Roadside advertising is a pain to the beholder and its proliferation along suburban avenues has become unsightly and a serious distraction. On the other hand, our major highways – once one is out of the metropolis – are mercifully free of it.
But Vic Pierson reminds me that for 50 years (up until 1963), in the US, one firm provided an amusing innovation along that country’s interminable trunk roads – the Burma Shave roadside ads.
The product was a brushless shaving cream and the ads took the form of short verses whose lines were displayed, one at a time, some distance apart.
Here are some samples of the verses – each ended with “Burma Shave!”
 
Grandpa’s beard
Was stiff and coarse
And that’s what caused
His fifth divorce

He had the ring
He had the flat
But she felt his chin
And that was that
 
Within this vale
Of toil and sin
Your head grows bald
But not your chin
 
Henry the eighth
Prince of friskers
Lost five wives
But kept his whiskers
 
Vic says about 600 verses appeared.
Burma Shave later used its ads (see below) to draw attention to road safety.

There’s a book just out – Making Habits, Breaking Habits by Jeremy Dean. It poses the question, “How long does it take to form a new habit?”

It is commonly considered that it takes 21 days.

A century ago there were many pocket-sized magazines specialising in short stories, essays and poetry. The advent of the “wireless” and, finally, television, put paid to them – much to the frustration of thousands of talented writers.

But they’re coming back thanks to handy-sized tablets such as Kindle and iPad.

A reader tells me of a proposed US congressional act – The Persons With No Abilities Act of 2013 – that he thinks South Africa should adopt holus-bolus.

He might be kidding, of course, but I instantly liked the idea. Yet, when I considered it more deeply, I realised all that the Americans propose doing is to formalise a policy South Africa has tacitly pursued for years.

There I was, as we old travel writers say, sitting at the Mount Kenya Safari Club watching the first rays of the sun creep across the face of the snow-capped mountain.

I was on latitude 00.00 – the equator – and recalled how, when Victorian explorer John Speke told a formal scientific gathering in London that he’d seen snow on the equator, they laughed at him.