Saffers

There are a lot of South Africans in the United Kingdom. They're known generally as 'Saffers'. One of them is Sir David King, the South Africa-born and -raised and -trained scientist who is currently the chief scientific advisor to Her Majesty's government.

Sir King was the guest of a SciCafé day held by the British Council at the rather impressive Cape Academy of Mathermatics, Science and Technology, a boarding school in the beautiful surroundings of Tokai. In fact, judging from the bars on the windows, this is the reborn Reformatory.

Most of the seats were taken up by students from the Cape Academy and other schools, including South Peninsula High School in Diep Rivier.

But there, in the front row... is that who I think it is? It's Julie Cleverdon, acting head of the MTN Sciencentre, sitting two seats away from Sir DK in the front row.

And next to her is David Muller, our resident actor, known for impersonating Einstein and molecules and palaeoanthropologists ... and for just general clowning around, as in the photograph above.

A group of uniformed students, led by a fellow student, introduced some harmony to the proceedings with their songs and dances, including ''iThemba Lami'' (Our Hope).

Then three young students spoke about iImbovane project, online at academic.sun.ac.za/Iimbovane, which finds easy ways to assess biodiversity. In this case, ants.

Then David King spoke about climate change and his new institute, which takes on scientists with one mission: find new ways of providing us with energy that don't cook the planet the way that our reckless desire for oil and gas has done.

The Cape Academy teachers, led by Greg van Schalkwyk (headmaster) and including Charl Schoeman and Paul Wilton from the labs, were impressed with you Julie... this may mean that you can expect a phone call asking if the Mellow Yellow mobile laboratory would like to find itself parked outside the Cape Academy soon, when it hosts the South African Association of Science and Technology Educators. Or an acronym similar to that, anyhow.