Being Boycie by John Challis

Author:John Challis [Challis, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wigmore Books Ltd
Published: 2011-11-13T23:00:00+00:00

In the New Year, I took a trip out to Stellenbosch, a Dutch colonial town in the Cape, which produces some wonderful white wines. We had been invited out to taste the new champagne in one of the biggest wineries there. Curious as ever and emboldened by the fizz, I wandered off-piste, away from the guided tour and found myself among a bunch of ebullient grape treaders. These men seemed to me to be extraordinarily accepting of the fundamental unfairness of their existence, and I couldn’t help thinking this must have reflected a pragmatism or expediency which they adopted in order not to rock any boats. Once I was discovered chatting away with this jovial crowd, I was very hastily led away from the scene. The chilly reality of the regime was once again inflicting itself on me.

After Christmas, the Mrs Markham tour rolled on to consistently packed houses, by way of Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe. I’d driven up the N1 Road, north from Pretoria with Ian Hamilton in his car, but when we reached the border where a bridge crosses the Great Green Greasy Limpopo at Beitbridge, it was closed for the night. We didn’t have anywhere to stay, so decided to park the car among the vast groves of baobab trees out in the bush and kip in it. We were surrounded by the Marelani Nature Reserve and the noise of insects and other imagined, more predatory beasts kept us awake all night.

We managed to get through the hours of darkness without providing a snack for a hungry lion, and carried on to reach Salisbury the next day.

When we got back to South Africa, I continued to seek out other views and experiences. I met hundreds of people of diverse hues, and encountered dozens of various aspects of the captivating country. Shirley Anne and I got together when our separate itineraries allowed, but I knew intuitively, as my tour was drawing to close, that our relationship couldn’t last beyond it.

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