Paul Roos boys now require industrial-sized rugby boots 🏉

Good morning Stellenbosch,

A quick reminder that:
• some Paul Roos boys now look older than junior attorneys
• runners on Andringa Street wake up before sunrise voluntarily
• and parents everywhere are currently discovering there is no bread for school lunches approximately nine hours too late.

Winter is here.
And society is hanging on by coffee ☕

Stellenbosch University has been ranked among the Top 300 universities in the world, coming in at #275 in TIME Magazine and Statista’s new “World’s Top Universities of 2026” rankings.

SU ranked as the 3rd best university in South Africa, behind University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand.

The rankings looked at:
• academic performance
• innovation and economic impact
• and global engagement

Interestingly, SU scored highest for innovation and economic impact, which is encouraging for a university aiming to become one of the world’s Top 100 institutions in the years ahead.

Not bad for a town where students are somehow balancing world-class academics, coffee shops, mountain trails, and the occasional Wednesday night that accidentally becomes a Thursday morning 😄

There comes a stage in parenting where your bed quietly stops belonging to you.

At first it starts innocently:
“Mummy, I had a bad dream.”

Next thing you know, it’s 2:14am and a tiny human is lying horizontally across the bed somehow taking up 94% of the mattress.

Nobody explains how children sleep like:
• spinning ceiling fans
• aggressive starfish
• or escaped octopuses.

And if they don’t climb into your bed?

Then one parent gets assigned night duty in the child’s room.

Which usually means sleeping bent at a 37-degree angle on the edge of a single bed while being kicked in the kidneys every forty minutes.

Meanwhile the child sleeps peacefully.
Deeply.
Like someone with no debit orders, responsibilities, or caffeine dependency.

Parents now celebrate things like:
• “both kids slept through”
• “nobody vomited”
• or “I got six uninterrupted hours.”

Basically the modern equivalent of winning the lottery. 😅

There is a very specific moment of stress that hits households around 7:42pm on a Sunday night.

Someone opens the fridge.

Silence.

Then the sentence arrives:
“We have no bread… and no milk.”

Which is impressive considering approximately R2,700 was spent at Woolworths three days earlier.

Suddenly the entire household enters emergency mode because tomorrow’s school lunches now depend on one exhausted parent making a late-night shop run.

Usually Dad.

Dad leaves with one clear mission:
• bread
• milk
• maybe lunchbox snacks

Simple.

Twenty-five minutes later he returns proudly carrying:
• biltong
• sparkling water
• frozen pizza
• a new type of chilli sauce nobody asked for
• two packets of chips
• and somehow a cordless flashlight.

No bread.
No milk.

The man essentially completed a recreational shopping experience.

Now it’s 8:31pm, the kids are already asleep, and someone is making school sandwiches using:
• frozen hot dog rolls
• grated cheese
• and optimism.

Parenting really is just surviving one slightly disorganised week at a time. 😅

I was standing in the queue at Paul Roos Spar when a Paul Roos schoolboy walked in carrying his rugby boots.

And I genuinely froze.

Because the shoes were so big I initially assumed:
• he was transporting camping equipment
• or carrying two black labradors by the tails.

Nope.

Rugby boots.

Size 15.

At that stage you’re no longer buying shoes at Sportscene.
You’re ordering industrial equipment directly from Caterpillar.

The boy himself looked about 17 years old but already had:
• a jawline
• a beard
• shoulders like a commercial fridge
• and forearms that suggested previous employment in demolition.

Meanwhile when most of us were 17 we still looked like:
a worried pencil.

Honestly some of these Paul Roos rugby boys are so enormous that when they walk into Woolworths the automatic doors open slightly earlier out of fear.

And the frightening thing is they’re still growing.

One sneeze away from being selected for the Springboks.

You see them walking through Stellenbosch in school uniform and suddenly feel like you should:
• call them “sir”
• ask them for financial advice
• or thank them for their service. 😅

If you’ve spent any time on Andringa Street lately, you’ve probably noticed that SOX Footwear and MOOD Coffee Bar have quietly become one of the unofficial gathering spots for Stellenbosch runners.

And not casual runners either.

We’re talking:
• people wearing watches worth more than your first car
• calves sculpted by Jonkershoek trails
• and individuals who casually say things like:
“Just did an easy 18km this morning.”

Meanwhile most of us consider parking slightly further from Woolworths as cardio.

The coffee there is genuinely excellent though.

One of those places where you order a flat white and suddenly feel like your life is more organised than it actually is.

And honestly, even if you don’t run, it’s still worth going.

Because simply standing outside with a coffee near enough runners creates the illusion that you might also:
• own trail shoes
• know what electrolytes are
• and voluntarily wake up before sunrise.

A very strong Stellenbosch strategy, really. 😄

In Japan, there’s a well-known custom in some workplaces where employees who arrive early intentionally park furthest from the building entrance.

Not because they have to.

But because it leaves the closer parking bays open for colleagues arriving later.

The idea comes from a Japanese concept called omoiyari:
quiet consideration for other people.

Honestly… imagine if we all applied a little more of that in daily life.

Not just with parking.

But with:
• letting someone merge in traffic
• returning shopping trolleys properly
• speaking politely to cashiers
• keeping noise down in neighbourhoods
• or simply thinking:
“How will this affect the people around me?”

Modern life often pushes people toward:
me first,
my convenience,
my rush,
my problem.

But communities become far better places when small acts of consideration become normal.

And Stellenbosch probably needs this reminder occasionally… especially in parking lots 😅

Monday ☀️
21°C / 13°C
Partly sunny and much calmer after the recent weather chaos. Good drying-the-laundry weather. Also good “I should probably go for a walk” weather that most of us will ignore.

Tuesday ⛅
20°C / 12°C
Mostly cloudy with some sunshine peeking through. One of those Stellenbosch days where people still insist on sitting outside with a coffee even though it’s objectively a bit chilly.

Wednesday 🌥️
19°C / 12°C
Cloudy start with some afternoon sunshine. Cool, comfortable, and ideal for pretending winter has “not really arrived yet” while secretly wearing two layers underneath your jersey.

If you enjoy reading the Stellenbosch Brief each week and would like to support it, you can buy me a flat white ☕️

Normal milk.
Nothing fancy.
We’re trying to build a local newsletter here, not open a wellness retreat.

No pressure at all.
Just genuinely grateful you’re here reading it.

🤝 SUPPORT THE BRIEF

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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