Buttocks and red roses

A PAIR of giant serpents writhe in mortal combat across the fellow’s shoulders. Below, a fully-rigged sailing ship occupies the rest of his back, surrounded by a rope grommet. Then a large red rose on each buttock

A tiger and an eagle are locked in mortal combat across another fellow’s shoulders and down his whole back. The buttocks? A red rose on each.

Buttocks and red roses – they seem to be in vogue. Buttocks and red roses – sounds like a song title.

In the female category, you never saw such cleavages. Colourful, intricate, ornate. Nipples never had such adornment. You get dizzy just looking.

It’s almost as good as at the

Street Shelter for the Over-Forties.

Yes, this was the International Tattoo Convention, which ended in London yesterday. Tattoo artists were gathered from around the world to show off their work.

Heavily tattooed girls? Is this not a little alarming?

Yeah. But we men grit our teeth and advance all the same. The Street Shelter is like D-Day all over again.

Master burglar

IN LONDON many years ago now, there was a fellow at Speakers’ Corner, in Hyde Park, who used to describe himself as president of the Master Burglars’ Society.

He was heavily tattooed, in fact he would have put to shame the folk at the current International Tattoo Convention. Even his eyelids were tattooed.

He would explain that the tattoos were because he was once wrongly pointed out at a police identification parade.

Oddly enough, he was a middleaged South African named Van Zyl. What was he doing in London? My guess is that he was among the South Africans who were demobbed in Britain after World War II, and never went home. There were quite a few knocking around in those days. But most of them didn’t take up burglary, tattoos or the soap box at Speakers’ Corner.

Rigged with facts

HILLARY Clinton and Donald Trump go into their first televised debate tonight. However, Trump has warned that Hillary is scheming to “rig the debate by using facts”.

“You just watch, folks,” Trump told supporters in Toledo, Ohio. “Crooked Hillary is going to slip in little facts all night long, and that’s how she’s going to try to rig the thing. It’s a disgrace.”

The billionaire drew a sharp contrast between himself and the former Secretary of State by claiming that his debate preparations “involve no facts whatsoever”.

“I am taking a pledge not to use facts at the debate,” he said, raising his right hand. “I challenge Crooked Hillary to take that pledge.”

Yes, this is satirist Andy Borowitz again in The New Yorker. We’re getting there folks, we’re getting there.

Archaic schooling

INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener looks, in his latest grumpy newsletter, at the ructions in education

“The SA Democratic Teachers Union seems to have scant idea about either democracy or teaching. The union is very concerned by the proposal from the Western Cape government to send school assessors around to see what is happening in the classrooms.

“The union claims that this will take education ‘back to the archaic times’. Which might be no bad thing, as in the present times the teachers have so failed the pupils that South Africa now languishes near the foot of all international education ranking tables.

“Perhaps with a bit of prodding and persuasion from an assessor system with the power to instil a bit of ‘archaic’ fear in non-performing teachers, many more school leavers will have useful and employable skills.

“This in turn might result in more young people having the self-confidence to move on without insisting that they need to attend university, from which so many of