Last harvest for Pinkie Tremble

Pinkie was the editor of Straight from the Grape, an in-house newsletter for Spar supermarket wine managers, from 1985 to 2007. Armed with a diploma in wine from KWV, she started it when she retired after working for Spar for more than 20 years.

Her newsletter featured digest-style tips for busy supermarket managers and pointers for the training and empowerment of receiving clerks, shelf-packers and cashiers whose general training hardly prepared them for the specific requirements of wine. Pinkie was of the opinion that the wine department should be achieving a sales ratio of at least 4% - something that few were attaining.

She once rather wistfully remarked that had she launched her newsletter on the American scene, it would probably have made her a far more comfortable income. Instead of which, she deliberately kept the annual subscription ridiculously low - and only increased it about three times in its entire existence.

Media marvel

During her supermarket years, Pinkie published three magazines for Spar - for housewives, dealers, as well as in the ethnic Black languages. She was also the national judge for Operation Upgrade and speaker at various Spar dealer conventions.

She was an honorary member of the SA Wine Writers Association, and a prolific freelance writer on a wide variety of subjects - ranging from food and wine to entertainment and the arts. In her heyday her articles appeared in popular magazines such as the Personality, when her feature A week in the life of a working girl under the pseudonym Margaret Bruce (her middle names) was a great hit; and also Car, Wynboer, the Cape column of the now defunct The Retailer and the Malawi Airlines in-flight magazine Reflections.

Her writing ability also spanned the radio medium, with more than 400 radio scripts to her credit. Her series ‘They made the headlines', ran for over two years on Springbok Radio and the much-acclaimed Requiem for a Superstar - the Judy Garland Story - was broadcast on the old English Service at prime listening time. She was also a regular contributor to the Woman's World programme.

In her retirement years, she offered the supermarket wine trade an amusing and informative talk called Wine, Women and Wit for presentation at functions or fundraisers locally and overseas.

She also presented training sessions at the Spar Academy - and her wine manual for supermarket managers ‘How to increase your liquor knowledge without being driven to drink' was a no-nonsense fund of useful information. Her list of recommended must-have wines for supermarket wine buyers/managers was also popular.

International talks

She made many trips to America, which she loved as a second home. There she would address wine clubs with her entertaining talks and visit the Californian wineries to pick up promotional tips.

Not many people can say they have owned and lived in a synagogue, but that's what Pinkie did - on the proceeds of her winnings from the 100 000 To Go competition, a factual radio quiz programme that ran on Friday nights - on her favourite singer, Judy Garland. The deconsecrated Jewish synagogue in Victoria-West became a welcome sanctuary where she could unwind after her travels around the country as an Operation Upgrade judge for Spar.

Among her other qualifications, she trained as a radiographer in London - where she survived numerous air raids during the Blitz. During the 1970s Pinkie was a librarian at Herschel Preparatory and later Herschel Senior School in Claremont.

Of interest to Eastern Cape readers, was that Pinkie was the daughter of the late Dr John Tremble, one-time medical superintendent of the Frere Hospital in East London. Her beloved dad was honoured in 1996/7, some 50 years after his death, for his work as founder of the SA Trained Nurses Association.