Vrystaat Confessions

Tag: wine

  • Methodists on the Booze

    Methodists on the Booze

    There are many “Methodist” denominations throughout the world, not only the 1960s Harrismith, Orange Free State version, although that is the most important one. About 112 are listed in wikipedia. So there must be around 112 methylated ways to get to heaven, I spose. Do you think methamphetamines . . Nah! Many – or most maybe? – Methylated dominees will deny whatever I mutter on the topic of their booze doctrine, but this is sort-of what they sort-of think, I think.

    They gloss over Jesus and His wine. Jesus was a lot more pragmatic and accommodating than His Methodists. If He tried that water into wine trick in 2023, He’d be in trouble with this modern-day kerk! They would turn that trick of His into a whine. While it seems Meths are at pains to say they don’t actually BAN grog – no fatwas – they tut tut about it, and suggest that much-ignored Evangelical and Catholic tactic called ‘abstinence.’ The one that doesn’t work. That tactic. This is surely an opportunity for someone to start a 113th Meth sect: One that fearlessly BANS Booze! Methodists seem to have very few Thunderous Hellfire-and-Brimstone Sermons! There’s a gap in the market, surely?

    This from one of the many Methodist websites out there: Abstinence from alcohol “witnesses to God’s liberating and redeeming love, and is part of living into the life God has prepared for us. We start there. We start with abstinence as faithful witness, and as the norm for guiding our behavior.” The fact that ‘where they start’ is 100% non-biblical? Well, the Bible is full of suggestions . . it’s a guideline . .

    In 1960s Harrismith we didn’t get any of the above doctrine, sanks goodness. We got Mary Methodist who played the organ beautifully, coached the choir, sang in the choir, served on the Women’s Auxiliary (where women were kept away from any thoughts of usurping the patriarchy), kept us kids in line, or tried to, AND ran a bottle store. Which bottles contained liquor. She did all of these things well, and with love, did my Mom Mary of the Methodist Church and of the Platberg Bottle Store / Drankwinkel. Sanks goodness, Amen.

    Do Methodists call for prohibition? Almost. They want “public policy calling for the strict administration of laws regulating the sale and distribution of alcohol.” Give them half a chance and they’ll prohibit, bottle stores will close, and the mafia will have a new income stream.

    Well, despite the best efforts and misinformed intentions of the Grog Police, if there is a place as boring as heaven, if it is a good place, and if anyone is going there, Mary Methodist is most definitely at the front of that queue. St Peter won’t even ask to see her ID or her liquor licence. He’ll just wave her right through. I have no doubt about that. Especially if I happen to be doing St Peter duty at the time.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Sundry wafflings about booze by sundry Methodist if you’re interested:

    https://www.umc.org/en/content/communion-and-welchs-grape-juice

    https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-03/methodists-shun-bottle-no-one-wants-talk-about

    https://christianityfaq.com/methodists-drink-alcohol/

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Important Harrismith History: Our dorp’s two bottle stores dutifully providing much-needed succour to the grateful townsfolk, including many good Methodists, were the Platberg Drankwinkel and the Horseshoe Drankwinkel. Sister Sheila tells the lovely story of the Aberfeldy farm school where the subject one day was Engels. The teacher asked, Class, who knows the Afrikaans word for Horseshoe? And quick as a flash her friend Elsa du Plessis answered “Drankwinkel.”

    Platberg bottle store, Annie’s Caltex garage, and the Flamingo Cafe. OHS 155 parked illegally in the foreground.
  • Rust in Warden

    Rust in Warden

    Rust in Vrede means Rest in Peace. Rust in Warden was anything but peaceful on account of an invasion of hooligans from the Last Outpost of the British Empire – a flock of unruly wimmin studying to be teachers back in March 1976. It took us gentlemen from behind the boerewors curtain in the salubrious Johannesburg suburb of Doornfontein to bring some decorum to this rustic spot.

    Rust, meaning ‘rest’ was Tabs Fyvie’s farm in the Warden district with a lovely empty farmhouse which we colonised, spreading sleeping bags on the wooden floors. Overflow slept on the lawn. Beers, ribaldry and laughter. Tall tale telling . .

    – Liz believes me; Brenda thinks ‘Ja, right . . ‘ –
    – Hill entertains – the lasses believe him; I think ‘Ja, right . .’ –

    . . can’t remember eating . .

    And thanks to sister Sheila we have 1976 pictures!

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

  • A Crayfishing Oenophile CA LLB

    A Crayfishing Oenophile CA LLB

    John Newby was an LLB  attorney and a CA accountant, wine connoisseur, boyfriend of the lovely Heather – and a crayfisherman. A very capable and interesting fella. That’s him in the pic above, ‘cept I gave him more hair on top. He would shove his scrawny frame into a wetsuit and disappear under the waves among the rocks at low tide, then emerge with crayfish. Which he would then very generously cook and share with his fellow inmates at 72 Hunt Road, our communal house on the Berea in Durban.

    I always knew when a crayfish treat was coming cos he’d walk into my room, mumble an apology, roll back the carpet and shove his scrawny frame into a hole. He’d disappear under the floor of my baronial-style bedroom and emerge covered in cobwebs clutching a dusty wine bottle or two talking French and flowery oenological words which I took with a pinch of salt. Some people are just like that and you tolerate them, nodding gravely, while quaffing their wine. You don’t contradict if they’re buying.

    But lo! As with everything he did, Newby wasn’t bullshitting. We suddenly found out he had won the Natal Wine-Tasters Guild sniffing and spitting finals and was off to represent us at the nationals in Cape Town! I mean I always thought of myself as an oenophile, but that was in a volume and enthusiasm sense, not so much as a nexpert judge. I always swallow.

    Hunt Rd
    – our Hunt Rd neighbours – our house looked much the same –

    So now we were rooting for Nubile! We always knew he was a connoisseur, we now said. We had helped him train, we said. My memory is that he won that tasting too, and Hunt Road thus had an SA champion under our roof; WE were expert wine tasters.

    ..

    If I were you, I would take this 38yr-old self-serving memory with another sizable pinch of salt. And a large swallow of chablis.

    ~~~oo0oo~~~

    Nubile upped and offed to Aussie, which we didn’t like, but worse: he took Heather with him!

  • What a Mess!

    What a Mess!

    “Kom, kom, kom! Vyf Rand elk. Brings your money! Five Rands. I’m going to town. E’ gat do’p toe”. Town being Ellisras or Thabazimbi. The civilian staff sergeant from the Cape was shouting in that well-known accent – or eccent, ek sê. He was organising a whip-around to augment the army rations he had been issued as mess sergeant on our Commando camp out in the bushveld somewhere north of Pretoria. We were playing ‘Field Hospital Field Hospital’.

    He returned a few hours later with a big sack of onions, cooking oil and a vark of cheap white wine – a 25l plastic spug-spug. So instead of plain bully beef and boiled spuds we had a varkpan full of fried bully beef, spuds and onions, like bubble-n-squeak GT, and a fire-bucket filled with half a litre of semi-soetes for our supper. Much better. We considered the matter carefully and then all agreed one could actually quite easily call him a gourmet chef, and so we gave his mess a Michelin star.

    His vark was unlike the one on the left. Also actually unlike the one on the right. It was a big, floppy, papsak bag – like a very large colostomy bag.

    =======ooo000ooo=======

    One of the civvies on camp was Rod Mackenzie, trainee-ophthalmologist and lovely mensch from Durban who I would soon meet again and work with for years, first in hospitals and then in private practice. That was after the weermag in their wisdom sent me to Durbs as adjutant to the medics in the various KwaZulu hospitals.

    =======ooo000ooo=======

    E’ gat do’p toe – Capetonian toothless way of saying I’m Going on a Shopping Spree

    vark, spug-spug – large plastic container filled with fine, rare vintage wine, if you ask me

    varkpan – metal army-issue eating and cooking pan

    fire bucket – metal army-issue drinking and cooking bucket

    semi-soetes – fine, rare vintage wine, if you ask me

    papsak – scrotum-like but transparent, unlike the army

    weermag – war machine