James Myburgh, the esteemed editor of this site, has told me that the Politicsweb columnists will be standing down for a month while everyone - well, almost everyone - not Myburgh, not me, and not Jacob G Zuma - goes off to Plett for a well-deserved holiday.
Myburgh is headed for far sunnier climes, Zuma as usual for the wilds of the northern Zulu kingdom, and I have been asked by the mayor of Johannesburg, whose name no one can remember because he keeps such a low profile, to take care of the water and electricity in Johannesburg over the festive season. (I know what you're itching to say, and some of you will say, but I couldn't do a worse job than he, surely?)
At any rate, the time of the year has taken me by surprise.
I hadn't twigged that we are so deep into December already. Tempus fugit, fuggit, as Norman Mailer surely once wrote - as it always does when one is having so much fun. I have not even organised my traditional annual Hanukah/Christmas dinner for important people - aka those who have appeared in my column during the last five months or so.
Well, it's not really "my" dinner. It was something that Karen Bliksem used to do every year for the people who appeared in her column. She used to hold the dinner at her humble cottage in Parkview. People such as Fidel Castro, the late Yasir "that's my baby" Arafat, and Mahmoud "I'm a dinner jacket" Ahmadinejad were wont to attend. I suppose I should do the same as KB.
Karen did tend, I now realise - sometimes you need a bit of distance to understand these things - she tended to repeat the same old menu every year-end: a fresh salad starter, roast lamb, roast potatoes, peas, a touch of mint sauce, and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Somewhat passé, certainly not kosher, and not very politically correct - so many people shiver these days when they think of the screaming of the Karoo lambs.