Cradock - Dreams. In dreams I walk with you, in dreams I talk to you; we’re together in dreams – Roy Orbison.
Not the kind that run wild in your mind while you sleep, the ones that interrupt your thoughts in the middle of a humdrum day.
Imagine if we could swop lives, if I could be you or you could be me. I know that you wouldn’t know how to be me, because you haven’t lived my life, or I yours. And sometimes, when I think, “I wonder if…”, my next thought is this: For all the troubles life has thrown at me, I would still choose this life, not somebody else’s.
And when I think, “I wish I was my younger self again”, my next thought is, nah: if I were my younger self, I wouldn’t know the me I have become. And this “me” is very far removed from the 35-year-old me, or the 17-year-old one.
And to be different. I’ve always striven not to follow the pack, perhaps because as a small boy I felt that the pack had pushed me out. There’s nothing miserable about that statement, it’s just a fact. I’m glad of it, because its effect was to force me to seek other paths, to find my own way. And to be circumspect about who you trust. On my 21st birthday a guy I knew said to me, “Tony, you hold people at arm’s length.” And he was right, I did, and had to teach myself to open up to those people, the ones you don’t know and aren’t sure about.
Maybe it’s easier to hide behind a keyboard. To talk about your dreams, and how you don’t see this final foodie missive as the end of something but a stepping stone to the next thing. And that though you’ve always seen yourself as a perennial 25-year-old, you’ve had to face yourself in the mirror and acknowledge the hair that has turned silver, and the lines that are defying you to keep them at bay.
And that I’m okay with all that, finally, because everything I’ve ever been, seen or done is in that face and behind those eyes. To push past the dreaded 60 mark and find the realisation that not to have lived this long would mean there was somehow less of what time makes of you. And that takes time, and time peels away the years and paints grey where auburn once was, and the grey stands for something. For the pain you’ve felt, the love you’ve given and been given, the every hug, the every tear, the every longing for and the every gift received with gratitude.
But being 60 – oh all right, 61 – brings something else that infuriates me. The presumption that it means that it’s all over folks. Ageist bulldust.
My benchmark is my late father-in-law Phillip Louis Cassere, a man who lived a rollercoaster of a life and who conquered alcoholism when he was almost the age I am now, and who at 60 started a new career which he kept at until his early 80s. That’s what I call a role model. And I find myself having been offered a good job with the Daily Maverick. And I find myself – finally, finally – with a book deal, and I am not allowed to say anything more it about it other than that it should be in the stores by this time next year.
And life has thrown us something else, a pending new home town and a lovely old settler cottage in Grahamstown, where other writers and academics and weird and wonderful people lie waiting for party times at our place.
Our year-and-a-half in Cradock has turned out to be a bridge on the road to Grahamstown, a period in which Weekend Argus editors Chiara Carter and Dennis Cavernelis kindly let me keep this column until it had run its course – and it has.
Now we’re dreaming of the move only two weeks from now, and walks on beaches at Port Alfred and Kenton, and living in the cross-cultural city that Grahamstown is becoming.
And dreaming of tables, many tables, in a settler cottage with friends yet to be made and dishes yet to be cooked and served. Which, I don’t doubt, will include my absolute number one favourite meal. If you know me, you know what it is. If you don’t, it’s in the picture on this page.
Who knows, maybe we’ll meet up, you and me, and we’ll clink glasses and tuck into a humungous lamb shank together. That one over there, with the mint and the yoghurt. The slow-cooked one that seems to have lived a long life. Bon appetit.
Lamb shank with mint and yoghurt
1 plump lamb shank per portion
Olive oil
Many sprigs of fresh mint
Juice of 1 fresh lemon per shank
1 small tub plain yoghurt
Salt and pepper to taste
Brown the shanks all over in olive oil in a pan.
Oil an oven dish and place the mint sprigs in a pile in the middle. Season the shanks all over with salt and pepper and place on the mint. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and squeeze lemon juice over.
Roast in a 180°C oven for two hours. Open the oven door, turn the oven off, and leave it for 20 minutes. Before serving spoon off excess fat and add either water or red or white wine to the pan and reduce it to make a simple sauce of enhanced pan juices. Or just spoon the plain pan juices over the meat.
Chop mint and stir into yoghurt, and stir in some lemon juice. The quantities can be adjusted to your own taste.
Weekend Argus