Most price charts covering the recent past are dominated by a huge down tick that took place in early 2020 – the date when we all reacted to the official science-based news that the globe was being overrun by a virus that would quite likely harm us all. The speed with which most prices recovered was much greater than our trust in any subsequent explanation of what was really happening. But this year a fair sized traditional bear market is out of its cage and slowly but steadily destroying a great deal of wealth. The most spectacular victims so far would appear to be the crypto currency punters about which commentators like Tidemarks know almost nothing except to avoid them. The infamous boytjie from Pretoria, Elon Musk is perhaps another victim as this week he began backing away from his heroic and outlandishly overpriced bid to buy Twitter the equally infamous provider of so-called social media. His reasons for doing so probably have more to do with a “cash flow difficulty” than his hand-waving arguments that when he went to inspect his purchase he found too many skeletons in previously unknown cupboards.
Growing up in Grahamstown, some of Tidemarks’ friends were children of academics at Rhodes University. One evening in October 1957, one of these, Dr George Little, a scientist who knew about these things, fired up his venerable grey Standard motor car and ferried a crowd of excited small boys up to the top of Mountain Drive where we waited until a tiny moving dot of light appeared in the sky exactly where he said it would. This was of course Sputnick, the Earth’s first artificial satellite. About the size of a pine apple, remember this was the Eastern Cape, it did no more than send out a regular radio beep signal. This week the first images taken by the James Webb optical telescope, now also in orbit around this planet were released. They are breath-taking. And very soon NASA’s Google Photos account will be full (tech joke!) as this wonderful monument to human ingenuity and (mostly) American tax payers’ generosity settles down to its task of showing how incredibly lucky but insignificant we are.
Equally attention getting for some people must be the news that in Switzerland not only the suspects but also their wives have been arrested. Two former employees of Swiss industrial firm ABB Ltd are accused of corruption linked to half a billion rands worth of Eskom contracts. That’s going to test the marriage vows somewhat! And what about old JZ’s harem? Maybe the distinction between traditional and civil marriage is about to become clarified?
The experiment with the ‘bok team nearly worked. Awarding more than a dozen new caps to take on a very pumped Welsh squad was a big risk. All round it was a poor weekend for the southern hemisphere rugby world. Once again Tidemarks wants to know why a Māori All Black team is not discriminatory.
On a day when our very own Louis Meintjies came second in the notorious Alpe d’huez stage of the Tour de France I also watched the first day of The Open Championship. Heretically I have decided that the Old Course at St Andrews is a total con played out on the faithful. It’s a ridiculously featureless bleak landscape usually rendered especially inhospitable by atrocious weather. In the absence of anything resembling attractive and interesting vegetation or geographical features to provide navigational landmarks, players and spectators alike wander this wasteland in despair. Cries of pain and frustration waft out of the gorse thickets and across county-sized greens. Stone-lined pot holes await the unwary. The tallest feature on what should properly be a particularly boring dog-walking venue is an unbelievably ancient small stone structure, the Swilken Bridge. It lies at the head of a long queue of disciples, awaiting their turn to be photographed crossing it before it crumbles into the burn beneath. And the canny Scots heft their sporrans stuffed with cash and give thanks to their forbears for starting the fiction that these Links between the shore and proper countryside would be a great place to play golf.
James Greener
Friday 15th July 2022
