Carol’s Column

CD-Roms way beyond the ken of anyone over 4

There is a well-known saying. Give me a 4-year-old child and I will show you an electronic genius.

A few weeks ago, I received a CD called Discover Garden Birds with Ken Newman. I think I was sent it to review because a while back I wrote a column about an extraordinary birding weekend spent with the South African Ornithological Society.

Actually, there's only one thing I am more useless at than identifying birds and that's flyfishing. Like Prince Charles, my ears stick out at right angles, which means each time I cast a line it becomes entangled with my protruding auricular organs. My mentor, Malcolm Meintjes, one of South Africa's greats in flyfishing circles and a truly patient demonstrator of the art, almost had a nervous breakdown because of my ears. Actually, I won a course of lessons from him during a bet he lost while playing strip poker. But that's another story.

To get back to birds. A keen enthusiast, I have attended several birding courses and am well qualified to tell the difference between a mossie and a fish eagle. The fish eagle screams.

At one lecture, I learnt to tweet like a starling and pooop like a chin spot batis. Alack, hours spent practising in the garden only attracted my neighbour's strategically aimed hosepipe. He is not a keen birder. Nor does he like the smell of pig manure which is why I have placed my compost heap directly below his bedroom window. I'm not a keen neighbour.

Briefly, I read the press release accompanying the Ken Newman CD and rushed home to try it out.

To encourage garden birds, I've planted indigenous flowers and bushes, placed hanging baskets filled with wild bird seed and fruit from branches and provided several cat-proof drinking tables. With the result that our garden is filled with all kinds of birds. It's also filled with weeds, snails, slugs, caterpillars, worms and crickets, which makes for much extramural activity.

I poured a long drink of orange juice laced with vodka (which my good friend Betty says increases one's learning curve), put the CD player on the stoep, placed the disc in and sat back to listen to the numerous joyful bird sounds.

Nothing. There was nothing. I checked the player and indeed the disc was spinning, the working parts laboured away and all seemed well. Still nothing. The birds had flown away, along with their voice boxes.

I replaced the Ken Newman and his birds disc with some funky jazz. The cool clarinet sang loud and clear. It was obviously Newman and his bolshy birdsongs at fault.

The laughing doves cooed as they gobbled my birdseed. Huh, I thought to myself, who needs a CD with bird sounds when you've got the real thing.

That was this weekend. On Monday I came into the office and spotted the press release enclosed with the CD. I reread it carefully.

“Accompany South Africa's best-known bird expert into a virtual garden. Join Ken Newman on CD-Rom as he takes you on a journey of discovery into the life of birds around us.”

I phoned my 4-year-old godson. “Is a CD-Rom the same as a CD?” I asked.

“Oh Carol, you old people are so stupid,” he said.

As I said, give me a 4-year-old child and I will show you an electronic genius.

I was too scared to ask him what Rom meant so I looked it up in the dictionary. Rom is an abbreviation for Roman, it says.

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