Every year someone tells me Cape Town has a mild winter.
This statement is usually made by someone who has just arrived from Johannesburg, Durban, or the Sahara.
I always smile politely because arguing about Cape weather is as pointless as arguing with a seagull over a chip.
Cape Town doesn’t really have winter. It has meteorological mood swings. You wake up to brilliant sunshine, leave the house wearing only a jersey, and by lunchtime you’re wondering whether Noah is accepting applications for the Ark.
The other evening I was sitting in a beachfront restaurant trying to enjoy the atmosphere when winter itself arrived wearing a baseball cap.
He wasn’t merely drunk. He was conducting important scientific research into how many bad decisions a human being can make before closing time.
He danced with invisible partners, introduced himself to women who clearly hadn’t requested the honour, nearly baptised an entire table with his beer, and eventually decided the restaurant entrance would make an excellent public convenience.
The manager rushed over in disbelief.
“Is he with you?”
The ladies looked horrified.
“We think he lives nearby,” one replied. “But we certainly don’t know him.”
That, in many ways, is Cape Town in winter. Some people respond by putting another log on the fire. Others apparently decide to become a public spectacle.
The sensible among us retreat indoors with hot chocolate, coffee, soup, or something considerably stronger. Old Brown Sherry suddenly becomes respectable again. Cape brandy acquires medicinal qualities. And if someone offers you a glass of genuine Portuguese port, you accept immediately in the interests of maintaining your core body temperature.
Yet there are still people who insist our winters are mild.
A British visitor recently remarked that he’d never been so cold indoors in his life.
At first this seemed unfair. Britain practically invented miserable weather.
Then he explained.
“The cold gets in everywhere.”
The British visitor looked around the house and said, like Hamlet, “The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.” Unlike Hamlet, however, he wasn’t standing on the battlements of Elsinore. He was sitting in a perfectly respectable Cape Town lounge
He was right.
It comes through the windows, under the doors, down the chimney, through the floorboards and, somehow, straight into your bones. We don’t really believe in insulation or central heating. Our theory seems to be that winter only lasts a few months, so why spend a fortune preparing for it?
As someone online memorably observed, Cape Town in winter is “as cold as a polar bear’s arsehole”—not because the temperature is especially low, but because our houses are designed with all the thermal efficiency of decorative bird cages.
Then there’s the Great Washing-Line Lottery.
Where I live the mountain permits about three hours of sunshine a day. If the forecast predicts clear skies, every resident performs the same frantic ritual.
Wash.
Spin.
Run.
Peg.
Pray.
Walk through any neighbourhood and you’ll see washing hanging from balconies, railings, trees, portable racks and any object capable of supporting a damp towel. Even the grand old houses along the coast such as St James surrender their dignity and display underwear on the balcony in pursuit of fifteen extra minutes of sunlight.
Winter, however, has one redeeming quality.
It reminds you not to postpone living until summer.
If you spend every rainy day wishing it away, you’re quietly donating weeks of your life to the weather.
Far better to put another log on the fire, pull on another jersey, ladle out another bowl of soup, and remember that comfort food was invented precisely for days like these.
There’s probably only another couple of months to endure.
As comedian Stuart Taylor observed, Cape Town winter behaves as though it’s trying to destroy you and everything you love.
Fortunately, even Cape Town weather eventually gets bored and goes away.
Chesney Bradshaw Column
Chesney Bradshaw writes with a wry eye on everyday absurdities — from Cape winters to foul?ups with porridge manufacturers — blending satire and insight in equal measure. His column is syndicated to Financial News Daily. The views, analyses, and satirical perspectives expressed are entirely his own and intended as bona fide media commentary on public and economic life.
