The Rissington Rag - March 2026

It’s now full-on summer in Hazyview and time for a laid-back, easy-going, musing sort of Rag – so pull up a drink and an armchair so that you can settle in for a good read …

Summertime and the Living is Easy

The spider lilies are in flower. It must be summer.

We always think of our southern hemisphere summers as being focused on Christmas but, in reality, the true beginning of the SA summer is actually early January and it runs through to February and early March. The same is true of Europe where the middle of the year is not actually the middle of summer, which starts in July and carries on through August. As time goes by and travel becomes such an accepted feature of our lives, we now not only go on holiday in summer, but we actually often shut down our businesses (unless we are in tourism) and all but close down our countries’ economies for a month.

That happens here over Christmas or, bizarrely, in Dezemba, a new concept of doing nothing even vaguely constructive for a whole month. I am sure everyone is familiar with many South African-isms with no real depth or discernible meaning at all. For example: 'Yoh', 'Eina!', "Eish', 'Mzansi Fo Sho' and, going back a bit further in time, 'ayoba' and 'Yebo Gogo!' but 'Dezemba' was a new one for me (and I had never heard of a 'palooza', either, until Pick n Pay brought it up this month - I believe it's American, so how did we just end up with it here?!)

Here’s the inevitable somewhat-clunky AI summary of 'Dezemba':

‘Dezemba’ (or ke Dezemba) is the festive, summer holiday season in South Africa, representing a cultural mood of celebration, relaxation and travel. Characterised by hot weather, beaches and braais (barbecues), this period features significant public holidays like the Day of Reconciliation (Dec 16) and the Day of Goodwill (Dec 26). 

Key aspects of December in South Africa include:

Cultural Feeling: It is described as a ‘mood’ rather than just a month, characterised by a lively and celebratory atmosphere.

Lifestyle: The country slows down, with many travelling for holidays to the coast, attending concerts or enjoying outdoor social gatherings.

Activities: Popular activities include braais, beach trips, shopping for holiday sales, and watching cricket, particularly the traditional Test Match.

Summer Season: December is in the summer, bringing hot, sunny weather suitable for outdoors-, coastal- and nature-oriented activities.

‘Ke Dezemba’ Vibe: The phrase ‘Ke Dezemba’ is used to mark the start of this celebratory, high-energy festive season. 

You have no idea how many pointless ‘not-even-Oxford’ commas I removed from that badly-constructed piece of AI-generated text but the whole concept of Dezemba just sounds wonderfully South African, doesn’t it?

And something of a contrast to the European summer holidays which conjure up thoughts of overcrowded airports, busy roads, lack of parking at the coast, overbooked restaurants, queues at toll plazas, slathering on oil and frying on Mediterranean beaches and then the total chaos of what the French call ‘La Rentrée’ at the end of August. In France, this is more than just an end of the holidays. It is a reboot, almost like a new year resolution. Here’s a summary from the ‘France Channel’ website:

“La Rentrée is a time of excitement and renewal (for workaholic sociopaths). Schools and communities often hold special events to welcome students back. These events foster a sense of community and shared purpose. For families, it's a time to re-establish routines and embrace new challenges.

La Rentrée is more than just the French version of ‘back to school’; it is a cultural reset that permeates all aspects of life in France. Its comprehensive scope, economic impact and cultural significance distinguish it from the simpler notion of returning to school. La Rentrée reflects the unique rhythms of French life, marking a transition that is both practical and symbolic, preparing the entire nation for the year ahead.”

Of course, your choice of travel destination dictates your summer experience with climate change also impacting on that. As Europe gets hotter, so the trends have changed and people are escaping the European heat and humidity that can only be relieved by sitting in a shady bar or paddling in the Trevi Fountain and they are heading, instead, for the warm, sunny-but-not-sunburning southern Hemisphere winters in places such as Hazyview.

Forty years ago, February was our busiest tourism month for Europeans escaping the cold of winter. Now July is our busiest month at Rissington as they escape the heat of Europe’s summer. Go figure!

So, what are the Current Travel Trends?

As we mull over all of this, here are a few pieces discussing the direction in which travel is heading.

Firstly, the idea that travel runs the risk of imploding its own very raison d’être by ramping prices, expectations and obligations. Here is a seriously well-thought-out piece:

The Luxury Travel Industry is Breaking Travel

This has the spin-off effect of increasing the tendency for us to travel back to the same place year after year. We have about 35% return guests at Rissington, many staying for a week or two –  in one case, this year, for four weeks and this will be that person's seventh visit. A month at Rissington, being looked-after and attended by our wonderful team. On an average night up to one in three of our guests has been here before. What a treat! 

I now go back to the same place in Kenya for a month every year for the very same reason. Why Kenya? The same reason why people come here for long stays. It’s quality, it’s sensibly-priced and I know exactly what to expect. You can’t experiment all the time. Sometimes you just need to KNOW that you are going where you want to be. It’s a genuine relax and reinvent.

The Surprising Joy of Going Back to the Same Place

Travelling as South Africans, the combination of Trump noise and Schengen paranoia makes going abroad something of a challenge from a visa perspective, so we’re thinking of heading for Turkey in June for a month. We don’t need visas to go there and the more I look into it, the more fascinating it looks. We'll be there before the heat and the hordes.

We had been thinking of heading to the USA for the 2028 Olympics but that is beginning to look as if it might quite simply not be possible. It’s funny how isolationism in any form disrupts such basics as holidays and international events, as much as it does business and immigration. The smaller world is becoming less and less accessible and the days of hassle-free travel planning are fizzling out. So, we’ll go to Turkey and Kenya – and you all come to South Africa, where visitors from most of our key tourism markets can stay for up to three months without buying a visa in advance.

One of the great aspects of running a hotel, of course, is that one meets people from all over the world, offering a brief glimpse into the cultures of other countries without even going there. It helps with decisions as to where to visit and where not. I once worked out, from the occupancy levels of the places I have worked in over the years, that I have met over a million people during my hotelier career, which means that I have met one in every ten thousand people on earth. I think that sounds like quite a good insight into the people with whom we share our planet! Many of them made me want to visit their countries. Others, maybe not so much.

What a racquet … or racket …

In the December Rag, we were talking about the current noise surrounding Pickleball and Padel and the argument as to which is better. We were thinking (you might remember) about building a court at Rissington for one or the other.

With both the boys living at home again now (and working very hard – more about this below), we have a Sunday afternoon tradition of playing tennis at a local club. For some reason it always seems to be 2-against-1 and I am more-often-than-not the one. It does lead to the odd little piece of recognition in the form of a back-handed compliment and sometimes-grudging admiration. As one (to-remain-unnamed) twenty-ish person said to me last week: “Wow. You’ve still got it, hey?!”. I almost glowed with pride at the rare praise and tried not to think too hard about the hint of surprise with which it was obviously tinged. I then beat the pair of them 6-4, just to prove the point.

As part of my research into the Padel/Pickleball debate, I came across this video:

Patrick McEnroe on Pickleball

The boys were rather amazed when I told them that, in my teens, I had played a match in a local tournament against this Patrick McEnroe (yes, younger brother of John). Although Patrick was two years younger than I was, I don’t think I won a game – maybe not even a single point – but I was there! And I have “still got it”, even now … apparently.

So that’s settled that, anyway. It doesn’t matter whether it’s pickleball or padel, as long as we don’t lose our tennis courts in the process. Hazyview has both, so I don’t think we shall be building courts here at Rissington after all. And yes, the two tennis courts we have been playing on are now one tennis court and three pickleball courts. Point made, as my ‘old mate’ Patrick McEnroe would seemingly agree..

Generations … again:

Have you tried to buy a red T-shirt recently? Or a bright yellow or orange one? OK, maybe in Wales - Happy St David's Day, by the way - a forlorn-but-hopeful rugby supporter can still pick up a bright red CYMRU shirt but otherwise all bright colour seems to have been phased out. I am putting it down to the Gen Z fear of standing out or making a scene. The same applies in interior design shops. No bright towels or bed-linen.

We have talked about this before as well. Everything is black, white or charcoal (which is a fancy word for grey). Clothes, cars, homes, everything. Compare the hotel rooms of the 1970s with today’s. We have gone from bright orange overlapping circles and stylised flowers with a bit of brown and green thrown in (yes, OK, it was a bit much sometimes) to the undeniably dull and blend-in colours of the 2020s. 

This priceless, short (real) video from the BBC in the 1970s (as you will see from the presenters and especially their hairstyles!) shows the colours of that era specifically relating to the invention of the duvet. (Choose whether to watch on Instgram of Facebook.)

The Duvet FB

The Duvet IG

It’s funny to think that I wasn’t allowed a duvet until I was 16 because my father thought they were ‘nasty foreign things’. It was always sheets and blankets. 

Anyway, back to the charcoal problem. Rissington is doing its little bit to counter this blandness by lobbing a bit of bright hippie tie-dye onto the veranda daybeds and resisting black furniture as much as possible. We still love our wooden bookcases too. They will come back in one day, I promise. Wood and shiny black plastic alternate like flares and drainpipe trousers, don't they?

In the meantime, however, don’t throw out your bright shirts. It might be a while until you can get one again.

Portraits of life …

I would also like to share with you my theory about the psychology of portrait photography vs landscape. Don’t you think that the young always seem to prefer to take their phone photos with the screen upright, where older folk hold the phone sideways? There could be many reasons for this, with the main one probably being that ‘old-fashioned’ cameras were designed with the controls on the top when held horizontally, so default, if you like, was always landscape.

But I also think that the clue is in the names ‘portrait’ and ‘landscape’, as popularised by computer-speak. We oldies are accustomed to taking photos of a context. Our pictures often have people in them, yes, but not generally taking up the whole screen. And we rarely feature ourselves in the photos, either.

The younger generations are more likely to take a photo in portrait, of a person or of themselves, where the background is largely invisible or irrelevant. The photo doesn’t say ‘look at me in this amazing landscape’. It’s says look at me pretending to be an emoji, in a random place, with a crooked smile or with my tongue sticking out and piercings or nose-rings on full display like a bullock at market, getting on board an aeroplane or in front of the scoreboard at a rugby match. No real context. Just ‘me’ telling you how cool I am to be where I am. It’s a small difference, but a telling one.

More me-me-me

Another thought about egocentricity is that Rissington always used to have a policy of replying to a booking email on the same day and this was considered pretty quick. Nowadays, if we don’t hit reply immediately, we get a phone call.

Them: “I am just phoning to check that you have received my email.”

Us: “Let me look. Yes, we have. Two minutes ago.”

Them: “When can I expect a reply?”

Us: “Definitely today.”

Them: “OK, but can you look now and tell me whether it is possible for me to get the room I have asked for on the dates given.”

Us: “Of course…(delay for a few seconds) Yes, we can do it.”

Them: “Please confirm by email as soon as you can …”

Blah blah blah. We say: “Yes, of course we will, today …” . We think: But if you lot keep on phoning us and bugging us, we’ll never get our emails done. I’d probably have done all the emails by now if you would just leave me alone for a minute …

And as for the heading of the email:

From:  An ordinary person

Sent: Friday, 26 February 2026 16:00

To: Rissington Inn

Subject:  Booking for July 2028

Importance: High

Always 'Importance: High'! Have you ever seen anything other than 'High'? There’s no ‘Medium’ or ‘Low’. It’s me-me-me again. I am more important than anyone else because, if you don’t deal with me straight away, I might develop mental health issues. How can it be urgent for us to confirm a booking for more than two years hence?

Try this:

From: Rissington Inn

Sent: Saturday, 28 February 2026 11:00

To: People who have asked to receive it

Subject: The Rissington Rag

Importance: Low (sorry to bother you but do read it sometime or you’ll miss out!)

That’s better, isn’t it?

Music and what it tells us about ourselves:

Our new selection of rather lovely vaguely-jazz (but not annoyingly-jazzy) remakes of popular songs from the last fifty years has been extremely well-received in the Rissington dining room. It’s a good thing, on balance, that I have accepted that not everyone wanted to listen to my Genesis / Soweto String Quartet / Ismaël Lô combo.

The debate about Spotify and Apple Music will continue to rumble as pointlessly as the iPhone/Android debate and I do both in both cases. But one thing I love about Spotify is that it occasionally gives you bizarre insights into your own musical tastes. Here (left) are a couple of screenshots from my year-end assessment last year.

The age is about right, but is it any wonder that these apps never know what music to play to me when left on 'random'? Who even knew that there were 221 genres of music in existence?!

We are glad our music is working though. Somehow it seems to appeal to all generations, which is a miracle in itself.

Music time:

I know how many of our readers look forward to our occasional musical discoveries and how popular the Ndlovu Youth Choir is. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s their superb interpretation of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Bohemian Rhapsody

They are on tour in Johannesburg and Cape Town during the year, so keep an eye out.

I also found this amazing hark-back to the 2010 South African World Cup and salutary reminder that “It’s time for Africa”. This is Hisma RK, a francophone African from West Africa somewhere but I can’t find out where, doing (or maybe even miming, I am not sure but it doesn’t matter – he nails it!) a wonderful rendition of that song. (I can only find it on Instagram and Facebook – so sorry to those who won’t have access). It’s very feel-good indeed!

It's Time for Africa FB

It's Time for Africa IG

Chapeau!

The small changes at Rissington keep us fresh and yet still consistent. A tour operator friend (and big Rissington supporter) from The Netherlands sent me a lovely message the other day including this:

“It’s also amazing that you’ve managed to keep the Rissington standard so high for 31 years. Chapeau!”

It’s the perfect compliment, and I like to think that it is a recognition that we are not just keeping up standards but also keeping ahead of expectations.

We are hopefully pleasing everyone, upgrading but keeping the vibe the same, whilst accommodating innovations and trends. It’s an important balance and complicated one.

Challenges in hotel management:

Among the manifold challenges facing hotel managers, the weather ranks high and the endless heavy rains in January of this year really pushed us to our limits. Nobody wants rain on their travels – and certainly not all day, every day, for weeks and weeks, with road closures, no activities, no views, nothing to do.

I have to thank our guests, though. They were tolerant, calm, patient and highly appreciative of all our efforts to keep them informed, to keep them dry and to keep the Rissington road open.

Pretty soon after the rain, everything got back to normal – or as near normal as Africa ever is – and we cleaned up, applied over 200 litres of paint and assessed the damage, none of which was permanent.

But, boy, I have never known so many umbrellas to disappear permanently from the rooms! We are used to losing the odd bottle of shampoo and our swimming towels are in very high demand, but umbrellas …?

Some guests should maybe more like Winston Churchill and organise their requirements well in advance. This letter is on display outside the Rissington Bar and was written by the great man's doctor in preparation for a visit to the USA during Prohibition in 1932.

And someone else commented during the deluge that they were surprised not to have been able to connect to the WiFi in the outside shower. The mind boggles – just as the phone would probably have done, out there in the rain, sending (selfie?) updates from the shower to the world …

Thabiso and the Rissington dogs:

Rusty is now 14 so he is going a bit deaf and I was explaining this to Rissington gardener / maintenance man / cycling supremo Thabiso and his older colleague, Selby.

Thabiso just laughed. “Rusty is old but he is still small; he hasn’t grown as much as Bruno, who is younger!” He thought this was hugely funny. “And Bruno is younger but he has grown bigger.”

No matter how Selby and I tried to explain that Rusty is a Jack Russell and he’s not supposed to get any bigger and Bruno is a Canis Africanis, which is always bigger than a Jack Russell, it was no good. We worked our way through a discussion on different breeds and their attributes. Thabiso just wasn’t having it.

Selby and I eventually agreed with Thabiso’s own rather neat theory that Rusty "has grown on the inside and Bruno has grown on the outside".

How lovely, is that? At least Rusty is bigger than Bruno in this photo of a sizeable Rissington termite mound.

Competition Time - Where in the World:

In the last Rag, we asked you to tell us why you enjoy the Rag. The winner was Peter Smithson who told a wonderful story about how he met two other completely unconnected Rag readers at a function in Brussels. Peter wins the week at Rissington but big thanks to everyone who joined in. Many of you went to a great deal of trouble and I am just so glad that Rag is still giving pleasure and bringing people together.

In this month’s competition, we go back to our traditional Where in the World. See if you can work out where this photo was taken without using some cunning AI device.

The winner gets three nights at Rissington on a bed and breakfast basis. Entries to [email protected] by 1st April, please.

JJ’s photos - and Rissington's media going forward:

All the roads are open after the floods. We were up on the escarpment last week and everything is back to normal. In case you missed them in our social media, here is one of JJ’s pictures taken at God’s Window the other day:

For more of his wonderful photography, do follow him @jjslensadventures on Instagram.

@jjslensadveNtures

And while you are on social media, don't forget to follow Rissington by clicking on one of these buttons:

RISSINGTON INSTAGRAM  and/or  RISSINGTON FACEBOOK

It's also time to tell you that, with more and more news going out frequently on our social media channels, we have decided to make the Rag a biannual publication, rather than quarterly. From now onwards, each year, there will therefore be a May Winter Rag, with all our usual updates and our suggestions for the dry season in the Lowveld, and then a December Rag with all the news and ideas from the year and plans for the following year. Each Rag will be bigger and better. All the fun will continue, along with the news, the 'Where in the World' and other competitions, the music, the tourism trends, the great photography and the tales of the challenges which we sometimes face as hoteliers! I think it will be a good refresh button for all of us. For more regular fixes, you will find a couple of posts per week on our Instagram and Facebook feeds, along with the latest information and occational competitions and offers.

If you are reading this and you are not already a subsriber to the Rissington Rag, you can sign up here for it to be delivered to your email Inbox twice a year. You will not receive anything else from us. Just the ever-popular Rag. That's a promise. And we will never pass on your details to anyone else.

SIGN UP FOR THE RISSINGTON RAG

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Winter specials:

Much as we are still in summer now, we still need to discuss the specials for the early part of our autumn and winter, when the grass dies down, the game-viewing is easier and the temperatures hover between 12 (in the middle of the coldest nights) and 26 (an average daily high). The bush is golden brown and it never rains …

So, for May and June, we are giving you a ‘book four nights, pay for two’ offer. So book a four-night stay at Rissington for any time in the months of May and June on a bed and breakfast basis and we’ll only charge you for two. You choose your room. You just settle with us for your two nights BB and all your dinners and other extras. We will upgrade you, if possible, from a budget room (if you book one) to the best room on the day but if you want to be guaranteed a superior room, a garden suite or a hillside suite, you’d need to reserve and pay for one of those. Offer applies to new direct bookings only and guests taking it up must be Rag readers or followers on Facebook or Instagram. Email [email protected] or call/WhatsApp 082 327 6842.

That’s all:

We very much hope to see you soon. Here comes that list of names again! All the names of all the lovely people you will see when you get here. And if you are wondering what happened to Quinton, the intern chef, he completed his three months at Rissington and headed off into the real world with about 150 recipes under his belt. He’s a wonderful enthusiast and a very driven chef, so if anyone has a job for him, let me know! 

See you in the warm, Lowveld winter, we hope - and you will hear from us again in May …

Chris, Shirley, Nonhlanhla, Natasha, Nkateko, Anita, Lindokuhle and Thandiwe; Gertrude, Dudu, Yvonne, Angel, Conny and Delinah; Futhi, Betty, Noggs, Patience, Bonisile, Rosa, Lilian, Maureen, Fisokuhle and Tumi; Sipho, Aubrey, Selby, Lucky, Pieter, Thabiso and Coco; and Simphiwe and Hazel in the office, whom you may email on [email protected] for all your booking requirements. Or simply book online on www.rissington.co.za and tell us all about yourself in the ‘Special Requests’ box. JJ and Lungi are both here too, starting businesses at home. And Rusty and Bruno are on monkey patrol around the dam where there is still plenty of water (but there are no crocodiles this year).