41
Albion Street,
Stratton,
Cirencester,
Gloucs.
GL7
2HT
2012-2014
Dear Everyone,
Cough! Cough! Splutter! ..... Splat! Splot! Ah, the distinctive sounds of late Autumn
.... swaddled, pasty-faced, red-nosed, zombie-like creatures, rise up and stomp
determinedly through the swirling urban floodwaters to converge on the local
pharmacy, before subsiding gently into a duvet-wrapped, drug-fuelled haze of
Benylin, Lem-Sip and honey until Christmas .... or perhaps more esoteric ... swatting
bug-filled clothes moths? (maniacal cackle) ... sheep with ‘flu slipping on
cow-pats??? (philosophical question : how do we know if sheep cough if no-one
hears them?) ... post-woman engulfed by brick-dust cloud whilst dodging falling
plaster ? ... hmm .. more on this story later.
Just when we’d
snuggled in with the duvet of complacency, the great bed-bug of life bit us on
the bum. Rupert has moved out (well,
sort of), the house is a building-site and Tamsin’s expecting a baby (yes,
we’ve seen the evidence on Facebook, ergo it must be true ...... aarrgghh!!!). And .... the sheep in the park at the end of
the street have emigrated (noooo!!!) ..... obviously the swamp-like conditions
were playing havoc with their gambolling habits (!) ... what with the barn
being off-limits and there being nowhere dry to lay out the cards, whisky and
cigars ....
The much-talked about
event from last year has finally come to fruition ... Rupert has moved out
(yay!) and into a student house in Bristol.
However, there must be another meaning to the words ‘moving out’ that
have escaped us ... the mini-piles of clothes which infest the house still ebb
and flow with the tide of Rupert(ly) musical activities ... and the chair
entirely devoted to Rupert’s burgeoning mountain of mail, has accreted so much to
its upper slopes since he ‘left’, that it has developed a dangerous wobble,
having been affected by global warming in recent years, and is tip-toed around whilst
talking in hushed tones lest there be an avalanche ... until ... suddenly the door bursts open, a
howling gale whistles around the lower slopes, the upper slopes teeter
ominously, and the whole mountain slithers toward the unsuspecting Rupert ... “Oh,
bugger! ... it’s that time of year again ...”.
Oh, for the paper-shredding cat ...
Ah, we feel so
proud! Rupert’s behaviour, as the only
‘mature’ (cough) student in his house, has proved that living with a couple of
environmental obsessives for three decades, has the power to change
the world! (evil cackle) ... ah, the power of memes. For, at this very moment, five other students
are being persuaded of the error of their wasteful ways, and are being inducted
into the mysterious alien world of ... recycling ... “You want me to do what? I just don’t get it ...” (moan, gripe, curse)
... Imagine, if you will, one day towards
the end of September ... Rupert has emerged blinking into the sunlight
(what???) after a lifetime of living in the dusty (cough!) comfort blanket of
the slovenly parental home, to begin a bright new life in Bristol. As the car stuttered and spluttered out of
its familiar milieu, loaded with .. um .. er .. not a lot ... but definitely
loaded, little did Rupert realize how much separated a 30-year-old from that
mysterious feral creature known as the ‘teenager’. Some of these strange beings were known to
have been infesting the house over the summer, but whilst much of their
behaviour has been well-documented, nothing could prepare Rupert for the
horrors which he was to find therein.
Dark was the night, and silent were the streets; a dog howled; something
rustled in the plastic-filled urban undergrowth (rats? .. foxes? ..
pallid-faced creatures of the night? .. not Michael Howard, surely? .. a
party-goer left over from the weekend?); his mind was racing; his heart was
pounding; but finally the key turned in the lock, the door creaked open ... “Hello
.. is anyone in?” Giant black bin-liners
impeded his every movement, but finally he made the breakthrough into the light
of the kitchen, to be confronted with .... (gulp!) ... the most immense inside land-fill site
he’d ever seen! Eventually, a weary, dishevelled
being was found slumped in a chair in front of the telly, having given up trying
to find the front door. Knowing nothing
of the alien concepts of cooking, operating a dishwasher, or recycling, the
occupants of the house had found themselves gradually disappearing behind a
wall of plastic junk-food containers .. hmm ... Pink Floyd without the music ..
not a great concept! Every week, the general
rubbish bin would be full to overflowing, and if the lid doesn’t close, the
rubbish isn’t collected. This is to
encourage the use of recycling bins. So
.. Rupert’s first task upon moving into student accommodation was to move three
month’s worth of evil-smelling rubbish down to the skip, since he’s the only
one with a car (sigh). Task no. 2 was
teaching the teenagers how to recycle, since there ain’t no way he’s moving any
more trash in his car ... and drowning in rubbish doesn’t sound like a great
future .. (rustle, rustle) ... “Help!” ... (rustle, rustle)
..
The Great House
Project just might be reaching its Grand Finale .. though I think that there’s
a distinct likelihood of a planned come-back in the early Spring, as the old
trooper becomes addicted to an ever-improving face-lift. The start of the nightmare arrived one day in
September, as the old brain cell pleasantly drifted up through the layers of
murk that infest the sub-conscious towards the early-morning light ... zzzz
..... zzzz .... zz ... Suddenly ... shake, rattle, & roll (house, windows,
& Joy - out of bed, respectively) .. “Wha .. what ... ???” (carefully
removes non-effective ear-plugs) ... thud! clash! The
scaffolders had definitely arrived! Two days
later ... chip! chip! clink! clink! chip! ... ping! (house shedding dandruff)
... whooosh! cough! hack! (brick-dust / render landslide with emergent valiant
post-woman ... the mail must always get through!). And then .... silence. Tumbleweeds drifted by on the scaffolding ...
weeds grew on the spoil heaps ... and the skip filled up with water as it rained and
rained .... and rained ...
*********
At this point, gentle
reader, your letter-writer’s resolve to finish this missive in time for Christmas
2012 crumbled. Unresolvable clashing
priorities, i.e., the perceived need to be in two countries at the same time, caused
this poor little brain cell to overload (ahhhh). The excuse for 2013 was overload of a
different kind! However, normal(ish)
service will now be resumed ...
*********
As for the Great House
Project ... or Money Pit Hall ... eventually the rains ceased, the November
murk arrived, and the builders returned.
Tamsin was soon to give birth without any medical help, and we were stuck
here with builders who were on a steep learning curve ... what to do? .. what
to do? ... brain cell impotently whizzing around in ever-tightening circles
like a bluebottle stuck in a lampshade.
Meanwhile, e-mail conversations with our builder, Mr. Mueller, on how
the new sash windows were going to be installed when the original carpenter had
gone mysteriously AWOL, to the minutiae surrounding the practicalities of
actually installing the phenolic foam insulation on the gable-end wall, were
zipping through cyberspace daily (though probably not in the manner of
bluebottles).
As the November mists
swirled around the scaffolding, Mike and Allen arrived armed to the teeth with
the accoutrements necessary to do further battle with a very battle-scarred house. All was going well with the roof extension
and the replacement of the evil (cackle!)
asbestos guttering ... clatter! .. clatter! .. thump! .. crash! ...
(expletive!) .. and the insulation .. miiing! ... miiinnnngg! .. thud! ...
thud! ... crunch! (further expletive!) ... when, for some reason, Bob’s brain
emerged from deep within his computer and urged him to take a stroll
outside. As he surveyed the wall,
something was not quite right. Not only
was the hood of the air-brick almost completely buried in the phenolic foam,
but Mike was happily sawing up the tiny bits of insulation necessary to plug
the final gap! We were but minutes away
from .. Death by Rayburn... (gasp! gasp! wheeze!). Worried, he now looked up to where the TV
aerial lead / support used to be ... “Oh, bugger!” (cursed he) ... for all was now
covered in several inches of foam. “But how
are we supposed to access the cable now?”
Mike and Allen looked sheepish.
Plan B was hatched. This involved
cutting the cable and being without the TV for a week, until TV repair man
eventually re-connected the aerial on the outside by re-routing the cable
through two bedrooms .... don’t ask (sigh) ..
Mike and Allen’s
leisurely sojourn through the vagaries of insulating foam application came to
end with the arrival of ... The Polish Plasterers. We had decided to use a particular type of render
containing tiny air-filled glass beads for added insulation. The downside was that there was only one gang
of plasterers in the country that our builder trusted to do a very good, but
speedy job with this material, which meant working around their schedules. The upside was that they were Polish, with
all the stereotypical thinking that this engenders turning out to be absolutely
spot on! One day, just as the sun was
giving up the struggle to penetrate the all-enveloping early December gloom, a
white van hove into view, eventually disgorging its six occupants (with
gleaming white jump-suits to match the gleaming white plaster) who eyed the
house up and down a few times before settling in to work before the light
finally disappeared.
For two weeks, ‘Money
Pit Hall’ cowered beneath a blur of white activity .. eventually emerging with
that ring of sparkling-white confidence (and no toothpaste in sight). Our days were now accompanied by a different
sound-scape .. slap! slop! ...slop! slap! ... scrape! ... scraaape! ... always
followed by ... splot! .. or possibly .. thud! ... and then occasionally from
below .. “aargh!” (bloomin’ large pigeons they have around here!) accompanied
by much laughter and Polish chit-chat. 4-00
p.m. came and went ... darkness arrived ... 4-30 p.m. ... 5-00 p.m. ... and
still they worked (by the light of the silvery moon .. er .. street-lights ..
probably). Good thing we didn’t close
our curtains! Only once they had
finished a particular section (which gave a better finish) did they stop. Unused to this level of speed and dedication,
we were overcome with curiosity at the end of the day. “Aha!” (we exclaimed together, as a couple of
little light-bulbs fizzed into unaccustomed life in the old brain cells). We were astounded as we stared at the huge
piles of fallen plaster on the sacking underneath the scaffolding. As the plasterers cleared up at the end of
the day, these mounds of fallen render were then thrown into the skip
unused. It broke my skin-flint heart! Not to mention my green one! Fast, furious and wasteful, as opposed to
careful use of resources, but slower ... it’s a sad fact that resources are not
valued (sigh), whereas other people’s time is.
Of course, if you’re a self-builder ... or incredibly mean, like what
(!) I am ...
Winter passed ...
spring (2013) arrived ... the birds all staring at their ‘phones, tweeting ...
an occasional .... cough! cough! thud! (bird flu? .. pollution? ..) .. the
April sun beating down on that ring of sparkling-white confidence ... when,
looking upwards .. “Oh, curses!” (cursed Joy .. though the language may
possibly have been a little more colourful).
Silently, but surely, a crack in the render was dramatically zipping its
way from top to bottom between the front and gable end of the house, like the
ripping of electrons from their cosy atomic bosoms in a lightning strike ... if
perhaps on a somewhat different time scale!
We rushed (!) around to the back ....
we squinted up at that ring of sparkling white confidence .. we cursed
again ... for there, snaking its way down the wall about 100 mm away from the
gable-end was a not-entirely-unexpected mini version of the crack. Sigh .. back to the dentists .. erm ..
plaster-operatives. All that wonderfully
welcome April sun had exposed the one error that no-one had thought through when
slapping on render over different materials with different rates of expansion
... doh! .... those all-important expansion joints in the render where the
phenolic foam on the gable end wall meets the brick on the front wall and
similarly with the back .. oh, curses!
curses! (Error! Error! Brain must self-destruct! .. now, now, Joy,
you’ve been watching far too much Doctor Who .. ). A couple of weeks later .. with cavities
correctly filled, that ring of sparkling white confidence returned ...
especially after a few necessary improvements and corrections were thrown in (yes
.. I know .. but these things matter to an obsessive .. ) ... after all, not
even Polish plasterers possess the ability to see in the dark. Continuing good weather brought Mike and
Allen out of hibernation armed with paint-brushes, Joy’s quaintly hand-drawn
painting-by-numbers house chart and .... special
string. Now because vantage points
were somewhat limited from street level, this involved Bob sauntering half-way
down Albion Street and yelling “Up a bit on the left .. no, down a tad .. erm
... yeah .. well .. I think so ... waddya
think?” (turning to a passer-by, made nervous by the sudden responsibility). The special
string was duly employed .. p-twang!!
... a red line appeared across the wall ... “arghh, no! .. it’s bleeding into
the paint .. quick! .. gimme a rag! ..”.
Oh, well, back to the trusty pencil (sigh), which proved to be the
better tool. The house is now blue with
white stripes (gable end) and white with blue stripes (front and back), which
you can’t fail to notice when you come down the street!
Meanwhile, five days
before Christmas (2012), loaded to the gunnels (gunwales? .. er .. roof-rack)
with Christmassy goodies, we finally made it on to the ferry bound for Santander
... en route to visiting Our Little Treasure and her little treasure in
Portugal. For in the meantime, on
December 5th, little Manué was born in a van
(though almost under the stars, in a tin bath filled with water heated on an
open fire!). Romantic, but scary! After arriving in Spain after two nights on
the ferry ... Bob’s brain still deeply immersed within his computer, and my
brain deeply immersed within ‘The Spirit Level’, we emerged blinking into the
much too early (earlier even than the market!!) morning light. What was this unaccustomed bright light in the
sky? And .. it actually feels warm! Car chuggs into life ... somewhat louder than
expected ... Joy’s brain cell shrinks into the brain’s furthest recess ..
“Where’s the duvet?” ... “Gimme more coffee!” ... “Oh, curses, it’s the exhaust.”.
.. “It’s the early morning ... we’re in a foreign country ... and the exhaust
has gone .. o me miserum! (oh, me over-acting!)”. Discussions were had. Would the Spanish police bother us? Do we try to find a garage? Decisions were made. Drive on and risk it! Eight hours of slog down the Spanish motorway
system (two hours of which were spent trying to find access to said motorway
system) found us in Mérida, a lovely old town, full of Roman building remains
(a World Heritage Site), luxuriating in a shower at a Parador, and feeling
human again! Oh, joy!
The journey itself was fairly uneventful, except insofar as it
encapsulates the dire financial circumstances Europe finds itself in. The Spanish motorways are free and are well-maintained,
and there are also plentiful signs pointing the way to ‘área de servicios’. Enveloped within our zones of comfort, we
were on our way - tra la. Or were we? Bladders began to fill ... maybe shouldn’t
have had that third cup of coffee (wince) ... anxious eyes scanned the parched
horizon, squinting through fingers ineffectual against the harsh low winter sun,
searching, ever searching .... until a ‘servicios’ sign held out the hope that
our dignity may at last be rescued .... (sobs of relief). But ... where were the ‘servicios’? Following the signs further and further off
the motorway, and closer and closer to the nearest town, the chimaeric nature
of motorway services became ever more apparent.
The further south we travelled the more mythical these ‘servicios’
became. So ... bladders tightening, we
squirmed our way back to the motorway, and with eyes peeled, eventually found a
real one – hallelujah! ‘Spot the service
station’ was a game that kept us amused for hours! Our mantra for the journey became ‘if you
can’t see it from the road, it doesn’t actually exist’. Other indignities await the naive traveller :
picnic areas. These are alternatives to
the ‘servicios’, but the loos have been closed, due to the aforementioned dire
financial circumstances, and so are somewhat less than salubrious! Motto : A strong bladder is an essential attribute
when spending on infrastructure is weak.
An interesting aside to anyone from chilly northerly climes was that
we arrived at the Parador in Mérida on 22nd December and had to turn
off the central heating and throw open the doors to the balcony! The evening was ... WARM!! And we were warming to Spain. Breakfasts in Paradors are interesting in
that since they cater for all European tastes, there is everything laid out from
meat and cheese to Madeira cake (yes, it’s those weird Portuguese). One strange ritual is that you can make your
own tea, but you must wait for someone to bring you coffee (presumably on the
grounds that good coffee is important, but tea ... pah! ... only for those
Brits and Germans). Morning (?) arrives
... it is very dark (one hour ahead of Britain) ... alarm rings ... throw on a
few clothes and slippers (yes, I’ve no pride) ... slump in dining room until a
few molecules of coffee whiz up the nostril and alert a few taste-buds ...
brain begins to creak into action (sort of) .. squirrel away all sorts of stuff
into a doggie-bag for lunch .. con waitress into giving us lots more coffee ..
pour into waiting flask .. we’re on our way.
The transition from Spain to Portugal is quite noticeable. On the Spanish side of the border is
organized agriculture (exports to the rest of Europe), and busy motorways
(i.e., no tolls). In Portugal it’s the
exact opposite. The motorways are eerily
quiet .... a dozen cars per hour if you’re lucky ... and then they’re likely to
be foreign, as the locals avoid them like the plague because they can’t afford
the tolls. The land is sparsely planted
with acacia and eucalyptus trees, and is dotted with ruins because of depopulation
to the cities. This then becomes a
magnet for northern Europeans with a little money and large dreams of ‘getting
back to the land’ ... but more on this story later. The ‘A’ roads are good, and that’s why
everyone uses them (and they’re free!).
However, every few miles in the Beja district they were punctuated by a
bridge over the road going nowhere!
These were the unfinished and weathered remains of what was supposed to
have been an extension of the motorway system, but which now stand as a permanent
reminder to the greed and corruption of a local politician who embezzled the
earmarked cash before the job was anywhere near complete! AND ... he was voted back in!!! And then there’s the police (sigh) ... shall
we say that Portugal does things differently ...
We’d arranged to meet up with Tamsin, Urbano and Manué in the square
of her nearest village, Santana da Serra, which was actually only 6 km from
where she was living, but a 40-minute bone-shaking drive up a country track ... Several old women
were making much of little Manué and Tamsin, who appeared to have such a high
reputation amongst ‘the grannies’ as being the first woman to have given birth
in the campo for 30 years! In effect,
this was a ‘sticking up of two fingers’ at ‘the system’, and everyone hated
‘the system’, in which all services are being centralized further and further
from home, and where localism and people’s power over their own lives is being
gradually eroded. Stocking up with a bag
of flour half the size of a man, directly from the local miller (not yet
centralized!) our little convoy (including friends of Tamsin on a flying visit)
set off up the country track before darkness fell. Initially the road wasn’t too bad ... the
late afternoon sun streaking through the ubiquitous eucalyptus (bad .. import
and fire risk) and cork oaks (good .. native and source of income) .. the
dramatically beautiful green hills and the valleys .. old ruins interspersed
with odd farmsteads. Soon the steep road
was becoming ever more twisting, lumpy and hair-pin-like, and the long winter
shadows were fast disappearing ... the little convoy closed in as the ‘evil
ones’ looked on from the forest (Iberian lynxes? wild pigs?) ... (gulp) .. are
we nearly there yet? Pete’s place hove
into view (just), as the light was fading over a beautiful lake ... we were at
the end of the road (phew!).
Pete, a dour Dutchman, gave over his house to us for the fortnight
or so that we were there, whilst he moved into his truck, which was such a kind
thing to do. He’d even been building a
special indoor loo for us ... essentially a bucket with a hand-made loo-seat around
it. This, we had to empty every two days
onto a ‘humanure’ compost heap for the fruit trees. Out there, you’re on your own – there are no services! The house was wired up for electricity, but
since the storage batteries were (almost) dead, we had to rely on candles and
our gas-light. (Here comes the candle to
light you to bed .. here comes the chopper to chop off your .. head!!). Disconcertingly, and adding to the surreal
atmosphere, a bulb would periodically zap into existence ... and then splutter
to its death half a second later. Helen,
a Canadian with an Australian accent, who lived in a yurt / caravan on Pete’s
land, cooked an evening meal for everyone, and we all snuggled up to each other
on cushions around the central wood-burner, and chatted until the new parents
fell asleep! How different from the
night before!
As every new parent knows, the last thing you have time to do with a
new small demanding being is preparing meals. So, Christmas Eve for the new grandparents, as
always, was Food Preparation Day. The
day passed by in a blur (or rather .. a cloud) of pastry-making, sprout-peeling
(yes, we even brought our own sprouts), interspersed with liberal quantities of
red wine (for the chestnut paté recipe, you understand ..) .. hic! ... and
accompanied by an overwhelming urge to lie down .. hic! .. zzz ... and all
before the sun went down. Ah, the joys
of no electricity.
Christmas Day arrived. Our
new morning ritual involved waking to the sunrise (no curtains), counting one
.. two .. three .. then leaping out of bed and throwing on as much clothing as
possible before freezing to death (no heating), and huddling around the newly-lit
kindling in the wood-burner as it lay forlornly among the dead embers of the
previous evening, praying that the fire would catch quickly before the cold
seeped through to the old central heating-sensitized bones. And all this before even a sniff of coffee! Coffee and toast would eventually arrive
courtesy of the wood-burner ... ah, bliss!
Cooking Christmas dinner was an experience. Nearly gassed by an unwell bottled gas oven
.. cough! cough! cough! Would the poor
thing survive? .. at least until the paté en croute and roast spuds were
cooked. We were willing it on ... “come
on old thing, you can do it” ... as we anxiously gazed at it and each other
through the clouds of blue acrid fumes swirling back into the room from the
coolth of the open window. Thank
goodness for the trusty old wood-burner, which was at least cooking everything
else! As the other visitors had
previously left to celebrate their own Christmasses, we were Pete (Dutch),
Helen (Canadian-Australian), Urbano (Portuguese), Manué (stateless), Tamsin and
us (British), a wonderfully mixed international bunch with our own ways of
celebrating Christmas (even little Manué ... getting high, or would that be
drowsy .. on slightly alcoholic milk!).
Now Bob and I have always thought that we were right at the lower end of
the spectrum when it comes to consumption of alcohol, but this lot ... even
discounting the new parents .... had to be leaned on to drink a glass of wine
with the meal .. impressive! However, they
so loved the food, and were so appreciative of our efforts ... Helen said that
no-one had ever cooked them Christmas dinner before, which made us feel so ...
well ... Christmassy ... (not just the wine) ... ahhhhhh ...
As we chatted to Pete the following day, there came to us from
across the water a strange faint tinkling sound which seemed to be gradually
getting louder and louder ... a collective hangover? ... Santa arriving late?
... lost Morris dancers ... (oh, the bells! .. the bells! ..) ... “Look! Look!
It’s the Boxing Day Sheep!”. Heads
all turned at once in the direction of Pete’s pointing finger. There, on yonder hill (actually a grassy
knoll on the mountain-top), were the tinkling flock of woolly sheep kept on the
move by a shepherd and his dog ... obviously the sheep’s special Christmas
grazing area (we like to think). They
stayed, tinkling all night and most of the next day, eating everything in
sight, before departing for pastures new.
Shepherding in the old way ... a rare sight these days, as more and more
of the land becomes fenced and communal areas decrease. The lake is actually a reservoir, as are most
of the lakes in Portugal, as the rivers were all dammed by Salazar in the
30s. This means that all the fertile
river valleys were flooded, and people were either forced to move away from the
land or had to adapt to the less fertile and very steep mountain land.
Back in slightly chillier England, life returned to normal. 2013 was the year that Joy had to give up the Treasurership of the South West Green Party, having come to the end of the 5-year maximum period allowed. Bob reluctantly put himself forward for election and was voted in as Treasurer on the grounds that no-one else was crazy enough to stand! Thus, I could indirectly carry on controlling the purse-strings, with Bob as the puppet Treasurer. A great idea ... or so I thought ... (“Gold! Gold!” .. (cackle!) “Are you sure she’s the right person for the job, Neddy?”). However, it was at this time that the South West European Election Team (SWEETies) was being formed, and a Campaign Treasurer was required ... and .. yes, you’ve guessed .. I was that unhinged creature who applied! Now I had no idea as to how full-on this job was going to become over the next 16 months, even to the extent that Christmas 2013 almost did not exist for me (and Bob), and that’s why none of you received any Christmas cards! At this time, three or four of us were trying desperately to fund-raise, with absolutely no experience whatsoever, and with money disappearing faster than the sea on the shoreline at the start of a tsunami, the pressure was on. My particular task here was to sell advertizing in our newspaper ‘Green News’, and with the deadline for printing coming up in early January, my brain seemed to suddenly acquire negotiating skills, and I managed to raise £900 in advertizing revenue (yay!). Setting budgets for various projects, whilst not knowing how much money is likely to be coming in and when, and making sure that enough is squirreled away to pay for the next imminent installment of several thousands of pounds for FreePost (a misnomer), is scary stuff ... and ... you incur the wrath of the rest of the team when you have to say ‘no’ .. or at least to lower their expectations (sigh). And ... after the European Elections were over, and everyone else can do normal things like going on holiday, the Election Agent and especially myself had the unenviable task of chivvying the Candidates for their expenses, and sending in the region’s expenses before the end-of-June legal deadline ... and all by e-mail! It was an experience .. not one that I ever want to repeat ... but at least I was part of the team that saw Molly Scott Cato elected the South West’s first Green Party MEP ...and our membership has more than doubled (even in the Cotswolds!) and is growing fast (hurrah!).
In a lull before the storm in the summer of 2013, part six million of the Great House Renovation Project saw Joy busily learning on the job to be a plasterer. To enable our elderly gable-end wall to ‘breathe’, it was rather necessary to strip off the internal gypsum plaster (bad .. locks in dampness) and replace it with lime plaster (good ... allows water-vapour to escape). Whilst struggling with the physicality of it all (i.e., Joy lacks muscles), the suspicious pink pore on my nose that had glowed and erupted like Etna in 2012 before deciding to lay dormant for a year, chose this moment to explode! Maybe it sensed my inadequacy, and decided that now was the time to take over the world (evil cackle!) ... or at least .. my nose. It throbbed ... it glowed ... it was painful .. and having googled glowing, throbbing, painful, evil things on noses, and decided that it was likely to be a basal cell carcinoma, it was duly carted over to the doctor for ... ‘dealing with’. Three months later ... on my birthday (nooo!) .... it was time (gulp) to excise the evil glowing pore (and its friends) forever. As the surgeon and I walked towards the battle-field .. erm .. operating theatre, amiably chatting about coincidences and birthdays ... the evil one’s last minutes were approaching ... similarly Joy’s equanimity. As I was ‘prepared’ on the operating table, eyes covered so as not to see anything horrifying .. like scalpels .. or blood ... a nurse mentioned ominously that I could squeeze her hand as tightly as I wanted. When the surgeon mentioned that there would be six injections in the nose and two near my ear (for the skin graft), my thought was “mmm .. uhuh”. Next minute ... excruciating agony ... aarrgghh! ... I gritted my teeth .. tears rolled down my face .. I couldn’t imagine how the nurse didn’t yell with the pain of my squeezing so hard .. it was exhausting trying not to cry ... and this went on for half an hour ... until ... bliss! .. the anaesthetic kicked in. So many nerves in one little nose. It’s a curiously detached feeling, sensing the pressure from the scalpel, and the blood spurt everywhere .. it’s as if it’s not you! One year on and the nose is so far quiescent .. with the skin-graft circle glowing in the cold like Rudolph’s nose!
2013 was also the year that the pulsating all-controlling brain sitting at the nerve-centre of the evolving PhD process was finally switched off . Bob sat his viva last November (2013), finally handing in the amendments in January this year. And now ... after 7 years ... he’s now Dr. Bob ... yay! The graduation ceremony was at Oxford Brookes in June this year .. only this time the stingy buggers didn’t hold it at Headington Hill Hall ... sniff! ... and it was altogether a stripped-down process compared with when he was awarded his M.Sc , a day we remember with fondness (sigh). But at least he got to be number one in the queue though! And .. he got to wear a magnificent red and blue gown with cream-striped hood ... all embroidered with oak leaves! Pity about the ‘hard’ floppy hat though .. so disappointing .. after all, as we all know, he was only in it for the ‘floppy’ floppy hat ....
Rupert also graduated this year from BIMM with
a 2 : 2, which considering the amount of time and effort that went into his
essays, was probably about right! The
problem with Rupert is that he spends so much time networking, and on the
practical side of actually being a musician, that actually spending enough time
researching, planning and writing essays (most of which seemed to be squeezed
into night shifts) was always going to be a problem ... that, and getting
enough sleep! Interestingly, he often
dropped huge percentage marks simply because he was late in getting essays to
his tutors, and not because they weren’t up-to-scratch (sigh). But from his point of view, he’s happy, as
he’s learnt a lot, and that’s what University is all about after all. The ceremony at St. George’s in Bristol was on
a beautiful September day, and we have anarchic photos of Rupert in his
(revolutionary) blue graduation gown
with light blue / silver stripes on the hood, with his compadres in front of a large
sign issuing a dire warning to the effect of ‘Please do not throw your mortar boards up in
the air’, etc., with mortar boards ... yes ... up in the air! It was the most informal degree ceremony we’d
ever been to ... including a video link from a graduate in Canada who couldn’t
make it to the ceremony, lying decadently (in shirt and tie and party-hat ...
not sure about anything else ..) in his bath surrounded by oodles of bubbles
and popped party poppers, whilst and sipping champagne ... and another graduate
singing a couple of his own compositions ... all rather fun!
Late September this year was when we’d arranged to visit Tamsin and
little Manué again ... only this time Rupert had actually made time in his
immensely busy schedule to accompany us to Portugal ... but only for 10
days. Lack of finances .. as usual
(sigh). But .. no matter ... Uncle Rupert was an immense
hit with Manué, and our quiet life came to a sudden end the moment Rupert went
home. Manué is a typical two-year old,
with the usual tantrums, and isn’t averse to biting a chunk out of anyone (wince)
who happens to be in his vicinity when he’s frustrated by life, i.e., when not
being sufficiently entertained. Otherwise, he’s quite an endearing little chap ... though his favourite
word does appear to be ‘no’ in three different languages .. hmm .. closely
followed by ‘mee ma’ (mummy), ‘mama’ (booby .. he’s still being breast-fed),
‘mow’ (cat), and ‘pee pee’ (he only wears nappies when travelling).
As before, the poor little aged car (now almost uninsurable for
trips abroad) was piled high with stuff that we were either desperate to get
rid of (Tamsin’s old wood-burner), or obsessively-hoarded for years ‘in case
they ever come in handy’ (Tamsin’s and Rupert’s old toys), or desperately
desired by English expats in Portugal (Stilton cheese, English beer / cider,
twiglets (?), etc.). The journey down
from Santander was a reprise of December 2012, though the fighting to get into
the shower at the end of each day was somewhat more intense, and Rupert’s
touching faith in technology meant that we saw rather more of the countryside
than we’d originally intended (“Map? ... nah! ... trust me ..”). We’d arranged to stay in a holiday cottage on
a permaculture smallholding, Várzea da Gonçala
(www.varzeavivapermaculture.com)
in the Cerca dos Pomares valley for
about four weeks .. basic .. but at least we had electricity this time! All four cottages were arranged around a
courtyard (with fig tree .. yum!), and these, together with odd caravans, were
inhabited by various interns (for the four-week long permaculture course), WWOOF-ers
(Willing Workers On Organic Farms), and the odd family who were hoping to move
in with their extended family to the smallholding next door once the building
of their yurt was completed ... and us.
It was all jolly communal, since everyone shared the outdoor solar
showers and compost loos, with some (the WWOOF-ers) sharing an outdoor kitchen. Every morning .. huddled figures emerged
blinking into the early-morning light, eyes swollen and sleep-filled ...
hurriedly stumbling over those well-worn paths ... cursing as yet again, ankles
are twisted on that all-too-avoidable rock destined to catch the early-morning
half-asleep unwary, as, zombie-like, all thoughts are on getting into that
smallest room at all costs ... elbows and loo-rolls at the ready ... and all
this before even a sip of coffee! Hmmm
... how did anyone ever fight duels? ... zzzz ... (obviously not night owls) ..
Saturday mornings were even more stressful, as this was Market Day
in Aljezur. Aljezur is about two or
three miles away from Várzea, and this was where everyone in the valley did
their weekly shopping. Interestingly,
there are two markets : one for the tourists, where David Cameron was
photographed pointing at a fish (!), and the earlier one where all the locals
come to flog all their home-grown, home knitted, home-carved, home-anything ..
to other locals ... at very reasonable prices (though quality is somewhat
variable!). Unfortunately, this involved
crawling out of bed (groan ...) in what seemed like the middle of the night in
order to fight one’s way to the home-baked bread stall, which tended to sell
out of everything by 10 a.m. ... then it was rush .. rush .. rush .. to get all
the good veggies / honey / fruit / herbs / olives / nuts before everyone else
did ... And then .. it was more rush .. rush .. rush .. to get around all the
local shops for all the stuff you didn’t buy / couldn’t find at the market,
before the shops closed at 1 p.m.. .. or even 12 noon in some cases! On the way round, you’d be saying ‘hello’ to
all the other folks in the valley doing exactly the same, before eventually,
we’d all collapse in a heap at the café in the square, laden with
arm-stretchingly heavy bags! This is
where you’d meet everyone you knew .. German, Dutch and British expats / hippies
/ WWOOF-ers hoping to grab a lift back to the valley. People walked for miles (being poor), and so
giving lifts is what you did if you owned a vehicle. We’ve lost a lot as we’ve become richer
societies here in Northern Europe .. leading more individual, more isolated,
and less communal lives ... such that we barely know who our neighbours are,
let alone relying on one another to help out when needed. That’s why the place is full of expats trying
to escape the stresses and life-controlling cog-in-a-wheel aspects of
capitalism .... though there are downsides ... being poor, mostly!
And then there was the reliance on Sunday flea-markets, monthly
so-called ‘gypsy’ markets in different towns, thriving charity shops (an import
started up by ... yes, you’ve guessed .. British expats ..supported by the
Anglican Church) ... such that you could furnish a home for next-to-nothing,
especially in Lagos. We spent many happy
hours just searching for baby carriages and child car-seats .. with some
success .. swapping Manué’s small ones for bigger versions. It was a reality that we weren’t familiar
with in our privileged lives. This is
where we became even more familiar with the utter frustration of the
hand-to-mouth existence that is Tamsin’s chosen life. Little Manué is officially stateless, and
since Tamsin is not registered as an official being in Portugal, then he cannot
be Portuguese. She cannot register, as
she doesn’t have an address (living in hovels and vans). Manué can be British, but isn’t automatically
British because Tamsin was born abroad.
To start the process, she needed to print out forms from the Home Office
website (she has no access to a printer, and internet cafés .. when they can be found .. don’t have
printers), she required a passport photo of
Manué (nearest place .. Lagos .. requires money to travel), the form
must be signed by someone who knows her and Manué in an ‘official’ capacity
(she has had no contact with officialdom, as Manué was born in the countryside
and has never seen a doctor). So, we
were left with ... the Minister of
Religion route. It would seem that when Tamsin
was pregnant and earning money by busking for tourists, she was living on the
beach in Lagos, and used to eat at a soup kitchen run by the Anglican Church in
Lagos ... and also played her trumpet / ukelele for all those partaking. So after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing
(impossible to arrange without our .. somewhat limited .. access to the
internet at Várzea) the Minister was more than happy to sign (phew!). But it would have been almost impossible for
Tamsin to have sorted this whole thing out without us there to transport her
(and pay!) ... it would seem that parents do have some uses ... ! But
... at last ... we’ve managed to get all the official documents together
and letters from her school / college to prove that she lived in Britain, and
we’re now settling down for the long months ahead to await the outcome.
Apart from doing the odd touristy thing such as getting sun-burnt
feet (the only bit of white flesh allowed to peek out to look at the hot, hot sun)
on a beach not far from Aljezur, and indulging in a bit of shopping and café
culture in the spa town of Monchique, we spent a good deal of our last two
weeks building a high bed for Tamsin’s proposed new winter hovel, and
transporting Tamsin’s stuff up and down the valley from hovel 1 to hovel 2 via
Várzea. Getting to Pero Negro (Black
Pear) involved a 10-minute bone-shaking drive up the valley, during which our
poor much-put-upon little car finally buckled under the strain with broken
suspension ... oops! (Managed to get it
fixed with a wonderful Portuguese mechanic who had worked at Rössing in Namibia
at the same time as Bob .. it’s a small world!). Parking up next to a hippy bus by the river, we
slashed through the undergrowth ... stumbled across a stream ... slashed
through more undergrowth ... stumbled across another stream .. staggered up a
hill with the sun beating mercilessly down .... gasp! gasp! ... “Water! ... Water! ... I can’t go on! ....
(wailed a feeble disembodied voice) before collapsing in a heap on the step of Tamsin’s
ex wooden hippy house 20-30 minutes later.
“You want us to carry what ... ?” (an incredulous voice opined), as we
wondered how exactly we were to carry a double mattress plus enough winter
clothes for half a dozen bag-ladies ... not to mention a small child! Thank goodness we have ... Rupert! As the sun sunk below the horizon and we finally stashed the stuff
in the holiday cottage, we were wondering how we were ever going to move it
ever again!
Rupert left and the bed-building began. We made forays into town to gather up the
best pallets before they were scabbed by anyone else ... pallets being one of
those items that never make it to a tip in Portugal, as everyone has a use for
everything, especially building materials.
Recycling is viewed as being just for the tourists! It’s a bit hardcore taking apart pallets, so
of course, little Manué decided that he needed to help too ... gathering in the
dead nails and putting them carefully in small heaps ... whilst miraculously
avoiding getting beaten up by the odd claw-hammer .. or nimbly circumventing
the sharp nails or splinters sticking up out of the wood (sigh). Eventually, after a re-design that an IKEA
flat-pack designer might have been (semi) proud of, it was decided to attempt
to lug the half-assembled pieces up the valley to hovel 2 ... also ..
unfortunately for our poor battered little car ... back in Pero Negro. We arrived at the river crossing ... the
rains had cleared, but the river was running scarily high (gulp) .... Bob
hesitated ... mentally weighing up the odds of being washed away .. or at least
chugging to an ignominious halt ... “Right, Dad .. now .. slowly towards the
middle ... keep to the right ... then quick as you can up the slope on the
other side ...” (yay! we made it!) “ ..now quick left .. avoid the pot-holes
..” .. crunch! .. squeal! .. thud! .. (er .. oops!). So far, so good (!) Arriving at the second river crossing, we
disembarked. The river was very spread
out at this point, but was at least (semi) passable, i.e., we could just about
stagger across it without water splooshing over the top of the wellies. However, life is always more complicated with
a small child. Luckily, Tamsin is adept
at juggling Manué and piles of shopping whilst balancing on slippery rocks
(who’d have thought that circus skills would have come in so handy?).
Hovel 2 is at the top of a steep hill, treeless and exposed to the
elements (sweat! sweat!). For a being from
the flatlands of Lincolnshire, this was the hardest challenge of all ... oh well
.. alright ... maybe after the morning coffee problem (sigh) ..15 minutes later
... heart pounding ...only one more hair-pin bend to go ... counting ..
counting steps .. one .. two ....... ninety-nine .. hundred ... start again ..
one .. two ... past bread-oven .. collapse ... sun beating mercilessly down ..
crawl into house .. flop onto mattress ... oh bliss! Water-revived, a little later, the old brain
cells and a few others swung into action (!) and hiked off down the hill armed
only with a hand-saw and a water bottle to do battle with a couple of trees,
leaving Bob and Tamsin to start work on the bed platform. (“Hi ho!
Hi ho! It’s off to work we go!”). Splooshing up and down the river, I decided
on a couple of trees that didn’t look too difficult to cut down. The river was the best place to cut down trees ... deliciously cool under the
canopy .. a great space to allow a tree to fall relatively freely ... the
ability to hack off side branches without everything becoming entangled ...
easy to cut up afterwards and drag downstream ... The downsides appear to
be ... the river getting inside your
wellies (squelch! squelch!) ... and trying to ensure that the tree falls in the
right direction ... see saw .. see saw .... creak! .... see saw ... creak!
creeeak!! ... crash! .... oops! Despite
being a novice ... or maybe beginners’ luck ... the trees fell more or less
where I wanted (phew), and after a couple of hours, Tamsin had the wood she
needed for her bed. But ... the hill
awaited (gulp). Thankfully, other folks
carried the trees ... I just had to carry myself (sigh).
We didn’t quite finish the bed, but Tamsin finished it soon after we
left. But the postscript to this story
is that Stefie, one of the people with whom she was supposed to be sharing the
hovel (the others being Stefie’s partner Rubin and son Nico), decided that she
couldn’t now share with Tamsin and Manué, effectively making her homeless
again! We left Portugal thinking that we
had set her up (more-or-less) for the winter, but fate has decided
otherwise. So now Tamsin is living in a
friend’s spare van until the end of the winter (he’s in Austria), but
unfortunately this doesn’t have a wood-burner and the winter is coming. And with nowhere in the valley to stay, she’s
now living in a community near Monchique at the moment, but I suspect that this
will not be for long ...
Dr. Bob is now working for about three days per week as a Research
Associate at Oxford Brookes on a Sustainable Buildings Project. Because he only wants to work part-time, he’s
on short-term contracts ... though at least the latest one is for a whole year
(hurrah!) ... which should prevent us from falling into penury for a while ..
In theory, Rupert has now returned to the bosom of his family, though mostly this
entails living in his practice-room as far as we can tell. He’s still gigging with a million bands as
usual, doesn’t appear to sleep, occasionally does operatic concerts, teaches
drums to a couple of people, and still works part-time as a carer. He does pass through now and again .. we know
this, as there are signs ...
Joy, Bob, Rupert, Tamsin and Manué
No comments:
Post a Comment