There are many ways to forge a friendship

In the case of one with a one-time mayor, it was a truly inauspicious start.

Rooibos tea. Image courtesy Wikimedia commons (soultea.de/André Helbig)

Every year, without fail, I get a phone call on my birthday from a former mayor with whom I rubbed shoulders while editing local newspapers. For some odd reason we struck up a friendship lasting over 40 years. Maybe it had to do with our first meeting that, to say the least, was a disaster.

Soon after he was elected (as opposed to present mayors who are today appointed by a political party), he pitched up at our humble offices without an appointment.

The timing was at an inopportune time as we were on deadline with printers breathing down our necks. There was no time to receive visitors, I reminded our receptionist.

“You don’t understand,” she shot back, “he is the newly appointed mayor.”

There he stood, in black pinstriped suite. Smart and overpowering, given our meagre and unostentatious reception area.

“I won’t keep you long,” he said with a friendly smile and without awaiting a reply; he set himself down on one of the two visitors’ chairs. Only problem: the one he chose needed wood glue to keep the legs from collapsing.

He didn’t show any sign of discomfort for having to carefully do a balancing act throughout the visit.

“Tea or coffee?” I offered, forgetting we didn’t possess a tea set with which to serve the city’s first citizen. Teaspoons? One plastic tablespoon. Sugar bowl? An ugly metal mug. Tray? Our receptionist hightailed it to the dentist’s surgery next door, borrowing one for “a special occasion”.

After half an hour the interleading door opened, and in walked the receptionist. The mayor jumped up to relieve her of the tray boasting a faded pink mug, chipped yellowed cup and the rest of our ugly array of cutlery.

But his sudden movement was enough for his chair to lose two legs. He insisted on standing for the rest of the visit.

After seeing him out, I reckoned he would never again darken our doors. Wrong. During his entire tenure, he popped in regularly, as he put it, to enjoy tea with “nice, earthy” people.

Not before we invested in a proper kitchen and decent furniture. But with a twinkle in his eye, he always insisted on having tea in “my favourite mug”.