A trip to Simon's Town
A trip to Simon's Town
A trip to Simon's Town evokes Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
One chap I always wanted to get merrily drunk with was Dylan Thomas.
"My foxy darling..." I imagine him whispering dirty sweet somethings in my ear, "another glass? It's made from saliva and snowflakes, whale juice and moonshine..."
Aye, such fine wine with such fine prose would make me weep like a funeral and under ship-in-bottled sea-heavens we'd sleep side by side like a Sunday roast and I'd nibble him down to his wishbone.
But today I'm off to Simon's Town with my mum, scooting along Boyes Drive listening to the original BBC recording of Thomas's beautiful, bawdy play, Under Milkwood, with Richard Burton's voice booming on cassette tape.
"If you squint, Simon's Town could be the small Welsh seaside town of Llareggub," I sigh wistfully.
"South of France," says my mum. We drive past Bon Appétit, but it's closed for lunch, and worse, locals say it's closing down. On hearing such sad news, I feel raw as an onion.
To console ourselves we flee to the comfort of The Meeting Place. Upstairs the veranda's nautical views exhibit flat, grey warships on a flat, grey sea, and your mind slowly relaxes with the gentle clink-clink of sea-soaked, salt-encrusted masts of yachts.
This is a sea-side town of penguins, baboon lovers and shark spotters, seagull shrieks and the rare red moon rise and where wild seas (are) barking like seals and people are snake queuing at Salty Sea Dog's for the best fish 'n chips this side of the Atlantic. There are Agatha Christie sea coves to bathe in and tall-as-runnerbean boys and girls in freshly laundered navy uniforms that stride proud down St George's Street. There's a couple snogging on a jetty bench. And the Sailors Arms is always open. No whales today, but the air is sea-fresh. In the Just Nuisance car park a Congolese man sets up shop. Two fluffy grey penguins emerge from a bush. "Can they fly?" asks a boy. "Are they birds?"
The warm cocoa voice of chef and owner of The Meeting Place, Nadine Bentley, beckons us inside for her legendary Thai fish cakes which are huge, the size of space ships. There are deepsatisfying sofas and long farm-house Provençe tables. Nadine opens a bottle of Springfield's The Work of Time 2003. We swirl, we sniff, we sip, we swallow.
"What a brave little wine, it can hold its own against an open fire. But you have to devote time to it. Throw away your Sunday papers, throw away your Welsh bedscocks mum, let's drink!" "Wonderful follow-through, very luscious, and what dark, brooding looks," exclaims my mum as she holds her glass up to the orange light of the fire.
"There's a bit of Malay curry in this wine,' she continues, "definitely a lot of Malay farm workers on this estate." "And it's soft and warm, and round. It sustains because it's got love in it. Like a long slow kiss behind the sandstone Huguenot church." "No, more like the soft, warm embrace of a Malay nanny." "It's a wine like the good old days." "That you never had." And we cackle like nanny goats. "Yet it's not melancholic."
"And not the wine for a first date." "It's the wine to drink when you're about to propose." "If Van Gogh had drunk this wine, he'd never have lopped his ear off." "What wine did Van Gogh drink?" "No idea," says she, her mouth full of fish as a pelican's. "Another glass?" "Yes, oh, yes." "Mum, you do realise that tonight we're going to be snoring like a brewery!"
