Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being is one of loveliest books to have by your bedside. It’s light enough to dip in and out of when the mood strikes. It’s also the most beautiful book I own, so it’s doing some good work there on its own either way.

The chapter I’ve been returning to is titled Point of View. It put a finger on something that I’ve been thinking about for a good while.

I’ve been thinking about this in both the positive and negative realm.

A film like Her made me think a lot more about AI, over a decade ago, than any futurist ever has. And for all the talk of choosing your attitude regardless of circumstance, who can forget Life is Beautiful? I could go on…

The other side of the coin is when I feel like someone is lecturing me. We’ve all been there. The person seems so intent on making their point and also wanting you to absorb it.

But the lecturer is unwittingly having the opposite effect of what they desire. The more they gesticulate, the less likely you are to shift. If anything, you feel even further away from their school of thought at the end of it.

The opening of a conversation is the fascinating part. If you’re able to create something that prompts independent thinking, that leads to collaborative conversations, then perhaps everyone leaves feeling a little bit better off.

I released a short missive here last week that I very nearly didn’t publish. Many of my previous essays were labours of love that I toiled over across a few days. While I’m proud of putting the lengthier, meatier pieces out there, I didn’t expect this almost whimsical post to open so many interesting conversations. So, thank you!

I enjoy sharing my writing online and this has prompted me to lower the bar for what I deem publishable. Less definitive, more of an opening.

This past week, I came across two gems that I can’t not share.

One is a story from record producer Jimmy Iovine. The other is a poem I found in Bill Gurley’s book, Running Down a Dream.

On David Senra’s podcast, he interviews the legendary producer Jimmy Iovine. At one point Senra says something interesting to him:

“Every single person I’ve read about who worked with you says the same thing. You want Jimmy in the room because he’ll tell you the truth.”

Senra then retells a story from Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run. Springsteen had spent two years recording The River. At one point he invited Iovine over to listen to the finished album. After a full double album, when the final track ended, Iovine said one sentence.

“So when are you going to record the vocals?”

The vocals were already there, but they were buried in the mix. Springsteen agreed, and the team went back and remixed the entire album.

Jimmy Iovine was still in his twenties at the time. He had already worked with John Lennon, but he was still a young man sitting in a room with artists whose reputations were far bigger than his own.

Senra asked him where that confidence came from, and Iovine’s answer was surprising:

“My father really drilled into me from when I was a little kid that wherever you go, the place is better because you’re there, because you’re a decent person. He used to say, ‘You’re a humble person, you’re a decent person, you’re a good person, and you’re not going to screw anybody.’”

“So wherever I went in my life, I always felt comfortable.”

It’s such a simple idea: help your child build the confidence to feel like they belong in every room they’re in, and that they have something to contribute. But his father didn’t fill him with false confidence by making him believe he was brilliant or extraordinary. The cost of entry is to show up, humbly and decently.

It’s funny that I listened to this podcast in the same week I came across this poem in Bill Gurley’s brilliant book.

Do Not Ask Your Children To Strive
by William Martin

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

“Is there anything on our menu that was jumping out at you but you just thought, ‘No, not today…’?”

“Story of my life,” is what I wish I’d said. I felt seen, but was also stumped by our waiter, Savva. “Everything looks amazing,” I stammered, which was neither gracious nor useful. I had an inkling of what he was getting at.

We were in New York City after attending my brother-in-law Simon’s wedding on an island off the East Coast of Maine. Staying in Crown Heights with Jules’ friend from business school, we’d spent the days covering as much of Brooklyn and Manhattan by foot as possible. Thomas, our son, would turn three in a few weeks’ time and it was by far the longest spell we’d been away from him. It felt too long, and we were a long way away from Cape Town. It was our last day in New York.

I bought a copy of Danny Meyer’s Setting The Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, a couple of days before at Books Are Magic. With it halfway devoured, and walking through The Flatiron District, I had the thought: Why not ask someone from Union Square Café to sign my copy of its founder’s book? Nothing beats a signed copy, and who ever wrote the rule that it had to be signed by the author? This sort of thing tends to embarrass Jules, but she mostly never holds me back so she waited outside.

I walked in to find an elegant woman in a floral dress at the bar picking at what I would later learn is called the 19th Street Burger. Despite the cheese and bacon burger’s presence, I still felt underdressed in this white-tablecloth-establishment. We had planned to cover a lot more ground that day and I was dressed like someone heading out for a Sunday morning dog walk.

The maître d’ lit up immediately. The request was probably not something that happened every day. She relayed my intentions to the manager who took my book to the head chef, Lena Ciardullo, for signature. While we waited, she wanted to know more about my ‘interest in Danny’, about living in South Africa and what brought us to New York. She insisted we join them for lunch. When the manager, Julie, returned with my signed book, she extended the invitation once more. I explained we didn’t have a booking and the restaurant seemed to be filling up quickly. “We’ll make a plan,” Julie said. “And we’ll make it special.”

When I walked outside Jules could tell that something was up from the look on my face. “Love, I think we have to go there for lunch today,” and I shared the details about the warmth of the interaction.

Fortunately, I had a denim shirt, trousers and veldskoen in my backpack, as we were heading to a jazz club that evening. I joked with Jules about making a quick change in a New York phone booth, but there were none to be seen. I’m not sure where I got that idea.

“We hear you are big fans of Danny,” Savva said to us shortly after we sat down for lunch. “Are you in hospitality too?” “Pretty much,” I said and I told the story about how Jules and I left our roles in corporate to start Julep, an online flower delivery business in South Africa. For over five years now, we’ve been sourcing and delivering boxes of fresh blooms with the mission of ‘Making Your Day’, but we’d never really described ourselves as being ‘in hospitality’.

Over lunch, we discussed Savva’s question further. We’d seen a company in our space that we admire often refer to themselves as ‘a technology company’. While we’ve got a polished website and solid systems, that’s something we’ve never tried on, and it feels a far cry from saying we’re in hospitality.

After watching seasons of The Bear together — the show about a restaurant and its people in Chicago, Jules and I geekily searched for the stand-up dustpan and brush they use in the show, and elevated our afternoon studio clean-ups closer to restaurant-grade. But The Bear also sparked several conversations between us about how we saw our vocations.

My standout episode of The Bear is titled ‘Forks’ in Season Two. In it, Richie does a week-long training at one of the world’s top restaurants to bring those lessons back to the restaurant they were reinventing. He spends whole days polishing forks, which at first infuriates him, but once he commits to upholding high standards, the repetition turns mesmeric, and then goes on to become one of the most likeable characters on television.

Across the table, Jules and I spoke about the challenge of wanting to build an exceptional, profitable business that will endure. The spark of bringing joy into the South African household in a way that hadn’t been done before is what attracted us to the idea in the first place. But keeping the standards high is something that gets harder to do the more people you try to reach. For both of us, even if negative feedback only comes around every thousandth order, it is still difficult to not take it to heart.

Our first and best hire ever came to us from my favourite restaurant in Johannesburg. The COVID-19 pandemic was in full flight as we were trying to get the business off the ground. When I reached out to Steve and Liza Maresch of The Local Grill, they were delighted to find some income for Bongiwe’s household. We felt a bit awkward that she didn’t entertain the idea of ever going back to The Local Grill, and she was treated like royalty by her former colleagues when we went to celebrate our first Christmas party together as a team.

We return to the same ideas with Bongiwe and the team: Just like in a restaurant, you’re only as good as the last meal you serve. On the product side, you have to always put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask: “Would I be delighted to send this to my best friend?” and on the customer service side, we need to remain as communicative and attentive as we can.

There was something about Savva asking the question directly that forced clarity. It’s a binary answer: you either are or you are not in hospitality. And at that table, we decided that we are.

Setting The Table is a trove of ideas and concepts that underpin the enlightened hospitality philosophy of the founder of the most intriguing ensemble of restaurants I’m aware of. What started with Union Square Café forty years ago, has evolved into a panoply of some of the finest restaurants in the world, as well as spawning the renowned chain of Shake Shack restaurants.

My interest in Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group was initially piqued after watching Bill Gurley’s brilliant talk, Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love, a couple of years ago on David Senra’s wholehearted recommendation. Gurley lists his principles that guide a fulfilling career and one of the role models for those principles is Danny Meyer.

Among the collection of artworks that could have been on loan from MoMA, and under what seemed triple-volumed ceilings, there was a vibrance that crackled through Union Square Café as the staff crossed paths with each other with a smile or a quick word. They weren’t following a script, but intuiting the needs of the customer in an optimistic and generous way. Deliberate and intentional in their actions, if Jules’ mom, Lynne was with us, she would have said, “They move like Roger Federer!”

People often say they “felt like a celebrity” when they’re treated exceptionally well, but I’m not sure that’s what I’m after as a patron. There’s something uncomfortable about the hierarchy it implies, the sense that you’re receiving treatment others aren’t. It reminds me of the old test: if someone’s nice to you but rude to the waiter, you know everything you need to know about them.

But one of Meyer’s principles is ABCD — Always Be Collecting Dots so you can Always Be Connecting Dots. That day at Union Square Café, a round of bubbly, an exceptional caviar topped potato stack, and a slice of chocolate cake for dessert all arrived at our table as ‘gifts from the restaurant’. By any definition, we received the ‘celebrity treatment’, but perhaps being the only two South Africans making the most of their last afternoon in New York earned us that bit of special attention.

The best rugby coaches in the world talk about playing ‘eyes-up rugby,’ which means you’re responsive to what’s happening in front of you rather than executing a rehearsed template. In an industry where hospitality can feel formulaic and forced, Union Square Café felt like a team that played with their eyes up: communicating, supporting, anticipating.

I waitered at the Woodlands Eatery as a student in an environment where we were encouraged to be ourselves in showing our hospitality. As I like to say: While you should never overstay your welcome, you should always feel free to stay your welcome. But I remember thinking that part of the hospitality challenge was not over-egging the pudding. You want to show up, be gracious and even entertaining, but they didn’t come out that night to be with you — so don’t get too close to pulling up a pew.

The meal ended with us saying to Savva that if he ever comes to Cape Town, as he expressed he’d like to do one day, we’d love to take him out for a meal. Which would be a story itself.

Bill Gurley’s talk shares its title with a famous Tom Petty song which is no coincidence. In its lyrics, “Yeah, runnin’ down a dream / That never would come to me”, the message is that dreams don’t come to those who sit and wait but need to be chased down. As Gurley puts it, life is a use‑or‑lose‑it proposition, and we should use it to pursue work that lights us up. The final slide of his presentation is a quote from the original Traveling Wilbury himself:

“Do something you really like and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I’m concerned, that is success.” Tom Petty

In the Season Three finale of The Bear, Will Guidara, the co-producer and consultant to the show (who was mentored by Danny Meyer in his role as general manager of Eleven Madison Park before buying it), makes a cameo appearance and delivered the following words that resonated with both me and Jules:

The morning after my 40th birthday last month, I scrolled through Instagram and saw that Union Square Café was celebrating its 40th birthday party on the same night. Thinking about how Union Square Café has been making people feel the way that they made me feel, for as long as I’ve been alive, is a beautiful coincidence.

It made me think about what it means to me to be Runnin’ Down a Dream and pursuing work that lights me up. That there’s nobility in helping people celebrate some of their most important moments, and that doing it well can make the world a nicer place. It made me think that maybe one day we’ll celebrate Julep being in business for forty years too.

Oddly enough, I don’t think about going back to New York City half as much as I think about going back to Union Square Café for another meal.

NOTE: Bill Gurley’s book Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love is slated for release in February next year. I can’t wait to read it. Pre-order it HERE.

If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy these other essays of mine:

George Costanza sat in the diner with Jerry, Kramer and Elaine and proudly explained how he heroically saved a beached whale in an iconic episode of arguably the greatest show in history, Seinfeld.

On Monday, 2 September 2024, at around 6:30pm, I found myself in a vaguely similar position. Two young women were swept out beyond the rocks between Clifton 3rd and 4th Beach while I was on the sand with Jules and our son Thomas, enjoying what felt like the first day of summer. It was one of those perfect spring evenings where Cape Town tries to fool you into believing that the Atlantic is actually an inviting place to frolic.

Thomas, approaching his second birthday, had been providing the entertainment. His language had exploded over the winter, and he had Jules and me in stitches, pointing at the surfers goading, “Ironing boards! Ironing boards!” Perhaps we should go to the beach a bit more this summer, I suggested to Jules. When I shared this anecdote with my good mate, a surfer who lives a few blocks from Muizenberg’s Surfers Corner, he remarked that his similarly aged daughter would struggle to identify an ironing board at all.

So this is a story I’ve seldom told, mostly because “any ocean rescues to report, boys?” is not the sort of thing that often comes up. Also, I know my mates still won’t let me forget about the time in high school when, during the December holidays, I was caught in a rip current in Kammabaai in Hermanus. In a panic, I put my head down and swam harder than any water-polo coach had ever gotten out of me in training, until a lifeguard appeared barely a metre away from me standing with water up to her sternum asking, “Can’t you stand?”

With my credibility as a narrator suitably questioned, I was genuinely surprised when Stanford Slabbert from Lifesaving South Africa got in touch a month ago to say that they’d like to give me a Letter of Appreciation in their annual Bravery and Drowning Prevention Awards for my efforts. I had no idea how many rescues happen on South African beaches every year – I suspected plenty, or that such awards exist.

On that evening in September last year, I only realised what was happening when Jules came running over, flagged down by two women pointing out towards the rocks. The moment my memory takes me back to most is that in the last few strokes before reaching the woman, who was struggling badly, I paused to catch my own breath and thought, “What the hell are you doing? You’ve got a wife and a kid on the beach. Don’t drown.” I came to the conclusion pretty quickly that I wouldn’t be able to swim her back to shore alone, but I thought I might at least help keep her afloat.

Swimming out to her, there were two stories running through my head about friends who’d been in impossible situations at sea, their only hope being that an NSRI rubber duck would appear on the horizon. I hoped that Jules or the other women on the beach were calling the NSRI who have a rescue station at Bakoven just a few kilometres away.

I often wonder what might have happened if Andile Maluleka, an off-duty lifeguard from the Clifton Lifesaving Club, hadn’t been there that day. He’d jumped off the 4th Beach rocks recreationally at about the time I reached Kabelo. He got to the other woman, who was closer to the rocks, helped her to safety, then swam back to guide me and Kabelo to a calmer spot between the rocks of 3rd and 4th Beach. He had no rescue equipment – just an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things.

Perhaps it’s a product of the South African all-boys school environment, where talking about any achievement is akin to putting your head above the parapet – but I suspect many struggle to tell a story where they feel like they did a good job. The truth is, this was not my David Hasselhoff moment. That honour belongs to Andile, who actually knew what he was doing.

On the rocks, I told Kabelo how brave she was for staying calm and she embraced me and wept into my chest. We were now well out of sight to anyone on the beach so I quickly climbed back over the rocks to Jules and Thomas to let them know that we were all okay. The two women who’d first seen the trouble were still on the phone with the NSRI, who were apparently dispatching an emergency vessel of sorts our way.

In South Africa, so much rescue work depends on the non-profit organisations and volunteers giving countless hours of their time to keep our oceans safe. That’s what stayed with me: that the sea can turn on you without warning is something we’ve known from a young age, but knowing there’s this chain of strangers from Lifesaving Club volunteers like Andile to NSRI crews, who show up when they’re needed, again and again.

In cricket, a nightwatchman is a less talented batsman who gets shoved in towards the end of the day’s play so the real specialists can survive until tomorrow. They’re not there to score runs or look graceful. They’re just there to hold on.

I’m not sure if there’s a moral to this story. Perhaps it’s that if you’re ever facing something impossibly big and you are out of your depth, you can do what the nightwatchman does: pad up and try to survive a few overs in the twilight. All the while hoping someone better equipped is already on their way.

But the sea wasn’t angry that day, my friends. Just deceptive. And I was just the nightwatchman. Good enough to hold on for a few overs.

I have been mighty quiet on Substack this year.

In April, I published Pure Gold, inspired by a story that Rob Louw told about Errol Tobias at a rugby evening at Wynberg Boys’ High. A few weeks later, Tom Dawson-Squibb reached out to me for advice about his idea for a book. Tom was on the panel that evening alongside Rob Louw, Duane Vermeulen and Dave Wessels which Nic Groom expertly hosted.

Tom wanted to write a book about his five years as head coach of the University of Cape Town’s rugby team. His tenure came to a heartbreaking end with a loss in another final—this time to the University of Free State Shimlas in Bloemfontein.

I took Tom a pack of 100 4” x 6” notecards and suggested that any story that he may have, no matter how big or small, should make its way onto a notecard in a few sentences or bullets. For the Proteas’ Performance Coach, I dusted off the cricketing analogy of ‘building an innings with ones and twos’ and said something to the effect of, “Trying to write a book is too big of a project to get your head around. What I would do before trying to ‘write a book’ is to try and notch up a century of these notecards with stories and anecdotes.”

I had never written a book before, though, and I knew that a few esteemed authors used this method. I soon learnt that Tom wasn’t really asking for my advice about how to write a book; he was asking me to help him write it.

He sent through his first notecards from a flight to the T20 Cricket World Cup in the USA and West Indies, and I encouraged him to keep going. He started adding further context to the stories with voice notes. After about his 30th notecard, we shelved the notecard system altogether in favour of voice notes which we felt had more texture and ‘story’ to them.

We then started recording an hour-long video call a week, and Tom sent me the recordings of his calls with his assistant coaches, the chairman of the club and other key personnel. I started working through the transcripts of these calls, whittling away at them and a picture of what the book might look like started emerging.

Over the next seven months, we went back and forth with the draft stories that pivoted around three themes that were illustrative of the journey (Defy, Explore and Simplify). I then met with the 12 guest ‘authors’ (who were all leaders within the team) to help them craft a story that meant the most to them about the Ikey Tigers, which were included in the book.

One of the central ideas in the book is what Tom refers to as Performance Connections:

Despite writing a book that largely explores this idea, it felt like an unwritten rule that we would never speak about the Performance Connection we were developing over the project. We would often refer to the screenshot below in our message history from the American writer Billy Oppenheimer’s newsletter SIX at 6 from April this year.

The title of Oppenheimer’s yet to be released book, The Work Is The Win, became a maxim of ours—we would refer to whenever we thought we might be getting ahead of ourselves as our ambition for the project grew.

I am incredibly proud of the work we put into this project and am so happy with the final product. It was a great privilege to work on this project with Tom, who believed in me and trusted me to manage it. I am also so grateful for everyone who supported this project from the start—especially Jules, who took on the lion’s share of the dinners, baths, and bedtimes over the past seven months to create space for me to write.

Writing online became a meaningful hobby for me a couple of years back, and the positive responses I received from this newsletter's subscribers fuelled this labour of love. While I always secretly harboured the dream of writing one or more books, I didn’t think that this year would be the year that it would happen.

I fetched the first 1,000 copies from the printers last Friday and delivered the first 200 books to those who pre-ordered this week. In the last few days, we have managed to get copies into the Exclusive Books stores in Cavendish Square, the V&A Waterfront, and The Book Lounge.

We also received our first review from Karina Szczurek, and Tom appeared on John Maytham’s Afternoon Drive Show on Cape Talk, which you can listen to here.

We are taking orders for delivery within South Africa on our website at www.humanball.co.za.

Read an excerpt from Humanball below.

Humanball by Tom Dawson-Squibb

Relationships Matter

Excerpt from Humanball: A Leadership Journey in South African Rugby…

Read more

a year ago · Tom Dawson-Squibb

About a month ago at an event at his alma mater, Wynberg Boys’ High, Springbok legend Rob Louw was asked what it meant to him to see this Springbok team go back-to-back with World Cup victories. His words have stayed with me.

He spoke about how fortunate he was to tour the United Kingdom with the South African Barbarians in 1979. Significantly, this team was the first multiracial South African touring team, made up of equal numbers of white, coloured and black players. On this tour, he got the opportunity to play alongside the tremendous Errol Tobias for the first time, and they struck up a lifelong friendship. 

A couple of years later, Errol Tobias became the first player of colour to represent the Springboks, playing six tests between 1981 and 1984, including three series victories. Against England at Ellis Park in 1984, Tobias scored a superb try and set up Danie Gerber’s hat-trick after which, England coach Dick Greenwood famously commented, “Errol Tobias is not coloured — he’s pure gold.”

Louw witnessed the immense talent in South Africa that was being overlooked and was convinced that within a decade or so there would be several players of colour representing the Springboks. It wasn’t to be, the 1995 World Cup-winning Springboks had only one black player in Chester Williams. 

While there was incremental progress since 1995, Siya Kolisi’s team, our current team, is the first Springbok team that even somewhat resembles the demographics of South Africa. This is what made these World Cup victories special for Rob Louw.

After the Springboks won the 1995 World Cup, Errol Tobias was invited to lunch with Nelson Mandela alongside Chester Williams. He had this to say about that day:

Watching the recently released Chasing The Sun 2 documentary series, I was struck by how much the Springboks talk about their purpose of playing for South Africa and giving hope to every South African.

One of my favourite scenes from the documentary is when Kurt-Lee Arendse, one of the Springboks’ most influential gamebreakers, visits the butchery in Paarl where he worked as a 20-year-old. After missing out on a professional contract with the Boland Cavaliers, he was packing meat by day, and training every evening in the hope that an opportunity would come his way. We saw the warmth of his connection with his former colleagues and got a glimpse of what his life might have looked like without rugby.

The Springboks' thrilling trifecta of one-point triumphs in the 2023 Rugby World Cup was the highlight of my rugby-watching life. While the Springboks' victory brought temporary euphoria to the nation, the return to routine was inevitable, and we still put our trousers on one leg at a time.

Do I feel the hope that Rassie and Siya repeatedly mention? The stories of Arendse, Nche, Libbok, and Mbonambi are of course inspiring for any young sportsman looking to overcome the odds to play at the highest level. But how does winning a rugby match really change things for the average South African? 

Perhaps the answer lies in Jacques Nienaber’s impassioned plea to the Springboks ahead of the final:

It’s difficult to imagine the weight of the doors that Errol Tobias had to kick down to play for the Springboks in the 1980s. While that weight has lessened in the subsequent decades, the majority of South Africans don’t go to schools with the rugby pedigree of the likes of Wynberg Boys’ High, where we sat, overlooking their exceptional fields. 

Errol Tobias helped pave the way for many South Africans to write their own stories. In the years to come, when I stand up to sing Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika on a Saturday afternoon with my team in the green and gold, I’ll ask myself whether I’m the one writing my own story. Then, I’ll help myself to an ice-cold Castle.

“You love this hey? The more under, the more canine, the better, right?” Jules said this to me midway through the first half of the Rugby World Cup semi-final against England. This was a reference to my previous essay, Punk Rock Rugby. “Oh, no, no… Not during the match! You don’t want to be the underdog during the match. It’s before the match that being written off is okay.”

Four hours of knockout rugby within seven days, and two solitary points decided the Springboks’ playoff matches against both France and England. And it was none other than Handré Pollard, with two perfectly executed penalty kicks at the eleventh hour, who turned the tides in their favour. When the final whistle blew last Saturday, and the Springboks secured their place in the 2023 Rugby World Cup Final, a sense of exhilaration tinged with trepidation coursed through many South Africans, as they pondered the prospect of such an ordeal once more.

Upon receiving the Player of the Match award, Pollard was asked what went through his head in the biggest moment of the match. The moment in question was the nerve-racking experience of lining up a kick from nearly 50 meters, poised to hoist the Springboks ahead for the first time in the match. Without missing a beat, he responded, “It’s what you live for.”

Unless Pollard misheard the question, his response was profound. After all, she didn’t ask how he was feeling at the final whistle, or receiving the award, but rather the moments when the game was in the balance and he had his nation’s hopes on his shoulders. Standing over that ball on a wet, windy night before a howling, scowling, Parisian crowd must be a lonely place. I didn’t for a second want to trade places with him. I could barely watch it.

In the ultimate episode of the brilliant YouTube show, Boks Office, Springbok legend Jean De Villiers, shared his perspective on Pollard's post-match interview. What struck him was how he was still completely in The Zone: “He didn’t smile, his answers were controlled, and it was as if he was still in that moment.” 

“Everything worth doing is hard,” they say, and I’ve thought about Pollard’s words a lot this week. It’s so easy to think about peak moments without thinking about the work that goes in, particularly when you find yourself in those lonely places where it’s just you and your thoughts, and you’re wondering whether things are going to plan. 

Perhaps Pollard is onto something. Seeing the way he strode onto the field two weeks in a row after being out of test rugby for over a year, you would hardly guess that his team was down on the scoreboard staring defeat in the face. What if, like Pollard, we embraced the hardest, loneliest moments on our journeys as part and parcel of what we are striving for? 

Sport’s power to change the world is something that rings truer for South Africans than most: partly because we feel we need it to be true and partly because Nelson Mandela told us it’s true. Following the Springboks' confrontation with the All Blacks in 1995, the sight of President Mandela presenting the Webb Ellis Cup to Francois Pienaar is, for many, the first moment when South Africans felt a sense of unity.

You can take the view that this 2023 Springbok vintage has been outplayed at times, but far more remarkable is their ability to dig deep in the darkest and loneliest moments. And when Handré Pollard lined up to kick what would be the match-winning points in the quarter-final against France, we can agree for sure with something that Bongi Mbonambi did indeed say. He shouted repeatedly to the team, and to Pollard, “It’s for South Africa.”

I felt that.

My brother, , has written two excellent essays on the Rugby World Cup. Check out You Never Lose Control of the Dog and Stronger Together.

I was twelve years old when I played my first game of koppestamp. I had played park rugby, touch rugby, tag rugby, six-down and full-contact rugby. Koppestamp was different. Those who complain about the sport’s complex set of laws will have no such gripes about koppestamp. 

Afrikaans for ‘headbutt’, our U13 rugby coach, Mr Powell, explained that the solitary law of the game was in the name — headbutts were verboten. One night I ran this by my mate from the Boland, Wilhelm, and he disagreed with this ‘interpretation’, “That must have been the Southern Suburbs version of the game.” 

It blew up immediately. We looked across sheepishly at Mr Powell waiting for him to intervene. Puggy Powell, as he was known up on the slope of Table Mountain at the UCT Rugby Club, loved the dark arts of forward play and was not bound by the teacher’s code. His whistle remained firmly in his pocket. He smiled.

He did eventually intervene, angrily asking us why neither team had initiated a single rolling maul. We had worked on our mauling in the previous weeks and he wanted to see us implement it. On his cue, we mauled and mauled and we forgot that we were at each others’ throats previously. A lady walking her dog along the Liesbeeck River may have wondered if this was a new form of team-building. In a sense, it was.

The rolling maul is an art form. Two packs of forwards aim to coordinate their collective power through a focal point to carry the ball upfield and generate momentum. If the defending team get a sense of where that attacking team’s planned incision lies, they counter-shove through that point and the attacking team needs to decide whether it can overpower it, or shift the focal point.

The “rolling” part of the maul refers to two things. First, when the maul is in full flight it trundles along as a singular unit, rolling its way up the pitch. Secondly, players join, disengage and rejoin the maul from the back, rolling in their positions. Where rugby’s scrum is a choreographed dance with specified positions and role-players, the maul is an unstructured, chaotic, interpretive dance in constant flux.

The Springboks are the modern masters of this interpretive dance, and have gifted the rugby-loving world a few in the previous World Cup so glorious that they will remain firmly in rugby folklore. Against Japan in the quarter final, the Springboks launched a 50m rolling maul which resulted in a try. In the final against England, the Springboks introduced a seldom seen open play maul which led to a penalty which extended the winning margin (see Squidge Rugby’s analysis of that move, or The Move, here).

Not everyone is as excited to see the men in green trundling up the field, whichever way they get there. “At some point, people will need to decide which type of game they want to watch,” said All Black coach, Ian Foster last week. Do we really need to decide which type of game we want to see? Isn’t the beauty of this oval-balled game the juxtaposition of styles that each nation brings to the table? 

To lean on the metaphor of football manager, Jurgen Klopp “(They’re) like an orchestra… But I like heavy metal more. I always want it loud.” While the Springboks may have relied on the heavy metal Bomb Squad in the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2023 cohort has evolved into a different beast. 

It’s loud. It’s fast. It’s stripped down. It’s distorted. It may not be for everyone. And with Rassie Erasmus at the helm, it’s certainly anti-establishment. It’s Punk Rock Rugby.

The French have their champagne on ice. While on the outskirts of Paris, the unfavoured World Champions toil away ahead of this weekend’s epic. The underdogs bump heads with the upper crust. “The more under, the more canine, the better.” Rassie might say. He will be in a defiant mood, as he attempts to gatecrash the party once more.

I’ve noticed that there are a few questions that run through every person’s head on the back of a game vehicle: I wonder if we’ll see a leopard today? If I were a leopard, is that the sort of tree I would climb? How many years have now passed since I last saw a leopard? Those leopards should know that we’re not all that bad and that we’ve travelled really far to see them — it would really be lovely for us all if they showed face from time to time.

If you’re as experienced as Brett, our game ranger at the Tamboti Lodge in Madikwe, who has been circumnavigating the fifth biggest game reserve in South Africa for over 20 years, you may find ways to distract the mense from these thoughts. And earlier this year, he certainly distracted me. 

It was on an early morning game drive in the Autumn and it was cold. Shortly after seeing some jackal parading up the path, Brett pointed out a black-shouldered kite. These were things that Brett really loved to see. He then discussed how jackals, spotted-owls and black-shouldered kites all represent something important: they are indications of a healthy, thriving ecosystem. 

The presence of the owls meant there was an abundance of rodents in the reserve, which we weren’t all equally thrilled about, but indicated fantastic soil quality and biodiversity. The jackals thrived in an environment with small mammals and the carcasses of larger predators’ kills. I made a note of the black-shouldered kites too, if not for the fact that they have an awesome name. 

Indications of health — I loved this idea. For the rest of the trip, I eased into the back benches of the Land Cruiser with a beverage and my thoughts. I saw our hosts, Giles and Marguerite, holding hands while Colin and Jane playfully bantered. Nicola rested her head on Justin’s shoulder ahead of me, and I thought about these subtle, yet important indications of health. I also thought of our baby boy, Thomas, back at the lodge with Jules, possibly giggling.

Wanting to see a leopard with its kill, possibly up a tree, started to feel more juvenile. Brett was helping me rise above this urban desire to chase peak Instagrammable moments. I would settle for something more authentic. I was a visitor here, and would not demand entertainment. I would enjoy soaking up the ebbs and flows of each game drive like a session of test cricket. If you’re looking for T20 cricket, I thought, go to a zoo.

The next evening, with a gin and tonic in my hand and my son on my lap, I revelled in a form of time travel — saving this Time in a Bottle, like that lovely Jim Croce tune. Sitting above the lodge’s watering hole I thought about how this Lowveld landscape was not that different than it was millennia before. This game reserve was a thriving ecosystem once more. With loads of rodents. Thanks, Brett.

Working from home this week I walked past Thomas’ room and eavesdropped on his nanny, Josephine, singing along to Imogen’s Heap’s The Happy Song whilst Thomas giggled. I thought back to our trip to Madikwe and how there was this game ranger who sold me on a new lens to see the world through. I then thought about our friends Nicola and Justin back in London, and how much we would have all loved to have seen a leopard.

Thank you for taking the time to read my writing. If you enjoyed this essay, I’d be so chuffed if you forwarded it on to anyone you think would enjoy it too.

Extract from a conversation between Write of Passage’s David Perell and the Cultural Tutor

I felt like a stuck record. It was one year ago and I was chewing many an ear off with my thoughts about how Damian Willemse may well become the best Springbok we’ll ever watch. I felt conviction in these words, and merely saying them around a braai did not feel sufficient. So I sat down to write. And instead of writing about the player who was making me fall in love with the game once more, I started writing about my dad.

I had dabbled in writing online before, but on 2 September 2022, I published A True Champion. I’ve teased my grandfather here before about his stories within stories. It turns out that I too am incapable of talking about a rugby match from last weekend without also telling you a story about watching the 2009 J&B Met. I blame genetics.

There was something in that process that made me want to do it again. So I enrolled in a writing course. I dialled into live session after live session at ungodly hours with a couple of hundred people dotted across the globe and published five essays. Write of Passage is a five-week course that showed me the true value of using my words — yet I still fall short of finding the superlatives to describe it.

I took the course shortly after Thomas was born, so admittedly there is a bigger force at play, but there was something about the experience that changed me. If you’re familiar with the Memory Palace memorisation technique, the analogy I use to describe this Substack is that it’s my Idea Palace of sorts.

Knowing that I have a little Idea Palace — an imaginarium where I get to contrive and file some of my thoughts, tales and aspirations — has oddly chilled me out a bit more. I feel less inclined these days to try and get the final word in around the dinner table (braais are different), as I know if I have a point of view I’d really like to share, I may write something about it.

Last weekend, I was in Amsterdam, and I met up with Rik van der Berge, a Write of Passage alumni and Dutch native whom I’d only ever met over Zoom. We sat at Cafe Wildschut in De Pijp and yarned for hours about the surprising ways that writing online has enriched our lives, spitballed essay ideas and discussed another common interest we share— our first 11 months of parenting (Thomas is one week younger than Rik’s daughter, Blom).

My friend in Amsterdam, Rumpus Dale, said it was awesome that I would make a plan to meet up with someone I’d never met before to talk about writing. It would have felt like a great loss to go into the backyard of someone I admired and not look them up.

The idea of taking a conversation from around the fire and turning it into a piece of writing is indeed one of the core principles of Write of Passage. If you’re feeling increasingly impassioned about a topic, it may be worth starting a Substack and spending some time trying to distil those ideas into a few hundred words — and you may well surprise yourself with the outcome.

The course runs twice a year, and I’ve been involved in the last two cohorts. I joined the most recent cohort as an editor. This meant I edited over a dozen essays a week for the duration of the program. Each essay gets edited by at least three people (one Write of Passage editor and at least two other students), and one thing I’ve learnt is that the quality of a piece increases exponentially with some quality peer feedback. 

If the idea of sharing your thoughts on your own Substack appeals to you, then Write of Passage is certainly worth considering. There are three free workshops running in September that you may want to check out. These workshops are jam-packed with tactics and tools to help you sharpen your ideas and grow your audience online.

• Grow Your Audience with the Cultural Tutor (6 September - 20:00 SA Time) Register

• How to Start Writing Online (13 Sept, 01:00 SA Time) Register

• Test Drive Write of Passage (21 Sept, 18:00 SA Time) Register

I have an offer for you: If you sign up for and attend any of these three workshops at the links above and want to publish online, I’ll give you my editing services for the first essay on your Substack at no cost. Simply drop me a line and we’ll set up a call.

Let me know if you have any questions, and please feel free to forward this to anyone who you think could benefit from writing online. As my friend, says, which I agree with, “Everyone has a writer in them”.

The sound of gravel crunching under my heels, the thrill of cupping the cold stream with my hands to drink, and ending a hike perched on my dad’s shoulders: my earliest memories are memories of the mountains. Wherever you wander in the Cape, you’re never more than 10 minutes from a wondrous patch of trail where you could potentially lace up your shoes for a walk or trot. Table Mountain towers above me today, a push notification reminding me that I’m still short of 10,000 steps. There’s just the one little thing about this mountain that gets to me: I don’t run on its trails enough. 

Momentum is a funny thing, they say, but so is inertia. So how is it that with even the most hulking reminder omnipresent, it is still somehow possible to not move towards the most reasonable goals? More so now than ever, in whichever realm of our choice, we know what we should be doing if we want success — we’ve got the books on our shelves, the websites archived, the tweets bookmarked. 

James Clear's Atomic Habits argues that chasing down goals or outcomes is not necessarily the way to go — rather, we should build identity-based habits. "Every action you take is a vote for the person you wish to become" is the essence of this philosophy, and the perfect maxim for intentional living. It highlights the idea that our daily choices and habits shape our identity and ultimately determine our trajectory. By consistently making votes that align with our desired identity, we reinforce that identity and increase the likelihood of achieving our goals. 

With democracy being the order of the day, I know what you’re thinking: what about all those votes we cast for that person we don’t want to be? Casting off these fresh votes in favour of our desired identity may feel infinitesimal — as though we’re rallying behind an independent party in a national election. But that’s far from true. We know that every mountain is climbed one step at a time and what matters is that we’re moving onwards and upwards, rather than in the opposite direction.

One way I’m trying to think about my trail running ambitions is whether there is a way to cast a big, buy-the-t-shirt type of vote for the type of person I aspire to be. This is why I registered to run the RMB Ultra-Trail Cape Town EX23 in about five months’ time. Of course, I ordered the t-shirt too.

The 23km trail starts in Constantia near the Alphen Hotel and navigates through Constantia’s greenbelts, Cecilia and Newlands Forests, through UCT’s Upper Campus, up to the Blockhouse and Devil’s Peak, wrapping around the mountain to finish at the Garden’s Rugby Club. And my plan between now and then is to cast many votes in support of finishing strong around lunchtime on Saturday 25 November.

I don’t know why I’ve hesitated in pursuing this goal as it aligns so neatly with my earliest memories and current intentions. I’d love to know if there’s a bold vision you’re working towards and whether, as Clear suggests, you can move from saying “I’m the person who wants this”, to “I’m the person who is this!”  Indeed, Maya Angelou did in fact say that when someone tells you who they are, you should believe them. 

Thanks to andfor your thoughtful feedback.

Tom Rosslee, holding a stick of droëwors in one hand, and a green sippy cup in the other, sat in a Scandinavian high chair between his two aunts who were waiting for him to flash a smile. But he did nothing. He had been oddly quiet throughout the evening, except now, at his dining room table with the kameeldoring wood cackling in the fireplace to his right, he seemed even more distant. The ladies flanking him ought to have known that it was a bad idea to try force smiles out of Young Tom while he was in this mood. It was a mood that his parents had picked up on for the first time earlier that week, and quite uncommon for him at all, let alone in this month of June, just a few months before his first birthday.

Rosslee had been teething on and off for the past couple of months, which he couldn’t wait to end, and was tired of all the lotions and potions his parents intermittently spread across his gums. They didn’t help. He was, however, coming into his stride with an iconic sense of humour that often made an appearance around the dinner table — “he’s running more inside jokes than the Rondebosch Boys’ Boarding House”, his uncle speculated  — but just the night before, his laugh around the dinner table was weak and uncertain. Young Tom Rosslee was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Rosslee, much like his old man, it can plunge him into a mood. Tom Rosslee had a cold.

Rosslee with a cold is decaffeinated coffee, a braai without boerewors. The common cold robs him of that glint in his eye, that smile, and a laugh that his dad describes as “the sweetest music”. And it affects not only him, but also his family around him who adore him, and who have grown accustomed to drinking in his mood. But now, sitting in his high chair, Rosslee had a cold, and he continued to chew quietly on his droëwors and seemed miles away in his private world, not even reacting when suddenly the JBL speaker switched to Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Three Little Birds.

The sweet little ditty, recorded by The Wailers in 1977, has inspired many with its uplifting and optimistic lyrics. In fact, Rosslee’s grandmother had gifted him a children’s picture book authored by Cedella Marley, Bob’s oldest child. The book, Every Little Thing, has adapted the lyrics from Three Little Birds, into a story about a young boy who shows love for those around him with the simple lyrics of the chorus repeated: “Singin', don't worry, about a thing / 'Cause every little thing, gonna be all right”. Undoubtedly the words from this song — a classic tune with a timeless message — had jolted millions before him into a lighter mood of pensive reflection. His aunts had of course seen him at his best, and if you supplement what they knew with what they’d seen on video calls, and in WhatsApp groups, they knew that dinner time oftentimes resulted in a positive riot. Nevertheless, here was Tom Rosslee unmoved by both their presence and Bob Marley's. After all, he had a cold.

In Rosslee’s frequent walks through Keurboom Park or Newlands Forest, his parents proudly paraded him in a bearsuit of sorts, or a “onesie” in the modern vernacular, and looks as cute as all hell. A recent charade of his is to respond to his mother’s sweet request to “clap (his) handies” to which he puts his chicken-thigh-sized hands together. His parents listen silently, all eyes on their little prince, and when there is an almost audible “clap” from Young Tom’s paws pressing together, there is an even greater applause. His father smiles at his mother, and says, shaking his head with a knowing smile, “This child is special.”

After his relatives had all gone, Rosslee left the table and retreated to the warmth of his nursery. He was going to do some drinking of the warm white liquid he had grown ever more accustomed to over recent months. His father, cradling the bottle ran a temperature test and the malty flavour was somewhat reminiscent of the mug of Horlicks he too used to enjoy, in those good old days before calorie counting. He sang his son some Springsteen and young Tom Rosslee gripped the bottle firmly and imbibed.

After his mother entered the room and draped a knitted blanket over the sleep sack which he’d been zipped up in, he slept peacefully. Indeed, the blanket was crocheted for him by his great-grandmother whom he never had the privilege of meeting. In her twilight years, Nanna, as she was known, started a project where she knitted each of her five grandchildren, two blankets for each of their spawns. We don’t think she fussed too long over the arithmetic or permutations of it all. She loved her music, and while Bob Marley & The Wailers were hardly her soundtrack of choice, she too subscribed to the philosophies of Every Little Thing. 

This is a parody of an award-winning piece of journalism by Gay Talese from April 1966: Frank Sinatra Has A Cold. The essay is a response to a writing prompt from the Write of Passage writing course: Imitate, Then Innovate.

Imagine for a second dining out with Ted Lasso. From the divey-est of dives to the finest of fine dines, it’s difficult to picture yourself having a bad time. If you've watched the show, you may have come to love Ted for his ability to see the positive in any situation and his unflappable nature when faced with challenges. As your dinner companion, Ted would charm the waitstaff with a friendly "Howdy!" and then break the ice with a wholesome tale from his hometown, Kansas City. 

What makes a dining experience enjoyable may vary from person to person, but we all want our expectations to be met. My wife, Jules, teases me when I begin a sentence with “For me, …” as though I’m saying “Pay attention now, something profound might follow.” But here I go: For me, to sit in a restaurant and have strangers cook and serve us delicious food, is a luxury. However, when I talk to others about dining out, I often hear complaints and negativity. Watching Ted Lasso makes me wonder if the problem is with the dining experience itself, or whether we can change our attitudes toward it. Are we really bringing our best selves to the table?

I have a friend like Ted and, as you can imagine, spending an evening in a restaurant or crowded bar with him is always a delight. Andrew exudes Ted Lasso Energy, treating the waitstaff with warmth and winning them over with his charm. He's quick to ask for a bucket of his favourite beer on ice, “To save them running back and forth, you know,” and takes their menu recommendations to heart. Although he tends to frequent the same table in the same dive bar, like Ted (the Vasco Da Gama Tavern in Green Point), I've seen him work his magic elsewhere too. 

Having worked in restaurants before, I've witnessed the power of a familiar face flashing a friendly smile and greeting staff by name. The room's temperature shifts, and a sense of welcome washes over everyone. As Matthew McConaughey might have said at some point, but probably didn’t: “When you show up with the attitude that there’s no place you’d rather be, you may just end up being right.” 

We've all had dining experiences where our expectations were not met. I used to respond by muttering under my breath and growing impatient. However, my wife Jules shared her philosophy of "protecting the sanctity of the dining experience"  — although she may not have called it that. Essentially, it’s the idea that if you have something negative to say, why not wait a few days? We're out to have a good time, and expressing negativity in that moment can ruin the experience for everyone. 

Recently, I listened to an FT Weekend podcast about fine dining after the announcement that Noma, the world's top restaurant, would close in 2024. Food critic Tim Hayward spoke about the bizarre reality of 14-course tasting menus and, for a journalist that has experienced hundreds of Michelin Starred meals, he ended with a surprising answer to the question of what makes a restaurant good:

“For me, it’s hospitality… The magic comes in when you walk into a place and they greet you at whatever level, whatever kind of place it is and they say, “You’re in my hands now, and while you’re in my hands, I’m going to make sure everything is as lovely for you as I can make it, is that okay with you?”, and you go, “Yeah, that’s okay with me”. The amount of money that changes hands, the quality of food that’s delivered, is not that important. I’ve come in for the evening and I go home thinking: Those people really looked after me and that was wonderful. That’s it, that’s what you want. Hospitality with a small h.”

Perhaps Tim Hayward makes a counterpoint to mine: that hospitality - with a small h - should stand alone. But there’s a reciprocity to the relationship that I think we’re missing. And I wouldn’t be the first person to suggest that if we have a desire to be treated better, maybe we should be the one that goes first. 

We watched Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society in my final year of high school. A TV + VCR setup wheeled into our classroom and our English teacher was hiding a smirk that generally signalled that we may enjoy what followed. We were most impressed to see the TV outside of the Geography Department on a Friday morning while the Stormers were touring New Zealand, and it didn't take us long to realise that we were in for something special.

The Dead Poets Society gatherings would kick off with a segment from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately…” and “to live deep and suck out all the marrow out of life”. Great art has a way of showing rather than telling, and the film made the argument for thinking for yourself and seizing the day better than the lectures I received at that age.

The themes from Dead Poets Society feel relevant as ever. Especially since just over a year ago, Jules and I found out that we were going to be parents. We thought we had a handle on the conventional wisdom surrounding pregnancy, not to mention the practicalities of adding another human to the household. So we started jotting down lists of things we had to do, things we should do, and things to avoid. But we quickly realised that there was a lot of grey area between these lists.

This stressed us out, and by the time we reached our peaceful Friday evening braai, the grey area had spread to our once medium-rare steaks. “They can take our wine, but they can’t take our T-Bone!” I announced, and quickly messaged my friend Sarah: “What’s the book that says you can drink coffee and the odd glass of wine while pregnant? Asking for a friend!” 

A few nights later, I was waiting for Jules to doze off so that I could pry the copy of ’s Expecting Better from her bedside table. The book’s subtitle is “Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong - and What You Really Need to Know", and it delivers on that promise. As a professor of economics at an Ivy League university, Oster debunks many an old wives tale with a data-driven approach with a writing style that is both approachable and engaging. 

They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears, and we were delighted to find our sage in Emily Oster. If I’ve learnt anything from the cinema, it's that when you set out on a grand adventure, you’re better off having a wizard, spiritual guru or talking donkey to guide you through the murky waters. But let’s not forget that you should disregard the advice of your digsmate, especially if he’s a lanky Welshman.

The sequel to Expecting Better about babies and toddlers is titled Cribsheet — and that’s exactly what her books feel like, a cheat code that you can constantly refer to whenever you’re a bit unsure of your next move. For us right now, it’s introducing our boy Thomas to solid foods as he edges towards six months old. If you search Amazon for "introducing children to solid foods" you’ll get several hundred results, and you could find a thousand more opinions elsewhere. Emily deals with this in a short chapter providing an analysis of what the data tells us, neatly summarised with five bulleted takeaways (e.g. introduce allergens early). 

The term ‘unsolicited advice’ tickles me, as the only time I ever hear it is in relation to parenting. Everywhere else, you’re either getting good advice or bad advice, and it’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to take it or leave it. But when it comes to pregnancy, childbirth, and raising kids, it seems to mostly matter whether you ‘solicited’ it or not. Maybe it’s just because things get a bit noisy and overwhelming at times.

Liberating is not usually the adjective I use to describe a book. But the more I think about it, the more I think that the right advice at the right time can change your life. Remember what Robin Williams’ character said? "No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world." Well, I’m firm in my view that Emily Oster's words on pregnancy and child-rearing have made the world a better place. I also feel like it has armed me to not let that ‘unsolicited advice’ get under my skin — because when you think about it, you realise that all everyone wants is the best for your baby.

You might also want to consider subscribing to 's brilliant Substack, .

My grandfather, Bob Rosslee, passed away earlier this month on his 98th birthday. I had the privilege of saying a few words at his memorial, welcoming the guests and introducing the speakers that followed. I told a story that I’d like to share on this platform.

Good evening to all of you here, who shared some love for my Oupa, Bob Rosslee. 

A couple of months ago, as I was on my way home from visiting Oupa, I spotted something that made me smile.

In the foyer of his retirement home, fittingly named Evergreen, a dedicated resident shared a list of the movies they could watch on their Friday Movie Night. The maker of the list asked the other residents to tick off the films they’d like to watch. The ones with the most ticks would be watched first. Democracy — at its best.

There were several movies that I wouldn’t mind drifting off to on a Friday night. But there was one movie on the list with several more ticks than the others - The Bucket List. A sweet tale about two old men, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, chasing down their dying wishes.

One retiree took things further and, in addition to a tick, provided a little commentary: “a very good movie”. Chuckling on my way home, I made a note to ask Oupa who this film buff might have been. While I knew that Oupa often skipped movie night, I don’t think that would have prevented him from having his say in the margins.

I’ve been thinking about this in the past two weeks as I reflected on Oupa’s presence in my life. In particular, the question: How do we make the most of the time we have?

And I think about what his answer might be...  I think he would say something to the effect of: Live well, but don’t worry too much about time running away from you. 

He is, after all, the only person who ever took me out to dine at a freeway picnic site. I fondly remember sitting with Oupa, Ouma and my brothers beside the N1, eating hardboiled eggs and roast chicken sandwiches, off a concrete table and chairs. With cars and trucks hurtling past us at 120km, I remember thinking: Why try get to the hot springs in Montagu in two hours, when you could easily stretch it out to three, three and half hours?

Oupa’s stories notoriously also went on a bit. The master storyteller that he was, would allow his stories to meander across the decades and millennia. His stories within stories were a common occurrence - and some stories couldn’t be told without telling a very important, yet tenuously linked other story, possibly about the war. He got teased by us all for repeating himself, but if you listened carefully you would notice new facts inserted or selective omissions, which generally improved the story.

I don’t think I’ll be the only person here emphasising how much my Oupa loved telling a good story. Nor will I be the only grandchild, or great grandchild, with many memories of visiting Oupa at Evergreen, or in Hermanus, and always leaving with a smile on my face. 

I do remember him making lists though. Especially his birthday lists. He jotted down the names of the people who called to wish him that day and by the end of the day he had two lists: the good list of the people that called… and the bad list. My brother, Gareth, once asked Oupa to read him “the good list” and when Oupa went through the dozens of names, popular chappie that he was, he started to read a former US President’s name. Once he jogged his memory to confirm that Bill Clinton had not in fact called him, he looked up at us with a chuckle and said, “Someone’s been messing with my list… You buggers!”

So do I think that he was the film buff that provided the commentary on the movie, The Bucket List — “a very good movie”? No. I don’t think it was our Oupa.

Because, his movie star good looks aside, I don’t think he shared that much in common with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in the movie. I say this because Oupa never gave anyone the impression that he had unfinished business, or had any wish to live any life other than the wonderful life he led. 

Oupa was so loved. And it gives me great pleasure to welcome his family and friends to the mic to share their favourite memories of Bob Rosslee, Oupa, or as my dad and his brothers called him, The Old Man.

I wrote to you last on New Year’s Day. In Songbook #8: Tiny Changes, I mentioned how I was thinking of the daily habits I can build to improve my life and the lives of the people closest to me. Hours later I finished Atomic Habits and, whilst braaiing boerewors for my family, I started plotting how I was going to make this year remarkable.

This is when I got carried away. Perhaps the caramelised onions dancing around Joey’s boerewors drippings inside the Ultimate Hot Dog Roll™, gave me that sniff of perfection that I immediately wanted to seek in all areas of my life. Once I’d finished my boerewors roll, which I soon realised was my allotment for the year, I would be chasing those goals and pictured The New Me taking my son Thomas for a swim in Majorca, Corfu, Tofo Beach, the Camps Bay Tidal Pool. 

I would quit drinking, until at least the day after I start receiving compliments about my photoshopped physique, and promptly signed up for several 6am classes in my remaining week of holiday. That day would come soon, I mused, before attending only one of those classes. On Monday 2 January 2023, I arrived fresh faced at the Virgin Active in Claremont and took my seat on a spinning bike beside a 65 year old woman in an empty class. 

We stared ahead and warmed up, and before long, the Portuguese Jessica Fletcher beside me had solved the mystery. She reckoned that class had been erroneously added to the Virgin Active app by someone who forgot that the 2nd of January was a public holiday. And it made complete sense. With no sage to guide us into the new year, we cycled in silence at a comfortable pace, and I felt a shared moment between us when we realised that we would not be hurtling towards our new selves, as we had both recently planned.

It was not just Virgin Active that had dropped the ball. Meta, Inc.’s algorithms got lazy and veered off course from the New Year, New You starter pack of Russian Kettlebells, a Wim Hof ice bath and the Lululemon tights that were clearly in my mind’s eye. Instead, later that day whilst scrolling from the couch and feeling somewhat parched, they presented me with a picture of Anthony Bourdain, drinking a cold pint and giving me a “What the fuck do you want?” stare.

The quote beneath Bourdain suggested I “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o'clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you've never been.” It didn’t take long for me to reflect on the fact that I quite like drinking cold pints at 4pm in mostly empty bars. And I started to think of the quality humans in my life that I would love to have a drink and spin a yarn with this year.

Now don’t confuse this as a call to action for you to shelve your New Year’s Resolutions on week one. This is about something bigger. Because seeing Bourdain staring at me over that frosty pint made me think about the type of life I want to be living this year. That is: I want 2023 to be a year that is memorable, for all the right reasons.

How does this tie in with the Atomic Habits and Tiny Changes that I’ve been bandying on about? Well, for starters, if you want to have a memorable life, you may want to consider having a system to help you remember what’s going on in your life. This made me think of this daily reflection exercise I heard about, called Homework For Life, from an author and storyteller, Matthew Dicks.

The idea is that at the end of every day, you take a few minutes and ask yourself, “What was the most Storyworthy moment of my day?” Even if it doesn’t feel particularly poignant at the time, you just write down a few sentences in your notebook or spreadsheet about any story you might tell a friend over a dinner table. Dicks says that “There are meaningful, life-changing moments happening in your life all the time … Find your stories. Collect them. Save them forever.”

I leapt up off the couch, immediately inspired to buy Matthew Dicks’ book, Storyworthy. Barely a minute had passed until I returned to the couch with my Kindle, albeit with slightly less slouched posture. “This is it!”, I thought, “This is the book I need to read to get my year zooting forwards”. And before it was fully downloaded I decided that I had just embarked on a quest to become a better storyteller. Matthew Dicks, the author from Woonsocket, Rhode Island would be my sage this year, and not the spinning instructor from Claremont who no-showed at 6am that morning. That’ll show him.

The foreword to Storyworthy was written by Dan Kennedy, the founder of The Moth Podcast. There was one sentence that jumped out at me: “(Matthew Dicks) taught me that trying to get better at storytelling also meant trying to get better at being a friend, or a son, a boyfriend, a brother, or just a better person.”

And for the third time in 2023, at 4:45pm on 2 January, I needed to retrace my steps and temper my New Year’s Resolutions. Because reading that sentence in the foreword, I thought that while it would be nice to become a better storyteller in 2023, a far better outcome would be becoming a better family man, entrepreneur, friend… and then maybe a writer. 

The line from Atomic Habits that left a mark on me is “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” And while I plan to document my first full year as a dad through my Homework For Life Google Sheet, I think I’ll be paying less attention to the storyworthiness of it all, and more attention to whether I like reading about the person I’m becoming.

Happy New Year!

One of my favourite lyrics is from Frightened Rabbit’s Heads Roll Off, where Scott Hutchison sings, “And while I'm alive, I'll make tiny changes to earth”. I always hear it as a call to action: every positive action I am able to take matters.  

It matters, as acting with goodness in our hearts causes positive ripples in the cosmic pond. Of course the opposite is true too. Who can’t think of a time when they’ve passed anger, pain or frustration onto an innocent bystander? 

I wrote about meeting Scott Hutchison in Johannesburg in Songbook #5. He was a lovely man, full of heart and soul. His music inspired many and his lyrics offered companionship to me and many of my friends through tough times. 

Scott tragically took his life in 2019. When I read the news at my desk, a colleague rushed into my office to see if I was okay. I’m not sure what noise I may have made at that moment, but it hit me hard. I’m not sure you have to have lost someone close to you to suicide to find anything related to suicide so triggering, but it’s certainly been the case for me since losing my dad in 2011.

It took me the better part of a decade to invest in seeing a psychologist after I found myself angrier and more frustrated than I was accustomed to feeling. I went for weekly therapy sessions for around a year with a man with kind eyes in Johannesburg and am in a much better place for it. 

I referenced the achingly beautiful Red Hand Files in my previous Songbook, the Nick Cave Omnibus. Nick provides written responses to his fans' questions and in Red Hand File #147 he provides a perspective on suffering:

As far as compassionate acts that reduce the world’s suffering go, I can’t help but think of the Netflix documentary, Stutz. Directed by Jonah Hill, the film chronicles the life and career of Hill’s therapist, Dr Phil Stutz. Hill says that the purpose of the film is to give the tools he learned in therapy from Dr Stutz to a wide audience in a way that enables people to make their lives better. 

He delivers on this promise and more. Wanting to hear more from my man, Stutz, I found myself in unfamiliar waters, listening to Gwyneth Paltrow on the Goop Podcast. She interviewed Phil Stutz and there’s a lovely bit around the 20 minute mark where  he talks about the impact that each of us can have on the world.

Whether Stutz listens to Frightened Rabbit is a question for another time, but this idea about making tiny positive changes is something I’m fully behind. I’m currently reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits which has the payoff line, “Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results”. So, rather than thinking about my lofty goals for the year ahead, I’m thinking of the daily habits I can build to improve my life and the lives of the people closest to me. 

Phil Stutz starts off every patient’s session with the question, “What do you want?”, and to be honest, I was hoping to find a way to enigmatically insert that thought into this conclusion. But I’m going to go poach an egg instead.

If you're interested to read more about Stutz, my friend, , wrote an excellent essay on his Substack here.

“I’m also thinking of starting a Substack?”
“A substack or a blog?”
“A Substack.”
“What’s a Substack?”
“It’s a blog.”

This conversation (loosely) played out at a recent family lunch when my brother, Gareth, suggested he’d be making another foray into writing online. Whether you call it a Substack, an email newsletter or a blog is semantic. If you want to create an online home for your writing and build an email subscription list, Substack is the way to go.

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When I think of the email newsletter, I think back to Gareth’s emails from London in 2004/5. Under his nom de plume, Poncey Malherbe, he regaled us with tales from watching Bob Dylan at the Brixton Academy to partying with the England Rugby Team after beating the Springboks at Twickenham.

One of Poncey’s tales circulated the University of Cape Town’s Comm-Lab wildly. It may have been the one where we shared brandy and cokes with West Indian cricket fans at The Oval in the rain. This was as viral as things got in 2005. 

A maverick entrepreneur - who owned a prime piece of South African online real estate - was keen to unmask The Ponce and offer him a job as the editor of what would become South Africa’s leading rugby website.  Which he did. The young entrepreneur was Dave Wessels. The story goes that Dave, now the Stormers’ Director of Rugby, registered the website domain SARugby.com (and several others) with his dad’s credit card as a teenager in the 90s. 

Dave slipped off to the family PC midway through dinner with the idea that “The Internet” his parent’s guests were talking about - still with the finger speech bubbles - was going to be big business. Owning website domains was the way to do it and he got there early in the land-grab. 

The website domain you own these days seems less important than your audience, as more and more of the content we seek comes trickling into our inboxes. I think that this is a good thing, as I’m more likely to consume content that I have a genuine interest in this way, rather than surrendering myself to social media’s algorithms.

Browsing the internet used to feel like a trip to the farmers market on a Saturday morning, where you checked in on your favourite merchants, and carefully selected your essentials for the day. It now feels like Times Square on Black Friday, and the thought of popping out to get the proverbial eggs and milk can be an anxiety-inducing affair.

So from the warm cocoon of my Gmail inbox, I can take a leisurely moment to chew on some content on:

• writing online from David Perell;

• a data driven approach to parenting and pregnancy from Emily Oster;

• improving relationships from Esther Perel;

• neuroplasticity and creative experiments from Charlotte Grysolle; and

• frameworks for personal growth from Sahil Bloom.

And once I get through it all, you’re going to have to watch out for this guy.

It’s strange to think that decades later, we’ve gone through the full circle of the internet experience and landed back on email newsletters. It’s not such a far-fetched thought when you consider The Lindy Effect, the theory that the longer something has been around, the longer we can expect it to be around.

Sahil Bloom provides the Lindy Effect 101 here with the story about Lindy’s, a New York deli frequented by comedians in the 1960s. The observation was made that “the more stage appearances a Lindy's comedian made, the more future appearances he could be predicted to make” — this ‘life-expectancy’ is proportional to its age. 

In other words, email has been around for three decades, and we can expect it to be around for at least another three. Some social media platforms may end up burning out as quickly as they arrived, and we shouldn’t be quick to write off handwritten letters still being a thing in thousands of years’ time.

When Gareth recently saw Dave, he explained his understanding of Substack and how I was using it to build up an email distribution list. Dave opened the web browser on his phone, (kindly) subscribed to my newsletter and quickly retorted, “We must start a Substack, Ponce!”. I really hope they do. And if you’re interested in starting a Substack of your own, I recommend David Perell’s Ultimate Guide to Writing Online. 

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

If you told me that a parallel universe exists where I have only my Nick Cave related memories, I wouldn’t mind trading places for a few days. In many ways, Nick Cave has punctuated the most pivotal times of my life — a leitmotif of sorts. 

It’s impossible for me to think about Jules and my wedding day without hearing Breathless, and I have sung the opening verses of Into My Arms many times to my seven-week-old boy, Thomas. Through the peaks and troughs of my life, I don’t have to reach too far to find a Nick Cave memory that carries some significance. This essay reflects on seven of these memories.

You may want to accompany your reading with this Spotify playlist of the songs mentioned in this essay.

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One - Where The Wild Roses Grow (with Kylie Minogue)

I’m sixteen and I’m at my best mate Deacs’ house. His dad, Willouw, plays me my first murder ballad, Where The Wild Roses Grow. It’s an enchanting song that you feel may just be the most beautiful love song you’ve ever heard — until it’s not. The red-lipped temptress, Elisa Day gets murdered by the protagonist in the final stanzas.

Like many teenage boys in 2001, I was bewitched by Kylie Minogue’s gold hotpants from her Spinning Around music video. Here she was, singing a chilling duet with an Australian I had only just heard of, on an album called Murder Ballads. Hearing Kylie’s honeyed vocals juxtaposed with Nick’s baritone for the first time is a wonderful sensation.

The song sat side-by-side with The Ship Song on the “Best of…” album that was my Nick Cave gateway drug. The Ship Song is a traditionally beautiful love song that dances between metaphors of ships, dogs and wings in a tale about losing yourself in the arms of another person — a lot for my sixteen year old brain to process.

On the last day I took her where the wild roses grow
And she lay on the bank, the wind light as a thief
And I kissed her goodbye, said, "All beauty must die"
And I lent down and planted a rose 'tween her teeth

Two -  Straight To You

As a teenager, my musical education really took place in my older brother Gareth’s bedroom, late on many school weeknights, fueled by sweet Joko tea. We theorised about the meaning of life through rock music — to me, the three year age gap, and surprisingly powerful Philips CD player, had provided him with infinite wisdom on these matters.

He has always had great taste in music, so I’ve always been partial to his habit of playing music a few decibels higher than he ought to. Mom would come check on us and hear us listening to Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews and Nick Cave (to name a few) and tell us quite politely to go to bed. I can’t help but think that she may have been more forceful if we were listening to Limp Bizkit or Eminem. 

I love the memory of coming home from sports practice to find my mom in the kitchen, making bolognese and singing along to my favourite songs. 

All the towers of ivory are crumbling
And the swallows have sharpened their beaks
This is the time of our great undoing
This is the time that I'll come running

Three - God Is In The House

After my parents divorced, my relationship with my dad hinged mainly on music and sport. Amongst the folk classics such as Jim Croce and Leonard Cohen, he loved Jethro Tull’s Aqualung album. Aqualung’s single Wind Up provided my introduction to satire in music. It pokes a little fun at the Christian institution when the higher being responds to the protagonist’s pleas for the truth: “I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday”. 

Nick Cave’s God Is In The House was our attempt to see him, and arguably raise him on the satire front. It’s an iteration on the same theme — just because you clothe something as sacred and pure, it doesn’t necessarily make it so. God Is In The House takes aim at the god-fearing in a playful black comedy that meanders between the triumphant and the macabre. It is wildly fabricated yet deadly serious. 

Our town is very pretty
We have a pretty little square
We have a woman for a mayor
Our policy is firm but fair
Now that God is in the house

Four - There She Goes My Beautiful World

I’m days away from my nineteenth birthday, living in London on my gap year, walking through Camden Town on a Sunday afternoon with Gareth and Deacs. We make a stop at a record store and see that Nick Cave’s Abbatoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus album has just been released. It was one of those albums that ditched the crystal case and had a wonderful canvas cover with a picture of a white flower.

Days later, we see that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are playing live at Brixton Academy in November on the Abbatoir Blues tour. We are going. Deacs’ dad Willouw - who introduced us to Nick Cave in the first place - flies over to London to watch the concert with us. The Bad Seeds looking every bit the part, the intensity of Nick’s movements resplendent in black tie and the backing vocalists’ afros, There She Goes My Beautiful World remains imprinted in my memory to this day. 

My life since that day is old enough to order itself a beer. The performance was, after all, on 11 November 2004 — eighteen years and one day ago. I’ve discarded my entire compact disc collection in the years since they became increasingly obsolete. Not the Abbatoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus double album.

The wintergreen, the juniper
The cornflower and the chicory
All the words you said to me
Still vibrating in the air
The elm, the ash and the linden tree
The dark and deep, enchanted sea
The trembling moon and the stars unfurled
There she goes, my beautiful world

Five - Push The Sky Away 

I’m twenty-seven and my friend, Sean, says to me: “I have a ticket to Glastonbury with your name on it. Get to London in June and we’ll take it from there.” A few months later, we are pitching our tents on a Wednesday morning on Glastonbury’s Worthy Farm.

On the weekend where Arctic Monkeys, Rolling Stones and Mumford & Sons headlined the festival, we spend our Sunday evening watching Vampire Weekend, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Phoenix back-to-back. 

There’s an otherworldly moment between Nick and a beautiful raven-haired maiden in a white dress sitting atop the shoulders of a friend during Stagger Lee. Moments later we are repeating the chorus to the lyrics from Push The Sky Away, feeling like we indeed got everything we came for.

And if you feel you got everything you came for
If you got everything and you don't want no more
You've got to just keep on pushing it
Keep on pushing it
Push the sky away

Six - Red Right Hand

I’m thirty three when I first subscribed to The Red Hand Files newsletter. Named after the song Red Right Hand, each of the editions is a written response to a question sent to Nick from a fan — there are over 200 Files.

My first interaction with Red Right Hand unfortunately does not reflect a refined palate for the good things in life. The song features on the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack. We had a VHS growing up which had the two glorious Farrelly Brothers movies recorded back to back: Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary. My younger brother, Matthew, and I watched that one VHS a shameful amount of times, and still have inside jokes running from the lines of those movies.

The Red Hand Files have had a profoundly positive impact on my life since it started trickling into my email inbox in 2019. In it you may find solace for the loss of a loved one, musings on loneliness and aloneness, lessons on friendships and love and wild stories about band members, flutes and Nicolas Cage. After reading enough of the Files, it starts to feel like a friendship, and I find myself regularly forwarding on the emails to spark discussions.

Take a little walk to the edge of town
Go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms
Like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks

Seven - Bright Horses

The album Ghosteen was written and recorded in the years following Nick’s loss of his teenage son, Arthur. It’s a wondrous sprawl of an album that untangles itself beautifully in just over an hour. Nick’s grief is palpable throughout, and the vivid imagery conjures wild apocalyptic landscapes that allow you to drift into another world.

In Faith, Hope and Carnage, Nick says “I think music out of all that we can do, at least artistically, is the great indicator that something else is going, something unexplained, because it allows us to experience genuine moments of transcendence.”  In many ways, this Songbook newsletter is motivated by this idea. The idea that music moves us in ways that we can’t really explain. It certainly does for me. 

The Bright Horses are a metaphor for his son’s wild and enlightened spirit and I’m not sure what else I can say about the painful refrain “And I’m by your side and I’m holding your hand” other than — it transcends.

The bright horses have broken free from the fields
They are horses of love, their manes full of fire
They are parting the cities, those bright burning horses
And everyone is hiding, no one makes a sound
And I’m by your side and I’m holding your hand

Five men and a bag of cash on the day of Charlie and Neliswa’s lobola negotiation

I befriended an Englishman, Charlie Hare, at Glastonbury Festival in 2013. I was living in Cape Town, he was in London, and at the time we didn’t realise we’d both be in Johannesburg for the rest of the decade. Five years later, in the throes of his engagement to marry a beautiful South African, Neliswa, I ended up playing a role in the team that negotiated his lobola (and the celebrations that followed).

He and Neliswa now have two children, Amara and Theo, and live in the English countryside. Last Friday morning, I received a charming voice note from Charlie in response to an essay I wrote two weeks ago:

The essence of that essay, is that we use the word ‘amateurish’ as a synonym for sloppy and incompetent behaviour, and ‘amateur hour’ to describe a time where a lack of skill, ability, or performance is displayed. In that being an amateur means doing something for the love of it, it should be a compliment.

The original Amateur Hour was an American radio talent show broadcast in the 1930s and 1940s. Before its time, the Major Bowes Amateur Hour was not dissimilar to the roaringly successful television talent shows launched in the 2000s, such as Idols, X-Factor and America’s Got Talent. 

You might think that Amateur Hour resembled the Idols (or American Idol) cringeworthy segment called The Wooden Mic. Not so. One blue eyed boy you may have heard of who got his break on Amateur Hour was The Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra.

One of my heroes, Nick Cave, endorsed an amateurish mindset in his Red Hand Files newsletter this week. Chris from Aurora, USA, wrote to Nick asking if it was a fool’s errand to learn to play the guitar at the age of 62 and Nick’s response was expectedly lovely:

Nick discussed his desire become a ceramicist at the age of 63, “It was by any measure a fool’s errand,” and how that led to him making seventeen figurines that are now sitting in a museum in Finland. This Red Hand Files edition ended surprisingly well for Chris from Aurora: Nick invited him to play on the next Grinderman record, if there is one:

It makes sense that we’re wired to optimise for the best outcomes across the different facets of our lives. So when we feel like we can’t quantify the value of a ‘project’, it stresses us out. Perhaps calling it a fool’s errand (or amateurish ideal) is the first step to breaking away from being so endlessly logical about how we spend our time.

For many years I’ve known that I wanted to write: to write more, to write better and, dare I say it, to be a writer. But I only ever dabbled. And the problem with dabbling is that you don’t get that rush of knowing that you’re improving.

At the beginning of September I committed to writing a little bit every day. This led to me enrolling in an online writing course and posting a dozen essays. As much as I love the feeling of dipping my feet into the ocean, it doesn’t compete with the feeling of immersing myself in the icy waters.

Is there something that you love, that you’re only ever dabbling in? Stop dabbling and “Get practicing, dude.” And if you’re open to sharing, I’d love to hear about it in the comments of this post.