It’s hard to believe that this is Grunt Number 250. That amounts to more than 80000 words – the length of decent-sized novel – since I began writing in the middle of 2009. In those days, you may recall, the newspaper was called Krant. When I was asked if I’d be interested in contributing a weekly column, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Perhaps the most stringent demand lay in the relentlessness of the deadline: 350 words to be delivered each Monday morning, no matter where I was. So these columns have come from all over the country: Nieu-Bethesda, Groot-Brak, Potchefstroom, Clarens, Cape Town, Vanderbijlpark, Johannesburg, amongst others – and Bloemfontein, of course.
And deadlines pay no attention to whether you’re on holiday, on business, whatever your reason is for being out of town; you just have to deliver. Earlier this year, for example, I was in hospital, but I still managed to knock out a column on schedule between various periods of semi-consciousness. Come to think of it, I wonder if my dozy mental state showed!
Every Sunday evening (and sometimes later into the night), I’ve sat behind my laptop, trying to find something to write about. In the beginning, I wasn’t even sure that anyone out there was actually reading this stuff. But the response grew to the point where people would stop us when we were drinking coffee, buying a bolt-cutter, parking the wagon, doing groceries at the supermarket, or queuing at the ATM. Their response has always been generous, often sharing their own experiences, some of which have been extremely moving, others, extremely funny. It’s amazing for me to find how many people have bothered to contact me over the years, and to share their experiences of living in Bloem.
When the paper started, I had no idea how long it might survive. My target then was 10 columns; later, that became 50, and later still, 100. Now I’ve done 250. Had I known what I was letting myself in for, I suspect I would have still said “Yes!”
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