(A couple of years back I wrote (sporadically) a column for the Mail & Guardian Online. I don’t think anyone actually read it – it was usually buried several mouse clicks away from the real writers like Tom Eaton, Richard Calland and Ferial Haffajee. So, because I’m feeling guilty at not having posted anything on Thought Leader for a bit, I thought I’d re-publish one or two of the pieces I wrote then. Sorry if you’re reading it for the second time. Your fault for snooping around the back-end of the M&G Online.)
I was listening to Radio Sweden the other day. Don’t laugh. You have no idea how difficult it is to continue writing a column after that opening, but I’ve always wanted to try.
It’s like accepting a challenge from your mates to weave the words platypus or absquatulate into a column (”semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal” and “to depart in a hurry”, respectively). It always seems like a good idea until you’re faced with an open Word document and blinking cursor.
Anyway, there I was, racing to catch a plane at 4.30am the other day, and I turned the radio on to be greeted by an unreasonably perky, heavily accented man who emphasised every word oh-so-carefully, telling me about the latest trends in the world of Stockholm fashion.
At first, I thought that the Swedes had succeeded in taking over the world and that I was listening to some sort of weird Nordic propaganda. An all-night Abba special was just an ad break away. But I was too tired to change the dial and stuck with it, thinking, “It’s either them or George W in charge. Abba isn’t that bad, really.”
It was Radio Sweden. The kind of bland, parochial, home-made programming that our public broadcaster thinks we need to hear in the hours when their quota of bland, parochial home-made programming is used up for the day.
The drive to the airport was about 26 minutes long. I know this because I managed to hear an almost complete edition of whatever it was I was listening to, and I checked later to find out it was 26 minutes long. In that time, here is what I heard:
A pair of Chinese scientists are under investigation by the Swedish equivalent of the CIA. It seems that they were taking all their scientific secrets back to China with them. Sweden’s spooks declined to comment (but I bet were secretly delighted that they were involved in a story that raises more than a flicker of interest. I mean, not since Britt Ekland appeared in The Man with the Golden Gun has Sweden made such a huge contribution to the world of international espionage.
In similar news, there are a few red faces in Stockholm right now. It seems that a piece of paper, found buried under a crate of mackerel at the docks, suggests that Sweden was involved in human trafficking during World War II. And not just any old human trafficking. They were helping move the Nazis.
It seemed to have escaped their notice that the Nazis were on a bit of a roll at that stage, so they probably didn’t need that much help. The Swedes decided to chip in anyway. So much for their much-proclaimed neutrality.
With a nod to their Scandinavian neighbours, there was an interview with a bloke who was performing Hamlet at a local theatre — as a one-man show. He sounded way too pleased with himself for my liking. He was particularly smug about the fact that he had managed to give one of the characters a broad Sean Connery accent.
He may have gotten himself into a little spot of hot water toward the end of the interview, though, when he confessed that he was going to take the production on tour, and his first stop would be Beijing. I wanted to e-mail him to tell him to check his baggage carefully for a pair of Chinese scientists clutching a handful of secrets, but he was annoying me, so I thought I’d let fate run its course.
Then there was an advert bizarrely imploring Gothenburg to “show us what you’ve got”. (I didn’t stick around to see if Sweden’s second-largest city rose to the challenge or whether it, in fact, had anything to show. I suspect it didn’t.) And there was an interview with an artist about his rock installation. Apparently it represents his existential landscape. I don’t know either, and, frankly, I was at the airport at this stage and didn’t really care any more.
The point of telling you all of this? Well, one of my current fads is listening to a couple of internet-based radio stations — one a lefty American talk channel featuring regular roastings of George W and Rush Limbaugh; and the other an American comedy channel featuring regular roastings of George W and Rush Limbaugh.
And so a simple thought occurs to me that is so blindingly obvious that I’m almost afraid to state it, in case everyone else already knows it and thinks that I’m a bit slow for only getting it now.
The thought is this: technology has become the great democratic leveller. Sitting in Cape Town, I can join in a few global jokes about an American president as easily as I can learn more about some Swedish bloke’s attitudes toward rocks.
I can send out a warning to Chinese scientists, I know (at 4.30am in South Africa) that Stockholm is set for a mild, cool day. And all of this before I even get to the airport.
Would apartheid have flourished if we had the internet and satellite radio in the 1970s? How about Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s? It’s an interesting thought. At least, it is to me. But I can’t dwell on it for now, I can hear my platypus trying to absquatulate and need to stop it. I win.
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