The Rissington Christmas Rag - December 2025

Welcome to the December Rag and to all the wonderful celebrations that go with it: Summertime in the southern hemisphere, three decades of Rissington and, of course, Christmas, New Year, festivals, fun and holidays.

2025 has been a great year for our little lodge and we shall be heading into 2026 with our highest-ever forward occupancies, which is very exciting.

So ... let’s take a look at what we have done during our thirtieth year to make sure that we keep up with - and stay ahead of - all the trends. Then, further down, you will find all the usual useful humour and quirks, a generous competition, some great photos and memories, a bit of jingoism and some music …

And definitely don't miss the brilliant Julien Cohen's Christmas Flashmob in Paris at the bottom of The Rag. It is absolutely SUPERB.

OK. Here we go ... (and if you don't have the time to read it now, snooze it for when you can relax and enjoy it with a coffee or a glass of wine on another day - there's no rush).

A letter from the bank :

Let's start (for the very last time) with a final mention of our three decades of Rissington. These photos put it all into persective. A typed (on a real typewriter) message from a real locally-based bank manager, typed by a real secretary on real paper with a real message. Dated 31 August 1995. 30 years ago.

Ben van Rensburg was the man who made Rissington possible by jumping through many many hoops in order to approve the bond (mortgage) and the overdraft facility required for this penniless 31-year-old to buy and rebuild the property and ultimately to create the Rissington we all know and love today.

That is how it all started. And Ben and his Hazyview business friends came for lunch every Friday for months and months to help keep us going. We braaied for them and they drank lots and lots of brandy and Coke.

This was all pre-Internet. There's no website on the letter; no email address; no link to Internet banking. No PINs. No form to fill in online to accept. No Password to open an encoded document. No Scam Warning. No instruction to recycle the paper.

Just a personal message of good luck from the bank manager.

That's how business worked in those days. I kept the letter. It means a lot to me. 

Plenty of tweaks and treats :

And now, back to the present and more signs of how far we have come, thanks to Ben van Rensburg. These are the latest innovations :

· A new concierge desk is now located in the shop off the bar to assist guests with their day-planning and activities bookings. I know. Very grown-up! But it will help everyone to make the most of their time with us. And the shop is now offering a much wider range of interesting, stylish (and, predictably, some rather bizarre) items.

· The walks, hikes and cycling trails have been improved and re-marked.

·  The dining room, the stoep and the terrace are undergoing a gentle upgrade with improved table-lamps and ceiling lights, new salt-and-pepper sets, better napery and more flowers and plants as well as a few extra dishes inspired by our African travels.

·  We are phasing in new crockery, serving boards, pots, bowls, buckets, jars and jugs to brighten up the meals a tad.

·  In case you missed it, there’s a new à la carte breakfast picnic menu so that you can have a different picnic every day (and all-recyclable packaging). The idea is getting great reviews. (Phew!). Rissington will never send you out with a bruised apple, a dry cheese sandwich and one of those hard-boiled eggs with the weird grey skin on the yolk. With us, you choose from a menu. A really different menu with plenty of interesting ideas.

·  We have upgraded our general picnic choices, which are all now presented in a range of baskets. These are especially popular with our Joburg market and particularly on their birthdays, it seems. They LOVE a picnic, preferably in their bedrooms! But they can be taken down by the pool, on the road or wherever you like.

·  There’s tea, there's coffee and there are two delicious cakes. All day, every day. Just look at the delicious cake in the picture above. Vienna, eat your heart out. Here comes Hazyview.

·  We are using metal straws, instead of non-recyclables.

·  The new light music playlist is getting enthusiastic compliments from diners. I am not sure that we have ever been complimented on our music before but it is happening now...

·  All staff have the new branded uniforms and fleeces with the big R. The fleeces are GREAT!

·  There’s a Big (even bigger) R for selfies (see left for how it works!) and there’s a Os and Xs set by the pool. There’s also croquet and (tucked away) volleyball in the garden. (We are even looking at putting in a padel or pickleball court, so let me know what you think of that idea.)

·  We’re introducing non-alcoholic wines as an option.

·  Blackout curtains have gone in everywhere. We are also, at last, putting safes into all our rooms in December/January. They will have good old-fashioned keys, not complicated codes that lock you out when the batteries die, thus imprisoning the very items you were trying not to lose.

·  All showers are being re-tiled with new non-slip floors where necessary.

·  All daybeds and hammocks are being refurbished and upgraded with some bright colours. In a world where the new 'fun' colour is 'charcoal', we're taking it back to the bright colours of our youths. Yes, even tie-dye cushions. What is it with charcoal, for goodness sake? There are charcoal-coloured cars everywhere. Even charcoal-flavoured toothpaste. Soon we'll be brushing our teeth with sticks rubbed in ashes again.

·  New linen is being introduced, including larger towel sizes and luxurious king-size pillows throughout,

·  The spa is a huge success - beyond our expectations, I must admit - with sometimes as many as a quarter of our guests making use of it.

·  The restaurant restrooms have been retiled and refitted.

·  The Nespresso machines in our rooms now have a range of excellent Terbodore coffee capsules. These are fully compostable in line with our determination to follow sustainability principles wherever possible.

Every little upgrade makes a difference and gives us so much pleasure! And there’s even more to come next year.

It's all about service and hospitality, after all. Here's an odd story from the Karoo. Do you know what it means if someone leaves a pineapple outside their front door. Read this and find out, along with other fun quirky foodie things:

THERE'S A PINEAPPLE ON MY STOEP

In other news, Philippa leaves Rissington; Waidon joins :

Philippa and I go back a long (very long) way, to the 1980s, so it was something of a jolt when she announced that she was going to leave us and move back to the UK (where she was born). With Team Rissington having been ‘looked after’ by her so ably for the past five years we were however happy to recommend Philippa strongly for her intended role as a carer in Britain and, in early October, off she went. Currently, she tells me that she is looking after a 102-year-old in the Chilterns. I can imagine that this might occasionally be something of a battle of wills!

Philippa’s priority, of course, will be finding easy-going care patients with lovely houses and plenty of dogs. Volunteers and victims welcome! There’s no need to worry if you are hard-of-hearing. As PG Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster used to say of his Aunt Agatha, Philippa can be heard ‘across three ploughed fields and a spinney’. We shall miss that. So will Rusty and Bruno.

As Philippa pulled out, so Waidon weighed in. Or waded in. Or some other such awful obvious pun.

Where Philippa was resolute in describing her role as that of Office Manager and (strict) Head Gate-Keeper to the Scissors and the Paper Clip Supplies, all of which were kept well-hidden from the rest of us mere mortals "in case (we) used them", Waidon Maritz has been employed as our General Manager. He’s an experienced hotelier and has been in Hazyview since he was seven years old, which I have to keep reminding him (and myself) was also seven years after Rissington was born. We have been here all his life! You will like him. He’s fun, helpful, popular and he’s settled into the team with great skill. They love him.

My amateur video of Rissington’s farewell to Philippa is below. The planning of it took no more than about five minutes of discussion by the team. They huddled in the kitchen where an idea formed and was followed by literally about half a minute of rehearsal before they sprang it on her. The poster, which you can see, with its suitably-outsized Rusty and Bruno superimposed on a photo of the whole staff, was designed and organised by the team whilst I was away. Philippa, who never liked a ‘fuss’, was visibly moved (and that didn’t happen often!).

You can see the Video here, with a cameo performance by Waidon (at the top of the steps and clearly thinking "what on earth have I got myself into?") ...

A FUN FAREWELL TO PHILIPPA

And what has the owner been up to?

My travels this year – and particularly during my month in Kenya in September – have given me plenty of time for reading and I have been doing a fair bit of writing as well. The days of freelance travel-writing are more-or-less over, worldwide, as most publications have come under pressure from the Internet. Their budgets to pay non-staffers have been dramatically cut or even abolished altogether.

So, I am left with a number of choices and I am pursuing them all, one way or another. I am working on a cookery book (and her life story) with an old friend from my Cybele days back in the early 1990s. It’s a fascinating opportunity and it has raked up a veritable raft of happy memories whilst at the same time reminding me of numerous clever thoughts, ideas and tricks relating to food. The book is hers, not mine, but we have had a lot of fun (and relatively few arguments) putting it all together. It will be coming out next year if all goes well. I think it is going to be really good. 

I was holed up on a beach in Kenya, writing the book, when I took this amazing photo. Faced with such beauty, how can I not be inspired?

Once that job is done, I shall be taking up where I left off with my own manuscript - working title ‘Hotel Havoc’  - the intention of which, with my tongue very firmly in my cheek, is to teach the young and the not-so-young how to run a tourism business and simultaneously to teach the tourist how to get the most out of a hotel, specifically without causing a scene!

The book is half-written but has had to take a back seat over the past five years. The time has now come to get stuck in again. It’s really just an excuse to tell all my best stories from 43 years of running hotels. All true of course. And ‘no names, no pack drill’, as my prep school form-master always used to advise.

The final option was to become an influencer myself and to blog online, but you will be delighted to hear that I am not going to do that. In fact, it is not even vaguely tempting. Instead I shall carry on with my quarterly Rags and my occasional photo blogs on Tripcast, as well as the regular posts on Rissington’s social media. Well, we wouldn’t want you to forget about us between Rags, would we?

Follow us now, if you are not already:

RISSINGTON ON INSTAGRAM

RISSINGTON ON FACEBOOK

In fact, where I used to prefer essays and long reviews, I now actually enjoy the short, pithy nature of social media writing, suited as it is to the bullet-point brains of the youth. It keeps things focused.

Bookish travel:

I rather approve of this idea. It is aimed at people who travel to the places which were the settings of novels that they have read.

I recently saw that there are guided James Bond Tours of London scenes featured in those movies, for example, and we all know how long the queue is on Platform 9 ¾  at King’s Cross where thousands line up daily, for hours, in anticipation of the opportunity to take a photograph of themselves not disappearing into a wall.

It can get out of hand, though, as 'Sound of Music' tourism apparently has in Austria, leading to daily dozens of otherwise-sane adults, clad in short lederhosen dungarees and dresses fashioned from green-and-yellow flowery curtains, skipping and swinging from the trees along a Salzburg lakeside avenue and belting out Do-Re-Mi with a tunelessness that belies the very purpose of the song and would have absolutely horrified Julie Andrews.

This Bookish Travel genre is rather more refined (and more grown-up) than that and focuses on less-visited tourism regions where less well-known books are set. You go there and you read the book with a group of like-minded folk but without all the pitfalls of overtourism. Read more about it here: 

BOOKISH TRAVEL

I am really hoping it takes off, especially with my friend Tony Park’s fans. Rissington puts in an appearance in a number of his books and this is a really great place to read, so there might even be a few spin-offs for us here. (I always ask Tony to stick to his word and not to set any gruesome fights or shootings at Rissington, for fear of over-enthusiastic re-enactments.)

For Tony’s latest book ‘Die by the Sword’ and details of how to buy all his books in countries where it was previously challenging, visit his website here: 

TONY PARK

Keeping it affordable:

We have kept our rates unchanged this year out of deference to our regulars and in recognition of our government’s determination – so far mostly successfully – to keep inflation down.

We have also been dishing out some very generous deals over the past year. Just ask the people who are currently taking up our end-November and early-December Regulars' Special of R200 per person bed and breakfast (with the only condition being that you must dine with us in the evenings). It’s really worth following us on social media so that you are always aware of these deals.

This one is still available to any Rag Readers and/or social media followers until 12 December. There are still one or two slots available. And as for the definition of ‘our regulars’, our research shows that almost 35% of our guests return to Rissington again. And again. And again. Isn’t that just amazing?

Formophobia :

One of the downsides of online shopping and of so many other aspects of Internet-based communication is the number of times that we have to fill in our details on random forms and the variety of different complicated payment systems that have been set up to convince us that we are not being scammed.

There really is a condition called ‘formophobia’ (which you might have been forgiven for thinking would actually be a psychological issue faced by sharks and cows looking at the prospect of co-operating with Damien Hirst). There’s also an associated ‘scriptophobia’ which relates to signing forms but both seem to promote that same tiny panic attack that you have every time you click ‘pay new beneficiary’ or choose YES on a payment authorisation for your credit card.

Nothing is as bizarre, though, as Mortuusequusphobia – which is the phobia relating to an abnormal fear, of ketchup. The name comes from the Australian slang term for tomato sauce, ‘dead horse’ which is then translated into a Latin-based term meaning ‘dead horse phobia’. It is all derived from Cockney rhyming slang. This rare condition can trigger extreme anxiety and panic attacks in those who suffer from it when they encounter ketchup. I wonder whether it has anything to do with fake blood on film sets?

Rissington photography

We have had plenty of new photos taken in our 2025 photo shoot so if you haven’t been onto the website recently, please take a look at www.rissington.co.za. And anyone in the travel industry reading this, please make sure you have only up-to-date photos of Rissington in your online presence. Drop us an email and we’ll send you the link to our OneDrive collection of recommended photos. Thanks to The Guys in Nelspruit, as ever, for all the great photos and videos. You can see their website and contact them here:  theguys.co.za

There is nothing worse than seeing out-of-date content on the Internet (it’s where AI picks up all its wrong Information) and I still see photos on travel websites of Rissington with its old swimming pool. That was five years ago! Look at the collage above. It's hard to imagine it now. JJ and Megan with their German firiend Julius in their early schooldays. The old pool and the new!

For your further entertainment, there are some fun Rissington videos to watch on our YouTube channel here too.

RISSINGTON VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE

AI and travel issues (again) :

The Internet has become such a scary place. A friend of mine asked Google why a lion would be licking the skin of a buffalo calf that it had just killed and the first entry (from AI Overview) was that it was to be kind to it and send its soul to heaven. I see it has been updated to a much more realistic reason now but it shows how things can get out of control.

Look up ‘why does my dog rattle his teeth’ (a new Rusty habit in his dotage) and AI will give you so many theories – love, anger, excitement, fear, pleasure, smelling something – that you won’t know whether to reach for the tranquillisers or the dog chewing gum.

Anyway, with all of this being the case, why would you entrust your holiday planning to AI at all?  Well, you wouldn’t. Read this:

DON'T LET AI PLAN YOUR HOLIDAY

Although TripAdvisor seems somewhat to have fallen by the wayside, I still get that same mild moment of panic, to which I referred earlier, every time I check the reviews of Rissington – mostly on our Google profile nowadays. The vast majority are five-star reviews which give great pleasure to all of us but then, a few months back, someone wrote (in German) that our breakfast was ‘schlecht’. No reasons given – just ‘bad’. I mean, really? Everyone loves our breakfasts! What on earth was ‘schlecht’ about it?

Of course, we can reply online (and we did), asking for more details by email, so that we could look into it. Predictably, we never heard from them again, so we are stuck with the review for ever and no way to rectify whatever the complaint might have been. My guess is that they never actually found the breakfast buffet at all, with its heaving piles of fruit, cold meats, patés, bobotie, quiches, scones and so on. ‘Schlecht?’ I don’t think so.

Perhaps he should read this Gen Z take on the irresponsible breakfast:

IS IT THE END OF BREAKFAST?

Living the good life ... in France :

Talking of food, some readers may remember ‘Steppo’ – my stepsister, Sarah – who was behind a number of Rissington’s favourite recipes in the early days when she helped out here. Sarah has been living in France since 2012 and, after being based in Brittany for 11 years (running gites, cooking and being a real-estate agent), she has now moved down south to the wonderful walled mediaeval city of Carcassonne, not running gites but still catering and still being a real-estate agent.

If you are looking to buy a main residence or second home there, please take a look at Sarah’s Facebook page.  It has some wonderful properties and a few foodie things too. She will be happy to help you with your property search – from chateaux and properties with business potential, to the euphemistically-named ‘fixer uppers’ – so please check it out. I know you are all secretly looking for a chateau.

Please Like, Share, Follow, even it’s just for the joy of snooping at some really gorgeous houses, and mention Rissington if you are looking for a property so that Sarah knows where the intro came from. You can DM her on Facebook if you want to chat.

SARAH'S BEAUTIFUL LIFE IN FRANCE

It’s a deal - sort of :

Back to online purchases, where prices seem to change all the time and where, tomorrow, you will always be able to buy two of the T-shirts for the price you paid for one yesterday and you will also get a discount voucher, free delivery and a complimentary keyring, snow-shaker and fridge magnet - tomorrow - as well ….

Remember Rissington’s old Guest Information that included so much fun stuff that we had to remove it for fear of triggering a Gen Z Snowflake reaction (yes, it’s Christmas and Christmas isn’t Christmas without a bit of snowflake-bashing). So here’s a flashback to an old favourite.

It's called ‘If Airlines sold Paint…’

Customer: Hi. How much is your paint?
Clerk: Well sir, that depends on a lot of things.
Customer: Can’t you give me an approximate price?
Clerk: Our lowest price is our introductory special at $12 a 5-litre. After that we have dozens of different prices up to $199.
Customer: What's the difference in the quality of the paint?
Clerk: Oh, there’s no difference. It's all exactly the same stuff.
Customer: Well, in that case I'll take your $12 paint.
Clerk: Well actually the $12 variety is only available on our website. If you want to buy it here in the store you’ll be charged an additional $20 Customer Convenience Fee
Customer: So if I go home and get it from the website, it's only $12?
Clerk: That’s correct sir - plus a Credit Card Usage Fee of $6 and then there’s standard Shipping and Handling of $15.
Customer: What? So in other words buying online would cost me almost exactly the same as what I’d have to pay here in the store?
Clerk: I suppose so, but if you buy it here you get to use it immediately. Online purchases take ten business days to get to you - unless you pay the optional $25 Express My Paint Fee.
Customer: You've got to be kidding me!
Clerk: Well no sir, but it’s academic anyway as right now the $12 paint is completely sold out in both places.
Customer: That’s nonsense. I’m looking at shelves full of the stuff.
Clerk: Ah, but that doesn't mean it’s available for sale. We sell only a certain number of introductory priced cans on any given day. Oops, look at that! It just became available again - at $17.50.
Customer: C’mon! You mean to say that it went up while I’m standing here?!
Clerk: ‘Fraid so. Inventory control changes our prices all the time. I strongly recommend you to purchase your paint as soon as possible as it could go up again. How many 5-litres do you want?
Customer: Well, maybe three 5-litres. No, make that four, I don’t want to run out. I assume I can return anything I don’t open?
Clerk: Certainly sir. The $12 paint is non-refundable, but if you return it within 48 hours you will be entitled to a $5 credit towards the future purchase of another 5 litres of the same colour at the same or a higher price.
Customer: That’s crazy. In that case I’ll just give any unopened cans to my brother as he’s planning to repaint his home soon.
Clerk: Sorry sir, no-can-do! Our terms and CANditions – that’s a little in-house joke – prohibit paint transfer. It is strictly for the use of the original purchaser.
Customer: But wait a minute, I hadn’t spotted those "Paint Sale - $9.99* a Can" signs over there? That sounds like a much better deal.
Clerk: Ah yes, that's from our low-cost paint division. The asterisk denotes that the cans are actually 2.5 litres and the price is based on a minimum purchase of two. There is also an additional Environmental Fee of $5 per can, a non-refundable Can Deposit of $3.50, a Paint Facility Charge of $5 and if you want more than one colour, the second has a $25 surcharge and the third is $50 extra.
Customer: This is utterly ridiculous. To hell with this! I'll buy what I need somewhere else!
Clerk: Well sir, you may be able to buy paint for some rooms from another store, but you won't be able to find the paint for your connecting hall and staircase anywhere but here. And I should also point out that if you want Uni-Directional paint it is priced at $249 a 5-litre..
Customer: I thought your most expensive paint was $199!
Clerk: That's only if you paint non-stop all the way around the room and back to the point at which you started. Staircases and hallways are considered one-way exceptions to the rule.
Customer: So, if I buy the $199 paint and use it in my hallway what are you going to do about it - send someone in to paint over it?
Clerk: Wow, I believe you're getting it now sir. But no, please, that would be plain silly. We'll simply charge you a Direction Adjustment Fee plus the difference to $249 on your next purchase.
Customer: Next purchase? No way! I’m leaving.
Clerk: We never forget you have a choice, so thanks for shopping with us. Have a nice day!

And yet, we have all had to get used to booking our flights onlline and not complaining when the same flight is offered back to us by the same airline for half the price ... the day after we have already booked and paid at the higher price. Bonkers!

Amazing scams just go on and on :

Also seemingly made worse by the Internet, this is an extraordinarily intricate scam - one of dozens sent to Rissington by email every week - but I mean, honestly, does anyone actually fall for these things nowadays? Look at the trouble they have gone to in order to try to make this ‘convincing’:

Attention, Dear

We would like to inform you that, due to the impossibility of transferring your funds via online banking, Western Union, or bank check, we have credited your total amount of $4.5 million to an ATM MasterCard. We have already paid the fees for card reactivation and shipping. The card, valued at $4.5 million, is registered with EMS for seven days and will then be returned to the US Treasury Department.

We decided to assist you to prevent the card from expiring. We trust that you will reimburse us for the funds and even pay us an additional amount for our assistance. Please contact FedEx Express at the following email address: [email protected] and provide your address so that FedEx can deliver the card to you as soon as possible. Phone number: +256 75356014

As mentioned, we have covered the fees for crediting, reactivation, shipping, and registration. However, the storage fees at EMS were not paid, as they were refused. EMS stated that they didn't know when you would contact them, and the fees could have increased by then. They told me the storage fee was $25 per day.

Here are the contact details for Mr. Isacc Morgan, the customer service manager at FedEx Express: Email: [email protected]. Contact him today and pay the storage fee to avoid higher costs. Please notify us as soon as you receive the card. Important: Your package was registered as a gift so that customs officials do not know its contents.

Please provide all the codes to prove that you are the legitimate holder of the ATM Visa card.

ATM card shipping code: AWB 99xPF
ATM card registration number: xgt644
Security code: sctc:2001dhx:471
Transaction code: 233:cstc:101:001091
Certificate code: sctc:bun.xxiv:75:02
Customer name: Ms. Linda James
Bank: Stanbic Bank

To avoid any delivery issues, please complete this process immediately. Otherwise, additional fees may apply. Please let us know as soon as you receive your VISA card.

Sincerely,
Ms. Karim Patrick
IT Analyst
Stanbic Bank Uganda

Ms. Karim Patrick <[email protected]>

ATM card shipping code: AWB 99xPF

Does anyone want to give it a go?

Under African Skies :

These two photos were taken in Hazyview by a couple of friends, during the recent eclipse.

I was in Kenya when it happened and I saw it from Nairobi. The next day, on the beach south of Mombasa, I took that amazing photo (above) of the Indian Ocean at night. I am quite enjoying my photography after last year's big trip. 

And there's always good signage to keep me amused. The neighbouring beach restaurant had a surprising (seemingly Scottish or maybe Zimbabwean?) highland theme. The chicken sounds particularly unusual.

As Cyril Ramaphosa said at the recent G20, in an unexpected quote from Pliny the Elder: ‘ex Africa semper aliquid novi’. There’s always something new coming out of Africa. It’s probably a good thing, considering that the continent is expected to be home to a quarter of the world’s population by 2050. Only 25 years from now.

Making your mark on Rissington :

A friend of mine came up with an idea (for herself) the other day and I thought I would share it, just in case anyone else is looking for a permanent connection with Rissington.

We would be more than happy to offer the opportunity for you to sponsor a bench here with your name on it - or someone else’s name – looking at your or their favourite view. We have found highly durable benches made from recycled materials which will last for ever and save the name – and the planet. Let us know if you’re interested. No pressure. Just an idea. They start from just under R2000 for a ‘king bench’.

Living with wildlife :

All the usual critters appear, regularly as ever, in the garden, on the trails and on the bush cameras. The grey and the red duikers seem to be doing particularly well. The birding has been astonishing though. Our usual five cuckoo species are all around for the summer. And our four regular kingfisher species. Our woolly-necked stork still strides the lawns at breakfast.

We have had a few real close-up experiences though. The usual war continues above my front door between a proprietorial white-browed robin chat and a feisty groundscraper thrush which is again trying to defy gravity by rearing chicks high in a bougainvillea bush, way above its habitual ground-level. It failed last year, so let’s hope this year’s brood fares better.

Last week, we nursed a tiny female amethyst sunbird back to health after she flew into a window. Then, the next day, this African goshawk (above) flew right inside the house and perched calmly on the floor. He took a lot of persuading to leap off and fly away. Just this morning, whilst typing this letter, I have already had to usher an ashy flycatcher and a brown-hooded kingfisher out of my office.

Black-collared barbets usually nest in the tops of trees but this pair (there actually seem to be three of them around) have mined out the inside of a dead forest-fever tree stump just outside the Rissington office. It’s a significant excavation at waist height, allowing some extraordinary photographs to be taken. Here’s one of the birds, with a face full of wood chippings from its dig, which it then ejected onto the ground at the foot of the stump.

I offer this next link just because, as we can see above from the way we live, South Africa is the third most connected-to-nature country in the world (and not because Britain is the third least-well connected country!).

NATURE-CONNECTED COUNTRIES

Here, also, is a simply stunning (cellphone-long-distance) photo of a violet-backed (formerly plum-coloured) starling in the top of a Rissington jacaranda last week, taking a break from a whirlwind flying-ant-eating frenzy with dozens of other species of birds. Just look at those colours!

Competitions :

It has been a year of monthly competitions to celebrate our three decades and it’s time to announce the winner of the September Rag competition in which you were asked to tell us about your favourite view in the Lowveld. It was an interesting and broad range of answers, making it a struggle to judge, but in the end the Team decided (in true millennial/Gen Z fashion) that the winner was Jake Allitt, who actually reported over a couple of days on his view ‘in real time’ as he celebrated his honeymoon, staying at Rissington, dining overlooking the pool and visiting Elephant Whispers and the Blyde River Canyon the next day. Nice one Jake. You have won a week at Rissington on a bed and breakfast basis and a picnic at your favourite spot which, from the list you gave us, I think is probably the pool at Rissington, but you can decide on that when you get here.

For the December Rag Competition - and therefore the last of our ‘Three Decades of Rissington’ prizes – we are going even bigger and you have to dig even deeper. Tell us: What is your favourite aspect of the Rissington Rag? Why do you read it? What does it do for you? And what would you change?

You can give examples, if you like, to back up your answer. If you are looking for inspiration, blogs dating back to 2020 are available on the Blog page of the Rissington website here:

RISSINGTON RAGS OF OLD

The winner will earn a free week at Rissington for two, including return domestic flights from/to anywhere in South Africa, a picnic-in-a-basket, two Rissington fleeces, two massages, all your breakfasts and two nightly cocktails. Entries by 15th January please. Go on! Interact and win a prize.

Some music to end the year :

Going through old Rags as I wrote the previous paragraph, I realised that it had been a while since we had heard from the Ndlovu Youth Choir. They have featured in the Rag many times over the years and there was once even a plan for them to play a private gig at Rissington’s 25th birthday which was cancelled by the world chaos of five years ago. Since then, they have toured the country and the planet and have changed lives everywhere they go. Here’s a favourite clip of mine which featured them recently. It’s just so fabulously, uniquely South African, isn’t it?

NDLOVU CHOIR SCHOOL VISIT

It’s Christmas and the sun is beating down on beautiful Africa :

Looking for Good News about South Africa? Take a look at this very sound and sensible view:

Why South Africans are flourishing

To make it even easier to get here from all over the southern African subcontinent and see our successes for yourself, there are now regular flights from George to Hoedspruit (only an 80-minute drive from us) if you want to cut out the drive from the Garden Route. KMIA (Kruger Nelspruit), 45 minutes away, now has way-cheaper flights with FlySafair, on certain days of the week, from Cape Town and Johannesburg. There are also flights from Durban, Livingstone and Victoria Falls. Skukuza has more and more flights coming in too.

We hope to see you in 2026 so that we can show you all the exciting little (and not-so-little) innovations and improvements at our lovely lodge. And you should meet Waidon too!

And, if I may, a special Nadolig Llawen to my lovely Welsh friend Pat, who was brought up in the old Rhodesia (but is now back in Wales) and who sent me a couple of the memes which fitted the context beautifully. Diolch yn fawr iawn, Pat. Let's hope for a good Six Nations contest...

I have said this before but you all - yes all of you - really mean the world to us, so you keep coming ... and we’ll keep smiling!

Now, here it is. Time to get that Christmas vibe going. Turn up the volume and click below for a unique and spectacular festive 'flashmob' from Paris with one hundred musicians performing the well-known and beautiful Carol of the Bells which - did you know this? - is, aptly, of Ukrainian origin. Here goes!

JULIEN COHEN'S CHRISTMAS FLASHMOB IN PARIS

Merry Christmas and a very Happy 2026. All the best from all of us:

Chris, Shirley, Nonhlanhla, Natasha, Nkateko, Anita, Lindokuhle, Sindile; Gertrude, Dudu, Yvonne, Angel, Conny and Delinah; Futhi, Betty, Noggs, Patience, Bonisile, Rosa, Lilian, Maureen, Thandiwe and Fisokuhle; Sipho, Aubrey, Selby, Lucky, Pieter, Thabiso and Coco; also Waidon, who would love to see you all; plus Charlotte in the Spa; also Simphiwe in the office, whom you may email on [email protected] for all your booking requirements. Or simply book online on [email protected] and tell us all about yourself in the ‘Special Requests’ box.  And JJ and Lungile, both now fully-educated. Oh, and love from Rusty and Bruno and every single bird in this garden …

And, at Christmas, I can never resist this photo of JJ, taken 15 years ago! Now he's 21, he's finished his studies and he's starting his career in digital marketing and branding. Amazing. And he's still the nicest guy in the world.