Klipdrift comes to Stellies, and the ref needs his phone 😂

Folding a fitted sheet is difficult enough in daylight. At 2:17am, with a sick child standing next to the bed and everyone one bad decision away from crying, it becomes an extreme sport.

First comes the assessment. Can we put a towel over it and go back to sleep?

No. The damage has gone beyond towel territory. The sheet needs to come off.

You strip the bed while your child watches you with the quiet disappointment of someone who expected you to have this under control. Then you head to the linen cupboard, trying to make as little noise as possible, although you have already switched on three lights and said, “Where are the sheets?” loud enough to wake the neighbour.

The cupboard looks organised. There are neat piles. You feel a brief flicker of hope.

You pull out what appears to be the right fitted sheet. It’s for the spare bed.

Now you have two problems: finding the correct sheet, and returning the wrong one to the cupboard in a way that conceals what happened.

You try to fold it along the old creases. You find two corners and tuck them together. A third corner appears from somewhere it has no business being. The elastic pulls the whole thing into the shape of a large cauliflower. After three attempts, you press it down with both hands, slide it under a pile of pillowcases and shut the door quickly.

Back in the bedroom, you finally wrestle the clean sheet onto the mattress. One corner pops off as you pull the last one down. The child announces they’re thirsty.

By the time everyone is back in bed, you’re fully awake, the linen cupboard has a secret, and there are 43 minutes until someone asks for breakfast.

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Of all the things that happened during Sunday’s Springboks versus Australia match, I did not expect to see the referee taking calls on the field.

The comms with the TMO kept failing, so whenever they needed to talk, someone had to bring him a cellphone. At one point it felt less like an international Test and more like someone shouting across a restaurant: “Sorry, your wife’s on the line.”

Naturally, the memes arrived before the final whistle. And now someone has turned the whole ridiculous situation into a game: watsejy.com

Your job is to get the phone to the ref. It sounds simple, which is also what you say just before you realise you’ve spent ten minutes trying to improve your score.

Play it, screenshot your result, and send it to the rugby group. At least this gives everyone a new way to argue about what happened on Sunday.

Stellenbosch has a new outing for the friend who says, “I’m not really a wine person.”

The Home of Klipdrift has opened at Van Ryn’s Distillery in Vlottenburg, bringing two South African brandy names under one roof. For a town where you can spend an entire Saturday discussing the difference between two Chenin Blancs, I think it’s only fair that brandy gets its own afternoon.

This is more than a place to order a Klippies and Coke. Visitors can tour the working distillery, see the cellar where the brandy matures, watch a cooperage demonstration to learn how barrels are made, and then taste what all that time and effort produces.

I quite like the idea of doing the tour before the tasting. You arrive knowing very little about brandy, learn about wood, fire and maturation, and leave with enough new vocabulary to become mildly annoying at the next braai.

Someone says, “Pass the Klippies,” and suddenly you’re explaining the influence of the barrel.

They will ask you to pass the Coke instead.

The new space also hosts events and offers cocktails, so you could make a proper outing of it with visiting friends or family. It’s a particularly good answer when someone asks what there is to do in Stellenbosch besides wine tasting.

The Home of Klipdrift is open seven days a week for tastings and retail, with guided distillery tours available during the week.

I used to pull into a petrol station and say, “Fill it up, please.”

Now I say, “Let’s just see how things go.”

The attendant asks, “Full tank, sir?” and I look at him the way you’d look at someone who has just suggested we buy a smallholding together.

“R500, please.”

The pump starts. I watch the rand amount climb at the speed of a slot machine, while the fuel gauge prepares to move approximately one millimetre. By the time the attendant is done, the car has enough petrol to get me home, provided I don’t use the aircon or take a wrong turn.

The worst part is pretending to be relaxed while paying. You tap your card and stand there smiling, as if you haven’t just spent the school shoe budget on a trip to Somerset West.

And then there’s the drive home. Suddenly you’re an expert in fuel efficiency. You accelerate gently. You avoid unnecessary braking. You consider whether the downhill stretch is long enough to switch the engine off. You tell the kids to stop arguing because you’re fairly sure the extra noise is using petrol.

We used to plan road trips around where to stop for coffee. Now we look at the map and ask, “Do we love these people enough to visit them?”

If you see me driving unusually slowly through Stellenbosch this week, I’m fine. I’m just trying to make Tuesday’s R500 last until Thursday.

Every time I open social media, a young person appears to tell me they made $30,000 in two months while working from their couch.

They’re usually filming from Bali. There’s a laptop open on the table, although the screen is facing the sun and there’s no chance they can see what’s on it.

“I used to be just like you,” they say.

Really? You also spent this morning looking for a parking spot in Stellenbosch and wondering why the dishwasher smells funny?

The story follows a familiar route. They had no money. Then they discovered a simple system. Now they travel the world, work two hours a day and want to help ordinary people do the same. All you need to do is comment “FREEDOM” and wait for a message explaining how to buy their course.

The bit that worries me is what happens when a young person watches enough of these videos. After the fiftieth one, an ordinary job starts to look like a terrible mistake. Why learn a trade, build experience or stick with a difficult first year when a stranger with a rented-looking sports car says you can quit your job and earn passive income by Christmas?

That is a rotten thing to sell to someone who is just starting out. You’re asking them to risk a real paycheque on your unverified success story. Meanwhile, the one income stream we can actually see is the money coming in from selling the course.

Some of these people may have built real businesses. But if someone’s main source of income is teaching you how they supposedly made their income, I’d like to see a little more than a screenshot with the numbers cropped in convenient places.

I’m particularly suspicious of anyone who says their method requires “no skills, no experience and no effort.” If that were true, my fitted sheet would have a business by now. It has spent years lying around doing absolutely nothing.

Of course passive income exists. Usually there’s a lot of active work, money or risk that comes first. Somehow that part never makes it into the 30-second video.

If I ever make $30,000 in two months from my couch, I promise I’ll tell you how. First I’ll need to find a couch where my children aren’t asking me for a snack every four minutes.

We live in a world that shows us the harvest and hides the planting.

We see the successful business, the beautiful home, the person who seems effortlessly good at what they do. We rarely see the years of early mornings, mistakes, quiet practice and days when they wondered whether any of it was working.

It’s no wonder we grow impatient with our own lives. We want the result while we’re still learning the craft. We want a reputation before we’ve had the time to earn one. We want the view from the mountain, but feel frustrated that we have to keep climbing.

Yet the slow days matter. Every time you keep a promise, do the work properly or try again after getting something wrong, you’re building something. Perhaps nobody notices that day. Over time, those small choices become your skill, your business and your name. A good reputation can take decades to build, which is why it deserves care with each decision we make.

There will be seasons when you make great strides, and seasons when all you can do is keep going. Both are part of the journey. The difficult stretches teach you things an easy win never could, and the ordinary afternoons often become the memories you treasure most.

So work toward the goal, but don’t put your life on hold until you reach it. Notice who is walking beside you. Take pride in what you’re learning. Find a little joy in doing today’s work well.

“The destination gives you a direction. The journey gives you a life.”

Tuesday 29 September: ☀️ Sunny and warm. 27°C / 12°C. A good day to get the washing dry.

Wednesday 30 September: 🥵 Sunny and hot. 33°C / 16°C. Drink water, find shade, and don’t leave the chocolate in the car.

Thursday 1 October: 🌤️ Breezy and cooler, with some cloud. 24°C / 13°C. Stellenbosch remembers it’s spring.

Friday 2 October: 🌧️ Cloudy with a little rain possible in the morning. 19°C / 13°C. The jacket you put away on Wednesday gets another outing.

As always, thanks for reading. If you spot something in town worth knowing, reply and tell us. Half the best Stellenbosch stories begin that way.

See you around town,
Stellenbosch Brief

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