Holding up the bar this morning at Clarke’s on Bree, as is my breakfast want, waiting for Pieter Cronje to deliver some Palesa Fairtrade wine for a food/wine matching guide I’m writing, I was handed an invitation to a performance of the Palissander chamber choir by an ethereal chorister, drumming up an audience. The gig was scheduled for St. George’s Cathedral at 12h30. Palesa & Palissander, sounding like something by Henry Purcell, I submitted to the great god of synchronicity and went.

The acoustics were suitably medieval and impressive and it turns out that palissander is a precious dark brown wood that plays palissandertaal according to the Afrikaans poet Boerneef. A palesa sounds like tsotsitaal for a palace, which is what St. George’s is, so the synchronicity is nicely symmetric. Both music and wine an uplifting experience.

In the modest audience was gifted Afrikaans singer Gert “seestoep op Clifton” Loubser who’d slipped in from an appearance at the courts across the street, carrying his black gown like an off duty Batman. He gave me such a beatific smile, my whole afternoon brightened up. Fairtrade wine and chamber choirs do that for you.