Spring in South Africa Arrives When Neighbours Start Living Outside Again

There is always one weekend when you realise winter is finally losing its grip.

Nobody announces it and there is no official start date. You simply walk outside one morning and something feels different. The jersey you put on is suddenly unnecessary, the back door stays open, someone suggests having lunch outside and, somewhere in the neighbourhood, you can smell the first proper braai of the season.

Spring in South Africa doesn't really arrive with flowers. It arrives when people start living outside again.

After months of rushing from the car into the house, eating indoors and planning weekends around how cold it is going to be, weather changes our routines almost overnight.

Coffee moves onto the stoep. Lunch stretches well into the afternoon. Gardens, balconies and pool areas that have barely been used for months become part of the house again, and a quick visit from friends has a habit of turning into the rest of the afternoon.

There is also something about warmer weather that makes entertaining feel less formal.

The best spring get-togethers are often the ones that weren't really planned. Someone sends a message asking what you're doing later. Another person offers to bring something for the braai. Chips are tipped into bowls, whatever is in the fridge gets put on ice and someone inevitably arrives with an extra friend. And that's perfectly fine.

After a winter spent largely indoors, there is less appetite for making a production out of seeing people. The house doesn't have to be immaculate. Dinner doesn't need three courses and nobody is particularly concerned about matching glasses or an elaborate drinks menu.

Something on the braai, a few snacks on the table and enough cold drinks in the fridge will usually do the job.

Our shopping habits start changing with the weather too. Ice suddenly matters again. Fruit gets eaten outside rather than forgotten in the bowl, cooler boxes come back out of the cupboard and cold drinks begin taking up considerably more fridge space.

PURA Soda is an easy addition to that kind of spring fridge. A few cans can move from a weekday lunch to a Saturday braai, into a cooler box for an afternoon outside or onto the table when an unexpected guest decides to stay.

Perhaps that's the real appeal of the first warm weekends of the year. They remind us that some of the best time spent with people doesn't need much organising at all.

It's the chair dragged into the last patch of afternoon sun, shoes kicked off under the table and music playing through an open door. It's children staying outside until it gets dark and friends who popped in for an hour still sitting around the table several hours later.

It's getting halfway through the evening before realising nobody has gone inside to fetch a jacket.

We've spent enough of the year behind closed doors.

It's time to open them again.