The members of the Gouda Book Club were all very concerned about this and have decided that they themselves will take strong action. It was decided that a delegation will travel hence to Malmesbury to confer with the decision makers of KaapAgri to persuade them to open a fabric section at their branch in Riebeek West.

The secretary of the book club had a vision after 3 bottles of Santa Cecilia Chenin Blanc 2009. After he passed out in his food at Bar Bar Black Sheep, he woke up in the Riebeek Quantum Parallel Universe. It was beautiful. Radio Hermon played sweet Andreas Vollenweider harpsichord tunes. You could smoke in every bar and restaurant, even Air Gouda had a smoking section for internal flights. The petrol attendants at Kasteel Motors were a bunch of Russian girls in hot pants on roller skates. Malmesbury ceased to exist, there were five bars between Kasteel and West and the service in both hotels were excellent. The metro police were helpful and the local police nowhere to be seen. The Friendly stocked cheese, CRISP was open all week and there was no gate between Bar Bar and Aunti Pasti.

Kasteel square was all dandy with a drinking fountain and some shade trees. Ladies, with low cut dresses, on picnic blankets were drinking cold Santa Cecilia Chenin Blanc 2009 and eating left over rabbit stew on the freshest baguettes, ever. The men were drinking 7-up Cola with brandy, whilst watching the young children play tennis. The show-offs were proudly parading in new clothes that they bought at the Hepworth’s branch in Hermon. Everything was in sepia.

The secretary is now thinking of going commercial with the concept of drinking to much wine to hallucinate and will obviously be sponsored by Santa Cecilia Chenin Blanc 2009 and Disprin.

Literature reviewed by the Gouda Book Club:

Comments fron Hang Fire Book ” For The Discerning Reader”:

I used to love these books. There was another one called Grensvegter. His name was Rocco De Wet who was fighting a war against terrorists in Angola. The cover page read like this… ” Man is hy, vegter is hy, genadelose vergelder is hy. Hierdie boerseun wat man alleen die vyand van sy land uitsnuffel en verdelg”. I still remember it so well I used to say it over and over in my fantasy world because I was so in love with the character…..

Regards
Muksie aka Johan

Die Swart Luiperd is actually a very physical farmer, he is very athletic and extremely good in gymnastics, the character is very Tarzan like, only more civilized, wearing clothes and can speak all the native languages. He is also very good with all types of wild animals and can use the nature do survive and do all sorts of things to fight enemies and to navigate through jungles, when he is not riding his well self trained horse, he is swinging through trees on vines and jumping from tree to tree. His weapons of choice is a bow and arrow in which he is sufficiently good at and a knife and a whip. His real name is Leon Fouche and his wife Susan and his son Ben. He has blue eyes and black hair and is well build and tall, he always wears a black spandex suit which makes his muscular physique stand out and then the black leopard head mask which he wears as a disguise and also to make his native enemies fear him more. He has two leopards, Simson and Spikkels which he trained to react on his voice and commands and they are his loyal friends, also he has a black stallion called Donker, also trained by him to be as loyal as the two leopards. Other skills include him being able to go for days without any sleep and fearless and brave.

I never were fond of the gun slinger version of the story, but the original Swart Luiperd was created by Braam Le Roux.

These books where the best adventure stories you would ever find!!!

Regards

Riaan Louw

In the years before satellite imaging and when the world was still considered to be flat, a rumour existed that somewhere in Africa there was a city with golden streets on the banks of a lush river of gold. The river was Vigiti Magna and city was fabled to be called Monomotapa. To make travel more attractive, travel agents of the time included this river and city on their travel pamphlets as the star attraction of the journey. These cruises were especially popular with the Portuguese and Dutch. It is a well documented fact that after settling in at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck sent Pieter Cruythoff on a trip to find the famed river of gold as his travel brochure indicated that it was north on the N7, right at Malmesbury towards Ceres.

Corporal Pieter Cruythoff then coyly asked Surgeon Pieter van Meerhoff to accompany him on this exciting tour of the hinterland.
Thereby setting a precedent that lasts to this day.

According to the archives they rode off into the morning dawn, ignoring the lure of the Paardeberg, Piketberg, and Paarlberg and headed almost straight to a yet unnamed mountain. They felt as if it was their mountain to name and called it Kasteelberg. (They did ponder the name “Brokeback Mountain”, but it did not roll of the Dutch tongue so well.) On the western slope of the mountain they found a cosy spot next to a river that sprouted right out of the mountain. They unfolded a tartan picnic blanket under yet unnamed trees and called the trees “Cape Yellowwood”. They marvelled at flowers without names, buck so tame they ate Lindt out of their palms, the mosquitoes and muggies that were absolutely everywhere. The remainder of the day was spent drinking Jan’s first vintage and smoking Satin Leaf cigarettes. Camping was fun indeed. The wine provided some inspiration and they named another 14 mammals and another 28 plants. After even more of Jan’s Kaapsche Wijn it was only apt that they then named the whole area, Riebeecks Kasteel. Somehow this was better than the Vigiti Magna and Monomotapa they set out to find.

Today on the western side of their beloved Kasteelberg, the same Riebeek’s River still pours out of Kasteelberg towards the sea, unfortunately via Malmesbury and not Riebeek Kasteel.

And then…. Pieter van Meerhoff got over the corporal and married Kratoa, a Khoi queen. He was stabbed through the heart whilst pillaging the island of Madagascar and thus died of a broken heart.

Pieter Cruythoff just kept on moving and was reportedly last seen in a Green Point bar.

Source: PPC Environmental Report Phase 1

“In 1661, Pieter Cruythoff, one of Jan van Riebeeck’s corporals, led a reconnaissance team of eleven men to explore the hinterland. A myth had been circulating for some time about the city of gold, Monomotapa, which allegedly lay somewhere to the immediate north of the Cape settlement.3 The VOC headquarters were impatient for their envisioned instant profits and commissioned several expeditions to find the fabled land. While the mission obviously never succeeded in locating a town saturated with gold, it did provide one of the earliest written records describing the interior of the Cape. The surgeon, Pieter van Meerhoff, accompanied the first mission and kept the journal and wrote of plains teeming with wildlife. From one vantage point at Kasteelberg, on one day, they saw “thirteen horses (quagga), five rhinoceros, ostrich, thousands of hartebeest” It is also in this journal that ‘Riebeek Kasteel’ was first mentioned. They camped on the western side of the mountain next to a beautiful river that sprouted from the mountain.”

The books up for in depth discussion at the last meeting were, what I thought, the riveting “ Farming with Angora’s from 1950 to 1955”, J Heller, Haiva Publishers 2009, and a very disappointing “Forty Years of Playboy Magazine”, H Heffner, Vegas Publishing 2008. “Forty Years” certainly did have a promising hard cover, but the amount of well written, interesting and thought provoking articles was at the expense of good pictorial content. “Farming with Angora’s” on the other hand was only twenty pages long and full of pictures.

As the meeting became more informal and the pile of empty Santa Cecilia Chenin Blanc bottles grew the conversation turned to the comparisons drawn between Franschhoek, Greyton and Riebeek Kasteel in a recent Sunday Times article. I listened and it all made sense…

JZ:”It is all good and fine, but one must remember that Franschoek and Greyton are small country getaways, not a global player like Riebeek Kasteel for instance. Take the access to Franschoek, it is via a country meander and the main road to Greyton is a common garden variety open road. Take the route to Riebeek Kasteel on the other hand; the N7 is a proper autobahn, an artery of commerce, a road that ends in another country, a road that constantly reminds you that you are from this world and that the other world is frighteningly close by. “

Another empty bottle of Chenin hits the ground on the other side of the fence…..

JM:” My problem with Franschoek is the food. All they eat is duck…, duck konfyt, reduced duck, duck on a tower, duck with duck, even the KFC serves duck in the family bucket at R650 and I am not even talking about the Mcduck(Trademark) breakfast meal at R105, with a dinky of La Motte Sparkling Rosè. An Afrikaans girl has not baked a melktert in Franschoek or Greyton this century. In Riebeek it still sometimes happens… even if the lady in question might just sport a dandy moustache. Yes sir… down there in Kasteel we can still eat boerekos, even if it is so NEXT LEVEL boerekos, that some now only eat NEXT LEVEL boerewors.

II could sense that NEXT LEVEL boerewors made them think about Elton John, Quentin Crisp and Jani Allen, but they did not say a word. I also know they thought that Kasteel and West gays are younger and better looking than their counterparts in Greyton and Franschoek, but nobody said as much. The silence just hung for a while. We were grilling boerewors, stuffed with fresh coriander, a smithen of duck fat and lime zest.

JZ: “You must admit, there is stunning architecture over in Franschoek, but all the developments are destroying the old stuff like taking out Vibracrete walls. They were giving the panels away… but it is all gone now. La Trine, La Chocolate Mousse, La Riche, La Escargot, La Creusett, La Manon of the Spring, La Jean de Florette, and La Costa Plenty now all have dry stacked stone walls around the farms. Luckily, the farms are only 800 square meters big. Greyton still has a few walls standing, but Little Piggaly Wink, Pooh’s Cottage, Tiny Rabbit’s Nook, Mouse’s House, Tinky Tonk and Willy Wonka all took theirs down. Kasteel should protect them, 14a Blom Street, 14b Blom Street, 14c Blom Street, 14d Blom Street and 1 Hoof Street, all have fine examples. By the way, since you all thought that “Forty Years of Playboy Magazine” is such a kak book, I think I will take it home with me.”

“Whirrr” said the old bottle and “shuck” sighed a new one.