Soetkoekies

I have been looking for a good recipe for this traditional South African biscuit for quite some time now. The first few I tried were total disasters. They are interesting biscuits which call for both spices and Port wine, or Sherry.

The taste is memorable - and certainly brings back smells and memories of childhood for me. The only pain about them is that they have to rest for a minimum of 2 hours in the fridge - so you can't just whip them up in a jiffy. But I keep getting told about the joys of delayed gratification (something I have very little - I lie - NO experience in), so I suppose this is an instance to hand.

Soetkoekies

3 cups Cake flour
1 t salt
1 t ground cloves
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground ginger
1 t Bicarb
1 cup sugar
250g butter
100g ground almonds
2 large eggs
50 ml Port or Sherry


Sift the flour, salt, spices and bicarb together. Add sugar and rub in butter. Add the ground almonds. Mix in the eggs and the Port. Mixture should form a stiff dough. Place in a plastic bag and leave for a minimum of 2 hours in the fridge – preferably overnight. Roll out onto a floured surface, about 5mm thick. Cut the biscuits using a biscuit cutter and place on a greased baking tray. Press half a peanut, or slivers of almond into the middle of each biscuit. Bake in a preheated oven for about 10 minutes at 200° C. Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container.

Roof wetting the Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium - and the view FIFA demanded

So, I get this invitation – very glossy, very smart - very welcome drinks; followed by light snacks; followed by speeches; followed by concert; followed by supper; followed by more concert. I sort of knew it was going to be “popular”, so I didn’t take the instruction to wear smart clothes terribly seriously.

Parking was a bit chaotic – we were asked, in the middle of the street (before being requested to do a U-turn away from the site which was shown on the invite for parking), whether or not we were VIPs. So security, I would say, was a bit of an issue!

The outside of the stadium, now almost complete, looks like a large Afro-chic hat. The inside looks very much, to me - well, like a stadium! There is a green patch of grass in the centre, seats and a great halo of open space above you. The one thing which caught my eye was the grey colour of the seats. There are lighter and darker shades – randomly spaced, giving the impression of Mother-of-pearl, or the inside of a shell, or something like that. Of course, the entire effect would be lost if the stadium was full – but I thought it was quite a clever, and classy touch. (For almost five billion Rand – the very least I would expect was a nice touch, here and there.)

The speeches were as one would expect – everyone praising everyone who had anything to do with the construction of the stadium. Endless clapping this or that thought about how wonderful, how unique, how special and how beautiful it all is. The Premier, Helen Zille gave a rabble-rousing speech, preceded by one that was, (how can one put this gently?) less engaging, by the Mayor of Cape Town, Dan Plato.

Then on to the concert. Now, before I say anything, let me say how much I genuinely admire Richard Cock, the conductor. He is an extremely humble man and one who certainly knows how to bring music to the people. I don’t think he is a great conductor – but he is a populist supreme - and a gentle one at that. He knows what buttons to press amongst the musically uneducated and he really manages to get real rapport with them. This is a good thing – but I do have some slight problem about the actual level of musicality he seems content to allow in his efforts to do so.

Nevertheless, we started with what he called the “FIFA theme”. Apparently this is a piece of music owned by FIFA. (I was somewhat surprised that he didn’t announce that for the period of the tournament – FIFA owned ALL music – but he didn’t. Note to FIFA – this is something you may have missed for Brazil...). Needless to say, the FIFA theme was awful. Dreary, tub-thumping crashes and bangs which sounded not unlike the theme from “Dallas”. Indeed, it could have been the theme from “Dallas”, because who would remember the theme from “Dallas”?

Then we had the “Twenty Tenors” – (Geddit? Twenty Tenors???). Well, we had twelve of them, because (due to the fact that the stadium costs have ballooned from 1.8 Billion to a mere 5 Billion, in the space of three years),apparently the budget for the roof wetting needed to be somewhat limited. The singing was mediocre. But, and here is something worth noting, at least the singers were mostly black! They stood in the sharpest of contrast to the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, blindingly white.

And then, there was a group called the “Sterling Electric Quartet”. It consisted of four women playing an electric cello, violin, viola and flute. They wore dresses the size of serviettes and they seemed to be doing practise moves for the filming of the female part to the Karma Sutra. The audience loved them. Cameras flashed. Men approved. They can play – of that there is no doubt – but dear Lord! Why did they bother? It was a bit like watching porn with strangely shaped musical instruments.

My overall impression was one of sadness. Not at the kind of music the majority of the crowd seemed more than content to endure, but at the fact that this huge stadium can really only be used for three things: Soccer, Rugby and concerts. No Athletics. No cricket. Perhaps the occasional boxing match – who knows? Why? It has no athletics track because when the price was thought to be R1.8 billion, it was thought to be too much, so the size of the stadium was reduced to exclude an athletics track.

And sad, because I don’t buy the argument that the stadium is in the right place. Greenpoint Common is not a central point for Cape Town and nor is it, in my opinion, a developmental node. It will simply benefit the already rich of the area, who are mostly white. I have listened to all the arguments, over the years and I have to say, that I just don’t buy them. The reason why the stadium was put where it is, was quite simply, because that is where FIFA wanted it to be. And FIFA wanted it there for the view of Table Mountain.

Christmas in Fairyland

Joshua - Xmas 2004

I have said often, that the world isn’t divided North and South; or Gay or Straight; or Black of White. The world is divided between those people who have children and those who do not. It is as simple and as straightforward as that. If you don’t have children, you simply cannot imagine what life is like with them around.

Let me start at the beginning. My partner of 12 years, Leon, was broody from the day I met him. And when your partner says they want children - achingly, desperately, completely – you either shake their hand firmly and wish them a nice life, or you get used to the idea. I had never considered children. (Well, I suppose I might have, briefly, when I was married to a woman – but the thought soon perished, along with the marriage.) And then suddenly, at the age of 45, I was faced with some extremely uncomfortable prospects: Nappies! Projectile vomit! Teething! It is, you will agree, rather strange, when most other Gay boys in Cape Town are driving around in cabriolet splendour and planning their next holiday on a little known Greek Isle with beautiful local waiters.

Indeed, when I see primped gay boys sitting at coffee shops around Cape Town, with the time to look delicious and lovely, I sometimes ask myself what is different between them and us as we are now? I was never the natty dresser. I was never the theatre diva or the intellectual guru. I have, mostly, just trundled on with my life, and been Gay as well.

But with children, all that calm and relaxed way of life changes in a flash. Because a baby doesn’t care whether you are Gay or not. They are not interested in whether or not you look your best or whether there is anyone out there to impress. Babies want nappies changed and food put in their mouths and sleep. So, Gay or Straight, Lesbian, Transgendered, Bi, whatever ... it really doesn’t matter at all to the child. All they need is love and care. And for that, they pass no judgement on you, just so long as it is there.

Take other things, like Christmas for instance. Pre-children, Christmas was a bit of a sentimental chore. You bought the statutory soap-on-a-rope and you wrapped it, gave it, chewed your way through the turkey and felt stuffed on the pudding. And that was that for another year.

Post-children, it is something else entirely. It starts with lies and threats about what Father Christmas will or won’t bring - round about June – and this rather fatuous attempt at bargaining continues, unrelenting, until the Christmas Eve. And it ends with very expensive plastic toys which seldom make it intact until the end of the day.

But in the middle there is a rediscovered world. A world of involvement and excitement and anticipation. A world before lies are exposed and half-truths suspected. A world where adults are trusted entirely for what they promise. It glitters. It gleams. It shines.

Every year, we have a ceremony, in our house. The Christmas Tree gets dressed. The lights are wound around it, the bells and the baubles and the glitter-encrusted stars are carefully hung on the tree by all of us. And the last thing we do, in this little ceremony of ours, is that the Angel is placed on the top of the tree, by our eldest child, Gabriel, his namesake. And then we all stand back, and we switch on the lights. They twinkle and pulsate. And the sheer magic of Christmas is there again.

Christmas had always seemed to me as a Gay man, to be a celebration of something I would forever be an onlooker to. It is, after all, about a woman giving birth to a child. And this was not something I was reasonably expecting in my life. So I was essentially a voyeur to the whole event. I experienced Christmas from the outside. It was nothing unhappy, but just strangely irrelevant to my life.

That is simply not the case any more. The scales have fallen from my eyes and I have been blessed with another glimpse into the purity of a child’s world. Oh, believe me, it isn’t always sweetness and joy - but for that moment, when we switch on the lights on the Christmas tree and they shine in the eyes of my children, I understand, fleetingly, momentarily, the joy of birth – the hope of the future. Could it be a glimpse of the divine?

Lettuce soup

A lot of people, including those nearest and dearest to me, recoil from this. "Lettuce soup!" they screech and won't even try it. Well, trust me, it is a wonderful soup. And unbelievably quick and simple. Put aside your prejudice. Live on the wild side! Try it!


Lettuce Soup

3 large lettuce leaves (they don't need to be in mint condition)
1 medium onion chopped
1 T olive, canola or avocado oil
Juice of half a lemon
2 lt water
500 ml chicken or vegetable stock
4 T plain yoghurt (or cream if you insist - and sometimes I don't use either)
1/2 t nutmeg (or a bit more if you like the taste)
Salt and pepper to taste


Brown onions using in a little oil. Add the stock, lettuce and nutmeg. Bring to the boil and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Add lemon juice. Blend. Add salt and pepper. Wait for it to cool a little. Stir in the yoghurt, a spoonful at a time and serve.

Protecting our children

I grew up in suburbia in Johannesburg in the 1960s and '70s. Apartheid was at its height. White people were safe and black people were not. And black people didn't come to bother us much in the suburbs, because they had to live "elsewhere".

In this idyllic white world in which we lived, I can remember having freedom of the streets. At first, I was expected to walk to Nursery school and back home - on my own. It was four or five fairly decent sized blocks away. That would have made me 6years old, or so.

My mother didn't trust me entirely at that age, and I found her once, hiding, dressed in green, in a hedge opposite the road. It was most embarrassing - but her motives were pure. She wanted to see for herself that I looked left, looked right, looked left again before crossing the road. And when she was satisfied that I was doing that, I walked there and back on a daily basis, on my own.

As friends in the neighbourhood, we played on the streets, on our bikes. We had wars withe rival groups. We walked to primary school - most of the time alone. Later, I rode to primary school on a bicycle.

I remember this now, because my children are virtually incompetent on the roads. And. I have to say that we have made them to be like that through ensuring that there is an adult with them, every second of their day. They are taken to school, they are delivered home after school and the rest of the time, they are never left to their own devices.

I am not so certain that this is a good thing. Perhaps it may be a necessary thing in a world of child predators and human traffickers, but is it actually a good thing in the development of the child? The fact is, they are growing up in a world where they almost never have to take control of their own lives. They depend on adults all the time. And they simply expect that an adult will be there to deal with whatever potentially dangerous situation in which they may find themselves.

Of course, there is the other extreme. In setting up Public Viewing Areas for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, throughout the Western Cape Province, one of the things we have found (I have to say to my astonishment) is that parents simply come and dump children at the site, and then disappear, leaving the children there for the entire day, unaccompanied by any semblance of an adult. The risks of this are, of course, enormous, but it does not seem that the parents are in any way concerned. What is true, however, is that those children learn street savvy, fairly early on. Probably too early and probably far too much in too many areas. To compare them with my children would be chalk versus cheese. But, in my opinion, both are disadvantaged.