillside to recover. Between now and then, and sooner rather than later, the Municipality should erect a notice prohibiting dumping over the edge of the viewpoint (perhaps also providing a phone number to report transgressors), and it should also point to the fire risk from discarded cigarette ends. A number of lay-bye style bins should also be permanently positioned at the viewpoint so that hopefully, even the dumbest of Knysna’s residents, and visitors, will understand their purpose.

They’ve already decimalized distance of course, and with the exception of UK and USA, most of the world has slavishly bowed to Franco/German demands that the foot, yard, mile and furlong disappear.

Weight has gone the same way. So while I once might have come in at a slender eleven and a half stone, I am now positively protruding at 80 kilograms. While on the subject, the French have made dastardly dull, reporting of a recent extraordinary birth in England, where the baby boy materialised at an astonishing 14 pounds and six ounces (Source: Sky News). Well done! The French press’s formulation of ‘6.4kg’ was surely designed to dampen accolades for a beaming mother so rightly proud of her portly achievement (though goodness knows how her nether regions felt after having produced such an enormous creature. Reports that the baby will be starting work in a couple of months are probably untrue).

What else? Ah yes, liquid. The gallon has long gone. And thanks to meddling Europhiles, even the great ‘pint of ale’ is becoming a thing of the past. Now you are expected to ask of your local bartender, ‘a demi-litre of your finest Bordeaux, my good man’.

So what new conniving scheme have the boffins of Brussels now got up their sleeves, giving rise to so much alarm and despondency? Nothing less than the decimalization of time!! From 1 January 2015 they intend that seconds, minutes and hours will vanish from our vocabulary, as will, in Phase II, the concept of days, weeks, months and years – familiar chronological concepts which have warmed our hearts for millennia.

Precise details of apparently complicated proposals are still murky but I understand the old hour will be abolished first if the EC have their way. Among the first to raise objections was the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, having apparently seen a document leaked from a UK Independent Party MP in the European Parliament. The RO have launched a scathing attack on the plans, published in last week’s Observer Newspaper. ‘They’re completely and utterly bonkers’, said John Flamsteed, Astronomer Royal.

France in particular, (with support from Denmark in exchange for French backing of new farming legislation which will favour Danish intensive ’30 to a pen’ pig breeding) want ten ‘decantes’ to replace our normal 24 hours in a day. And they propose a hundred ‘centille’ per decante. So, if in present time formulation it was twenty past ten in the morning (when most of us are considering having a refreshing cup of coffee), the EC want us to reformulate this to 4.166am (I’m still slightly confused by all this, not to say giddy, so may not have my arithmetic exactly right). The EC Commissioner for Inter-Institutional Relations and Administration (one of the more obscure portfolios) is thought to be a leading advocate of the proposals, which are rapidly gathering momentum in the corridors of this most interfering of world bureaucracies. The organisation’s President, Jose Manuel Barroso, is also a strong supporter. You may recollect that in his previous role as Prime Minister of Portugal in 2003, he was also a ‘strong supporter’ of the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq aimed at extinguishing non existent weapons of mass destruction.

We are all in danger of falling prey to yet another ludicrous European Commission plan if they are not stopped in their tracks. You can do your part to literally save the day. Send a note of protest to: President Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium. It won’t be time wasted.

Last night we took a sunset cruise on board a large-ish vessel. What a treat to be joined within minutes by dozens of bottle nosed dolphins. These beautiful animals leapt and dived ahead of the boat, wowing we tourists with their every flashy move. The water is clear enough to see them well below, and to witness their mastery of that environment. With rapid changes of direction, they easily kept just ahead of us, or showed off alongside. Depressing and sad to think that the Japanese herd these wonderful creatures into a bay, several times each year, and slit their throats en masse. It cannot be right. It ought to be stopped, but campaigners on the spot, many of whom cannot hold back their tears of anguish, have been powerless to stop the needless slaughter.

Yesterday, I put forward the opinion that these oceans are devoid of plastic pollution. Alas, I was wrong. Even in this most remote of places, the flotsam and jetsam of human excess despoils the environment. Plastic bags are afloat in the deep ocean waters, and this morning, on our walk around the island, I picked up an assortment of stuff, including no fewer than five barnacle encrusted sandals displaying the usual assortment of labels (Nike etc).

To more pleasurable things. Sheila attended a yoga class yesterday, taken by a young Philippine woman, whose mastery of the art, and of the English language was at best indeterminate. At the end of the class came the instruction to relax.
‘Welax your arm; welax my leg; welax your shudder; welax my back; welax your ovary (que?); (and this to the single Frenchman in attendance) welax your TESTICLE!’ Well, when Sheila relayed this to me, and after the initial hilarity, it got me to wondering whether the powers of Philippine girls are not entirely fable. How exactly do you relax a testicle? I’ve been around the houses a bit, but haven’t yet learned the secret! Happy days.

However, the contrast between SL and our new destination was marked and immediate. The Maldives work!. They are clean. They are efficient. Okay, so they’ve had more than a quarter of a century to work out how to perfect an industry on which they are totally dependent. But they have it off to a fine art. The welcome is warm; staff come to you if even for a second you look slightly lost; they courteously impart information (SL Railway staff could learn a lesson or two here). Our transfer to the sea plane was effortless, and once aboard and airborne, what a pleasure to see the tiny atolls and the beautiful reefs from quite low altitude. We felt that at last we were on holiday!

We were greeted at Keruda Resort with traditional singing and drumming. A nice touch. The island takes about 50 minutes to walk around, so it is probably one of the biggest of the 1200 atolls. That means it is also one of the most populated, with more than 450 rooms. But apart from ‘feeding time’ when the restaurants get busy, one would never guess that there are probably a thousand guests here at any one time. Lord knows where they all go. Diving is popular, and the resort claims some of the best sites in the world. But I can’t imagine some of the blubberous creatures I’ve spied, partaking in anything so ‘sporty’.

Speaking of sport, I judge it a miracle of accomplishment that there is a full size football pitch on the island, with small stand, which would rival in standard, that of Forfar Athletic, or East Fife. And there’s a claimed golf course, though really it is no better than the pitch and putt facility in Crail.

The island has some interesting bird life. The Indian Cuckoo is as prominent here as it was in SL, but new to us were the Ruddy Turnstone (which we watched demonstrating why it is so named) and the white tailed tropic bird. The water, as you’d expect around an atoll, is teeming with fish. The lagoon is a nursery for the black tipped reef shark and the nurse shark, and we have seen, and swum among many. No big deal. They are no more than a meter long.

Here’s something else which I’ve admired. The island has a clear and meaningful environmental policy, and they put this into practice. The beaches are kept spotless (not that there is any plastic floating around in this part of the world – though oddly, I retrieved a fluorescent light tube from the water the other day). There’s solar power with a commitment to more, perhaps in due course to replace the diesel generators which grind away all the time. The resort grows much of its own vegetable needs. And, apart from deep ocean stuff, for which you’d pay through the nose, there’s no fishing of any sort around the island’s shores. I know my fishing mad mate would take exception to this, but South Africa might benefit from certain limitations on line fishing too. I don’t mean anything too radical or militant. But I’ve always felt that places like Robberg in Plettenburg Bay, should be off limits. We, and the bird life which surrounds this precious peninsula, could be spared the miles of discarded line which is not only unsightly, but fatally tangles fragile legs of visiting feathered friends.

Anyway, to get back to the environment in the Maldives, it is the obvious care and attention to this which will ensure repeat visits to these lovely islands (on Saturday coming, the entire island will observe Earth Hour and the resort has come up with some fun and imaginative ways of ensuring compliance to this, and in fact going beyond the statutory hour. I wonder what Knysna is doing? For the last couple of years it has seemed, as we looked over the lagoon from Belvidere, as if there is no observation of Earth Hour in town).

Sadly, Sri Lanka is a long way from getting its act together on matters environmental and what’s more, when you tell them about it, they just shrug their shoulders. To me they are saying, ‘who cares?’ and in silent reply, I say ‘well I do, and I won’t be back’. No. Sign me up for a return visit to the Maldives, any day. Though inn fairness, a week should be enough.

If you’re a poor Cypriot with let’s say, life savings of 10,000 euros, you can expect a tax of only 7 per cent, say the Fund. So that must be a huge relief to those already scraping the barrel to buy their next clove of garlic. Needless to say, there is panic in Cyprus. The tax will be imposed on Tuesday next week so people have been queuing for hours at the ATMs to withdraw what they can. Except, as part of the conspiracy, and the cause of all the problems in the first place, the blood sucking banks have stopped filling the machines with money.

The Fund, along with their cabbage munching backers will be watching developments very carefully in Cyprus. If the people accept the measure and go about their lives as normal (except for an enhanced financial headache of course) where will the bastards strike next? Spain, Italy, Portugal, or perhaps further down the line, if and when stagflation gets a hold, as some economists predict, the UK?

Savers have suffered at the hands of the banks since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. Interest rates have declined everywhere to near zero, unless you are fortunate enough to have some money lodged off shore, and even then the banks give you the impression that they’re doing you a favour with their miserable 2 per cent.

For some time now, a mate of mine in New Zealand has been urging me to protect myself by buying gold. Not the paper gold (a certificate which confirms you’ve bought it) but the real McCoy. Maybe he’s right. What’s for sure is that we should all be looking for safe havens given the determination of the IMF, the Germans and the Dutch, to steal what little we have, and put our hard earned savings, earned over a lifetime, into the hands of grabbing bankers and elites who run the world’s financial institutions.

Sri Lanka’s greatest asset is the undoubted charm of its people and the warmth of their hospitality. Having just gone through the most vicious civil war, which in one shape or another raged on for more than two decades, a period when tourist numbers dropped to virtually zero, now that it’s over, there is genuine delight from most Sri Lankans when they encounter foreigners, as they like to call us (‘Accommodation for foreigners’, ‘foreigners queue here’, ‘foreigners’ entrance ‘. In the early stages of our visit, such differentiation felt like a sort of apartheid. In time you get used to it).

Their curiosity when getting up close and personal (in a bus for example) can feel a bit strange. On many occasions older women started to play with Sheila ‘s hair without so much as a hello or by your leave. And younger women would beam the most infectious smiles at me, as if they were stranded on a desert island and hadn’t seen a man for years. I’d look away, but when I sneaked another peak at them, inevitably the same smile was attached to me like a tractor beam from the starship Enterprise.

In earlier blogs, I commented on the very first impression I had when flying into Colombo. From above Sri Lanka looked idyllic. But the beautiful palm fringed beaches from above did not convey the reality on the ground. The beaches are drowning in garbage and foul accumulations of plastic (some of which is openly buried in the sand). A lot of this pollution finds its way into the ocean, much to the detriment of marine life. Turtles easily mistake a floating plastic bag for a jelly fish. But if they eat the bag, they are doomed to a slow and painful death. Sri Lankans in general, like many other Asian countries, seem to care little about the consequences of their neglect. Perhaps many of their communities are temporarily more preoccupied with how to recover from the traumas so recently encountered rather than where to dispose of their litter. Whatever, the SL government needs to work on attitude for the longer term, if visitors are to be attracted back for repeat visits. Otherwise the island might have to rely on income from the export of its most wonderful tea!

After what looked like an inter-school sports day held in the famous Galle Cricket Ground yesterday, I was delighted to see a few children who had been designated litter pickers, for want of a better expression. They quickly filled dozens of sacks with the offending matter, but low and behold, they dumped it below the Fort ramparts, under a tree which was growing about five metres from the shore line.

Every historical monument (temples, monasteries, forts – take your pick) are so badly fouled that virtually all visitors to the country talk about it with dismay (excepting the Chinese of course). If it was not such a chronic problem I would have been amused to read at the Galle Maritime Museum, their attributing plastic pollution entirely to ‘fishermen and tourists.’ Ho, ho.

All Asian cities of any size are horribly air polluted. Colombo and Kandy (the springboard for the so called Cultural Triangle) are no less so. If it isn’t traffic fumes, it’s the choking, nauseous odour of burning rubbish. One encounters this everywhere. Small guest house owners on the south coast complained that they paid locals taxes but still did not get any rubbish collection service. They grumbled that the Colombo elite, who orchestrate power for their political cronies, redistribute the taxes to themselves. Where have I heard that before? It’s Jacob Zuma in a different guise.

It wasn’t just pollution which started to wear me down in SL. It was the clear knowledge, in spite of the people’s warmth, that they were out to fleece the tourist of all that they could, rather than seeing them as a long term ally on the road to economic recovery. In another blog I pointed to one historical site which required tourists to pay 75 times more than locals. I’m hoping that David Cameron can be persuaded to introduce similar penalties for foreigners visiting the myriad of British attractions (many of them free of charge). Even some Tuk-Tuk drivers would prefer no business than bear the shame to taking a tourist on a ride for anything less than three times what the locals pay.

As I sit writing this blog, I can hear a variety of sounds in the relative quiet of Galle Fort. One of these is the constant clearing of throats and ejected sputum which occurs without embarrassment, everywhere one goes. Okay it’s the ‘culture’ but it’s a bit much when it goes on in restaurant kitchens as well! Some decorum please.

Speaking of restaurants, the food here was so much better than I’d been led to believe. In particular we were delighted with the home cooking with the great Sri Lankan family we stayed with at the Kandy Guest House (see our glowing report on Trip Adviser). And as our South African friends would say, the fish in places like Marissa and Galle is to die for. The Lion Beer and fresh lime juice are also essential relief from the extremely humid and clingy weather which we have encountered on the coast, relieved today by an all too short thunder storm.

SL turned out to be hard work, just as we expected. We await our visit to the Maldives on our way home to South Africa with keen anticipation. I suppose we made SL burdensome by choosing to travel in the way that we did – by cheap public transport where possible, including taking our lives in our hands with some of the craziest bus driving I’ve ever witnessed. On the way to Galle, ahead of us, an old man with a crutch was crossing the road in one of the small conurbations which form a continuous line along the west coast. The driver of our bus had no compassion. He turned on the air horn and maintained his speed as the old man hobbled over the street. To give him his due, the old boy did not flinch an inch or even look up at the approaching menace. But the driver missed him with only inches to spare. Such is life here. Precarious.

The main part of town is bustling and boring, full of shops selling Chinese manufactured rubbish, which only people with a lobotomy would consider procuring. It is impossible to walk down Main Street without someone latching on to you with the usual introduction: ‘Which country you from?’ Sheila is consistently daft enough to reply. And her perception that it is ‘Scotland’ is more or less an inexactitude these days, since, having lived a tenth of our lives in RSA, and in my case a full third in Africa generally, I’ve come to believe that I should truly have been born with a black skin. Be that as it may, I’m describing Galle Main Street here.

I was searching for a t-shirt which, rather like a smiley badge, displays in simplified form, the arse of an elephant on the back. What a coincidence that the man who became our unwanted Guide that afternoon, also was on his way to buy an identical garment for his son. Sheila has on more than one occasion chided me for my Piscean tendency to tell such hangers on to piss off. So now I just go with the flow, for which read, get increasingly likely to grab a panga from one of the many cheap kitchen equipment stalls, and slice off the offending head.

In fairness there are a few other places which are quite interesting. The spice market for example, where locals are adept at extracting 10 times the local price from tourists, for little sachets of roasted curry powder and masala (Sheila has stocked up for the next year or so), and other stuff which hums to high heaven. The fruit markets are also appealing, with some places mixing fruit salads and fruit drinks for next to nothing (even for the much exploited tourist). And the Old Station Railway Cafe on Canal Road, which sold me the best banana milk shake I’d had in, oh, about fifty years (that apart I don’t understand why the place, which includes a little boutique, gets such healthy reviews on Trip Adviser. Unless you enjoy your conversation interspersed with noisy announcements from the adjacent railway station).

On which point, we called in there to ask about trains to Bentota, close to which is the former home of Sri Lankan architect, now deceased, Geoffrey Bawa. The ticket office attendant was a slovenly sod, who could just about afford the energy to look up when we registered our enquiry. The train, he advised, left only once at eleven in the morning. He couldn’t, or more likely couldn’t be bothered to raise his indolent arse off his seat, to check when trains left from Bentota for Galle. I was reaching for the panga again. So instead of a final day trip, which would have brought forth another seventy dollars for the struggling Sri Lankan economy, we are contenting ourselves on this last day, relaxing and finishing off our novels.

The only true attraction in Galle is the Fort area. Thank goodness we chose this as our hideaway and refuge. For compared to the rest of the town, it is truly idyllic. Surrounded by a huge buttressed wall, built by the English in the 1600s and strengthened by the Dutch a century or so later, it was this which saved the Fort inhabitants from the 2004 tsunami. The on-rushing water was repelled by the stout defense, but squeezed up through the drainage system, flooding the cobbled streets but doing no further harm. Not so outside, close to the bus station, where many unfortunates were washed away.

The Fort is full of lovely little shops which sell trinkets for tourists, and lots of jewelry, claimed to be made from gold, silver, emeralds, diamonds, rubies etc. But given the ease with which Sri Lankans rip off their tourist benefactors, we’ve decided not to indulge. I once bought a Chinese made ‘North Face’ jacket in China which promptly filled with water like a sponge, as soon as I took it out cycling on a wet London morning. Who’s to say that SL goods are not similarly fake?

The architecture within the Fort area is also quite stunning, even beautiful. Colonial relics in various states of repair or disrepair with roofs made from red clay tiles, fire layers deep. Many of the buildings are being tarted up by Expatriates who want them as holiday homes. We found ourselves briefly feeling envious, until we realized that the buildings were in Sri Lanka. Now, had we uncovered such gems in Zanzibar, or Lamu or Mombasa (where the Cozy Tea Bar and its delightful Mzee waiters doubtless still serve their customers with evident warmth), then that might have been a different story.

Other Fort attractions include the Maritime museum (tsunami damaged but restored by the Dutch Government) and the Anglican and Dutch reformed churches. The latter embodies the tombs of Dutch residents who died in the 1700s. In the former, I was shocked to see that a virtually naked Japanese youth had been allowed entry, while his yobbish mates took photos of him in various poses, including standing on the pews. In a country so particular about respect for Buddhist symbolism, I was unaccountably offended that the Nips should have been allowed to behave in this fashion. When I tried to bring this to the caretaker’s attention, he kept shouting ‘donation, donation.’ I made an appropriate complaint in the visitor’s book.

Tomorrow we return to Colombo, and thence on to the Maldives for some much needed rest and recuperation. My final Sri Lanka blog in the next day or so, will post some simplified likes and dislikes about this fascinating country.