brewery and union

saturday was my last wedding of the year.

a year with four weddings, in different places, all over the country.

from the foothills of the outeniqua mountains to the northern kwazulu natal coast, and from my own garden to the lawns of a small town brewery.

in view of an overberg mountain range.

this wedding, which wed my special cousin deborah to special man kyle, was held in the white-painted interior of the birkenhead brewery in stanford, a town just twenty minutes outside of the western cape whale-watching hot spot of hermanus.

where in front of an doorway looking onto windy lawns and green, folded cape mountains, deborah and kyle said their vows, in front of a room full of standing friends and family.

including the bridesmaids in duck egg blue, cousin boon and peewhe too.

and aunty fronk the wedding organiser, the mastermind behind the event, smiling and beaming in pastel grey.

with more guests overlooking from the various levels of the tiered silver brewery tank balcony railings.

the walls were lined with bent metal hearts, interspersed with down-hanging plant and herb posies, tied together with string.

the tables were lined with bouquets in our grandfathers collection of metal mugs, prizes from his extended golfing career, with stuffed black and white gingham hearts hanging from the chandeliers above.

and, on the red carpet that brought in my dearest deborah cousin and entourage, the happy couple walked out on too post-vows, and were traditionally thrown, scattered and covered with hand-grabbed clumps of pink, tiny fynbos buds.

some of which got lost in her beautifully embroidered boob-tube champagne-coloured dress, with a trim of the exact same floral pattern as on the invitations and save the date magnet.

something that stuck to the front of my fridge for a while. reminding me of their upcoming union, a day i knew would happen at the end of the year, but didn't think would come so soon.

a day when all the family would be together, including peewhe and gr-hant from perthfontein, and all of deborah and kyle's friends, from all over the country, and the world.

a day when people would dance to everything from the talking heads to flo-rider, when siblings would cut their hands on loosely held rogue glasses while busting out moves, and spend an hour on a couch being healed/revived by a re-energizing machine, that kind of looked like a calculator/air-con remote.

a day when our immediate family would chase down the waitresses holding the tray of brie and pistachio wontons with sweet chilli dip.

to the extent that she actually came around from the other side of the building to feed us.

at our request.

a day of kyle and debz tying the knot, after being lost and found.

ten years after a post-school romance.

and even though i drank glass after glass of the resident honey blonde birkenhead brew, and ate an entire plate full of juicy tender, medium rare steak and asparagus, i still had the energy to dance until 1.30am.

after hours of breaking it down in my brother russell's suit jacket, dodging offers of shots, putting on transfer tattoos of butterflies and wearing plastic silver stick-on bindis and glow-in-the-dark put-together glasses.

after watching while a blown up weather balloon took out a few glasses on one of the tables at sunset, and rolled down the hill towards the mountain range in the consistent wind.

which died down later as the sun set, feet became sore in wedge sandals and it was eventually time to leave behind the dance floor die-hards, and drive across the highway to our rented house.

me being the only sober-ish sibling.

and as i left, and took my gift succulent pot home with me, i made sure i held it upright, and kept the stones from falling out.

with full intention of loving it, and making it grow.

like kyle suggested in his groom's speech.

and while walking out with wedge-height heel-up damaged feet, i was honoured to have shared the day with them.

to have tried to fight back the tears during the speeches, laughed at the microphone-loud speech jokes, and to have felt an even deeper appreciation for my gregarious cousin.

and her assemblage of hilariously flowermill place-card named guests, from jen-ket to pearlarator, to uncle cigarette.

but mostly i was just happy that at the last of my weddings to attend for the year, that another one of my family members could be so loved.

and in love.

rollin' back

i used to think there was nothing much to do in dullstroom.

besides fly-fishing.

or eating.

harries pancakes and homemade mom-food, inside, away from the temperamental sub-alpine climate.

but on sunday, when i went there for a two day getaway, without mom but with cooler box mom-food, i realized there was so much that i'd missed out on doing in the town before.

like the groot suikerboskop hike, with ground growing white, pink-tinged spiky pincushion-looking flowers hiding between rocks and the burnt, soon to regenerate wild woody-stemmed proteas around the summit.

or the mistiness that overflowed in windy cascading-ness, surrounding our stone house to the extent that we could hardly see past the garden shrubs.

and could only barely make out the silhouettes of the distant, tall and exotic pine trees.

before, i'd only visited our dullstroom share house in winter, and maybe once in the summer. but then i just remember it being too hot, and not doing much else except vegging, eating, sleeping and reading, in both summer warm and winter dry, scratchy grass conditions.

but not on this just-past two day getaway.

by the end of the first full day we'd already gone for our first mission, and walked in the mist along the railway line to the town, passing furry stems of orange poppies, pink tumbleweed wild flowers and the craaaak of well-hidden marsh frogs.

and when the misty fog turned to stormy rain we took shelter in the old transvaal inn bookshop, sharing a metre long strip of twisted liquorice from the wooden floored cove of the interior bert's sweets.

while pulling, ripping and chewing the inside-brown shiny black soft-sweet tubes we also occupied ourselves with other black things, like the assorted arrangement of sitting and stretching toy cats, and rearing, ready-to-kick toy horses.

only within the store, as they were 15 rand.

each.

after that we went cheese tasting at bergen's, after reading about it in the bland but informative folded-up dullstroom information booklet.

we tried soft curd cheese and bought some, and stabbed toothpicks into blocks of cheddar, gouda, marinated feta and wensleydale.

all made in a craft cheese factory in the unfortunately-named nearby town of tonteldoos.

after cheese tasting we then ate more variations of cheese, and stabbed more of it with toothpicks, along with three kinds of german wurst and a pint of india pale ale at the anvil ale house micro brewery just a few strides across from the enclosed critchley hackle estate.

and, after walking out with more india pale ale to go with our soft curd cheese, we eventually retired to a christmas bed mattress by the fireside.

which was regularly loaded up with neatly chopped sections of POP-crash-crackle wood, fuel-burnt super quickly by countless additions of newspaper and kindling.

(sadly, we only found the firelighters in the kitchen drawer before we left)

the next day, after 11 hours of sleep, we climbed the groot suikerboskop and explored overgrown car routes in the dullstroom nature reserve, and were almost crushed by a falling chainsaw-felled gum tree, which crackled, eeeeeee-aaah'd and crashed on the ground, just after i'd run away clutching my head.

making some kind of aaaah-ooo-aaah noise myself.

after that we took a walk along the old wooden sleepers of the highest train station in the country, at an altitude of 2070m above sea level, and placed two coins on the track before a serendipitous bllaaaaaaaaah-honk blaring train came past.

chuka-chuka-chuka-chuuuuuaaaaah.

and flattened the 20c and 5c into perfectly flat oblongs.

and just as we were about to leave, as we washed the last mug, and found the firelighters hiding underneath a mass of crunched black-plastic bags in the above-dustbin drawer, i felt a bit sad that we were leaving.

but as we closed all the curtains and upstairs windows, made sure the doors were locked and pulled the roll top door down and locked it, i felt that at least we'd managed to do so much, in only two days.

things i'd never done before, even though i've been visiting dullstroom almost annually since 1994.

for most of those fifteen years, in the back of my mind, i always wondered if there was more to the town than a yearly increase of differently designed restaurants and gift shops on the main road.

more to the town than its collection of clocks (the largest in the southern hemisphere).

or its prized pannekoek-huis.

but finally, with only two days worth of time, i had done so much more there than i ever thought i would.

even though we missed the anglo-boer war blockhouse on the eastern side of the kop.

and didn't eat at fibs.

but all that we did do just confirmed for me, that no matter how overdone, kitsch or useless i've perceived this weekend town to be in the past, it's actually only been as interesting as i've wanted it to be.

thumb click

moustaches are eccentric, and nowadays fairly uncommon facial hair additions.

lonely, sub-nose tatters of unbrushed hair, often dry, unkempt, dirty and scratchy.

or accompanied with beards, in varying degrees of untamedness.

usually the moustache is relegated to off-work no-shave periods, most men preferring to keep clean-shaven to confirm to corporate cleanliness.

unless you're my dad of course, who has fastidiously maintained his signature snor since his misleadlingy non-piloting days of the air force.

many years before he met my mother.

and long before i learnt to not know him without it.

i think seeing him with no moustachio would violate over 24 years of accumulated physical identification, and even though it has evolved from black magnum to grey walrus, his key facial feature does more than "underline importance" as he says, but is now an essential component of his personality.

but other men, without fear of being called "leather-lip", only grow their facial hair on select occasions, like during the month of november, otherwise known to charitable males as "movember".

like my brother jamie did these last four weeks, with continuous updates on the south african movember facebook page.

after four weeks of itchiness and no shaving, and assuring women that it would soon be gone, his 'tache reached cowboy-style and almost handle bar proportions, with a strange collection of bristling blonde hairs.

but apart from being a rolling joke and a reason to post bizarre photos of twirling waxed beards and ron burgundy on his group page, movember was actually more of a personal outreach initiative than i expected.

something i realized today when i went with him to hand over his make-shift plastic cheque.

to a lady named ilana friedman from magical moments, a charity that contributes to the welfare and happiness of underprivileged, neglected and abused children in the greater johannesburg area.

including nomzamo day care, which we visited this afternoon in alexandra, on the other side of the highway from the high-rises and 5-star hotels of sandton.

in this historically segregated area, only a few kilometres away from R60 restaurant sandwiches, toddlers don't even have access to public parks to play in.

or green areas in which to learn, laugh and develop their gross motor skills.

and as we drove through a sandy, mostly- mud bricked neighbourhood of "alex", directed by the resident care-giver rosalina, i was humbled by the discrepancy between life on this side of the M1, and the fact that i'd never given it a second thought when making my way through traffic.

but when we walked into the corrugated-iron day care house, to a room of over forty smiling children decorated in colourful cardboard, i felt happy that i'd been given the opportunity to experience life in a completely different space.

and to see the appreciation of my brother's donation so gratefully received, even though he was a tall stranger wearing a carefully cultivated top-lip frank zappa, who even gave one of the kids in the crowd his sunglasses to wear.

and to hear the sing-song "thank you... (*clap* *clap*) very much (*clap* *clap*)" chant from a group of kids we'd never even seen before, and to attempt afterwards to click their eager little fingers with a mutual thumb clicking handshake-thing while saying "shap!"

it was difficult to perfect the click noise with such tiny digits, but their enthusiasm was so moving, and while surrounded by their energetic and insistent bustling to get in line for finger snaps, i had to fight back the tears.

it's amazing to think that jamie only had to look ridiculous for a month to create such a positive outcome.

and that by just allowing his facial hair to grow naturally, with very little effort, that he could encourage such generosity.

but mostly, it was so inspiring to connect with such selfless people, and such beaming toddlers, even if it was only for a short handover and photo-shoot.

and only enough time for a quick succession of bent-over thumb-clicks.