Dalene Joubert News Today

They came with financial assistance, with legal help, with media assistance, with ideas, with hope. Some came with might. Some shone lights. It was not always a physical showing up. It was arriving with and at solutions to our country’s horrendous restaurant lockdown problems then. Let’s no...

. Surf boards. Sugar skulls. A fish vortex. Suspended jellies. The shy octopus. Long John Silver, peg-legged and fearsome. Casting a beady pirate’s eyes over ice-hot pool tables (they have a steely glint) on gleaming checkerboard tiles. A loo sign with arrows reads: “Men to the left because women are always right.” Touché. Masks. Cocktails. Sushi platters. Mammoth burgers and finger-licking buffalo wings piled high. Garlic prawns whispering “chew-on-me”. Except for the deboned mutton...

Some have survived. A few are thriving. Many have gone for good. Others are limping along. There are the optimists, the risk-takers, the resourceful, the resilient, the innovative and chefs with Covid-19. New ideas. New directions. New restaurants springing up. All this when the closest anyone can get to a new normal is the hunger for it. The only certainty: uncertainty.   So, who would have imagined this scenario?  On Thursday 20 February 2020 I meet US friends from near Chicago at 9th Aven...