Let’s copy that Spanish town
THE Spanish town of Estepona has hit on something we could do here in Durban. It has built a 38m slide linking two streets and saving people a 10-minute walk. Plus the fun of it – whee!
Imagine if we did the same here, building slides from the Berea to the CBD. With the gradient and duration of the slide, some fancy speeds could be built.
The ultimate would be to wear roller skates, jump off at the Greyville Racecourse underpass doing, say, 60km/h, then go screeching past the Drill Hall into the CBD.
Okay, then you’d have to find your own way back – a Mynah or an Uber or something – but at least you’ve had a free ride in and a lot of fun. It’s something that could rejuvenate the CBD’s shopping trade.
But the Estepona initiative has had its teething problems, according to Sky News. They had to close the slide on its first day because people were flying off and hurting themselves.
One woman complained on Twitter that the police laughed as she flew through the air. She posted an image of her two grazed elbows, declaring: “I have not put up pictures of my arse, but it is worse.” Ah, these voluble Spanish ladies. (She should shame those cops by sending them all the pictures.)
I’m sure Estepona will sort out the early problems and is on to something good. Durban must follow suit. The shopping expedition becomes a tourist attraction.
THEY’RE gearing up for a general election in Denmark in a week. Candidates are using the internet, posting their promises on websites and social media. Now one has gone a step further, according to The Huffington Post.
Joachim B Olsen, an Olympic shot put silver medallist who has been a member of the Folketing (parliament) for the centre-right Liberal Alliance since 2011, has placed an ad bearing the party logo and encouraging people to vote for him. Where? On one of the world’s top adult websites, Pornhub.
“Election campaigns are serious,” he says. “But there must also be some humour.” The campaign appears to be hard-fought.
When I consulted the internet on its progress, a graph showing surveys of party and grouping strengths was such a mass of wavy, writhing lines, I thought for half a second I’d found Pornhub.
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: “The other day, my wife asked me to pass her lipstick, but I accidentally passed her a glue stick. She still isn’t talking to me.”
CONSTRUCTION workers in San Diego heard a mewing from inside a 20m steel column that had been trucked 550km from Hayward, in the San Francisco Bay area.
It came from four stowed-away kittens, the Associated Press said. They have been given appropriate construction industry names – Crowbar, Rebar, Jackhammer and Chisel – and have been placed in foster care and will be available for adoption in a couple of months. I always wanted a cat named Jackhammer.
A TOURIST is having a beer in Denmark. A beautiful blonde sits down beside him.
“Hello, do you speak English?” “Oh, I not speaking very much English.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred kroner.”
LIKE so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.