{"id":323,"date":"2011-04-17T18:23:48","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T16:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=323"},"modified":"2011-04-18T21:48:44","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T19:48:44","slug":"a-social-whirl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/?p=323","title":{"rendered":"A Social Whirl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday 16th<\/sup> April<\/p>\n

\"Hemel<\/a>

A glimpse of a brooding Hemel en Aarde Valley<\/p><\/div>\n

I had a lunch date with our good friend Penny Charteris, now enjoying a very busy retirement in Onrusrivier – or just Onrus, as it is now officially called. Just as I was about to leave, Jeffrey appeared, a little wobbly, saying he would like a lift to go and visit relatives in Hermanus. I tried to convince him that a good nap would be a better idea, but he was determined, so we set off on the dusty mountain pass to Hermanus. Although I was not in a hurry and taking an easy drive, Jeffrey found the ups and downs, twists and turns and the rutted surface a little trying, shall we say. He clutched at his safety-belt all the way, murmuring plaintively \u201cSjoe! Meneer! Die pad is maar sleg!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I dropped him off on the main road along the coast and went off to a very pleasant light lunch and easy conversation with Penny in an unpretentious restaurant in Hermanus.<\/p>\n

Penny was preparing for a trip to Cape Town, so after doing some essential shopping I set out for Tesselaarsdal reasonably early. The weather was “coastal”, with glowering clouds and rain spattering down on the tarred roads. I stopped along the pass to snap a few photographs on my cell-phone, one of which is the header picture on this entry and gives some idea of the threatening storm.\u00a0 By the time I’d left Shaw’s Pass to tackle the sand road into our valley, the skies had cleared and there was not a hint of rain in our part of the world.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t seen Poenie yet this trip, so I took a chance and turned in at his farm against the road near Solitaire, since his front door was open. Poenie is the delightful Estate Agent who sold us Boggy Pond, and he is I think well on the way to becoming a good friend. He divides his time between doing scientific report-writing for Agricultural chemical companies, making and selling concrete breeze-blocks locally, selling farms throughout the Western Cape, and dabbling in oil-painting, when he isn\u2019t exploring the back-roads on his BMW touring motorcycle.<\/p>\n

Poenie was throwing together a pizza to munch while watching Rugby on TV, so I got a warm welcome, a glass of red wine, and a whole Pizza a la Poenie<\/em>.<\/p>\n

His son works as a Best Boy in the movie business in Cape Town, so the conversation rambled from there to all points of the mental compass. At some point Poenie – knowing that I\u2019m an occasional whisky-drinker – broke open a new bottle of Chivas Regal… I\u2019m no Whisky snob, but Chivas is one of the brands that I am rather partial to.<\/p>\n

We were in fact rather restrained, doing only a Gentlemanly amount of damage to his bottle, just enough to lubricate a most enjoyable conversation during which we got to know a little more about each other. As soon as Boggy Mansion is liveable, Poenie is definitely on the guest list… I don\u2019t know what the meal will be, but I\u2019ll share a bottle of Chivas with Poenie any time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday 16th April I had a lunch date with our good friend Penny Charteris, now enjoying a very busy retirement in Onrusrivier – or just Onrus, as it is now officially called. Just as I was about to leave, Jeffrey … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digbyyoung.co.za\/boggy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}