Five reasons why Motherland is my favourite coffice

When I was single and new to freelancing, I had a specific vision of what my work day would entail. I would rise - note: not wake, rise, as in greeting the brand new day with a Sealy Posturpedic style stretch, looking grateful and excited for the day - then indulge in some yogic-style stretches before heading to my sunlit courtyard for an exquisitely brewed coffee which would naturally infuse my body and mind with inspiration, with every sip. Then it would be time for a few hours of work, before I shut down the laptop and prepared a small feast.

The reality is somewhat different. I wake in an ammonia-scented pool (night-time toilet training is not progressing so well, which wouldn't be a problem if my three-year old acknowleged that she had her own bedroom), with the six-month old's foot in my mouth (it's as if she felt left out, being the only family member not in the bed). The wee-smell does battle with the stench of the dog's blanket issuing from their basket, which works better than smelling salts for a fainting Victorian heroine. It's not a gentle awakening, but it does serve to boot me out of bed - anything to get some fresh air. Then it's a series of Groundhog Day arguments with the toddler ('no, you can't watch a movie now. No, you can't have chocolate now. No, you can't wear a snowsuit today. Because it's 30 degrees outside and not snowing. I don't know - we live in Johannesburg and it never snows. Also you don't own a snowsuit....Because if you don't brush your teeth they will fall out...') and struggles with the baby to get her fed, clothed and nappied. I was surprised to learn that a six-month-old can have the strength of a rottweiler on Red Bull. Note there is no time for Zen-type inspiration in this scenario...and, if I were to open a laptop, it would be swiftly appropriated by the toddler who would insist that she had her own, pressing deadline to attend to (which would, in all probability, involve spilling milk on my keyboard and then pulling faces at herself on YouCam).

Hence my search for the perfect coffice, which I believe I have found in Motherland. Here's what I love about it:

1. The coffee. The coffee, the coffee. Obviously. A coffee shop is only as good as it's brew, and I really really love the full-flavoured blend here.

2. It being Jo'burg, and Jo'burg being small, you can always find someone you know to have a chin wag with. This alleviates that guilty feeling you get when you are supposed to be working but aren't - because, after all, you are actually here to work, and this is just a small diversion to clear your mind and make room for extra creativity. It's necessary. Think of it as a mental palate cleanser.

3. Almost everyone else here is for a meeting or to work on a freelance project, which creates a 'we're all in this together' vibe,

4. The background chatter, which makes a refreshing break from the isolated silence of a freelancer's life.

5. Free wi-fi! (After all, freelancing can be a tough gig.)

6. Fournos is just a quick stroll away. Which means that Jo'burg's best spanakopita and croissants are
within easy reach.

Egte regte

The first time I ever tried melkkos was at Veldskool. The camp itself holds no great memories - unsurprising, since we spent a week waking at 4.30am to the sound of a heavily accented oom, like an Afrikaans Sean Connery, braying "Good morrrrrning sleeping beauuuuties" over the intercom, before heading to the bathroom for an icy shower in a cubicle without a door. Nights, for some reason, were spent in a chilly hall singing 'Right Here Waiting' over and over and over and over - to this day, I cannot hear Richard Marx's crooning without having a little shiver.

I did like the melkkos, though - so when people started talking about the Bergbron Plaaskombuis, with its hearty boerekos, I was superkeen to try it out.

We headed there yesterday and, yup, it ticked all boxes. The restaurant looks like a house that's wandered down from Prince Albert, complete with steel windmills, old stove and wraparound stoep - a very inviting set up for a kuier. 

The menu is traditional all the way: you can't have toasted sandwiches, but jaffels are no problem. And although you might want a roll to dunk in your butternut soup, you'll get a roosterbrood instead, We had decided to get a bowl of melkkos for the table, while I opted for a tongue-stingingly hot boerewors, red pepper and tomato stew, and my husband - buoyed by memories of his grandmother's cooking - went for tomato bredie. My daughter ordered platkoekies, and was rewarded with a thick stack of crumpets soaking up pools of golden syrup like sponges.

This isn't fancy food at all; it's more like what your mom would serve on a chilly night (or, one imagines, what Oom Schalk's wife would hand out to the men after nagmaal. But it is robustly tasty, and a refreshing change when you're looking for something other than your usual bistro with its three versions of Eggs Benedict.

There are loads of little touches that made it really special - like the way you get a welcome mug of homemade ginger beer as soon as you sit down, and the open kitchen where you can watch your food being made. It's also got a kid's playground (godsend) and the staff are fantastic.

The great ice cream off

Ice cream has certainly come a long way. During my 1980s childhood, the best you could hope for was a vanilla soft serve, sometimes made more glamorous with the addition of a Flake 99. When Vienetta hit the scene, things got really exciting: I remember chipping away at the little concertina folds with my spoon, wishing the moment would last forever. If you were really, really lucky, you got a Carvel cake for your birthday, complete with crumby chocolate bits in the middle and thick icing on top. otherwise, you were doomed to Little Red Schoolhouse on Friday nights - an ice cream which, disturbingly, was the colour of red setters. Fitting, because the taste was more akin to a wet dog or towel left too long in the laundry than chocolate.

Somewhere between then and now, however, ice cream joined the ranks of beer, coffee and bread; a food item which is no longer fondly associated with sticky hands and hot days at the coast, but which now bears the proud label of Artisinal. It's Something To Be Taken Seriously. Eliza Doolittle's metamorphosis could hardly be more complete.

That's probably because, in recent years. we've seen homemade ice cream make its way out of the food markets and onto menus and, ultimately, into stores. there's Pete's Super Natural Ice Cream, Wicked Cream and The Creamery, as well as the guy who, to my mind, started this frosty revolution: Paul, of Paul's Homemade Ice Cream. 

I admire Paul as much as an entrepreneur as an ice cream maker - it's no small feat to go from scooping cookie dough sandwiches at a market to owning two eponymous stores. But I'm not surprised. For a girl raised on Little Red Schoolhouse, PHIC is just - well, let me just say that I can't believe both of them could be considered the same substance.

Because I love PHIC so much, I hit on a brilliant idea: every week, my eldest daughter and I go on a mommy daughter date to Rosebank, our nearest PHIC outlet. See how this works - I get to be a loving mom AND spoil myself at the same time. She always has whichever chocolate variation is available, and I sample almost every flavour. This is one situation where being extremely indecisive is an asset: one of the things I love most about PHIC is that the flavours change all the time, so while you might be disappointed not to find your favourite, you are equally likely to discover a new best-of-all-time. I started out in love with Nutella and roasted banana, then fell for Vietnamese coffee. Since then, some of the goodies I've gone for are chai, cookie butter (not surprisingly, one of my best), peppermint crisp tart and dark chocolate. It's always hard to make a choice, though, because the flavours are like something dreamed up in a Wonka kitchen.

That said, I like to give every ice cream parlous a fair chance - so, when I saw that the question 'Where can you get the best ice cream in Joburg?', asked on the Facebook group Jozi Restaurants, was frequently answered with "BBQ Workshop", I knew I had to give it a bash.

Don't be misled by the name - although these guys are apparently famous for their smoky souvlaki type dishes, it's definitely an ice cream heaven. My daughter stuck to her usual (with no ordinary chocolate available, she had to 'make do' with Fererro Rocher), but I branched out with grapefruit - and it was so good that I coudn't help but let out an "oh wow" when I tasted it. It had the refreshing tartness of sorbet, but the satisfying smooth creaminess of ice cream - and it was pure deliciousness. The watermelon had a similar freshness, and the Snickers was a no-brainer for fans of peanuts and caramel.

My final verdict? BBQ Workshop, you were an amazing fling and I will always remember you - but PHIC's imaginative flavours come out tops for me. 

The Beautiful Damned

Joburg Ballet's rendition of Giselle is the third performance of this magnificent ballet that I have watched; but this is the first time I have left the theatre feeling as if it is my own heart that has broken.

In case you don't know the story, Giselle is a village girl so fair and lovely she attracts the attention of both a count and a poor woodsman. The count pretends to be of lowly birth so that he can court Giselle, and she falls in love with him, little suspecting his nobility or that he is, in fact, already betrothed. The huntsman outs him, however, and the resulting shock slays Giselle. The next time we see her, she has joined a band of ghosts called the Wilis - girls who were jilted before their wedding day. They wreak their revenge by forcing any man they encounter to dance until his death. This is the fate that befalls the huntsman, but when the Wilis turn their fury on the count, Giselle protects him.

So far, so twee. The storyline is always secondary in a ballet, isn't it? You watch more to marvel at the amazing feats the human body is capable of accomplishing. Like most people, that's what I love about ballet - the stark dichotomy of floating grace and the resolute discipline it takes to create this illusion. This evening, though, I realised (after many years of  watching ballet) that, just as water has three forms, so too does the ballerina's steel: it has the ability to transmute from mental rigour to physical beauty, and then pure, raw emotion.

Watching the doomed ghost girls, I was, of course, transfixed by timing and placement so perfect it would have soothed any acute obsessive compulsive - but, more than that, I found myself wondering what had caused their molten passion to turn into diamond hard vengeance. Watching the dance between the two main characters reminded me of the very first time your heart knows and understands absence.

And that made me think about why it is we have things like ballet - because, in a world like ours, it;s easy to dismiss these tutus as frothy and frivolous. But they're not - they have the ability to make us feel connected and human. And there's little more serious than that.

Giselle runs at the Joburg Theatre until 17 April.
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The classic for people who don't like classics

I'm addicted to reading. I feel like every cheesy Internet meme about loving books was created with me in mind; I can't browse in Exclusives because, when by the time I've made a list of all the novels I need to read, I am in the grips of a full-blown panic attack.

All the same, much as I feel ashamed to admit it, I have never clicked with the classics. I have friends who make a point of re-reading Jane Austen every year because, they say, her words are infused with beauty. I, on the other hand, feel like her words are bricks in a maze. I experience the same emotion when I watch anything to do with the CIA (now, who would have thought Jane Austen would have anything in common with spies?) - somewhere along the line, I miss a vital point and end up feeling stupid and frustrated.

So I almost hesitated when I saw Jo Baker's Longbourne. It was something of a conundrum: on the one hand, my sincere wish that I had been born into a time of corsets and cads makes me a sucker for anything set later than the 1950's; on the other, the cover's description of the book being Pride and Prejudice revisited was a little offputting.

How glad I am I listened to the first voice in my head. Longbourne looks at life with the Bennetts from the point of view of someone who had to handwash all those party frocks and create all those elaborate hairstyles. Seen from that perspective, Darcy isn't a dashing gentleman at all; but the reason for yet another tedious chore.

Baker writes with empathy and insight - so it's that rare find, a book that's not just a great story, but a magnificent piece of writing, too. In fact, her crafted sentences are the main reason this is such a joy. Not a single word is wasted; she writes with the confidence of a dancer doing intricate steps, yet knowing them so well she no longer needs to watch her feet,

This is a must read. Just make sure you have nothing lined up on your calendar.