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Christmas lunch went well this year. We dined on oysters, turkey and ham and took luxuriant pleasure in wine. At some point, someone passed around some gummies. Carols were sung and stirring speeches were made in a variety of accents. But things began to veer towards the bizarre when Secret Santa started.

We had adopted our usual Christian policy of inviting those who had no-one else to share the day with. Bert Trappler and his mother joined us this year. Bert is an elderly bachelor who defines conservative and is the head of the Salvation Army brass band. His mother is the daughter of a verkrampte Dominee from Pretoria. It is rumoured that her father performed a sinister role in the previous regime. Our friends from Noordhoek had macro dosed before buying the Secret Santa gifts and Bert’s mum received a Vigazzler kit for encrusting one’s vagina with semi-precious jewels while Bert received a powerful vibrator which required a kick start. Neither put their gifts back into the pot.

Lunch ended late in the evening. Bert howled at the moon and swam naked. His mother roared like a lion. Repeatedly, until the police arrived.

We left for our second tranche of holidays shortly after Christmas. I can’t reveal the name of the place where we are because there are enough people here already and I will be excommunicated by the locals if I expose its location.

Wealth whispers on the dirt roads here. We are wary of annoying them. The true rich are not wholeheartedly in the business of sharing. This hamlet has a particular set of bylaws designed by a benevolent town council that, among other things, ban boasting on Instagram and driving to the beach. Everyone is required to walk and swim in the sea at least once a day. The town is possessed of an architectural style.

 

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Last year the weather was glorious here. We basked in a peculiarly temperate microclimate in Grecian scenes and left after a week, tanned and satisfied. The seawater was translucent, warm and a palette of blues stretching to the horizon ranging from turquoise to navy. The mood was free and loose. Industrial levels of unwinding took place in the sun.

This year the weather has presented as a relentless combination of wind and rain. The sea has been grey and foreboding. It has been so bad that people visiting from Hermanus have boasted about their climate. Bikinis and kaftans bought specifically for the holidays have remained in musty cupboards. Pleasing results from diets and new workout regimes are hidden under hoodies. The fishermen have only caught sharks.

The mood is tense. This is understandable from a geopolitical perspective as the threat of nuclear war has re-emerged. Did people need to watch Oppenheimer to remember that it existed, or has there been a genuine shift in the alignment of dangerous thumbs towards red buttons?

Our own elections loom in the coming months. But any minority who takes itself seriously while relying on a leaderless political strategy as optimistically named as moonshot deserves the resultant anxiety.

Children and teenagers locked in a confined space for days without Wi-Fi is an obvious problem. You may as well cut off their oxygen supply. It is at these times that I wonder why we insist on leaving our comfortable and spacious homes for the holidays for a 70 square meter cottage adorned with nautical décor and lacking any credible defences against load shedding. The threat of Madness and a few month’s break in Valkenberg looms when it is 2 pm, you have been for a walk in the rain and neither rummy, Pictionary, painting nor puzzles have distracted them, and the result is a series of shrieking meltdowns.

This sort of weather didn’t present a problem before you had kids. You could spend the afternoon in bed, reading or relaxing in any way you choose. Or you could hit the booze early or go out for a long lunch without fear of a hangover. Now the only option is to persevere with the games patiently and suppress the hysteria until you make a breakthrough. When this finally happens, you rediscover how much fun it is to hang out in the cocoon as a family and get to know each other beyond the tentacles of technology. This is when you remember the pleasure in a good book or watching test cricket between naps on the couch for the afternoon – both, some of the best forms of meditation. Computers generally work better after they are turned off and on. That is all that generations of technology experts have done. The same applies to the brain.

The weather did break fleetingly for an afternoon, and we tore off our clothes and rushed to the beach. I was enjoying a swim in the breakers when I was offered a bloublassie by someone sporting all the mod cons. At least that is what I thought she had said. Subsequently, I realized I had constructed my own meaning of the word, subconsciously, presuming that she had joined two words in a portmanteau, in the way she would have invented her daughter’s name. Afrikaans is, after all, an invented language.

I turned her down of course. I am a married man and a faithful sort. I worked out why she had approached me with the offer within a few minutes. I had been wearing a new pink cap from the Pineapple House Boutique hotel around town for a few days. It sported a pineapple on the front and a friend from Higgovale (who is sophisticated in this way) had informed me a few days before that the pineapple is the universal indication of interest in the swinging community.

Nature fought back and I was stung by a blue bottle shortly afterwards. The lifeguards informed me that the best cure for a bloublassie sting is the juice of a vygie. My thumb was still ringing with pain ten minutes later. By this stage, a ghoulish crowd had formed hoping for a violent allergic reaction or at least an epileptic fit when one of them shouted: “Pour coke on it!” No-one obliged. It was New Year’s Day after all, and supplies were low. “Wee on him!” shouted another. Again, there were no takers for a variety of reasons, although lack of size and hydration spring to mind.

My wife stepped up with as much discretion as the situation allowed and somehow, a chemical reaction occurred that alleviated the pain almost immediately. Unfortunately, this also signalled the arrival of the SAPS. Two rotund female officers waddled up to the scene after the emergency had been suppressed and threatened to arrest my wife for public indecency.

“Do you mean pubic indecency?” asked my wife to general hilarity – she had not made her pre-holiday appointment with the beautician. It appeared that the officers were serious, and it took a razor-sharp legal intervention from an advocate on a sun lounger to point out to the law that consensual indecency between husband and wife was indeed an oxymoron. I doubt either officer grasped the point, but they sensed agreement in the horde and chose to exit the scene rather than face any form of danger.

Some of our friends have left. Others have arrived. The bad weather has resumed but we have accepted our fate in much the same way as people who choose to holiday in Scotland. The absence of technology, sleep and interpersonal connections has equalised the mood.

Test cricket is also back. Annoyingly it is 30 degrees at Newlands. Even worse the pitch is a minefield and both teams were bowled out in a day. I don’t understand. The groundsman had the whole year to prepare the pitch and we are all starved of this form of the game. If this had happened in North Korea, he would have been executed at lunchtime, in full view of the crowd. Sometimes I long for summary justice. At least it would encourage more accountability.

Dare we mention the Indian bookmakers? For those of you whose interest was piqued by the story of the pineapple cap, I recommend that you purchase one immediately from the Sea Point hostelry mentioned above. That sort of optionality is hard to come by these days, and after all, you can always decline if the offer doesn’t meet your own peculiar requirements.

If you’re interested in more tales from Alex’s slow descent into middle-aged madness, give him a follow on Instagram.