Everyone has blarry thoughts on food. I don’t. But of course writing this means I do.
So: My thoughts on food:
Don’t tell others what to eat or what not to eat. If you must talk food, just tell them what you enjoy. Unless you’ve done genuine research and your results have been tested by other scientists, just tell us your favourite enjoyable food. No lessons given or implied. Amen.
So I like the two Anthonys:
Anthony Bourdain: Your body is not a temple! It’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride! “I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want.”
My kind of chef
…
Anthony Warner, The Angry Chef (paraphrased): It’s food. Eat it. Just not too much; Also, eat less sugar now; eat less meat whenever you can. He’s very interested in what food really does for us in real life (proper research) and gets irritated by influencers’ fad diets and insta-solutions.
Also my kind of chef
~~oo0oo~~
I like Chef Anthony B even more on grog:
Here a quote from the legendary chef Anthony Bourdain seems appropriate: “I would say that the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I’m drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place, and not drinking the best beer out there. You know, I haven’t made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they’re making some fucking Mumford and Sons IPA. People get all bent about it. But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time. I don’t like to talk about beer, honestly. I don’t like to talk about wine. I like to drink beer. If you bring me a really good one, a good craft beer, I will enjoy it, and say so. But I’m not gonna analyse it.”
Mtunzini, Zululand, KZN North Coast. A new chapter begins after eighteen months in the metropolis of Mtwalume, KZN South Coast.
We’ve had a very friendly welcome, a common refrain being, ‘Watch, Now You’re Here You’ll Never Leave.’
Also my landlord must have spoken to Brooose, my previous landlord. He said, Now that I’ve met you I’ll send a gardener once a week to mow the lawn, as I can see it’s not your thing. How else could he have worked that secret out?
Jess was surprised that unfurnished meant zero furniture, but I said, ‘We Have Plenty Jess’ and unpacked our fine aluminium folding camping table, two comfortable camping chairs and the mattress from the camper. Manie took a good look at that and offered to return the furniture he’d just schlepped off to store in his garden cottage after his last tenant left. Another bonus! These are kind people.
Meantime Willie had almost beaten us back home to deliver the fridge and microwave from his second-hand store.
In Feb I spotted at last what I’d been hearing regularly from my stoep – A Yellow-streaked Greenbul, coastal forest special.
It’s the annual Westville fair and the Chinese crafts are on full display. Tom has wheedled some extra pocket money and has made a fine investment: A BB Gun. Plastic pellets. ‘But a much better one than the last one Dad, this one’s metal.’ The plastic gun had lasted one day.
Right TomTom, you know that a gun is ONLY for shooting at a target, right? ‘Yes, Dad.‘ You set up a target, put your eye protection goggles on and make sure no-one’s in harm’s way, right? ‘Yes, Dad.‘
Pring pring. This is your neighbour the lawyer speaking. Do you know YOUR SON is shooting at MY DOGS?
Well no, actually, I didn’t know that. I’ll be right over.
The boys are nowhere in sight so I call them – Tom and a neighbour friend – and present them to the neighbours: the lawyer, the businesswoman wife and the adult son. I get an immediate confession and an apology from the boys, and they repeat their apology directly to the man. So I dismiss them. Off you go now.
Is that the end of it? No. Bitch Kvetch, Blah Blah, Blah bloody blah . . Well, I say with a smile, Boys will be Boys. Well, I never did anything like that, he says. Well, I certainly did, I say, and with all due respect your dogs DO bark incessantly and are extremely annoying, and the little plastic pellets didn’t actually hit them. Never mind the fact that there are a few too many of them. Still smiling. Three dogs maximum allowed in Westville and the lawyer has seven!
Well, says the vrou: THESE KIDS play outside the gates and the blacks walk past and make the dogs bark.
Mistake.
Firstly, I say with a much broader smile creasing my dial, chest out and going red in the face, These actually aren’t “the blacks.” They’re my son and OUR NEIGHBOURS, and they’re walking HOME. They live here; Secondly,these kids have every right to play in the street and on the pavements. I’m still grinning, trying to keep it light. You need your neighbours, if possible.
Ooh, he says, We’re not racist, when I go to the townships the dogs there bark at me cos I’m white. Kak cover-up, but nice to see you batting for the old bat. She herself makes no attempt to explain her “the blacks.” She’s the tough one here.
I repeat, Let’s just understand very clearly that these kids have every right to play RIGHT in front of your gates. Up to one millimetre from your gate. And YOUR responsibility is to keep your dogs in your yard and not let them run out and menace the kids. One of the girls is absolutely terrified of dogs. And her Dad happens to be a Metro cop and I will join forces with him in seeing to it that you are held responsible if your dogs do ANYTHING to my kids or the neighbourhood kids when out of your yard! . . smiles sweetly . .
Bloody hell! Well, according to the law I have the right . . . I am not a lawyer but I’ll tell you right now your dogs should not be out of your yard. Period. I get the kids off the streets as often as I can, they play at our place most days, so let’s just work together, okay? And anyway, nice weather if it doesn’t rain, and thanks very much for calling me and I apologise again for the plastic pinging of your puppies and let’s be adult about all this as we’re stuck with each other as neighbours. Kay?
Big smile hopefully covers up my eff you thoughts and we withdraw.
We still wave at each other. Him. She doesn’t.
~~oo0oo~~
Later: I was telling friend Stephen in Aussie about the seven barking dogs on my one side and the two barking dogs on my other side: White alsatians bought by non-dog people cos ONCE an intruder jumped over their low fence.
He said: As you probably know, one thing about not living in SA is that mysteriously the dogs do not bark. Except our neighbour’s when there are tradies (workmen) around. But he can only keep it up for about one and a half minutes. A very old labrador. Our other neighbour gets irritated on the rare occasion that the dog barks. So he sits out on the deck and shouts “shuddup.” Then the dog barks more.
Then she thinks it’s me shouting. And when I try to have a chat to her about this, she disappears. I will have to collar her sometime. Or as they say here, “bail her up.”
~~oo0oo~~
This evening I had curry and an ice cold beer on my new stoep with my children, checking out the birds; especially the black flycatchers with their two fledglings; the parents all black, the babies black with lotsa russet scallops and streaks – their gapes still yellowish. Then a kingfisher with a cricket in his beak, followed a big praying mantis – lots of protein. Complete peaceful silence. Not a sound. No shouting, no barking.
Hey! No barking! The dogs are actually quiet for a change.
Ancient O of Maritz Borough was smuggling red wine in his checked bag in the hold of one of those aircraft that doesn’t have propellors, and flies high enough so the pressure drops, making the pressure inside the corked wine bottle way higher than the rarefied air outside. This means the cork ejaculates and your underpants in that same suitcase get dyed a dramatic color that makes it look like . . well, nevermind.
He was trying to save on his dollar spend on his imbibing habit, and that frugal trick came back to bite him where the underpants stained.
Compounding his distress, his binoculars were ruined. They should have been round his neck, but they were also in the hold packed securely next to his voluminous white Y-front underpants and the multiple bottles of smuggled red wine that I’ve just ratted on him about.
So on the bus ride to the old Vic Falls hotel he announced mournfully to the delight and mirth of his good and unsympathetic friends that while his binocs had been clear before, they now had lost their clarity and this made the view through them look a bit “Clarety.”
Rather good for a fella from Sleepy Hollow, what?!
– Vic Falls as seen thru those binocs –
Full disclosure: He said nothing about his underpants, I invented that part of the story, but it must have been true, hey?
Winter 2010 – The Soccer World Cup frenzy was in full swing and I was pleased we were getting away from it all, off to the the relative tranquility of Afriski resort, high in the Lesotho mountains. The kids LOVED their winter skiing holidays!
En route we made our customary brunch stop in the village of Clarens and of course I had to inform our traveling companions, Andrew and Tracey Ogilvie, joining us for their twin girls’ first skiing holiday, that I had known the mayor of Clarens in the olden days. Actually, his son, the FSOC. America has POTUS and FLOTUS, so we can have Hizzoner, The First Son Of Clarens, right?
As I told my stories yet again poor Aitch just had to listen and try not to roll her eyes too hard – (btw, heard a good one: ‘rolled my eyes so hard I almost fell over backwards’).
Hilarious stories like: The TV repeater aerial and car battery on top of Mt Horeb andthe walkie-talkie conversations twixt town and top that ensued;The Clarens telephone sentrale saying “34? No, Stevie’s not there, he’s at the Goldblatts, I’ll put you through;” Hilarious, right?
Oh well, Andrew seemed to enjoy them. He’s polite that way.
We were there just before the Soccer World Cup opening ceremony and the first game (Bafana the host nation vs Mexico). The Clarens central grassy square was crowded – a million kids dressed in Bafana yellow, blowing their zulufelas, I mean vuvuzelas and marching around aimlessly in neat lines. We blew out of there and mercifully, the radio reception soon got too poor to listen in.
If it wasn’t for bladdy satellites we would have been totally isolated up on the high mountains, too. So we had to watch some of the games in the pub. Civilisation is overrated.
~~oo0oo~~
telephone sentrale – the telephone exchange, in those days a real live human being who knew what was going on in town and dorp
dorp – village
vuvuzela – instrument of one-note aural torture; probly modeled on the instruments that toppled Jericho
Dear old Sambucca obligingly died on Aitch’s birthday, making the date easy to remember. 2019, so she was about twelve in the shade. Tom and Lungelo buried her in the garden with much sweating in the heat. Not out of the kindness of their hearts or any soppiness, mind you. They did it for cold hard cash.
Tommy had a lovely fun collection of model trains. Mom Aitch and I started the trend, then his rolling stock fleet was given a boost when Val & Pete Excell brought him a Thomas the Tank Engine from England.
Trains were a thing. He went on a few train rides, one for his fourth birthday party:
Then all of a sudden he was grown and the trains gathered dust. He agreed it would be best if other children could play with them, so off they went:
parked here for safekeeping – hard copies have been discarded. And there were lots of hard copies! Here are some of Aitch’s photo albums. All are gone now.
1986 diary:
1992 diary:
1989 – My first bond:
Jess & Tom – Dance & Portraits
2021 – house-emptying pics. Plus storage, furniture selling, etc.
. . and today, a Lesser Honeyguide in the Milkwood tree! An Indicator minor in a Mimusops afra
– the banded mongoose gang visit regularly –
Mrs Pretty Mpisane who works at the cottage next door came in for a whirlwind day of cleaning. She gave orders, and we cleared rooms ahead of her. Much sweeping, and mopping and wiping down.
The day after, this tiny little mushroom popped up in the freshly-cleaned bathroom! About 10mm diameter cap.
And last thing before we left: Jess had a birthday and her friends Lwazi and Sandi treated her to roses.
Pre-sunrise at Punda Maria camp waterhole. I decide to make coffee to ‘take with,’ so it’s fully light when I get into the hide, and the sun is about to show. It’s Feb 2024
The resident Egyptian Geese, Blacksmith Lapwings, Three-banded Plovers; and foam nest frog nests are there. A Bearded Woodpecker drums a tattoo in a dead tree while a Cape Turtle Dove exhorts me to Work Harder. Good luck with that, I’ve been ignoring them for almost four years now. Two damp Striped Kingfishers sit in the falling mist, not quite a drizzle, giving their trilling call. A Brown-hooded Kingfisher silent nearby. A Tawny-flanked Prinia going crazy, scolding something I can’t see. Also Fork-tailed Drongo, Red-backed Shrike, Cinnamon-breasted Bunting, Chinspot Batis, Pintail Whydah, Blue & Lipstick waxbills (I don’t like the word ‘common’), Paradise Whydah, Red-billed Oxpecker, European & Carmine Bee-eaters; Greater blue-eared Glossy Starling, GHS girls (Grey-headed Sparrows), Laughing, Emerald & Cape Turtle Doves; Mosque, Barn & Lesser-striped Swallows; Puffback & Red-back Shrikes; Red-billed Quelea flock; Red-Billed firefinch, Indigo bird, Lilac-breasted Roller, Crested Barbet, Grey Goway Bird, Black-crowned Tchagra, Arrow-marked Babbler, Yellow-bellied Greenbul, Dusky & Paradise flycatchers; Long-billed Crombec, White-browed (Hooligans) Robin-chat. A great morning.
Somewhere in the middle distance eles rumble and baboons bark. A flock of White Helmet-shrikes – The Seven Sisters – fly into the hide tree just a few metres from me. I get a blurry pic.
A skreee from a Blacksmith Lapwing announces a raptor and there he is: A Little Sparrowhawk strafes low over the water, then banks up and lands in a tall mopani tree too far away for a definite ID, but his size tells me he’s a Little.
Now those eles arrive to drink, and one drops a huge dump while doing so. I zoom in on their dry skin.
Uh oh! Three primates enter the hide. Loud talk and cigarette smoke sets off my internal alarm. Oh well, I enjoyed a lovely couple of early morning hours alone at the hide. Time to wake Jess up for breakfast in the hut she hired after tiring of camping!
~~oo0oo~~
Places nearby
Luvhuvhu river banks White-fronted Bee-eater Collared & White-bellied Sunbirds Brubru Kurrichane Thrush Black flycatcher White-crowned Lapwing Bob the Sandpiper (common) Marsh Sandpiper Orange-breasted Bush-shrike Tambourine Dove
Twenty years on, we’re here again. Me and Jess. Thanks to her, we have actually booked ahead and are staying in a comfortable chalet at Kosi Bay Lodge. She loves it, there’s DSTV and good phone signal. Also a restaurant that makes great food. Really tasty grub. Oh, and some nature outside. You go, Dad.
It’s too windy for boat trips on the lakes, so I walk the grounds and drive around the area – Ezemvelo’s Kosi Bay camp. Utshwayelo Kosi Mouth Lodge – while Jess just chills. Good birding, including one I seldom see, an Eastern Nicator. My pictures were just shadowy blobs, so here’s one from a good camera:
Note: All the camps are quite far from the beaches, and as the only one that is actually on the lakeshore, Ezemvelo’s Kosi Bay Camp is, for my money, by far the best option.
~~oo0oo~~
Last we were here we camped at the Ezemvelo Camp, and Jess was young enough to enjoy the swing I rigged up using an umbrella pole and tie-down straps.
Out on the lakes in 2003 – Greg Bennett loaned us his rubber dinghy and Yamaha.
Oops! Sorry Daddy! Huh? I started awake. What, Jess? I cut one part way too short. Oh, doesn’t matter, love. Were you sleeping? I did nod off. Sorry Dad. Really love, I’m just happy you’re giving me a haircut. You can see how relaxed I am.
After: Jess you’d better sweep up here, my girl. It looks like an eagle caught a goat and pecked out all its fur on the stoep.
(*hoses herself* *fetches broom*) Okay Daddy. Can I have a picture of your haircut for my profile?
Earliest start and fastest drive to get the ole Ranger to Ford Bluff to fix my airbags. Jess missed the sun rising, my car was going so fast, but later she caught the sun once it was above the horizon.
My Takata airbags are part of the largest and most complex safety recall ever. Installed mostly from 2002 to 2015, some of these airbags could deploy explosively, injuring and even killing lil old me and Jess. Sixty seven million airbags have been recalled, proving false certain people’s nasty allegations that I’m the only airbag in my Ford.
My first recall was two years ago and I had it done (I thought) at Harrismith Ford. Been happily driving it ever since. Not as fast as today, tis true. Last week I got another recall alert, and this time it came with a Do Not Drive advisory. Which is why I was driving so fast to have it fixed. This is urgent.
The reminder last week and its warning caused me to think, I Wonder If The Fix Was Actually Done? I phoned Harrismith Ford and asked them to send me proof that it had been done. What they sent me in writing was, Oops! Actually, It Wasn’t Done! Full confession: This thought has been niggling in the back of my large cranium for the whole two years, but I’m quite good at procrastination and kicking for touch, even though I played my rugby in an honest position, not halfback.
Now I await Ford’s verdict with trepidation, as they keep saying they’re not going to replace my airbags until they’ve ‘checked them.’ I made them assure me they have them in stock so I can drive the car today. They assured me they do have them in stock, but . . ‘First we must check.’
Okay. I’m having breakfast and multiple coffees across the road while I wait.
Update: Great service. Done and dusted by 9am! Just look how great my bakkie looks with it’s new airbag detonators:
– like a makeover –– old detonator – obviously faulty: it’s barcode says BAM – also HERST, short for ‘herstel,’ meaning ‘fix’ –
Mom tries hard to see the bright side of things. She’ll often praise the staff and nurses that look after her and seldom criticises them. But once she said about one of them, Boy if these were the Seven Dwarves, she’d be Grumpy!
Realising she’d just been critical, she doubled down, tongue-in-cheek: And of course I’m Snow White!
There are many “Methodist” denominations throughout the world, not only the 1960s Harrismith, Orange Free State version, although that is the most important one. About 112 are listed in wikipedia. So there must be around 112 methylated ways to get to heaven, I spose. Many – or most maybe? – will deny whatever I mutter on the topic of their booze doctrine, but this is sort-of what they sort-of think, I think.
They gloss over Jesus and His wine. Jesus was a lot more pragmatic and accommodating than His Methodists. If he tried that water into wine trick in 2023 he’d be in trouble with this modern-day kerk! They would turn that trick of His into a whine. While it seems Meths are at pains to say they don’t actually BAN grog – no fatwas – they tut tut about it, and suggest that much-ignored Evangelical and Catholic tactic called ‘abstinence.’ The one that doesn’t work. That tactic. This is surely an opportunity for someone to start a 113th Meth sect: One that fearlessly BANS Booze!
From one of the many Methodist websites out there: “Abstinence from alcohol” witnesses to God’s liberating and redeeming love, and is part of living into the life God has prepared for us. We start there. We start with abstinence as faithful witness, and as the norm for guiding our behavior.” The fact that ‘where they start’ is 100% non-biblical? Well, the Bible is full of suggestions . . it’s a guideline . .
In 1960s Harrismith they didn’t get any of the above, sanks goodness. They got Mary Methodist who played the organ beautifully, coached the choir, sang in the choir, served on the Women’s Auxiliary (where women were kept away from any thoughts of usurping the patriarchy), kept us kids in line, or tried to, AND ran a bottle store. Which bottles contained liquor. She did all of these things well, and with love, did my Mom Mary of the Methodist Church and of the Platberg Bottle Store / Drankwinkel.
Do Methodists call for prohibition? Almost. They want “public policy calling for the strict administration of laws regulating the sale and distribution of alcohol.” Give them half a chance and they’ll prohibit, bottle stores will close, and the mafia will have our family’s income stream.
Well, despite their best efforts, if there is a place as boring as heaven, if it’s a good place, and if anyone is going there, Mary Methodist is most definitely at the front of that queue. St Peter won’t even ask to see her ID or her liquor licence. He’ll just wave her right through.
~~oo0oo~~
Here are a few more wafflings about booze by sundry Methodists:
Mostly it boils down to the same old ‘Yes, the Bible is the infallible word of God, BUT . . ‘ that all denominations use for various things.
~~oo0oo~~
Harrismith’s two bottle stores that provided much-needed succour to the grateful townsfolk were the Platberg Drankwinkel and the Horseshoe Drankwinkel. Sister Sheila tells the lovely story of the Aberfeldy farm school where the subject one day was Engels. The teacher asked, ‘Class, who knows the Afrikaans word for horseshoe?‘ And quick as a flash her friend Elsa du Plessis answered “Drankwinkel.”
They’re generous, kind. ‘Hospitable’ doesn’t describe the half of it. What? Tolerant? Long-suffering? OK OK.
Share our home, share our food, you can even share my car. Hang on, the Ford Flammable? Is that not a hostile act?
Anyway, I drove it, donning my asbestos underpants and gloves, and it was a revelation. I didn’t know they made Fords without shakin’, rattlin’ n rollin’;
Or Fords with little TV screens on the dash that say in plain English, “oil change overdue!“ as can be seen in the actual shot of Brauer’s dashboard above. And bespoke unraveling upholstery. No boot space though – full of golf kit and old planks that ‘might come in handy one day.’
Look, it was missing a pedal and an ignition key, but thanks to my mechanical skill, I managed to get it moving. I restarted it numerous times when it stalled till I realised I just couldn’t hear the engine. It has a tiny engine smaller than a pint of milk, whereas mine has three full diesel-filled litres. And I’m used to my diesel operating and grumbling in no uncertain terms. You don’t think, ‘I wonder if this engine is running,’ in my car.
Oh, I needed a loan car cos mine was being studied by automotive engineers and marketers marveling at its 17yr-old wonders. They’re considering relaunching it as a special edition.
