The liquidation of my wine shops in 2002 was a massively stressful experience that affected me on a deeply emotional level for years to come. When I eventually was able to step back to look at the destruction, I could make a list of several basic business principles that I had ignored.

However, I’ve come to realise that what I learned from working in retail was much greater than the obvious ones.

I started in retail by selling a cancelled export order out of my garage. This bootleg operation eventually needed to become legitimate, in the form of a license to sell alcohol. This required premises, and if you’re paying rent, you may as well have a full-service drinks offering.

There were many things that I didn’t know that I needed to know, but I had worked out that I needed to learn more about wine. So was set in process an ongoing process of properly understanding wine, especially in a way that could enable me to take others on the journey.

Discover. Experience. Learn. Understand. Share.

This has been a pattern I’ve repeated many times in my life. I should mention that this process is front-loaded with a high level of curiosity as well as a willingness to embrace the unknown (not always with happy outcomes, as I discovered in 2002).

But, while wine has been a lifelong pleasure, this still wasn’t the most important lesson from being a wine merchant.

The thing about retail, especially when it comes to a product as subjective as wine, and when the product range is purposely comprising a large number of unfamiliar labels, is that the person on the floor – the sales assistant – has a very important job to do.

My most rewarding times in the shops were assisting customers in assembling mixed cases of wines for them to try. Armed with just a few minutes of chat, I had to intuit what their tastes and preferences were, as well as how to accommodate that as best possible within their budget. The exchanges may not have qualified as intimate, but they were certainly personal.

All my interactions with clients/customers since then have benefited from my retail experience of best matching their expectations. I am socially awkward in some settings, but the purpose or structure of the shop floor interaction helped to overcome the worst of it.

Having customers come back for cases of recommendations (rather than individual bottles) was hugely rewarding.

In terms of ‘rewarding’, nothing comes close to the upsell. This is the crack cocaine of being a sales assistant. Possibly my most successful upsell was converting someone from the purchase of a bottle of Pongracz (local méthode champenoise with a current retail value of about R200) to Salon, a Champagne that was then selling at a multiple of over ten times the price. Its current price is eyewatering; the multiple remains around ten, but in Sterling (taking it to a more than 200-fold multiple of the local fizz).

There was also the customer who wanted a chardonnay recommendation. At this time, I was doing direct imports and the price of Burgundy hadn’t yet exploded. Even so, there would have been a multiple of between five and ten times the price for the bottle of Premier Cru he took to a special dinner over the weekend. When he returned the following week we shared commiserations that very nearly were teary, because the bottle had slipped out of his hand and smashed as he walked into the restaurant.

Of course, not every customer who walks in the door is open to spending a few pleasant minutes putting together a selection of bottles to try. Some are just plain rude or are having a bad day. It’s not the sales assistant’s fault, but one must learn to charm or dance around the prickliness as best possible.

There are also the occasional times when one has cocked up. Service recovery is another valuable skill to learn.

A lot of time, though, shops can be depressingly quiet, when an hour can pass without any customers. If it’s a slow time of year, this effect is even worse.

Rather than standing around, getting more and more depressed, we’d move things around or build a new display. You might say that it’s no different to moving the metaphorical deck chairs, but it’s amazing what a little bit of proactivity can do to how one feels. It also ensures a more interesting store for the customers who do walk in.

Without diminishing the different forms of mental health issues, I’ve often applied a different version of starting a proactive or creative activity when I’m feeling down (for the record, the impetus for writing this piece wasn’t one of those; this is an idea that’s been rattling around in my head for a while).

Online retail has its own requirements for specialised knowledge – traffic, click-through rates, fulfillment and more – but none of them bring us face to face with human beings.

The internet is full of laments about people being unable to conduct basic social interactions because of all the time they spend online (or because of the ways in which they spend their online time). Of course, the more online shopping we do, the less retail employment is on offer, and therefore fewer opportunities like the one I had.

Even for people who have no intention of working in retail all their lives – or especially for them – it’s a great place to start.

The caracal appeared on the trail ahead of me, stopped to look at me for a moment, then walked on calmly. I briefly saw it again on the adjacent Kloof Road, closed to traffic since storms in 2023. Before I could retrieve my phone to take a picture, as suddenly as it appeared on the trail, the caracal disappeared.

The entire experience lasted no longer than a few seconds, but it was loaded with magic; the soundless, effortless movement of the sleek cat, the self-assured way it looked at me, and the way it just vanished again.

I have spent thousands of hours on my bike on Table Mountain. This was the first time I’d seen a caracal; best of all, it was no more than five metres away from me.

But, for over five hours, I forgot about the sighting. This may illustrate something about my short-term memory, but it perhaps has more to say about the way that our minds work. Maybe the most surprising aspect of this forgetting is that I am usually awed by interactions with the natural world.

My day started on our stud farm in Ashton. After my cocoa drink, I did my usual 20-minute meditation. I left the house at 7:30 – before sunrise – dressed warmly against the low single-digit temperature. I was in a good place to start the day.

I felt awe and wonder seeing the setting full moon low in the sky above the arid hills in the direction of McGregor while young horses crowded around me for attention. I scratched a few of them behind their ears or on their wither, their winter coats furry to the touch. The boldest of them nudged me for more when I stopped.

This twice-daily walk through all the horses is one of my favourite parts of the day.

Later, I saw a group of weanlings cantering together, their ears pricked. I got up to see what was holding their attention and saw a jackal dashing out of the paddock. I’ve previously seen what I’m assuming is the same jackal. Unlike the caracal, the jackal made its presence obvious by dashing out of tall growth. No calm or silent movement for this creature.

The further difference is that the stud is surrounded by vineyards. The closest veld is several kilometres away; the jackal has no business being here.

On my drive back to Cape Town I started getting messages about mountain bikers riding on a muddy section of trail we’re busy repairing, just above Kloof Road in The Glen. I was on my bike within minutes of getting home, to do an assessment of the damage.

The ride around Lion’s Head, descending on the newly maintained trail, was magnificent. As I started climbing again, I reached a man and his son who let me pass. It was gratifying to see them riding together on this upgraded trail. I felt less gratified by the ebiker who raced past me soon after, but once again it felt good to see cyclists using the trail.

I got off my bike when I reached the muddy section, pushing/carrying it the rest of the way to avoid damaging the trail. The final section, down some steep steps, is where I saw the caracal. I’m sure the sighting was only possible because I was on foot.

Seeing as I had my phone out, when I reached the bottom, I started typing a message to post on my various mountain biking WhatsApp groups, with a request to please not ride this final section. Before I could finish, the lad – demonstrating phenomenal skills – came riding down the steps.

His father followed soon after, when I had already started explaining why, for all his amazing technical skills, he shouldn’t have been riding the final section. It was polite, but it remained a telling-off.

I was in full class captain mode, simmering in a mist of indignation at their lack of consideration for riding on a muddy trail that is in the middle of maintenance (and marked with danger tape).

I was polite and measured throughout, but as I soon as they went on their way, I felt regret at the way I handled the situation. Fortunately, I have the father’s contact details, so I was able to send an apology.

Just one of the ways I could have done it better would have been to share my wonder at the caracal sighting that happened minutes before their arrival. However, the caracal had left my brain almost immediately after it disappeared off the trail.

There was further WhatsApp group chatter about inconsiderate mountain bikers. Outrage stayed high.

Not even the time spent cooking supper with my daughter, Sophie, who works on conservation-focused documentaries, could unlock my memories of the rare caracal sighting.

I was lying in bed, lights off, when I eventually remembered seeing the caracal. I was instantly in a state of regret. In that moment, and for hours after, I couldn’t have been further away from my early morning post-meditation state of mind.

Barring my own poor short-term memory, I am left with the role played by the way that indignation messes with our brains. We know that social media is toxic, especially when it is used to weaponise outrage. This was a personal experience of its impact.

Outrage is sometimes necessary, but it eclipsed my experience of awe and wonder. I lost something in the process.

It all started when I wanted to use the title of one of my favourite Rock songs as the name for a yearling filly. I thought she’d be good, so I wanted her to be appropriately named. However, before I proceeded, I thought I should check the lyrics, to see whether this name might come with inappropriate connotations. 

The sound of Whole Lotta Love is Led Zeppelin at the top of their genre. It’s an absolute banger of a track (although in this context “bang” is perhaps an unfortunate reference). The song’s lyric, sung by Robert Plant, “I’m going to give you every inch of my love”, is not an attempt to give love a unit of measurement. It’s clear what love means in this context. 

I immediately shelved the idea of calling my filly Whole Lotta Love.

Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, released 44 years later, pairs similar suggestions with a catchy tune and a NSFW music video. His lyrics just don’t bother to use the word “love”.

It’s a particular male fantasy of women with passive, suppressed or unspoken desires being fulfilled thanks to the physical attentions of a man. In this illusion, a woman is incomplete without being at the receiving end of a virile phallus.

Society does a crappy job when it comes positive depictions of sexuality and desire, so it’s not a surprise that the spokesmen – literally – are men (see above). Media attention is given to men with aberrant behaviour, like Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and others. Positive role models are the guys who quietly go about living good lives. No-one is going to write about them, and nor would they want to be written about. Plus, advertising has still not let go of the dictum, “sex sells”.

I had been sitting with this version of Whole Lotta Love for some time when my friend, Piet Viljoen, introduced me to a version sung by Tori Amos in 1992. She takes an anthem of male conquest and makes it her own. She is at once vulnerable, sensuous and assertive, perched on the corner of the piano stool as she turns to deliver the song to the audience.

In the genre of hold-my-beer, she takes ownership of the song, demonstrating that the women’s version can have equal power. It should be said that she makes use of just one instrument, rather than an entire rock band. She metaphorically grabs hold of the mic, giving a woman’s voice to the expression of desire. She does a ‘right back at you’ with the male-written lyrics (although without the use of “every inch of my love”).

Tina Turner was another woman to bring her own interpretation to Whole Lotta Love. Ironically with her abusive ex-husband Ike, she released a funk version that oozes sensuality.

Of course, Whole Lotta Love drew heavily on Willie Dixon’s You Need Love. Following legal action, the royalties are now shared. By comparison, Dixon’s version comes across as a piece of musical courtship, perhaps because of its blues treatment that is so wholesome you could almost smell the plate of fried chicken.

For a “right back at ya”, along with a resounding “hell, yeah!” we turn to the Highwomen’s If She Ever Leaves Me. Described by co-writer, Jason Isbell, as the first gay Country song, the lyrics depict the cowboy version of the male protagonist in Whole Lotta Love or Blurred Lines. He is described as “dancing her home in your mind”. The thing is that “she likes perfume”.

The object of his desire is not off-limits because of her suppressed or unspoken desires, but because masculine is not what she wants. It’s a proper reversal.

By their very existence, the Highwomen make a powerful statement, which they reinforce with their lyrically clever Redesigning Women.

Decades later, Robert Plant collaborated with country singer Alison Krauss on a couple of albums many degrees mellower than his Led Zeppelin years. The songs – some of them anyway – talk of loss and regret. It’s not an unexpected place for a duo of 70-year-old man and middle-aged woman to end up.

Another legendary British rock musician, Mark Knopfler, also collaborated with a country singer, the similarly legendary Emmylou Harris. In the track This is Us, they are looking through a photo album that records key moments in their relationship, together singing the chorus, “You and me and our memories, this is us.” There is warmth, poignancy and togetherness.

For all the lust and desire that may characterise match-ups earlier in life, perhaps the kind of love we need when we are old is that kind of gentle companionship, a height we can only reach when the foundations are built on decades of mutual respect and shared life. We grow together, perhaps a little like the way trees do, in a process called inosculation. Parts of trees – even from different species – literally fuse together as if they’ve been grafted.

Inosculation derives from the Latin, osculare, meaning “to kiss”. This is appropriate, seeing as a kiss is generally the first step to forming a bond. For the most part, it’s a moment of purity, the meeting of equals.

It’s a shame that our depictions of the love (or its proxies) that may follow the first kiss are so one-sided. Until, of course, we’ve been together so long that none of that matters anymore. That’s a whole lotta love worth having.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but by accident I ended up making a kind-of resolution.

I was going to write a post about the new training plan I’ve put in place this year. In the past, I’ve written extensively about my Cape Epic journey. I also took readers on my hypertension self-medication. In that sense, writing about the cycling I’m doing would not be unusual.

I started typing, but I was bored after the first paragraph. And if I was bored, I couldn’t imagine anyone reading with delight. So, I left the idea for a few weeks.

However, a set of events can hold multiple stories, depending upon how deep we dive, or the perspectives we hold.

I reached the first Sunday in January and realised that I had achieved 2000m in elevation gained in three rides. Something got the arithmetic cogs going in my brain, leading to the thought that maybe I could do 10 000m per month. All this coincided with Strava’s release of the previous year’s data. I saw that my total for 2024 was 67 000m of elevation gain. My retired friend, who rides a lot, came in at 104 000m, suggesting that 2000m per week would be more realistic than 10 000m per month.

With one quarter, plus two weeks, of the year completed, my elevation gain so far in 2025 is approximately 50% of the total for all of 2024. I am 2500m ahead of target, which leaves me with bit of a buffer should I have to take time out for illness or horribly adverse weather.

As a basic, rule of thumb, approach to training without a coach it’s not a bad one. High intensity intervals can be incorporated, as well as easy recovery rides. Most importantly, I’m feeling great on it.

So, what is the story outside the achievement of a higher level of fitness?

In my chosen occupation as a racehorse breeder (some would say passion project rather than occupation), almost every step involves chance and uncertainty. What percentage of my broodmares will conceive? How many will carry their foals to full term? Will they be born with everything in the right place? Will they grow up to be athletes? What will the crop’s split be between colts and fillies (colts are more valuable)?

The time lag between the making of mating decisions and the sale of yearlings is approximately three years, which requires more than a crystal ball. I have no idea whether the decisions I make now will still be good ones in three years’ time.

Assuming I get the yearlings to auction in one piece, I have very little control over the selling price achieved. That’s just the way auctions work. Yes, if one gets lucky, two determined bidders can push a price way beyond expectation, but that has not been my experience for some years.

What I’m getting at, is that I have an element of control over day-to-day management of the stud. However, when it comes to the big and important things that can happen (i.e. how much income I will get, and whether the horses will be any good on the racecourse) these are largely outside my control.

I think you can spot the attraction of setting myself a target of what I’m going to do on the bike every week. It’s 100% under my control. In terms of time commitment, it’s between seven and eight hours per week, spread over four rides. The longest day out could get up to three hours. Regardless of adverse weather or conflicting social commitments, I’ve gone out and climbed the metres.

Apart from the exercise of control, I have a weekly sense of achievement. When it comes to the horses I breed, the highs resulting from wins are extraordinary, but their occurrence is both irregular and unpredictable.

It’s not as if I wasn’t already getting out several times per week, but there were no measurables linked to the effort. No fixed parameters other than riding three or four times per week. No requirement to reach some target.

Having a measured target changes the picture.

Improved fitness has a linkage with my management of hypertension, so I have daily empirical guardrails.

There is another angle. Living with a constant simmer of uncertainty is so much more manageable if one can achieve a Zen or Stoic state. A long bike ride takes the body to a special place, both as a result of the endurance and the rhythmic pedalling.

Riding up and over mountains is a reminder that the goal is reached by keeping the cranks turning; by staying the course. Pain is temporary.

The final takeaway is that commitment to daily/weekly measurable and achievable actions is the best we can do when it comes to New Year’s resolutions (assuming one does that kind of thing, of course!).

Our children have been saved from the types of clothing choices that were imposed on us by our parents. If anything, the roles are now reversed, in that our kids impose their choices on us. They are brand conscious in ways we never were, or for which we never had the opportunity.

If a hoodie was bought for us, it would have been because our parents deemed this to be an article of clothing we needed. Conversely, I’ve lost track of the number of premium-priced hoodies we’ve bought for our children because the brands were desired.

In truth, I can’t recall hoodies being a clothing option in the 70s, certainly not in South Africa.

I grew up with home-knitted jerseys made up of whatever wool happened to be in the house, wearing jeans bought in a size that allowed for growth. They were purchased, taken in, and then let out as growth required. Inevitably, the old hems would leave faded lines on the legs of the jeans, much like the growth rings on a tree. If the limit of ‘letting out’ had been reached, the jeans could be worn for a while with legs finishing comically high above the ankles.

Completing the ensemble would have been a home haircut (and it’s not as if my mother worked in a Vidal Sassoon salon). Somehow, we survived.

Fast fashion is not my thing. It should be no surprise that Uniqlo is my favourite ‘brand’, selected not because of the label, but because of the utility and comfort that comes at the price. Uniqlo is a brand in the sense of a delivered experience rather than the flaunting of a label.

Around 25 years ago I went through a period of wearing R.M. Williams trousers. Technically, given that I still wear one of them, the period has not yet come to an end. The others, literally, got worn to death, but this pair of brown moleskin jeans is still going strong something like a quarter of a century later.

They have shaped themselves to my body in ways that stretch fabric never could. Every time I pull them on, I marvel at their longevity; at the value of making things to last. Yes, they are faded, but they carry the signs of wear with pride (if clothing could have pride, of course).

Conceptually, my long-wearing R.M. Williams jeans aren’t greatly different to the taken-in and let-out jeans of my childhood, but at least they don’t have successive hemlines across the legs between ankle and knee.

At the time I bought these jeans, my daughter was watching Wallace & Gromit movies. In theory, these could have been made with similar animation technology as Pixar’s Toy Story, which came out at a similar time. Instead, Wallace & Gromit makes use of old-school stop motion, with the characters made of Plasticine, and it’s all the better for it. In fact, the creator, Nick Park, said: “Gromit was born out of clay, really. If he’d been designed by computer, I’d never have arrived at him.”

Don’t be fooled by the cutesy origin story. Actual labour – thousands of hours of it – goes into the making of these movies.

All of it is a piece of multi-dimensional genius, and that’s not just the 3-D of the characters. Take a look at the train chase in The Wrong Trousers, which has all the tension and excitement of a filmed action movie. I have to remind myself that it was shot in stop motion.

There are easy (or easier) ways of making animated movies. Similarly, clothing can be made to standards of much lower durability.

I don’t recall the cost of that first visit to R.M. Williams some 25 years ago, but I do remember it being what felt like an eyewatering amount at the time. However, it’s turned out to be a good value purchase.

We owe it to our future selves to continue supporting businesses that make things of enduring quality, even if our current selves baulk at the higher initial cost.

As a young adult in the mid-80s, I caught the tail end of racehorse breeders more-or-less taking over the Victoria Hotel for the National Yearling Sale. I did hear many stories, though, of the late-night shenanigans that went on in the decades prior. There is a sense of Nationals fulfilling the role of a tour, in the sports context, especially back in the day when the majority of the sale would have been supplied by breeders from remote parts of the Karoo. Perhaps the romance of the tour is part of what still draws breeders to Gosforth Park.

I could invite suggestions of who the main instigators of the rowdy behaviour may have been, but you know, what goes on tour, stays on tour.

On the subject of tours, a couple of years ago I inadvertently came into the possession of the tour diary of the Hamiltons Rugby Club Dynamiters old crocs tours. Spotting the familiar face of Marsh Shirtliff, I immediately got it back into safe hands. I suspect, though, that for all the anecdotes and pictures in the book, the most entertaining (or damning) stayed on tour. The Dynamiters tours are still going strong; this week they won the 11-a-side tournament in Phuket, with another racing personality, Wayne Mealing, in the team. By all accounts, these tours are legendary.

I had a little tour of my own this week. With us having just two weanlings on the Cape Racing Mixed Sale, I elected to pop them in the horsebox and transport them myself. The drive into Cape Town, on Wednesday, was somewhat eventful, but less so than if we’d got caught in Thursday’s mudslides.

One of the things that happens on tour is the special types of bonds that are formed when one spends that much time in proximity with the team. Of the two weanlings, one was sold (well done on your bargain purchase, Nigel Riley), while the Rafeef colt didn’t make his reserve and came home with us after the sale. OK, so he’s a horse and we didn’t drink a lake of beer together (and there was no fines meeting), but I definitely have the same sense of getting to really know his personality while on tour.

This guy took all this newness in his stride, bestriding the turf at Kenilworth as if he’d just won the Cape Flying Championship. He walked up and down as many times as he was asked, displaying his athleticism with a feline stalk. Throughout this, he remained as low-key as a churchgoing kid from a small town, while taking in everything going on around him.

For all the talking I did about his prospects on the Premier Sale in January, to be followed by an illustrious career on the racecourse, perhaps the most impressive thing about him was the way he took everything in his stride. In the stormy gloom of the late afternoon, when it the time came for us to go home, he walked up the horsebox ramp as if he’s an old hack that gets taken to shows every weekend.

A huge part of this colt’s behaviour is thanks to Kholiwe and Staci, the star grooms who took care of our weanlings. I am so impressed with their horsemanship, especially considering that both of them are new to this.

While the conclusion one could draw is that having women on tour leads to better behaviour, some may say that the whole point of a tour is NOT to be on best behaviour. As they say, “No great story started with someone eating a salad.”

On the other hand, if you call lucerne alfalfa, does it qualify as a salad?