Kirstenbosch Part One
There is literally no one who loves a Kirstenbosch summer concert more than me… Except maybe every single Woolies branch manager in the greater Cape Town area. And every dressed by Cape Union Mart Capetonian.
That fucking amphitheatre is like a sugar free, dairy free, gluten free, lactose free, ice cream truck. White okes flock to it like the salmon (smoked of course) of Capistrano (to quote Dumb and Dumber).
At 4pm yesterday afternoon I found myself panicked as the tumbleweed rolled through the hummus aisle at Woolies Food Newlands… I was too late… there was one rogue tub, lidless and crusted over.
“Fuck the hummus let’s get out of here!”
“Fuck the hummus let’s get out of here!” I screamed while grabbing the last of the fancy cheese, a stray rye loaf and a bag of those newfangled pop chips. We were going to be late… The ticking in my head was deafening. Now was not the time to wait for Monkey to select which choccy milk he wanted.
The thing you have to know about getting older is, not only do your milkshake cravings escalate, but time-stress is amplified. As each decade passes, the need to arrive at airports early increases incrementally. It means that by the time you’re 90 you’re at the airport a full 24hrs before your flight. Just in case. The same applies to summer concerts. Usually if gates open at 6pm… I’m there at 5pm. However this was Cat Stevens… the pied piper of the over 50s. We had to be ahead of the game.
It was 4pm… we’d missed the window.
Luckily we were obviously ahead of the hippies from Hout Bay and the 40-something parents who had battled to leave little Ava and Sam with the au pair. Monkey and I were OK. We joined the front end of the queue of disgruntled dressed by Cape Union Marters. As a white person queuing is not my favourite thing. However it’s a superb opportunity to build on my ‘Shit that white people love’ list. Yesterday I got to add…
26. Discussing their cholesterol… and how low it is. ‘Ya Trevor my cholesterol is very low… I changed my diet but I tell you it’s the apple cider vinegar… at first it doesn’t taste great… but now I love the stuff. I LOVE it.’
Woah easy there Dave… Save that love for your kids.
27. Introducing friends and family to new line items from Woolies… ‘Aaaaah Beverley these are pop chips… yeah try one they’re new. I know 80% less fat than regular chips and they taste just as good’.
‘Oooo I’m gonna buy these, these are great Sharon…’
28. Repeating over and over again that Cape Town is the most beautiful city in the world, no… the UNIVERSE. So beautiful it makes you forget about queuing. For about a millisecond.
29. Hating on people for pushing in… but muttering and developing new, better strategies for queuing, rather than getting rowdy.
‘We should get numbers at the gates… I mean in the old days we could enter earlier and enjoy our picnics while we waited…’
God forbid you’re so uncouth as to begin eating your picnic in the queue like Monkey did. It’s fine he’s Asian… they don’t know about the subtle art of picnics.
And let me tell you… that Tanja really does know how to pack one helluva picnic. The envy of all her bookclubbers.
Which leads me to 30.
30. Fuck me but white people just love a fancy as fuck picnic. White people will moan about spending money at a restaurant but not an elaborate picnic. There’s no ‘buy a 2l of Jive and share it amongst your friends’ at Kirstenbosch.
‘Oh Hells no Lungani’. If you aint packing some serious cheese, at least one variety of artisanal bread, and the mandatory hummus you’re exiled.
And at this exact moment a flustered woman abandons the queue… hot foots it down the path, sweating…
I can only imagine this was because of the Party Sized Bag of Doritos she was clutching.
‘Fuck man Jessica… did you not get the memo about pop chips?!’
These observations whiled away the time and we found ourselves doing the ‘hurry up and wait’ shuffle for 15 minutes in the hope the ticket gatherers would throw us a bone and open early. Have we learnt nothing?
It was during the frenzy of the eye rolling and sighing that I caught sight of the old bird with the crutches… This would be a spanner.
I said to Monkey, perhaps a little too loudly (one glass of wine (not screw topped you animal!) in), ‘Monkey… if we have to take her out with my waiter’s friend that’s just something we’re gonna have to live with…’ Keith, ‘hey you’re the guy from the queue friend’, snorted and said he would collapse her legs with his baguette and we could run past her on our good legs. Obviously they procured their baguette on Friday… heathens.
After a blurred rush of orderly chaos, Monkey and I found ourselves spread out on our purple sleeping bag, surrounded by the guilt of too expensive for my budget cheese, and plastic Woolies packets.
Shame… Shame… Shame!
No matter… we killed more time by watching all the selfies. Fogies taking selfies… I’m gonna have to warn the Millennials about this.
And then just like that it happened… The oke just walks onto the stage as if he’s no big deal and starts strumming his guitar in that Cat Stevens way… and for a moment I’m so confused and overwhelmed that I feel like I’m in a helluva cheese dream.
While we’re being honest I cried three times. OK I think I did the white girl cry. I was a mess. The thing is with proper musicians is that they have a sound. A guitar in the hands of any other human just wouldn’t develop that Cat Stevens sound. That one key note… more crying.
His band members could play every instrument on the stage. They moved around like kids playing musical chairs. It was alarming and totally fucking cool.
The encore was Morning Has Broken and that Saturday Night song… I barfed out loud but no one could hear me above the swishing of side to side hand clapping and singalong. The bad white dancers fuelled by the enigmatic pop chips.
I still can’t believe they’re 80% less fat.
(Published on Facebook Nov 12 2017)