NOTICES AND EVENTS          - 23/ 6/ 2010      <--Prev : Next-->



1) EDITORIAL

During the 2010 USA v England Football game last weekend at the Rustenburg's Royal Bafokeng Stadium, security of unprecedented levels both around the ground and in the air was employed.

This to safeguard against terrorist attack during a match which analysts pinpointed as a potential target.

Thankfully nothing obvious happened but did the security people consider germ warfare ?

Four days after the game our entire party went down with horrible sore throats. Now in a stadium with 40 thousand vuvuzelas, can you imagine the germs that were being spread around the cold night air ?

And the suckage, as the dreaded vuvuzelas were passed from infected mouth to infected mouth ??

Now my theory is that germ warfare was being employed not by mean and nasty fanatics but by those vociferous opponents of the now very famous vuvuzela!!

Have you ever tried to blow a vuvuzela whilst suffering from a strep throat ? Its well nigh impossible the anti vuvuzela gang will be thrilled to note. But lucky for us the middle ear infection deafness accompanying the strep throat prevents one from hearing the delightful noise of the African horn.

I was interested to note that Sainsburys in the UK were selling vuvuzelas at two per second right after the England game .... The african horn was the brainchild of one Capetonian Neil Van Schalkwyk I believe as long as fifteen years ago,

He began with 500 trumpets in 2001 and a year later came the breakthrough when a corporate company bought 20,000 as a promotion.

He could not trademark the horn itself, "because a trumpet is a trumpet and has been around for centuries," he said. So his company protected the name "vuvuzela" instead. He defines the term as "to sprinkle you, to shower you with noise."

Now Russians are knocking on his business door, as are Brazilians, for cooperation deals get the real "vuvuzelas" there too. Vuvus even showed up at Boston's Fenway Park, adding decibels to a baseball game between the Red Sox and the Arizona Diamondbacks and I heard on the news yesterday that they are being banned in Cardiff.

The craze is global. There are YouTube videos about them, in fact we introduced the lusty vuvuzela to the USA way back in November last year, and they caused so much disturbance, we had the Dallas cops knocking on our door saying we were disturbing the peace !!

I personally thought ours was a rather melodious rendition of "Ring of Fire" and I think our own You Tube video of this splendid occasion was definitely one of the first !!

You love them or you hate them, but I am sure this "code in my dose" is all because of the deadly secret weapon of mass destruction - the vuvuzela.

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