Clothing problems and literary darlings

THERE were interesting pickings for a social columnist at a literary breakfast in a wonderful old Randlord's home in Parktown, Joburg, on Thursday.

THERE were interesting pickings for a social columnist at a literary breakfast in a wonderful old Randlord's home in Parktown, Joburg, on Thursday.

A Communist Party bigwig, the chief executive of the top publisher Random House, a famous local woman writer, the person most people consider to be SA's No 1 socialite, two whodunit crime writers, a popular talk-show presenter and a pre-dawn broadcaster, who had half the room lapping up his sexy voice, were among my fellow guests.

The occasion was the launch of Random's new local imprint, Umuzi (Nguni for "home"), attended by some of its authors, at charming Hazeldene Hall, which has been restored by caterers By Word of Mouth to its glory of a century ago.

Right, we've set the scene and given you the plot, now to reveal the names of the characters.

First let me reveal what MP Jeremy Cronin does when his Blue Downs constituents on the Cape Flats think he's listening intently to dull parliamentary debates. Asked by the morning's host, Jenny Crwys-Williams (she's the talk-show presenter and the breakfast was a meeting of her upmarket book club), "what's your best time for writing?", he first said "prison", where he sat for seven years.

"But the struggle remains," he told us. "It's to stay awake in Parliament." So that's where he writes poetry and it was his great book More Than a Casual Contact that was being launched on Thursday.

The chief executive was a woman you may have seen on TV news in recent weeks following Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown into London's Old Bailey courthouse as two other writers accuse him of plundering their work for the plot of his book.

She is Gail Rebuk, a tall brunette, here from the UK for Umuzi's birth. She says she has to remain confident about the case's outcome, but his own lawyer describing one of the accusers as a "weak witness" is encouraging.

The famous woman writer was Antjie Krog, who, Jenny said "caresses words", and is best known, I guess, for the award-winning Country of My Skull.

Her poetry in Body Bereft is about menopause, not a subject regularly featured in verse. The book's cover will get you talking - it's a picture of a post-menopausal naked body. Reminds me of someone I know in the bath!

The guy with the sexy voice was 702's Xola Ntshinga, who read an extract from the late K Sello Duiker's Hidden Star; the socialite was Edith Venter (though she's rather more than that); the crime writers were Mike Nichol and Joanne Hichens (their book is Out to Score), and the food and flowers (mauve roses) were excellent.

Jenny was having problems with clothes talk that morning. She called Antjie's green jersey a "jumper" (when did you last hear that word?) and Jeremy's Hilton Weiner sweater a "cardie".

And as for the red shoes Jenny was wearing with her charming Marianne Fassler pink and blue Shweshwe frock - we won't go down that route!

.For the schleb lowdown on the Gala Opening (again) of Richard Loring's great African Footprint at the Globe Theatre at Gold Reef City Casino, go to sundaytimes.co.za/gwen