Thurs 23 July evening, and Friday 24 July: Due to last minute cancellations and totally unexpectedly, I (Liz) was asked to give the opening speech at the launch of the late great Neville Alexander’s book, Interviews With Neville Alexander. This was an honour and just a tiny bit terrifying as the Alexander family were sat in the front row and the event began with them introducing themselves. I was followed by a Cradock teacher, Mr Isaacs, and Desmine Abrahams, Damien Simons and Sipesishle Badi, three school students, reading passages from the book. They were brilliant, and the passages they read out included Neville Alexander writing about Olive Schreiner.

The Festival events today, Friday, are thick on the ground. Andrea is going to some exciting sounding readings, and Sue and Liz on a literary walking tour of Cradock. More later.

12.45: In the Victoria Manor Hotel (where Schreiner stayed on occasion). The readings Andrea went to were great although one of the speakers failed to show. The literary walking tour was informative and also the readings chosen to evoke places as we walked around were excellent and they were also read really well. An added bonus was that we had an SABC film crew in attendance, who are making a short film about Cradock. Many photos were taken of the film crew doing their filming, as well as of the people reading from works by Guy Butler, Iris Vaughan, Olive Schreiner and so on.

16.45: After a Lingelihle township tour. This was not literary but informative and concluded with the cemetery where the Cradock Four are buried. We arrived back for another event, but which we’re an hour early for. Andrea thinks we may have been asked to speak at it, but being an optimist I think this was an enquiry about another event that clashed with the Lingelihle tour. All roads lead to the Victoria Manor, so presently there is a wood fire in the sitting area and we’re toasting ourselves at it. Brill, for a Karoo winter deserves such respect. And the next literary event is…

It is a Karoo Kuier, a slide show with some readings starting at 17.30pm. Andrea has gone to it, with a gin and tonic in hand; Sue and I remain at the roaring fire, also with gins and tonic, I to write this, Sue to do Suduko. We have also discussed the Cory and PE Schreiner book launches with Howard Phillips and Nick Southey, which was pleasant and helpful in telling us what is expected.

Last updated: 27 July 2014