I like this dudes writing style..

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Having a ball in the barbs
14/09/2007 13:29  - (SA)  

Brandon Faber, News24 User

I'm no gardening great, let's be honest about it.

In fact, I find the prospect of being infected by the dreaded "green-finger", watching Keith Kirsten on Sunday mornings and shopping for plants about as interesting a prospect as having lunch with George Bush, naked and chained to a table outside the "Green Zone" on a record-breaking, sweltering hot summer's day.

Don't get me wrong, though, I like a beautiful garden just as much as the next pensioner, but I don't want any hand in making it look nice. It must just exist, magically resistant to all threats, disease and stormy weather, like Manton Tshabalala-Msimang.

It must be resilient in the face of adversity and immune to the natural progression of time - like Riaan Cruywagen and Robert Mugabe - two fellows who will surely outlast us all.

Anyway. . .

Driving along the suburbs of Jo'burg on my daily slog, I've noticed with freakish frequency the existence of cement balls lining the sidewalks outside posh dwellings. Cement balls, of all sizes.

Big boulder-types, smaller Sanlam-sized ones, just lying there - in a straight stripe. Sometimes hidden by a few plants but mostly out in the open for all to see, as if the spheres were artistic sculptures in some way.

Now I've already likened my knowledge of all things flora to that of the Young Communist Party's comprehension of Economics 101 so, understandably, the existence of the mythical cement creations leaves me a little bit confused.

No purpose at all

Yes, flummoxed friends, "what does it all mean" is the question du Jour. Surely it cannot be decorative? Anyone who believes that ten cement balls in a row is a thing of beauty is clearly in desperate need of an intervention. Even for a gardening layman it is palpably obvious that there is no purpose, at all, to having these things aimlessly lining our streets.

Somewhere, sitting in some office, the same dude who came up with "The Ab roller", "Pool Cop", "Shogun knives" and "The Big Green Cleaning Machine" is laughing his backside off at the droves of Northern Suburb dwellers, lining up to buy his balls.

I suspect this man is fully aware that the "pointless cement ball craze" will only last for a while and, I'm certain, he's been hard at work conceptualising next summer's "must-have" gardening item. . . "The multi-coloured plastic triangle".

Personally, I'd just steal some Metro Police cones and spray them whatever colour I want, instead of actually going out to purchase the prisms but, hey, what do I know. I obviously don't get it, haven't got a clue, do not see the true value and/or spiritual meaning of the balls.

Maybe, like Stonehenge, they are supposed to symbolise something of intrigue, of deep earthly truths that shallow cretins such as myself will never, could never, should never have any grasp of.

I'm okay with that, I guess.