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The first couple of weeks of December used to be known as silly season. This is no longer the case because these days a single thought or action which takes any form of what was previously regarded as silliness results in immediate cancellation by powerful algorithms armed with artificial intelligence, followed by a ruthless rubbing out on all fronts and across most perspectives.

Holidays have assumed the place of hangovers in discussions around water coolers around the country at this time of the year – now that employees have been corralled back into the office for three days a week.

Generation Z take holidays seriously. Unlike their grandparents, Z’s aren’t driven by acquiring possessions for the sake of ownership. They prefer the subscription model. Their lucre is spent on experiences that enhance their lives. They receive dopamine hits by showing sugar-coated images of these experiences on social media and then waiting anxiously for their friends to like them.

This should be applauded and even considered evolutionary given that most forms of religion have now confirmed that you can’t take your Porsche into the next life despite the possessions that the ancient Egyptians considered necessary to accompany Tutankhamun to the everlasting. This holiday spirit is heightened by the steady arrival of foreign tourists in Cape Town.

They swarm down the ramps of ocean liners and pour down the escalators in our airports like branded ants armed with hard currency and wrapped in Ray-Bans. Broad smiles are plastered across what remains of a hospitality industry reeling after the years of Covid drought.

It is not often that genuine value can be found these days, but the looks of disbelief on tiddly tourists examining restaurant bills behind tables laden with empty wine bottles and the remains of seafood platters suggest customers who were expecting more zeros on the end. Hearing whoops of delight floating out of restaurants from customers, waitrons, and owners alike in a rare collective alignment of interest, is now not uncommon.

Most Capetonians leave town for the holidays. They must because they have rented their houses out to foreigners who prefer self-catering alternatives. It is a sensible way of funding aspirational holidays for a populace more inclined to walk on the mountain than burn the midnight oil to complete a piece of work that can easily be done tomorrow or even next week when the planets are more favourably aligned towards industry.

Their holiday destinations are often determined by several factors including their seniority in the family trust structure, how long ago they moved down from Jo-burg, and how seriously they take the business of social elevation. It is here that teenage kids have become a powerful force in determining likely destinations.

Apparently, their proximity to fun and like-minded teens has become relevant for parents who prefer not to hear the dreaded “I am bored” too often. Skiing is a popular choice among those for whom money has ceased being a problem, or those wanting others to believe that they fall into this camp.

I have been skiing a couple of times. Before I had children and before I discovered that boarding an open chair lift between two peaks with a combination of a bang babbalas, vertigo, and general anxiety was a dreadful mix. I remember the terror being so intense that I considered leaping from the lift just to make it stop. Then I considered how painful the broken bones would be, and I managed to last out the journey by closing my eyes and pretending I was having a cup of tea with my gran on terra firma.

People argue that skiing holidays can still be fun even if you don’t ski. This doesn’t make sense. Apres-ski can hardly be enjoyed with the same enthusiasm if you haven’t come from the slopes dusted in snow and laced with adrenalin. Adventurous types who thrive on danger are unlikely to favour interacting with a chap who spent his day reading Dostoyevsky after a super circuit in the hotel gym, and for whom taking the lift to the bar represented a significant psychological challenge.

Others would argue that the joy experienced by one’s children at an all-inclusive Club Med-style resort, and the resultant freedoms this offers to parents, is enough incentive to stump up the two hundred big ones required to fund such an excursion.

But fathers are supposed to be hero figures. So how would I convince my children that I remained a hero despite lacking the courage required to master a green slope? In a word, Plett.

Plettenberg Bay remains a popular December holiday destination for South Africans. It’s difficult to argue with its geographical situation. Fine weather, distant blue mountains, surrounding wilderness, warm seas and good waves compose a complete vista despite the visceral threat of the sharks in the sea and on the beach.

Three hundred CEO’s can’t be wrong about this place. It is an ideal destination for those for whom winding down is a more relative concept. And the cycling terrain is unrivalled.

Schedules are usually drawn up by executive assistants months in advance – shortly after the leases on the largest available mansion on Robberg have been secured. The drivers are sent down in high-powered 4x4s packed to the rafters with a range of bicycles, golf clubs, boxes of colour-coordinated padel outfits, and of course, corporate-branded spandex cycling kits.

Cooks are hired and barmen’s services are enlisted for drinks parties. Days begin at dawn with an excruciating cycle. The schedule calls for coffee afterwards, still in the designer spandex, at a central location selected to optimize the number of eyes on one’s bulbous spandex-encased groin.

Next on the agenda is beach time, where you can pretend to read the latest self-help book while scanning the surf for networking opportunities, or someone to complete your fourball in the afternoon.

On the white sands of Plett, R&R stands for rack and rig rather than rest and relaxation. It is vital in this ruthless environment to look the business and exhibit maximum virility by displaying the type of discipline required to simultaneously starve oneself and spend at least a dozen hours a week exercising. These are the types of skills that were instilled decades ago at university, and then at sweatshops masking as accountancy practices.

Anyone who has attempted auditing will recognize that it requires levels of similar self-loathing as that displayed by the Flagellants who believed that flogging themselves was an act of self-sacrifice to gain favour with God. Those readers grasping for the links between accountants and CEOs should really be spending more time reading the business pages.

As in the world of business, any lengths are taken to achieve the ideal look. Plastic surgery is encouraged, although the results occasionally turn out to look more like taxidermy. Less invasive forms of improvement should be considered more.

There is also a growing band of disciples injecting themselves with medicines designed for diabetics which have the fortunate side effect of informing the brain that the body no longer requires fuel. Occasionally days will be spent at Kurland watching Polo as well as attractive future husbands or wives who currently belong to others.

Six o’clock is for donning white slacks and Gucci loafers for a drinks party where discussion will be limited to one of the following: last week’s ski trip, how much rent you paid to occupy someone else’s mansion for this holiday, ROE, AUM, S&M, or AI. Please no mention of IOUs.

Somehow padel is squeezed in between for those clients not talented enough to play golf, or who have grown bored with cycling (particularly the numbing effect it has on perinea). Surfing, hikes in the wilderness, scuba diving or anything resembling fun is frowned upon.

The drugs of choice are uppers – things to make humans operate faster and more efficiently. Dealers in the area informed me that Ritalin is in high demand, and obviously, cocaine remains popular. Some of the old school even still dabble with speed. Marijuana in any form, even gummies, which despite their ease of ingestion, are shunned, primarily for their calming qualities.

St Francis has become popular lately. The canals offer the ideal opportunity to show off the powerful cruiser that is used a week a year. The canals also provide those who live cheek-by-jowl the opportunity to observe the boating fraternity, and each other, in close proximity.

The golf courses are excellent, although if you can get around them in less than one hundred shots in the tempest that is usually whipping across the fairways, you would be more profitably advised to spend your time on the Sunshine Tour.

I also like the town council’s insistence on a common architectural style. This avoids the usual mishmash of styles that one finds in less well-heeled beach towns.

One can expect to find teenagers staggering around the streets in the early mornings. They will usually be barefooted, festooned in leather necklaces and clutching a pap sak or a half-full bottle of Old Brown Sherry. Expect the teenage children of a friend to contact you if you are in St Francis for the December holidays – for a couch to sleep on, free booze or food. Who knows how long they will stay?

The fishing is good here for those who can be bothered or are not using their boats for cruising the canals.

Hermanus is popular with folks whose elderly parents still have a house there. Most of these haven’t realized that it has become a large retirement village occupied by grumpy retirees who secretly hark back to the comforts of the old South Africa, when life was so much simpler for them.

The sea is freezing and ripping with life-threatening swells and currents. I don’t think an amateur fisherman has caught anything other than COVID-19 here for a decade. The golf course is excellent and the Hemel n Aarde offers fine wines and hidden gastronomic gems. It has a few Woolworths, a Nando’s, and prefabricated sushi – if these things are important to you.

The riots have rendered Kwa-Zulu Natal unvisitable other than those who actively seek danger. Besides, it rains there every day in December. Rather just skip the province altogether in summer.

By this stage, you may be asking where you should be spending your rest time. I would recommend the places no-one mentions. They are usually the choice spots that sensible and unobtrusive Capetonians have reserved for themselves. Quiet places bereft of GP number plates and barefoot farmers and bakkies. Places you can spend time getting to know your own children and your own partner over games of cards. Where you get the cricket score from the radio, and where you can still source your seafood from the sea.

You won’t find these places on social media. Anyone with sense enough to spend their holidays at a place like this doesn’t need to put it on social media. They recognize the dangers and are getting enough sustenance from nature, the sea, and the quiet and wholesale integration with their families and themselves.

Those who frequent the real gems know how to keep a secret. True wealth whispers.