Seven-ping Sunday**

Things that top you up

Every so often, when I drive past the 93-metre tall Media 24 building on Cape Town’s foreshore, I have a nostalgic moment for my ’90s office on the 21^st floor, complete with panoramic view of the harbour. Still young and fiks*, I sometimes ran up all 21 flights of stairs, which jarred a tad when the Cape Doctor was howling (the building used to sway in the wind to protect the structure while people hung onto signposts and traffic lights below). Today I had a flash of an ex-colleague and fellow sub-editor, Gail Alswang (anyone know what she’s up to?), with whom I spent hours poring over galleys to pass for press. Pre-phone, pre social media days, the galleys were long strips of text which were proofread and marked manually for hyphenated words and page breaks, complemented by magazine pagination plans.

I have many variegated memories of her, her kindness especially, but that for which I remember her most fondly was what she dubbed the Ping factor. The thing that makes you go ping inside, in your heart, your brain, your third eye, your gonads, anywhere receptive – she called what some today would call a top-up a Ping. (Sans virtual input.) By way of getting to know (and engage with) readers more (thanks to Jen Thorpe for compiling South African Writers’ Pub Hub), these were the tangiest relatable pings of my week:

What I’m reading: Ann Patchett – Bel Canto. Recommended by Karin Schimke, and borrowed from Muizenberg Library (the coolest, wittiest librarians!), I am on page 30 and persevering.

What I’m listening to: Norah Jones Day breaks.

Substack post of the week: Marita van der Vyver (More about the days of galleys and current status quo of journalism!) https://maritavandervyver.substack.com/printers-ink-on-my-fingers-and-in

Novelty value: Mancala, an east African game of strategy picked up in Abidjan. Can’t get enough of it!

Restaurant of the week: Curry Club, Cape Quarter, for my nephew’s 25^th. Rogan josh (the flagship), bangain muchi ka salain (aubergine steeped in curry leaf), paneer meneer Kastoori with basmati. Funky, tasty, fun and atmospheric.

Walk of the week: Sea Point promenade.

“The way the clouds cut crisply across the sky as if in murmuration leaving an envelope of pastel blue between the greying kelp sea. A lone ink sketch of a yacht out centre. Black and white photographs from the Orms competition along the promenade. Jonathan Inglis’s ‘Giuliette Price’ (a woman lying on pavilion seats at Hartleyvale) stands out. And benches in the shape of ducks and poodles which I had never noticed before. As well as a couple pushing prams – one with a baby, the other with a dog! A man passed out on the rocks had to be woken by a security guard as the tide came in.”

Smiles of the week – lest our cocks get soft: Zapiro.

• * fiks = fit, in Afrikaans

• ** with apologies and thanks to Tim Ferriss, whose Five-bullet Friday kickstarted, rather then ended, the weekend.