Country Encounters

By Robert Milne

As a youngster I was fortunate enough to sometimes spend the winter holidays with family in the Karoo, either in the small town or out on the farm at the foot of the majestic Swartberg Mountains. In those days life moved in a different way, without the distractions of TV or IT and of an evening round the fireside or the kitchen table, one of the main pastimes was story-telling. From this early beginning I developed a love for the subtle art of relating a good story and a passion to one day contribute in some way. I have since over the years told many a tale myself round the fireside, leading eventually to my writing of short stories, some of which are contained in this volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Milne
• Release date: Mar 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005006341

Book preview

Country

Encounters

Collected Short Stories

ROBERT MILNE

Copyright © 2021 Robert Milne

Published by Robert Milne Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Robert Milne using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Tracy Beunk for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.org

E-mail: [e-mail]

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contents

Muscadel Memories

Cooking in the Clouds

It’s Still Monday

Dehydrated Water

Coastal Capers

Catfish Canyon

Equator Island

Cederberg Sojourns

Overberg Odyssey

Misty Mountains

Author’s Note

Muscadel Memories

Some years back I was privileged to be part of a group of friends, aka The Crowd that liked nothing better than to get out of town on the weekend, or at any opportunity in fact, to make the most of our great South African countryside and all that it offers.

Living in Cape Town, one is especially spoilt for choice. We have so much natural diversity nearby, which includes winelands, mountains, nature reserves, forests, the Karoo region, rivers, and two very different coastlines.

The crowd had coalesced over a number of years from purely social acquaintances and other more energetic souls that were into running or hiking. All, however, had one thing in common – a love of nature and enjoying what life has to offer, whether through physical activity or just good food and drink, in a great country venue, with convivial companions.

Thankfully, there was one among us who was not only practically inclined, but also realised that these things don’t just happen on their own, and was more than happy to kick-start the process by arranging on a weekend, early in the new year, for the crowd to meet at a wine farm not far out of the city limits. There we would while away the afternoon in the glorious winelands scenery, enjoying the excellent picnic lunches available and sipping the rather palatable estate wines on offer, while we consulted our diaries and planned our excursions for the year.

The format was very simple. There are twelve months in the year and there were twelve core members in our group. Each person would pick a month in which to organise an out-of-town excursion for the rest of us.

Whenever possible, this would be linked to annual or seasonal events or festivals. Thus, November might find us whale-watching in a nearby coastal town, up the West Coast for the wild flower festival in spring, and in some cosy farmhouse in the mountains on a winter weekend. As some of us were runners, we would include some weekends at races in a country town, where there was guaranteed to be an accompanying festival involving the entire population. For the hikers in the group we also included the odd weekend hike and in addition to the other excursions, we also tried to include an annual longer four- or five-day hike.

After a while, the organisation of the weekends became quite slick. The organiser would confirm who was going and book the accommodation or vice versa. The twelve, core people would usually be there, but quite often additional people joined us, depending on the accommodation. When we went to the Cederberg Mountains for instance, we often booked a hikers hut that although a bit rustic and basic, could sleep well over twenty people, so our additional friends, affectionally referred to as rent a crowd, could be included.

Friday nights were usually a bring and braai, with the organiser arranging the fire, and the rest of us self-catering. Saturday morning and lunchtime was similarly self-catering and for Saturday night the organiser would lay on dinner or book a local inexpensive restaurant. Sunday was usually a big communal fry-up brunch, on a couple of gas braais, with everyone pitching in.

The beauty of the whole arrangement was that not only did we get to enjoy a great picnic lunch in the winelands discussing the fun and games for the year, but the result was that you only had to organise once, while enjoying a different outing every month. Most of us had a few favourite haunts which we wanted to visit anyway with a good group of friends. None of this broke the bank, as we usually self-catered at one of the wonderful venues and farm houses for hire, within a couple of hours drive from Cape Town. The different organiser each time approach not only created variety but also spread the word of mouth referral net, far wider and we got to hear of places we would not have, if organising solo.

One of the first country towns I visited with part of the crowd, was a small town along the R62 a few hours’ drive from Cape Town. We chose this venue because the town was holding its annual muscadel festival. For the uninitiated, muscadel refers to wine, usually fortified, and very sweet. It is reminiscent of liquid raisins, and made from the muscat or hanepoot grape. The town festival was a celebration of this wine and its local producers. The festival included most of the local vineyards, wineries, and co-operatives and besides muscadel, also focused on locally produced dessert wines, such as hanepoot, port, and late-harvest wines, also collectively known as soetes.

We arrived late Friday afternoon and checked in to our accommodation, which on this occasion was a very comfortable small country inn come Pension. We then rapidly repaired with a cold beverage to the small swimming pool in the hotel grounds, as although in theory it was early spring, it was one of those typical very warm Karoo days, with not a cloud in the sky, although it could still get rather chilly once the sun had set. We later enjoyed an excellent country hotel style dinner of generous proportions and good value for money. I especially fondly recall the warthog pie. Coffee and, of course, muscadel and port were thereafter served in the lounge and it was here that we met our rather eccentric proprietor.

The inn was furnished with some unusual pieces of antique furniture and decorated with a number of similarly antiquated pieces of equipment. Some were of a truly strange nature which our host was quick to display and rather keen to demonstrate. They mostly seemed to be old medical equipment bordering on quackery and involved electrical stimulation of various parts of the body, which seemed to overly interest some of the other guests. Having consumed our coffee and muscadel, we were able to beat a hasty retreat but not before we were advised by our host to try the local hot baths before retiring to bed. He said they were most relaxing, especially if one had a partner with whom one could share a dark corner of the large and convoluted communal pool, while watching other couples doing the same. Right.

Needless to say, curiosity won, and admittedly, the warm mineral water was most therapeutic. True to his word, as we were leaving, one of our party duly spotted our host and his wife, lurking in a dim corner of the pool. What an interesting night, I thought, checking the room for false mirrors before drifting off to sleep in the very large, comfortable four-poster bed.

Next morning heralded the start of another stunning Karoo day and we wandered round the historical town bedecked in its festival finery, finally ending up at the festival focal point, the local Agricultural Showgrounds. Here we were treated to numerous stalls selling country fare, local produce, and knick-knacks. The highlight of the festivities included a display of marching and drilling by the female military college, situated in a small town further up the coast. The tug of war was the main sporting event, with the host town competing against teams from nearby towns, amid much yelling and encouragement from the locals. Fortunately, or cleverly, the host town was victorious so all was conviviality.

By this stage we were getting a bit thirsty, having sampled far too much of the local pastries and confectionary. We spotted what we thought was a beer tent, and headed that way.

It turned out to be an area cordoned off with hessian fencing, very like a beer garden, with tables and chairs scattered about for the convenience of the patrons. The refreshment, however, was of limited choice, though not of limited quantity, being muscadel or port, red or white, sold by the bottle at a very reasonable price. We hesitated initially, as it was still early afternoon but then decided, when in Rome.

We acquired a bottle of rather pleasant port and retired to a quiet, shady corner of this fortified wine garden. As we sat there, we soon realised that most of the town’s residents had also repaired to this recreational area and being pretty thirsty themselves, many of them were getting rather inebriated. Some of them had obviously started sampling the liquid refreshment quite early in the day.

One fellow in particular caught my eye. A rather large and very fat local farmer’s son, surrounded by several of his cronies. He was reclining in one of the heavy, large wrought-iron garden chairs, quenching his thirst with both red and white muscadel, alternating from a bottle in each hand. When I say he was big and overweight, I mean it. He was dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, long socks, and boots. He had a considerable stomach sticking out of his T-shirt and overhanging his shorts to quite some degree and to my surprise, seemed to have a similar paunch flowing from his sides and lower back, overhanging the rear of his shorts as well. All this supported by two massive fat legs protruding from said shorts and further down squeezed into his socks and huge farmer boots. He seemed to be having a raucous great time with his cronies, and was rapidly depleting his two bottles of refreshment.

Unfortunately, however, at one point he leaned over a bit too enthusiastically while gesticulating to one of his mates and tipped himself out of his chair – no easy feat given its sturdiness – and landed in the fine Karoo dust that was the floor of the wine garden, covered in sticky fortified wine, with the chair somehow balanced on top of him.

He let out a great bellow and his rolling around succeeded in dislodging the chair but also covered him in dust as it adhered to the sticky sweet wine he had spilt all over himself. This resulted in much loud swearing from himself and even greater hilarity, but no assistance, from his fellows. Eventually he seemed to run out of patience and solved his predicament, by letting go of one bottle and with a ham-like hand, flicked the pesky iron chair sending it sailing through the air and straight through the hessian wall of the enclosure.

This brought a rapid end to his cronies’ mirth and on his command they propped him up in the dust against a tree, so that he was able to continue enjoying what was