A PC lunch
Having voiced (again) an interest in journalism I received a late invite to a Press Club lunch. Sitting at the table feeling self-conscious, I wondered if this was this the kind of event where one should have only relevant conversations? You should at least know what the days talk concerned. I tried to read the name printed on top of the menu that was upside down in front of me, but Jonathan Deal TKAG prompted no comment, and neither did ‘fracking in the Karoo’. I stuffed my mouth full of bread and butter and nodded along to the conversation next to me.
There weren’t a huge number of people in the room. Too many though for the single waitress to look after efficiently; forgetting who had ordered water and who had ordered wine. The chef himself would occasionally appear, his long, curly hair lifting off his shoulders as he moved across the room. Lunch was served before the talk began. Pesto stuffed chicken breast would be distributed to half a table before the waitress would begin at random to serve another. The gaps were filled by the chef.
Donwald, the Chairman of the Press Club and the only person not in a collared shirt, is a man capable creating news. He first organises a speaker; and then he writes about it for the papers. He introduced Jonathan Deal, Chairman of the Treasure the Karoo Action Group, who proceeded to talk about the potential dangers of ‘fracking’ as a method of extracting shale gas from deep below the ground.
The Cape Town Press Club is the oldest press club in South Africa. And it’s members are the oldest members of the press. Members of the audience scratched their bald heads, made notes in little lined pads or continued to help themselves to salad. They might have left the lunch that day and sat down to clicking typewriters, flat cap on and pipe held between teeth, to write up their comments.
When questions were opened to the floor they were largely unprobing comments that required Mr Deal to repeat a relevant paragraph of his speech, and the waitress began to drift around the room with the pudding. A deep red poached pear sitting deep red on a little pool of pale vanilla custard was placed in front of me. The problem with serving a pear whole with only a spoon is that it is hard to stop it from slipping, and as the pear slips away your spoon collides with the plate. The room was suddenly full of woodpeckers, hammering metal on china whilst Mr Deal tried to answer his final questions.
When the speech ended the chairman presented Mr Deal with a pencil sketch of himself that I had seen a cartoonist on the table next to me execute and slide into a frame. The clapping was considerably quieter than that clacking of the cutlery, a polite fluttering of palms across the room before they became re-engaged with their spoons.
We didn’t stay for long after the talk had ended. We moved back out in to the sunlight, bellies full with ample food and minds with sufficient information.