Letter from Pretoria

Letter from Pretoria

Dear Aunt Hortense,

It was Sunday in Pretoria, Christine had absconded to Cape Town for the weekend and Stelios had a raging temperature the night before. What’s an incompetent and desperate father to do? After administering liberal doses of Calpol and Tonzolyt and ice-cream in that order, his temperature came down to an acceptable 37.4. Seems the doctors today are not so keen as they were in my day to clip out your tonsils with a pair of steel wire cutters.

I’m a very firm believer in the healing properties of ice-cream, especially a combination of chocolate and strawberry favours for children. Ice-cream gets the endorphins going and is cheaper and more pleasant than either sex or exercise. I’ve even coined an Italian phrase for it: “Gelato-therapia”. It happened one day when I walked into my favourite Gelateria, “Ice-Dream” in Hout Bay. Signora Liana, the patronessa immediately filled a cup with Stracciatella, my favourite gelato flavour. She handed over the cup with a broad generous approving smile, brimming with good-natured sincerity and said: “Ecola! here is your usual prescription.” I replied: “Si Signora, e vero! veramente! It is true. When I’m feeling down and need cheering up, I don’t go to shrinks, I don’t go to doctors. I receive gelato-therapia from you.” All it takes is 10 Rands worth of vanilla infused with a gentle hint of lemon and speckled with small pieces of dark chocolate and I’m right as rain again.

After being rudely woken up at 6:30 am by the full blasting sounds of furious midgets and the hysterical screaming of Ratchet Clank 3, Crash Bandicoot and Mega XLR all coming from the kiddies channel on the designated day of rest, I made myself a mug of strong sugared coffee and skulked downstairs to the Jacuzzi where I soaked my sorry balls and weary sleep deprived limbs for two hours. I turned the bubble jets onto full throttle to drown out the cacophony erupting above me. Young Stelios was by then well enough and good enough to at least allow me the pleasure of having a late morning brunch with my pals, fellow pavement philosophers and coffee aficionado’s, Billy and Quinten. We were soon joined by a blonde female doctor sporting very trendy rectangular spectacles, who specialises in female sex therapy and who for professional reasons shall remain nameless. We chose Pappa’s in Hatfield for our mid-morning interlude which despite its Greek sounding name, has if you exclude the feta and halloumi salad, nothing Greek on the menu. By the way what do you call the inner circle of the Greek Cypriot Mafia? The Hallouminati!

It’s a quaint little enclave near the University of Pretoria, in an incongruous locale because it is surrounded by office parks, motor dealers, empty building lots, student digs and petrol stations. The place includes a small castle complete with a tower, turret and battlements. Below the benevolent shadow that it casts, it features a maze of old cobbled inter-leading alleyways that connect a series of small shops selling everything from rare books to old furniture, gifts, assorted hats, Indian Saris, glad rags and children’s toys. The place it seems has evolved over time with an unusual variety of building materials used in each phase and does not come across as ersatz or contrived in any way. It is a pleasant diversion of a place and therefore totally unexpected. Being more human in scale it is also refreshingly different to the sterile and artificially controlled environment of the mammoth shopping malls. It is something you would expect to see more in Cape Town than in the car showroom heartland of Pretoria.

At the core of this unlikely collection of motley buildings lies a pleasant enough sheltered courtyard complete with running water, defiant ducks defending their turf from marauding chickens and upright roosters strutting around in all their red-feathered glory like sergeant-majors on the parade ground. Any place with a cool courtyard shielded from the heat soaked glare of the burning asphalt outside deserves to be supported in my book.

An ageing lone musician perched on a barstool strummed old favourites from the Stones, Clapton and the Beatles on his electric guitar. He wore a black shirt, black Popeye hat and the obligatory dark sun-glasses. His instrumental rendition of these popular and well-loved tunes was rather good and that is where he should have let things stand. His voice however was hoarse and raspy, the result of one Marlboro too many.

The streets of Pretoria although deserted on a Sunday morning, (with people either in church or otherwise nursing a massive hangover after yet another famous Blue Bulls victory at Loftus) are presently lined with Jacaranda trees in full bloom and look simply magnificent.

Ordering food at Pretoria restaurants is a rather unusual and interesting culinary experience. What is clearly stated and printed on the menu is not necessarily what you will get on your plate. It was 10:30am and strangely we could not order from the breakfast menu even though the menu clearly stated that breakfast was served until 11am. The friendly black waiter was a real charmer, all smiles and good-natured bonhomie. Clearly an accomplished linguist, he flashed two rows of flawless brilliant white teeth and addressed us in a succession of English, Afrikaans and incredibly good Greek, which he no doubt picked up working for some Greek boss in a corner café. He politely explained that the establishment did not offer breakfast on Sundays, because the kitchen staff had only just arrived, had not prepped the kitchen properly for breakfast and accordingly were not in a position to crack open eggs, fry them and grill some bacon. We could however have anything else our hearts desired on the encyclopaedic menu, including butternut soup laced with whipped cream in 28 degrees mid-morning heat, a trio of miniature hamburgers all assembled on one plate (one is not enough in Pretoria, you must have three), grilled Falklands calamari tubes served with yellow saffron rice, salmon tartare, bacon, Mozzarella and avocado sandwiches and a biltong salad with a “rich” creamy dressing.

All of them very interesting options for breakfast and you will agree far more complicated to prepare and serve than fried eggs and bacon. In an attempt to stay sane and start the day on a healthy note I ordered a cappuccino, a glass of river juice and a rye sandwich filled with smoked Norwegian salmon, cottage cheese, slivers of cucumber and a hint of Wasabi served with a side salad. A good reasonably low-fat and low GI meal I thought. When it arrived it looked good enough on the plate but on closer inspection I noticed a fairly thick layer of molten Mozzarella cheese oozing from it and cementing it all together. This was clearly not the healthy sounding sandwich described on the menu. I called the waiter over and after running back to the kitchen for further clarification, he very patiently explained that the Mozzarella “was put inside by the kitchen because it was the ‘glue’ that holds the sandwich together!” I politely returned the sandwich, saying that I did not like ‘glue’ in my food and asked for a sandwich without ‘glue’. Strange place I thought.

Pretoria must be the only city in the world where the waiters routinely ask you whether you would like cream or foam in your cappuccino. If I wanted fucking cream in my coffee I’d move to Ireland or to the Austrian Alps, but then it’s definitely not called cappuccino! Also the smoked salmon with cottage cheese on rye sandwich combination works for me and is something that I order quite often when eating out and having a light snack or lunch. A few weeks ago I ordered it at a well known and very popular Pretoria eatery famous for its generous portions. Needless to say it was in a large shopping centre with a drive-in theatre on its roof.
Pretoria is very much like middle-America, don’t mess with their food. Portions have to be huge. Give them “’n groot bord kos” or else! Equally huge SUV’s rule the road especially new monster twin-cab bakkies, the new in colour and politically correct to boot being black. Quality is sacrificed for quantity and size. When my sandwich arrived it was served on a huge oval platter with an impressive looking side salad and to my amazement and bewilderment a monster heap of piping hot chips. Everything in Pretoria I have come to realise is served “wif chips”. That is what gives Pretoria its edge over it’s more fancied rivals like Johannesburg and Cape Town. You get monster 600 gram rump steaks and 1kilogram T-Bones with chips, hamburgers with chips, boerewors with chips, bobotie pancakes with chips and toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches with chips. Even the fruit salad is served with chips!

In this way Pretoria is rather quaint and old-fashioned. It is basic and more honest, even if sometimes bordering on the Neanderthal. It is so much easier to understand what makes the Afrikaner tick compared to the Cape Anglo and this makes life easier, simpler and much more “plesierig”. Ask any black citizen of Pretoria and possibly even country-wide and chances are he’ll take a basic unreconstructed Boerseun any day over a pseudo liberal so called “enlightened” white Anglo. He knows where he stands with an Afrikaner and they understand each other. It’s almost as if God in his wisdom put them on this earth to sort each other out.

After the last few days however I’m going to need a week in a silent retreat because of the extreme noise pollution and cacophony generated by play-stations and the Cartoon Network. I’ll think I’ll also take up a stress-free sport like floating. My son constantly reminds me that we undoubtedly live in the age of the wired and plugged-in generation and we may yet pay the price for being so connected all the time, because in the process of being so connected with every conceivable communications device and gadget we have disconnected from ourselves. How dare we seek private moments, silence and ideas, creative thought and the positive power of day-dreaming? I have no doubt in my mind that the only way to boost ones creativity is to become unplugged or unwired and get rid of TV, internet, email and even the telephone for at least a year. Unrealistic for most of us and drastic, but maybe necessary measures if you want to feed and nurture your creative soul.

And as my good friend Quinten says, there is no greater sight in the world and one that provides an immense sense of peace and pleasure than to watch a bare-foot man, trousers rolled up to the knee, white shirt billowing in the wind, straw hat on his head shielding his tanned face, walking on the watery edge of the beach and whistling through a long blade of grass clenched between his teeth with absolutely no idea of what he is going to do next. That is true wealth.

We don’t need therapy. We need more idle time. We need more time out with friends and loved ones possibly in a simple island setting. Sharing basic food, water, coffee and wine and long conversations into the night, with no agenda, no mad rush for enforced efficiency, only the aimless pursuit of pleasure and the time and willingness to let go and indulge our natural laziness without guilt. All we need to master is the art of doing nothing purposefully. Our quest for speed and efficiency is not only killing us physically but more ominously it is killing our souls.

As the great Joseph Campbell put it “Sacred space, sacred time and something joyous to do. That is all we need.”

Yours truly
Costas Ayiotis
Pretoria
17 October 2005