Indeed!! Thanks to @beyondchoc for bringing it to our attention…

Read more about the film on IMDB, and read more about the story of Georges Méliès, the inspiration for the film, and see one of his famous films:

See close ups of the full fleet here.

Customer Service?

Kulula is an Airline with head office situated in Johannesburg. Kulula airline attendants make an effort to make the in-flight “safety lecture” and announcements a bit more entertaining.

Here are some real examples that have been heard or reported:

On a Kulula flight, (there is no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced,

“People, people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”

—o0o—

On another flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said,

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

—-o0o—

On landing, the stewardess said,

“Please be sure to take all of your belongings.. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.”

—-o0o—

“There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane.”

—o0o—

“Thank you for flying Kulula. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

—o0o—

As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Durban Airport , a lone voice came over the loudspeaker:

“Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”

—o0o–

After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in the Karoo, a flight attendant on a flight announced,

“Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted.”

—o0o—

From a Kulula employee:

“Welcome aboard Kulula 271 to Port Elizabeth. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”

—o0o—

“In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child travelling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are travelling with more than one small child, pick your favourite.”

—o0o—

“Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Kulula Airlines.”

—-o0o—

“Your seats cushions can be used for flotation; and in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments.”

—o0o—

“As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses..”

—o0o—

And from the pilot during his welcome message:

“Kulula Airlines is pleased to announce that we have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”

—o0o—

Heard on Kulula 255 just after a very hardlandingin Cape Town : The flight attendant came on the intercom and said,

“That was quite a bump and I know what y’all are thinking. I’m here to tell you it wasn’t the airline’s fault, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it wasn’t the flight  attendant’s fault, it was the asphalt.”

—o0o—

Overheard on a Kulula flight into Cape Town, on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain really had to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight Attendant said,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to The Mother City. Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!”

—o0o—

Another flight attendant’s comment on a less than perfect landing: “We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”

—o0o—

An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which required the first officer to stand at the door while the passengers exited, smile, and give them a “Thanks for flying our airline”. He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old lady walking with a cane. She said,

“Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Why, no Ma’am,” said the pilot. “What is it?”

The little old lady said,

“Did we land, or were we shot down?”

—o0o—

After a real crusher of a landing inJohannesburg , the attendant came on with,

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Captain Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells are silenced, we will open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal..”

—o0o—

Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement:

“We’d like to thank you folks for flying with us today.. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you’ll think of Kulula Airways.”

—o0o—

Heard on a Kulula flight:

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing.. If you can light ‘em, you can smoke ‘em.”

Thanks to Kathy Day for sending this to me!

Wonder exactly what it’s basing it’s stats on, but pretty fascinating none the less!

Now, if you want to buy Princess Beatrice’s notorious hat, you can bid for it on ebay, current price £5000, all proceeds to charity… good on her for making good use of the notoriety of that hat!

Provided by Andrew Bloch. First saw this this morning, and now keep seeing it everywhere, and yes, I have voted!

Always trying to get more sleep… although I truly DON’T wish I was a Koala as life is too much fun to be asleep for so much of it…

Not too late to sign up for The Kerslake Company’s next coaching course, starting 15th May!

Sally Feldman stands up for popular works of scholarship

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any serious student of English literature must be a postmodernist with a huge appetite for deconstruction and a cultivated disregard for the enjoyment of the books themselves. Who needs to wade through the 896 pages of Middlemarchwhen it’s so much more interesting – and often far quicker – to identify hermeneutical opposition within a narrative discourse, or apply hypertextual liminality to notions of the authorial voice?

Even though the invasion of cultural theory had only just begun when I was an English undergraduate, it was enough to instil in me a discernible guilt about reading novels for personal pleasure, for feasting myself on Jane Austen’s sparkling prose and barbed satire and delighting in the way her books propose a morality, an idea of how to live.

But now a new book has appeared that has done much to banish that guilt and restore my Leavis-inflected faith in literature as an expression of humanism. It’s a lavishly illustrated edition of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, comprehensively annotated by Patricia Meyer Spacks, professor of English at the University of Virginia. Suddenly I’ve been given a dispensation not merely to enjoy the novels but to care about every detail of the characters and their specific milieux.

Spacks loves detail. But never for its own sake; never in the service of pedantry. Her detail illuminates and refreshes the experience of reading. If you’ve ever wondered why the Bennet sisters spent so much time trimming their bonnets, Spacks can enlighten you. Material was so expensive that to stay fashionable the girls would have to upgrade existing garments as they wouldn’t be able to afford new ones.

Mealtimes are frequently used by Austen as plot devices but Spacks gives them added significance. The Bingleys look down on their country neighbours for serving dinner earlier than in more fashionable town circles. And Lady Catherine de Bourgh can afford not one but two separate breakfast parlours.

Money, of course, is the invisible main character of all of the novels, so our understanding of the real plight of the Bennet sisters is poignantly enhanced when Spacks reveals just how much of it a gentleman needs to run his household, how much the girls would inherit from their mother, as well as the invidious property laws that were responsible for disinheriting them.

Read full story.