So you're a fresh incomer to a dorp. What now? How do you socialise with your new tribe?

I joined an informal calisthenics group during our first year in Cradock, back in 2007. A handful of us women gathered twice a week in the old mortuary at the graveyard (now the Round Table Clubhouse) and I vividly remember sweating inelegantly while trying to make sense of the casual conversation swirling around my head.

They all knew each other from school days and chatted in verbal shorthand about mutual friends, juicy gossip and local issues. I was lost.

My new country friends also seemed to speak in a new language, mingling Afrikaans and English at random into a word-slaai of a taal (fondly referred to as Graaffrikaans) that my partner Chris and I later learnt to embrace.

But at first, it was as if we'd tuned into a Martian soap opera. In a small town, there is always a lot going on, and initially, you have no idea who most of the characters are, what the plot line is or how you fit in.

Small town code

So here's the opening piece of advice, from Lyn Dugmore of Aberdeen: "For the first year of your new life in a town, close your mouth and open your eyes and...