My love of Pretoria was not instant.

I had come to South Africa from London in 1966 with a twoyear work permit in my wallet. The Langham Hotel in Johannesburg had offered to employ me, but Cape Town seemed a more attractive place for a young bachelor than the city of gold. Before I continued my journey, from Johannesburg to the Mother City, I paid the administrative capital a visit. In London I had seen a film of the splendour of jacarandas in full bloom for which the town is famous. It was a S. A. Tourist Corporation production shown in cinemas before the feature film and I was impressed with the spectacle of purple in which Pretoria was clothed during spring. Unfortunately my visit took place in August, the dry and dusty month no Pretorian enjoys. It is a month when gusty winds sweep the last leaves off the trees and everyone yearns for rain. Skins are itchy, tempers can be short and the nights are long. There may have been a brief downpour in July, but as I was to learn many years later, only towards the end of September could the thirsty gardens expect the civil service rains, the daily downpours that used to bring the longawaited relief at four oclock, exactly the time when the masses of civil servants in the administrative capital were ready to rush back to their suburban homes. The ominous dark clouds amassing from the south seldom needed more than ten minutes to unload their heavy burden, accompanied by rolling thunder and lightning bolting into the landscape with a fury that could have only come from Dantes hell. Then the rain would stop. The chorus of birds would break the silence as if giving thanks that natures drama had come to an abrupt end. I had booked a room at the Boulevard Hotel in Struben Street within walking distance of Church Square. Law segregated the people by race. The Boulevard Hotel was considered one of the most popular accommodation establishments in town, but only Whites had the privilege of enjoying its amenities. As if the racial division was not enough, bars were confined almost exclusively to hotels, and these were reserved for men only. Barry Hertzog, the Minister of Telecommunication, had placed a ban on the introduction of television to South Africa. As the few restaurants in the city closed at the latest at nine oclock, a night in an hotel could be a lonely affair. The activities on the square suggested a fete of sorts. It seemed a half-hearted attempt to entertain a small crowd wandering about, amongst them the stern faced maidens whom I could not ignore. But I need not have worried. Back at the hotel one of the headwaiters, a German who, like me, was a newcomer to South Africa, introduced me to a fellow traveler who happened to be blond and beautiful. The hotels restaurant was closed, but the night was young, and what better way to start the evening by sharing a bottle of wine among the three of us. The wine is special, the headwaiter said. Its called Spatzendreck made by a German of the Delheim Estate in Stellenbosch whose name is Sperling and shows a Mossie on its label depositing its droppings into a cask of wine. The colloquial name for a Sperling is Spatz in German, and that Michael Sperling was bestowed this nickname was only a matter of course. He, a Prussian by birth, introduced some German visitors to his latest vintage, a Late Harvest type of wine, which did not get him the compliments he might have expected. Among the group were a few graduates of the famous Geisenheim Wine Institute in the Rhineland, one of whom rather unkindly remarked that he found the wine tasting like dreck. This rather harsh description can be translated to meaning shit. Taken aback by this comment, Sperling vowed these experts would be proved wrong one day. Thus, in 1961, he had improved the quality of the semi-sweet wine considerably, but instead of giving it a flowery description, he simply called it Spatzendreck. It is most probable that Sperling had further improved the quality of his wine during the five years that passed since the Spatzendreck label was created, but this was not the concern of the trio at the Boulevard Hotel. The two lonely bachelors had only one thing in mind, and this could not be rushed. In competing for the favours of the forty-something freshly divorced Nordic blonde, no doubt to her utter amusement, three more bottles with the pooping sparrow on the label followed. Usually, in literature, the combination of wine and women produces a connotation of exuberance, hilarity and boisterous celebration. This is only to be expected if one bears in mind that Dionysus, with whom much of it started, was God not only of wine but of fertility as well, and that the original bacchantian orgies were a celebration of the intoxicating potency of wine and woman alike. That it did not come to innovative merry-making at the Boulevard Hotel as the two

hunters had perhaps bargained for was, after all, not their fault. Their weapons were on target but the disrespect shown for the Spatzendreck demanded its price. The warning on the label, which was declared by the renowned British wine magazine, Decanter, The Worst Label of the World in 1971, was there to see, but the innocent bird with its mischievous smile had deceived them. If the nectar of God Dionysus, Bacchus and whoever else was paid homage to during the long night would have been given the reverence it deserved, Spatz Sperlings mossie did not need to play his card of revenge. It would have been wise, too, if I had remembered the warning Shakespeare put in the mouth of Macbeths Porter, I thought during my sobering walk to the Union Buildings halfway up Meintjeskop the following morning. Lechery, sir, Porter advised, it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep and, giving him the lie, leaves him. Before I left the town of missed opportunities that afternoon, I read in the Pretoria News, The Asbok Aster (Festival Queen) of the Pretoria College of Education, Miss Hester Stander, and her two princesses, Miss Valerie Basson and Miss Rentice Botha, were last night crowned on Church Square by the wife of the rector of the college, Mrs J. G. Potgieter, before 2000 students. If only I had known what the town had to offer on the evening of 10 August 1966, I would have asked the headwaiter to put the second, third and fourth bottle on ice. If only I had known.