Cheese Lunches at the Lanzerac

When I was a student at the University of Cape Town in the mid eighties, one of our favourite thing to do on a Friday afternoon was to drive to the Lanzerac wine estate. On a Friday (and maybe on other days, I don't recall) the Lanzerac served a famous Cheese Lunch in the Tent Bar, which backed on to the main bar of the Hotel. The cheese lunch cost about twenty rand per person and comprised a hot soup, a salad, pickles and preserves, no less than 20 cheeses, most of them imported at that time, a selection of biscuits, the famous Lanzerac Brown Bread [made to a recipe provided by Mrs Hubert Rupert with Nutty Wheat Flour from the Gelb's Mill below Bird Street] and coffee.
They also threw in a free glass of wine. We would sit there for hours and try some of the Lanzerac wine and laugh and sing and theorize and laugh some more.
Tonight I am a guest at the Lanzerac Hotel and Spa. Stretched and stressed out, I ordered in room service. Feeling nostalgic, I ordered this perfectly respectable cheese platter with six different cheeses, biscuits, watermelon preserve, preserved green figs and konfyt, along with a very pleasant Merlot. In a gorgeous room with many appreciated creature comforts, I think about the changes in life, and sip.