...confessions of a cape town freelancer: part 3...

Biltong & book launches

In the days when I pulled a full salary at the end of a month, book launches meant one of two things to me: celebrating myself or celebrating another author. It’s not a vain thing, trust me, but when you eventually come to the end of a gruelling process of writing, editing, rewriting and giving birth to a novel, the book launch at the end of it is how I imagine my married friends felt on their wedding days. It’s champagne. It’s fireworks. It’s the dress, the hair, the makeup, the frills and thrills, and I love it. Since that full salary disappeared along with my royalties, book launches have taken on a whole new meaning. And here it is.

I still go to book launches to support other authors, but these days I also go to eat. Yeah. The snacks. And drink. Yeah, the wine. The beauty of a book launch in Cape Town is that you’ll never get shitty wine. The snobberati is way too cultivated for Tassies and the like. While I sip on my glass of Sauv Blanc, I survey the room. Not to look for the author and his/her entourage (which is often made up of a stressed-looking publisher), but to locate the food. The. Food. And when a launch is good, the food is stellar. I’m talking sushi, spring rolls (not oily), mini dishes of risotto, biltong (OMW, b-i-l-t-o-n-g!), tiny sandwiches, chocolate brownies, macaroons and strawberries.

All of this abundance happened just the other night. True story. The bookshop that shall not be named pulled out all the stops on a dreary Thursday night. It was a typical only-in-Cape-Town kinda winter’s day, and I barely got myself out of the house in a decent outfit, sans winter gown. I was also starving, which was probably the main reason I managed to remove my bum from the couch and force myself into semi-sexy stockings. My diet of Provita and Marmite, followed by almonds and yoghurt was starting to make me weepy. And needy. And grumpy. I was craving meat like a crazy person. So when I arrived at Bookshop X, I nearly clicked my heels Charlie Chaplin-style when I saw the massive bowl of biltong. If it weren’t for my friends who had just arrived, I would have disappeared into that bowl never to be seen again. As the speeches started, I stalked closer and closer to the biltong. With one hand gently caressing my glass of wine and the other casually making its way to the meat, I thought: this is where I’ll get my weekly fix of protein. And later, when I left the bookshop, I decided to sign up to all and every newsletter from bookshops in Cape Town so as to be informed of each and every launch. I know the food won’t be as extravagant as the spread at this specific launch (where the authors later told me that they had paid extra for catering), but as a freelancer I sure ain’t gonna turn away no chicken wing or samoosa.

Books might be the food of the soul, but I can’t eat my books, and they sure as hell don’t taste as good as biltong.

~jana