OYSTERHOOD is reclusiveness or solitude, or an overwhelming desire to stay at home.
What a great weekend!
It started off with a few hours of work on Saturday morning and, to be honest, the work should have continued around our social engagements but, in the end, the fun took over and it was just great.
On Saturday, we met friends for lunch who, due to serious health concerns, had been in self-imposed lockdown level five until they could get fully vaccinated. This was their first outing to Cape Town since March last year! And we made the most of it. A feast at FYN and post-feast drinks at Culture Wine Bar.
There were two literary wines involved in the afternoon, one from the UK (!), the other from France.
The Jane Eyre was a gift that I brought home with me that evening and it will be waiting to be opened for a special occasion. Not too long, it seems … there are so many reasons to celebrate, especially after this weekend!
When I finally fell into bed on Saturday evening, my heart was filled with gladness – that our friends made it through the madness of hard lockdown for one and a half years, and that they are now safe enough to go out of their house and celebrate life and friendship with us.
And if I hadn’t know it already, the fact how precious all of this is would have been brought home to me on Sunday morning when I briefly met with a friend at the Baxter for the Christmas market and she told me about one of her friends who has been fighting for his life due to COVID-19 in ICU for the past three months. It was good to see my friend, but so sad to think that this is still happening all over the world despite lockdown and vaccination efforts.
Sunday lunch was with new friends on a farm in the stunning Banhoek Valley. For someone who usually does not drink white wine, I enjoyed myself tremendously throughout the afternoon. The company was amazing and the wines a beautiful surprise. I might turn out to be a white wine drinker after all …
And because we hadn’t had enough fun yet, in the evening we went to the Alma Café to hear Derek Gripper perform magic on his guitar. He is a genius. To listen to him play is a spiritual experience. And there was Retha’s lemon meringue pie … Bliss.
During the first half of the show, though, I was also trying to watch with one eye on my phone the live feed, on silent, of the SALA ceremony, so I did not really know what was going on, but eventually the fantastic news reached me that Karen Jenning won the K. Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for her An Island. Is there a better way to end a weekend?
And we are reprinting the book again! It will need a new sticker …
Be kind. Wear a mask. Support local. Get vaccinated, please.
“Physical distancing remains one of the key strategies to curb this pandemic.”
— NICD
Karina Magdalena 