I fell in love with Knysna in 1964. I came to live here in 1983. But it wasn’t until 1984 that I realised just why this place was so special to me.

It was the 25 cent oyster that made it so.

I remember it clearly: we bought a hundred of them and took them to the lawn of Noel’s house on Cearn Drive, Leisure Island, on New Year’s Day 1984, and we scoffed them with champagne and orange juice while we watched the passing parade, the boats on the river, and The Heads in the background.

And I thought: “Yep, this is the way I want to live.”

Since then, oysters have punctuated every important event, every celebration - and not a few poignant wakes - of my life in Knysna.

And while they’re not 25 cents each any more (but what is?), it’s good to know that they’re still here. Even if the Knysna Oyster Company’s tumble-down farm sheds (remember them?) and the Oyster Tavern on Thesen Island have gone forever (after 60 years, its lease ran out), the Knysna Oyster Company lives on at the water-side Oystercatcher Restaurants in Knysna and Port Elizabeth.

And this is good news for the tourism industry - and especially for tour guides and tour operators - because both shops have products that the operator can use, and both have dedicated staff who understand their needs.

THE OYSTERCATCHER, KNYSNA
If you’re an old friend of Knysna you’ll remember the Jetty Tapas   (hell, even some people who’ve never been to Knysna remember the Jetty Tapas) - which was an institution in its day and a favourite eating, drinking and meeting place. It burned down about 10 years ago, and its regulars held a wake for it at - you guessed it - The Oystercatcher.

And they’ve been partying there ever since, which means that you can safely visit The Oystercatcher if you’re looking for an authentic Knysna experience. (Sunday afternoons here have become something of an institution of their own with live music rocking the crowds ‘til 6:00 p.m.)

For tour operators, it offers oyster tastings and set menus with (obviously) a definite seafood bias, although meat dishes - like chicken kebabs or rump steaks - are also available.

Their tastings concentrate on the differences between the wild and the cultivated oysters that grow in the Southern Cape - and I won’t be giving away any secrets if I tell you that you can differentiate cultivated oysters from the wild variety because the cultivated ones drink champagne while the wild ones prefer a glass of Mitchell’s Forester’s Lager (Knysna’s other famous export, that is, naturally, available on tap at The Oystercatcher).

The company has done a deal with Knysna Charters, and can arrange to take your guests on a water-borne tour of the Lagoon to visit the intertidal racks where the cultivated oysters are - well - cultivated.

The Oystercatcher trades daily from mid-day to 10:00 p.m. (although the management can arrange to open earlier for larger groups), and prefers to limit its booked seating capacity to between 30 and 35 guests.

It’s run by the very friendly Sue Landers: +27(0)44 382 9995 - oystercatch@mweb.co.za. Please contact her for STO rates, menus, etc.

THE OYSTERCATCHER PORT ELIZABETH
In the harbour, on the water’s edge - you couldn’t ask for a better spot.

And here’s something interesting: you know those genuine Knysna Oysters? Many, many of them come from the oyster farm in Port Elizabeth, where, as the ad used to say, “they taste so good ‘coz they eat so good.”

I haven’t been to the Pee Eee branch for some years now, but Manager Roger Hilligan tells me that the restaurant (which has a seating capacity of 250) now has two boats with a total seating capacity of 40 passengers (note: “passengers,” not “pax.” You’re a guest, not a number at The Oystercatcher) for harbour tours.

“What do I want to tell the tourism industry?” he said, when I mentioned that I was writing to you about his oysters. “I want to tell them that we’re very flexible when it comes to tours, functions, and staff parties, that we’ve got a new, expanded menu, and a sushi bar, and that by the end of this week, our new pub - it’s kind of a sports bar with bog plasma screens - will be ready for service.”

And that’s the thing about Roger, he’s excited about what he’s doing at The Oystercatcher, so it’s difficult to stop him once he gets going.

But who would have it any different?

Contact Roger Hilligan for STO Rates, menus, etc., at The Oystercatcher Port Elizabeth on +27(0)41 582 1867 rogerhilligan@telkomsa.net

EATING AN OYSTER
I have a philosophy about food: if you have to acquire a taste for something, it’s probably not worth acquiring. But the first time I popped an oyster, I just knew: I was eating the essence of the sea.

And it suited me grandly.

As they’ll tell you at The Oystercatcher, you don’t have to eat them with lemon and Tabasco (the ‘traditional’ way): there are many, many other ways of doing the deed (in fact, the company sells a book of oyster recipes), and every one of them is correct.

But since you asked: my favourite is to eat them straight out of the water, splashed with just two or three drops of Laphroaig (a smoky single malt whisky of note) to heighten the flavour.

Oh, no, wait. I prefer them with just a squeeze of lemon...

Or no, maybe the Tabasco does do it for me...

And they’re not bad accompanied by a tomato cocktail or a well-made bloody Mary...

Although you could have them char grilled, the way they do at The Oystercatcher...

Or better still...

Sigh. I think I’d better stop now. I’m gettin’ all sentimental.

Now - go away on holiday. It’s in the economy’s best interest... and

Have a GREAT Tourism Week!

What is it about South African Companies that they think they can behave like shits to their customers and get away with it? Why should their customers NOT get upset when they do? I'm referring to Gecko Media http://www.geckomedia.co.za/- I will NEVER deal with them again.

Anyone know of a decent company that can supply branded flash drives?

Ow! I just stabbed myself in the lip with my pen.

See, I’d been writing a quick note with my much-loved fountain pen, with the lid held between my lips (nice alliteration that, lid in my lips), and when I tried to put it all together again, well, that’s when it happened.

I have never stabbed myself in the lip with my laptop (which is not a bad alliteration in itself). And that, in a roundabout way, is actually the point of what I’m trying to say.

Why, with all our time-saving devices and suchlike, is everything becoming more and more complicated by the minute? And where’s all the time gone?

See, I’ve just finished re-reading (third time) Benjamin Hoff’s ‘The Tao of Pooh’ (And for those among us who think that things like Taoism are the Devil’s work, just one question: Who created the Devil?). No, the Tao means, literally, ‘The Way,’ and it’s a path to higher consciousness through attaining oneness - or total integration - with the world.

I find it compelling, but it’s anything but easy, simply, I expect, because it IS so easy and because our Brains tend, as Pooh would have it, to Complicate Things.

Take the foreword (I have the Egmont edition):

‘”What’s that you’re writing?” asked Pooh, climbing onto the writing table.

‘”The Tao of Pooh,” I replied.

‘”The how of Pooh?” asked Pooh, smudging one of the words I had just written.

‘”The Tao of Pooh,” I replied, poking his paw away with my pencil.

‘”It seems more like the ow! Of Pooh,” said Pooh, rubbing his paw.

‘”Well, it’s not,” I replied huffily.

‘”What’s it about?” asked Pooh, leaning forward and smearing another word.

‘”It’s about how to stay happy and calm under all circumstances!” I yelled.

‘Have you read it?” asked Pooh.’

(Forgive me, but I find that one of the funniest).

And what I want to know is, just WHY do we have to tear around all the time, looking for something that’s actually inside us if we’d only stop looking?

Why do we keep making laws (well, no, include me out of that: why do ‘you’ keep making laws? Or why do ‘they’ keep making laws?) - especially when we’re slipping further and further into lawlessness every day?

And why do we keep inventing new time saving devices, when the only thing you can’t stop, you can’t save - is time?

All these questions from a simple slip of the pen. When what I actually wanted to write was nothing more than “10:00 p.m. Gym.”

See?

As the book says: “While Eeyore frets... and Piglet hesitates... and Owl pontificates... Pooh just is.”

Once upon a time there lived a little country on the southern tip of Africa that tried to eat itself up. When it realised that that wasn’t going to work, though, the different people of the country made friends (although it was difficult at first). And then they all lived happily ever after.

The end.

Bet that got you, huh? It was a real story, with a beginning (go on, admit it: you HAD to find out what happened), a middle, and an end - and it gave you a moment’s diversion, and maybe, just maybe, it also made you think for a second about that little country at the southern tip.

Yesterday was one of those wonderful days we have in tourism where a bunch of us were able to get together for a function (it was the re-turn of the Outeniqua Choo Tjoe, which Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde blogged about here), and, as sometimes happens, some of us fell to talking about the deeper meaning of tourism.

Here’s what I had to say:

For some time now I’ve been trying to work out what it is that differentiates South Africa as a tourism destination.

• The Big Five? Pah! The Serengeti’s got bigger and fiver.
• Our beaches? Nah: even Australia’s got beaches (and they’ve probably got dinkum babes on them, too).
• Our landscapes? Sorry, everyone’s got a landscape.
• It must be our people then? No again: hell, even the Vatican, the smallest state in the world, has people.

So what could it be? Because those are all the things we’ve been marketing up to now.

I’ll tell you: it’s our stories. And I don’t think we’ve even begun to tap into their potential.

This is the most unique country in the world because of its story - which stretches all the way from well before the dawn of modern human behaviour (165,000 Years Of Holidays In Mossel Bay), to the fascinating work of the Sutherland Observatory,  and beyond.

Sheesh, man: we struggled for democracy and achieved it at enormous cost - and without an actual, you know, civil war. How can we NOT be unique?

Now here’s a challenge: look at a typical day’s television. Sports, documentaries, drama, comedy, tragedy, and (the greatest tragedy of all) reality TV. All wildly popular, right? And what do they have in common?

Storytelling. Because everyone loves a story.

Now when you apply that to tourism, I think a whole new paradigm opens up for us.

But.

South Africans are natural born storytellers. It’s in our blood. We’ve done it for centuries: for aeons, even. But I think we’re great at passing our stories down amongst ourselves - and we clam up when other people want to listen.

A brief search of the internet reveals a satisfying number of academic studies into story telling in Africa - but only one Story Telling Route (run by Coffee Bean Routes), and a depressingly small library of books of African myths and legends (I found a copy of African Myths and Legends - the big one with the green and black cover which I remember from my childhood and which I’ve been after for a while - at a flea market stall last week. But at three hundred bucks it was a little too heavy to carry).

And yet at any braai and in any shebeen - and in most homes, I guess - someone will often enough start telling a story that’ll soon have the audience spellbound, and often in stitches. “That’s good!” someone else will cry. “You should be on Television!”

Or in tourism.

And no, I’m not saying that everyone should be a tour guide. But I cut my teeth in tourism at Featherbed Nature Reserve, where I learned that people want to be entertained in a structured manner, and that the quality of the stories I told directly influenced the quality of the tips I received.

And there ain’t no better measure than that...

Every town and every dorp in South Africa has its fascinating places with fascinating stories: I think we need to root them out, dust them off, and present them to our visitors in a much more formal and organised manner than we’ve been doing.

And we need to tell the world that we tell stories. Because that’s what makes us unique.

(Help me here. I’m getting a headache from trying to think this through. How can we tell our stories in new and unusual - but structured ways? Let’s get a debate going - paste your comments here).

And now - go away on holiday. It’s in the country’s best interest...

Lets try this again, in Firefox this time:

Our criminal justice system can never hope to work because it’s based on a false premise.

I realised this this weekend when my Facebook friend, Charlene, said (out of the blue, as people do on Facebook), “Vengence is a lazy form of grief.”

And vengeance, I realised, is what our criminal justice system is all about (I had personal experience of this when I got into trouble with the cops. Got beat up and my cell phone got broken - and then stolen - and I was refused my right of access to a lawyer. In fact the cop concerned said, and I quote, “According to me you have no rights.” Why? Because he wanted to avenge himself for locking me up on spurious grounds).

Kill your granny? Right you little snotlap, we’ll show you: you’re gonna sit inside for 12 years. And we’ll make it worse for you: we’ll bore you to death while you do it.

In an ideal world (George Orwell, where are you now?), the commission of a crime would be a signal to society that something needs attention. Either there’s something wrong with you or there’s something wrong with society - but either way, there’s something that needs attention.

So when crime hits the roof because millions of people are starving, what do you do? (a) Catch the criminals and make ‘em pay? Or (b) look to the deeper problem of why everyone is hungry, and start a process of rapid education and capacity-building and so open opportunities for everyone?

Our criminal justice system tries to do the former. Any fool can see that only the latter actually addresses the problem.

Madala the Cheetah suffered a broken leg after being chased off by an eland bull at Garden Route Game Lodge. Mossel Bay's DR LD Griesel (an orthopaedic surgeon who usually operates only on humans) volunteered his services - and in a 6-hour-long operation, stitched a plate into Madala's leg. So - will this magnificent cat be able to hunt again? www.grgamelodge.co.za

Let’s talk about ‘due process.’

Now I’m no legal genius, but as I understand it, both the constitution and our common law protect the little ou by requiring that, if you want to pronounce someone guilty of something, and punish him for it, you have to follow ‘due process.’

But it seems that ‘the little ou’ doesn’t include schoolchildren. Because, you see, it seems that teachers are allowed to make summary judgments – snap! just like that.

Coupla weeks ago, my ward’s cell phone was ‘confiscated,’ and it was held for ten days.
He’d been using it in class, and the School Code of Conduct (as if that were some kind of legal document, binding on all parties, and all that), says that the teacher can do that.

And I agree: no one should use a cell phone in class. But what sets our education system above the law of the land? Hell, if someone as powerful as the Tax Man wants to go after my assets, he has to follow due process.

See, I pay for that phone – so it’s mine - and I do so in order to be able to contact the brat when I want or need to do so.

So I spoke to a lawyer about it, and he said I had a case, and that I should go to court to get an order to have the phone returned forthwith. But I thought, screw it, it’d be cheaper to get one of those throw-away Pep specials, and that way keep the communication lines open for the ten days in question.

Sure enough, the school kept its word and after the punishment period, returned my phone.

But it failed in its duty to set an example, because it didn’t teach the boy a lesson in citizenship, responsibility and constitutionality.

Was there a hearing? Was the boy given a chance to defend himself? Was the accuser given a chance to put her case to an independent arbiter?

No. None of that.

And THAT’S why I have a problem…

Ok, kids, I'm fishing here. As of this morning, 109 people read my (very much earlier) post about my novel, although only 34 read my rant about the publisher's rejection note and my offer of you-can-download-the-whole-blimmin-thing-and-for-free.

So now please tell me - did any of you actually download it, and have any of you read it? (I haven't yet worked out how to get Google Analytics to tell me who has and who has not clicked on the download button).

If you haven't done the deed, download it here.