‘Oor ons ewige gebergtes…’

One thing leads to another, as they say, and my recent musings about the movie, 2012, led to a brainwave: if we are to become the last place standing above water in two years’ time, oughtn’t we to declare independence now?

This is not as odd as you may first think. After all, at 179 square kilometres, we’d not be the smallest country in the world. Granted, the likes of the Maldives (298) and Barbados (430) wouldn’t stand a snowball’s come the end of the world (and I shouldn’t mourn the demise of the Gaza Strip), but we should be a proud member of a club of small, mountainous refuges: San Marino (61), Liechtenstein (157), Andorra (453), and (flourish here) Cathkin Park.

We’d need a capital, of course, or at least a place to store the state vehicle (the tractor).

I was asleep for most of my school years, but I do remember something about Madrid being sited cleverly in the geometric centre of Spain. Try this at home (to brighten up an otherwise dull day, you understand): cut out a photocopied map of the valley, hang it at various angles, and mark a plumb-line for each. Where the lines intersect is the middle.

My, my, wouldn’t Jannie Vogelsang and Hennie de Kock be surprised?

Since a rugby team would be probably too much to ask, and the national dress has already been long established by Stuart Longmore, all we’d need then is a national anthem. I shall personally strangle anyone who comes up with ‘God Save Cathkin Park’ since, apparently, the credit already goes to Hollywood.