Got time for a story?

Along with tasting notes, our coffees come with memory notes – a mouthful of words to contextualize what you’re drinking.

An Interrupted Plunge

One evening in early summer, I retrieved my daypack from the garage, dusted off the clingy cobwebs, and checked the pockets for forgotten bananas from last time. All clear. 

A nectarine slotted into each side pocket, one for the right hand and one for the left; the trail we were doing the next morning had a few good spots for snacks and a view. In general I do prefer things fuzz-free, my fruit included. 

If we were in England, maybe we’d have been going for a ramble in the morning through obliging field after field and pass a crumbling churchyard with Wordsworth’s gravestone in it. We’d pick handfuls of berries from the hedgerows and stain our fingers and shirts. 

Instead, we were in Cape Town. Fields are more of a concept in this city, reserved for schoolchildren and rugby, but we do have our fair share of churchyards complete with statues of angels shaking a fist at the sky. ‘This is a peach of a day,’ you say, as we fill our packs with water bottles, suncream, and quick-dry towels for the reservoir swim at the top. 

I debated whether to include a can of pepper spray too, and decided to take a chance on appealing to a would-be mugger’s better nature and leave it on the counter. All this time later, I wonder how differently that day would have unfolded if I’d taken it along with us – maybe we would have made it for that swim.