Old Selbornian News Today

Tears flowed as nine triumphant Grandads were welcomed home on Sunday. The stringy Grandads Army troopers had pounded out 1,500km over 14 days to raise thousands of rand from an admiring public.

The most unlikely local hero will pedal into Old Selbornian Club on Sunday. Please shift your mind about 80-year-olds.This oke, paediatric surgeon Professor Colin Lazarus, will have braved the trucking rush, broken roads and climate chaos that tumbled, scraped and battered his body. He would have welded together a rambunctious team of 20 unparalleled individuals who over 16 days covered a distance of 3,000km, 1,500 of them on bicycles.

The raindrops were literally drying on my helmet visor when I spotted Buffalo City traffic cops setting up their ATM at the entrance to the Gonubie cement road. I mean, they were emptying pockets metres from the circle leading off the old R102 Farmarama circle. Google tells me they were one minute away from where Anthropogene, the climate monster, came and bit off chunks of bitumen and road metal barriers.

Not many runners around the world are able to complete the 87.701km of the world's largest and oldest ultramarathon race Comrades Marathon between Pietermaritzburg and Durban but East London and Old Selbornian runner Sharon Eldridge finished the race a 30th consecutive time on Sunday, a remarkable milestone.

The early days of transformation when black people had to leave their African identity at the gates of Eastern Cape boys’ schools in the morning, become a white person during the day, and pick up their black identity again after school, are rapidly fading.

Prof George Euvrard, former Rhodes University dean of education and Old Selbornian, is a legendary Eastern Cape pilgrim.