Stratton,
Cirencester,
Gloucs.
GL7
2HT
Christmas 2017 & 2018
Dear Readers,
The (almost) annual migration
of the greater spotted Tamsin to ever hotter climes has now taken place, serendipitously
avoiding both the vicissitudes of weather and political ineptitude. Neat!
Of course, it is possible that come the end of March, a giant red hand
will be held aloft against all migratory species from now on, until all have died
of exhaustion in trying to complete the inevitable brick-sized form, or been
blown off-course by the chill winds and icy attitudes of this insulated and isolated
Little England (sigh). Even the sheep
have mostly all migrated to Wales, having seen the writing on the wall …
(clever creatures, these sheep). We
propose sneaking in the odd sheep whenever there’s a cabinet reshuffle … no-one
would notice, despite the extra wooliness … baa! baa! beah! Just another normal day in Parliament …
Why no letter or Christmas Greetings
last year? Well, t’was an annoying
series of bad luck episodes, such that I was beginning to think ‘Why me, God?’,
and I didn’t think you’d want to hear from an incredibly grumpy old lady. However, this year, I’ve changed my mind, and
decided to subject you all to the full force of my crazed brain cell … haha!
2017
By May, Joab and the gang had
finally finished re-roofing, strengthening, and wrapping an insulating blanket of
hempcrete, cork and lime around Y Ddôl, our cottage in Wales. However, this didn’t mean that it was
actually habitable! Electricians did
their bit to ‘improve’ the electrics, i.e., converting all the lighting to
12-volt to make more efficient use of the electricity, especially in the
winter, when electricity is in very short supply (the house being very much off-grid,
and reliant on batteries for electricity).
Bodge-jobbers and plumbers (the same thing in our case!) took an
eternity to finish a job that was kind of crucial to enable us to have hot
water, even though we owed them lots
of money! Trust us to find a very rich
plumber. There was no point in ‘phoning
during school holidays, as he was always at his cottage in France! Another few months passed, and after being
leaned on by Brian (officially carpenter and joiner, who was our ‘de facto’
project manager), the aforementioned plumber finally came home from France long
enough to dig out a length of Rayburn chimney pipe that would connect to our
section of pipe in order to increase its length to meet Building
Regulations. However … yes, you’ve
guessed … nothing ever runs smoothly at Y Ddôl … the plumber was afraid of
heights, and poor old Brian had to fit it, and all the connecting pipes for the
solar vacuum panel, while Neil, the plumber, did the inside pipework. But at least the Rayburn could be lit! Another little milestone reached … would we
live long enough to reach the end? Will
there be an end? Grand Designs it certainly
ain’t!
Whilst all this was going on,
I was slowly being poisoned yet again, with various evil concoctions (hubble,
bubble, toil and trouble … etc.), with even more evil side effects, in an
effort to keep the tumour cells in check (biff! baff! boff!). Before the dose was reduced, my brain cell
was so frazzled that I couldn’t remember anything Bob had said even half a
minute before, or make any connection between thoughts and muscles in my mouth,
such that I kept having to change what I wanted to say in order to communicate
(now that is extreme chemo-brain!). And
with Parkinson-like tremors, barely able to hold a cup, drinking was somewhat
challenging, as was doing up buttons – anything that involved fine motor
control was beyond me! With different
drugs, and more tolerable side effects, things gradually returned to normal ….
until Tamsin and Manué arrived ….. the
day before The Great Snow Storm of December 10th!
A couple of weeks before, and
the day before we were due to visit for the first time since the previous year,
Brian and his daughter Polly, had attempted to make Y Ddôl habitable again, by
cleaning from top to bottom, and leaving us his industrial-sized vacuum cleaner
and mop ‘in case we needed them’. An
understatement!
We approached the house in
slight trepidation. Photos we
had-a-plenty, but what would it be really
like? Outside .. gasps of awe and wonder
at the workmanship. Inside … lime dust
hung in the air and covered every surface that Brian and Polly hadn’t managed
to clean; the flagstones weren’t recognizable, despite their heroic attempts at
hoovering and mopping; iron and steel were corroded due to the deadly
combination of lime and exposure to the elements for a winter. ‘Aargh! my lungs are clogging up with particles!
… I’m gonna die!’ … (cough! wheeze! thud!).
Well, yes, but perhaps not quite that imminently. ‘Hmm … this lever on the Rayburn is jammed … what
happens if I ….’ (clunk! tinkle! tinkle!) ‘Oh, ****! … the little door flap just fell
off!’ ‘Now how will we control the
burning … we’ll freeze to death … we’re doomed!’ Visions of house filling up with black smuts
… again. We sensed that the clean-up
operation was going to occupy us for months to come …
And then our other house
suddenly filled up with childish accoutrements … and people … and our peaceful
life became anything but normal (sigh).
We’d definitely turned into a couple of old fogies … well, mostly me
(snarl!).
Tamsin had left the warm
environment (depending on where you are) of La Palma specifically to attend her
cousin Karen and Simon’s wedding. Now we
know that this was really important to her, because she hates the cold, and
this was December! As we woke up the
following day, The Great Snow Storm was upon us. Would we make it to Stratford-upon-Avon? Should we even try? Any other day, no. But this was a wedding, and Tamsin had flown
in specially. We couldn’t give up at the
first hurdle. So, piling into our trusty
4x4, the Irvings bravely battled the elements along sensibly empty roads, until
… ‘whoaaaa! … where’s the road gone?’ … (bump! bump! bumpety-bump! crunch!
crash!). Time slowed. I watched as a tree came slowly towards me,
crumpling the bonnet of the car on my side.
Time speeded up again. The car
crashed over a fallen tree and everything stopped. My spine went crazy. Each individual vertebra seemed to be jolted out
of position and clicked back together again, accompanied by heat travelling from
the bottom upwards – a very strange sensation!
Meanwhile in the back of the car, poor little Manué was hit above the
eyebrow by either Tamsin’s arm or a flying food container. What to do now? There was no way we could travel to the
wedding … or was there?
Before long a Landrover
turned up, and then just as we were deciding who to sacrifice to the wolves
(probably Bob), another car arrived, having made it all the way from London to
the white-out wilderness of Gloucestershire.
Hurrah, Bob was saved! After a
few games of Musical Chairs and tutting over the poor dead car, we all managed
to find a seat, and trundled back, very gingerly at 15 miles per hour, to
Cirencester. And then … Rupert rode to
the rescue! Serendipitously he was late
leaving, as usual, still at the practise room packing his drums into the van
for his gig. Yes, Rupert was playing in
a band who were the evening’s entertainment at the wedding. We just had to make it through!
And thanks to Rupert, we did! Just in time to appear on the wedding photos! Everyone had an amazing time, dressing up and
dancing to ‘The Curious Little Big Band’.
Miles, the singer, was such a good entertainer, that very few people
could resist his charms and stay seated.
It was such an exhilarating evening!
However, having danced like crazies until we felt even more crumbly than
normal (us oldies … ha!), a slow realization began to dawn that we wouldn’t see
anything resembling a bed until 3 a.m. (nooooooo!!!
… zzz … zzz …), while we waited for the
disassembling and packing away of the drum kit.
Since Tamsin and Bob had only managed 3 a.m. the previous evening,
thanks to Tamsin’s cheap flight from La Palma to Gatwick, this was doubly hard
on them, especially as Manué had by this time been outside and become
super-excited by the snow …. until he realized how cold it could be …
After this, there was no way
that Manué could be persuaded to go outside.
When you’re used to running around outside in a t-shirt, or perhaps a
sweatshirt at most, why would you want to wrap up in a ton of clothing just to
feel comfortable, let alone actually enjoy playing? However, this did mean lots of highly
expensive visits to the indoor play-park and swimming pool, which we managed to
make slightly more economically bearable by persuading Manué and the powers to
be that he really was only four years old!
Thank goodness he’s quite a small boy!
Ten days after the crash,
just when all (all?) we were worried about was how to get from A to B, another
totally unforeseen problem hove into view.
I stared into the bathroom mirror. ‘Aarghh! … what are all these itchy, painful,
weeping, red and yellow pustules?’ My
brain cell rushed through a few possible options … an allergic reaction? … the
plague? … alien take-over? Well … it
sort of depends how you define alien take-over, since it turned out to be
shingles. The chicken-pox virus had been
lurking as a sleeper in my nerves for almost 60 years, awaiting its call to take over its world, i.e., Joy! (cackle!). The shock of the crash, together with my already
chemo-compromised immune system, prodded the virus into action (yawn! … what!
…), which then ambled along the nerve fibres to the skin to try to infect
anything that brushed past … and it hurt like hell!
Such bad luck! Just as Tamsin was home for Christmas for the
first time for years! Ah, well, apart
from Joy falling apart, Christmas with all the family united was fun … and
somewhat different, in that we had a very non-materialistic Christmas, apart
from socks and chocs … and Manué burning his way through what appeared to be the
world’s supply of sparklers on the Christmas pud! In spite of all this incineration, perhaps
Manué wasn’t the reason for the apparent shortage of sparklers on Guy Fawkes
Night one year hence (well, maybe only in our household …). On the Eve before Christmas, while everyone
slept, someone was hard at work (no, not Santa’s elves on last minute overtime
…). On Christmas morning many tiny Christmassy
drawings and cut-outs, with little messages and hand-made vegan sweetmeats all tied
up with string, (very ‘Sound of Music’), appeared before our eyes. Tamsin had been very busy, and we loved her
for it. Tamsin could (almost) persuade
us to be raw-food vegans, so good are her food creations, but I don’t think the
old pension could stretch to buying the necessary ingredients!
And so to ….
2018
Tamsin flew back to La Palma
and Davor, her friend and on-off partner in foraged raw food living, and the
house returned to its normal tip-like condition, despite the return of toys to
the attic. The ‘treatment’ finally came
to an end, the evil ones were being eliminated, and I hadn’t felt this good for
well over a year!
After the ‘Beast from the East’
finally departed, we determined to spend as much time as possible at our house
in Wales, Y Ddôl, amongst the mountains.
After our enforced absence, the brambles had taken over completely, and as we
hacked at the dense undergrowth, we were beginning to feel like the Prince
rediscovering Sleeping Beauty! Whilst
pondering the problem of the sinking satellite dish (drying soil), a light-bulb
clicked on somewhere in the inner recesses of Bob’s brain … ‘wasn’t there a
patio behind the shed?’ We wielded the
machetes, and fought with several metres of bramble spines (ow! ow! ow!), until
suddenly, ‘Wow! … the patio … it’s really here!’. So used to the complete bramble coverage were
we, that we’d almost forgotten of its existence! The satellite dish was very happy in its new
home, and we were very happy with the long-awaited internet connection … though
the odd noble fir in the wood does look ominously close to the satellite’s line
of site. More future tree maintenance
(sigh) …
Having
wall-to-wall (or should that be mountain-to-mountain) sunshine in the valley,
at least allowed us the opportunity to check out which solar panels at the
upper end of the ‘garden’ were being obscured by rogue hedge trees gone wild
(easy to deal with), and worryingly those which were being shaded by Coed Cadw trees
from above. Since Coed Cadw weren’t
happy for us to go on their land to hack the branches back, and it was going to
be a specialized task that involved much swinging in the trees, juggling small
and large chainsaws (gulp!), we had to be pretty sneaky! We knew that the Coed Cadw ranger wasn’t
going to be in the area until September, so we ensured that the tree surgeons
did the job well before then. They were
so good at their job, in that they went back to the trees’ natural growth
points, rather than just lopping off branches, that if you didn’t know they’d
been there, you’d never guess. I think
we’re now safe (phew) … fingers crossed!
Now we have a few extra branches for logs, and a massive pile of branch
chippings from the impressive giant shredder that they arrived with. Hmm … could create a path, perhaps …
In
the unaccustomed 30° C heat, jungle fever took over our frazzled brains,
despite the shelter of the old oak tree.
What other rediscoveries might we uncover? ‘Shouldn’t there be apple trees
hereabouts?’ A scan through squinted
eyes peered into the middle distance.
Long thin upright whips bearing a bountiful crop of enticing red apples
swayed slightly above the three-metre briar thicket, rearing up and over the
path threateningly. But nothing would
deter Joy the Intrepid, as she sought to rediscover ‘the orchard’ (well, three
trees), not to mention the rest of the ‘garden’, especially when such a prize
awaits … eyes glaze over … saliva dripping (yeuk!) … all thoughts obliterated
…‘must … have … apples …’ Just think how
a sheep would feel in an orchard with the fruit dangling just out of reach …
oh, the torture! But at the sound of a
snip, as the apple falls … quick as a flash before it hits the ground … so
speedy! Needs must when you're that
desperate!
Hack!
snip! cut! (briars ruthlessly attacked), scratch! shred! bleed! (Joy ruthlessly
attacked). But eventually ... we found
the trees and the water tank … but no Sleeping Beauty. The apple trees appear to be 'Cornish
Aromatic', 'Blenheim Orange' and 'Ashmeads Kernel' - wonderful traditional
varieties. ‘We’ve won the battle –
yay!’ Oh, the excitement! (we don’t get
out much) … maybe it may even be possible to come back from checking the water
level without twisting an ankle, or getting Velcro’d to the vegetation … help!
But
this is only the beginning – we have a war to win! ‘Ha! you’ll be lucky’, think the evil lurking
briars … ‘we have time on our side’
(much evil cackling)! As Bob attempted
to cut down a stray goat willow, and the odd out-of-control hedge tree, beech
(?), the intrepid Joy hacked her way through the jungle, whilst at the same
time trying not to crush the many milk-cap fungi springing up everywhere. Despite the diverting tactics being employed
by the resident agitated robin, two more long-forgotten compost bins, and two
semi-remembered wood stores eventually revealed themselves … eureka! I guess this must have been the Irvings’
‘Sleeping Beauty’ moment – oh, Joy! (no pun intended). What a voyage of discovery … though perhaps
not quite on a par with uncovering the odd Mayan temple in the jungles of
Central America.
As
the living 3-metre-high briars transmogrified into giant 3-metre-high briar
‘hay’ stacks, by using rakes as pitchforks, never had our crumbly townsfolk
muscles been given such a workout. On
the other hand, workouts at gyms don’t usually cause flesh wounds. To complete the scene all that was needed now
was a guy on top, and have a giant bonfire!
However, it seemed a tad friendlier to the local wildlife if we gave
them a home for the winter instead. And the valley was tinder dry …
On
a day that was particularly hot, and us pale beings could only shelter inside,
we noticed that the woodland at the end of the field was filling with a little smoke
… a hotel barbecue at Devil’s Bridge? … a forest fire? Crucially there were no flames. We kept our eye on the situation, but it
didn’t seem to become any worse. We
discovered on the internet that there had been a grass fire that had eventually
burned itself out, and we thought no more of it. However, a couple of days later, as we
travelled back to Cirencester, we had a profound shock. There was a massive fire on the other side of
the valley, which threatened the little village of Aberffrwd. Where a few days previously there has been lush
green woodland, now vast swathes of the mountain-side had been transformed into
mile after mile of smouldering blackened skeletal trees covered in a fog of
rippling white smoke being carried along the valley by the gentle breeze. Excitingly for us accidental tragedy
tourists, a helicopter with a water scoop appeared periodically to drop its
load on the smouldering forest to dampen down the burning. Unfortunately, flames had broken out at a
place further up the mountain, and so it was a bit hit-and-miss. Luckily, the reservoir wasn’t too far away,
and we were rather transfixed by the sight of the helicopter not-quite-landing
on the water, whilst scooping up another load, then circling its target,
emptying the scoop’s contents as it went.
Obviously mesmerized, we never noticed whatever other activity was going
on, until a large buzzing thing circled our heads several times. Could have been a giant hornet. No, it was a baby drone. Wow, we’d never seen one ‘in the flesh’, so
to speak … too much excitement! We
decided that it must be BBC Wales, getting in some aerial shots, and therefore
it was probably time to leave. The
rumour was that the little steam train that travelled between Aberystwyth and
Devil’s Bridge several times a day was the cause of the fire, but the company
never admitted it. However, it was a
strange co-incidence that the fire was all above the railway line, where the
sparks fly, and not below …
As
the fields of Welsh soft green turned to Portuguese parched amber, and underdressed
roasting Brits came to terms with completing the traffic-light analogy,
everything ground to a halt … except the insects! The farmer took to bringing water daily for
the six young bull calves in the field, until eventually they ran out of food. One day we arrived to an empty field, and we
feared the worse. Luckily, the creepy
cluster flies saw no good reason to hang around just for us. However, giant hornets still roamed the
countryside searching for fresh victims.
Strangely, they seemed to be sexist, and only went for the nearest
male. Moral : always stand by your male,
when confronted by giant hornets … (?) Bees
took up living space behind the bargeboards under the eaves of the house, and
could be heard eerily humming in the heat of the day to keep cool … crazy hot
place to build a nest, we thought.
Perhaps the heat was turning all creatures crazy, as Bob thought he had
found a wasps’ nest in our ‘known’ compost heap … but later in the summer it
wasn’t there … puzzling, as wasps don’t leave until Autumn. Had they left early … or … had Bob’s brain
cells turned too red and blotchy in the sun?
When
it wasn't too ravingly hot, and someone from Joab’s gang finally braved the
evil giant hornets to do a spot of lime-infilling for us, where the new green
oak posts had shrunk away from the lime coating, we eventually managed to
lime-paint the house. It’s now dark to
light salmon-pink and many shades in between, depending on the underlying
texture of the wall. Not sure that was
the intended colour, but it would seem that the lime coating the cork insulation
takes up water from the lime-paint differently from the lime coating the hempcrete
insulation … no we don’t get it either!
We’re calling it delightfully characterful.
At
the same time, we decided to ‘sort out’ the solar thermal system. We had wondered why it was that our solar
thermal panel always seemed to be over-heating, whilst never actually producing
any hot water! Our thermal panel ought
to have been producing loads of hot water (you’d think!), but according to
Marcus, the solar thermal engineer, ‘it had been completely plumbed in
wrongly’. There are two types of solar
thermal panel, and the plumber had only learned about one of these, it would
seem (sigh). Apart from the usual ‘we’re
English, moaning about the weather is part of our national psyche’ reason, we
prayed for cooler, well, non-sunny but dry, weather, otherwise Marcus might
have fallen off the roof with heat exhaustion … and he was our only hope, being
remote and off-grid! Having worked out
‘a plan’ for our quirky situation, he spent two days enabling it, but couldn’t
test it because it was … yes, you’ve guessed … raining! Oh, the irony! We do now have hot water … but only on really
sunny days, and only enough for one and a half persons, just as Marcus
foretold. Life off-grid, eh? It certainly brings it home to you just how
much radiant energy is necessary to heat a tank full of hot water using a panel
of vacuum tubes – about 6 hours’ worth of uninterrupted sunshine! Next cunning plan – to divert some of the
electricity produced from the photovoltaic array up the hill into the immersion
heater. And then … we won’t have to toss
coins to see who gets to shower (yay!).
Late summer
turned to Autumn. The Irvings had fought
the long fight with the briars, suffered many wounds in the process, but
spurred on by the bountiful crop of delicious blackberries … oh, worth any
amount of pain … tut! tut! Joy, you
masochist. Even the apple tree that
normally never produces fruit, ‘Ashmeads Kernel’ decided that the summer had
been hot enough for it and took its chances.
Maybe it felt threatened by the long neglect .. never again to produce
its tasty apple (sniff). Many apples too
had been scoffed, and many fungi had been … er … rejected. Once, as we were going down the lane, we
chanced upon an amazing sight – a group of classic poisonous red Fly Agaric red
fungi with white spots! We’d never seen
these for real before, and they were much larger than I imagined them. One could almost imagine the caterpillar
sitting on the largest one smoking his hookah!
No, we didn’t find any magic mushrooms – honest! Now Y Ddôl has been left to suicidal bats (we
were always ejecting them … never found where they were coming in),
multitudinous spiders, and Brian, the carpenter, who’s supposed to be building
a staircase at some point. I really miss
the place … filling up with smuts in the winter (cough! wheeze!), the ever-encroaching
mud, the ankle-biting draughts down at flagstone level, the enervating semi-tropical
heat in the crog-loft, chopping up logs, re-arranging the wood store yet again
(don’t ask!), and even chopping down the odd semi-dead tree in the forest … all
part of the rich tapestry of life off-grid with no central heating!
The season of cheap flights arrived, and with it Tamsin and Manué, en
route from the less-than-utopian La Palma, via a bit of parental luxury (such
as a mattress), to the promise of Costa Rica.
La Palma is full of escapees from the harsh northern European climate
(political, as well as the weather), trying many alternative lifestyles, but
they all live in the mountains where land is cheaper, and the weather cooler,
ironically! And this year, while
normally cold, damp little Britain roasted, La Palma was cooler and it actually
rained in the summer (hmm … wonder what the Spanish is for ‘quelle horreur!’),
due to the vagaries of the jet stream and global warming. This was the last straw for Tamsin … she
needed guaranteed warmth all year round!
Costa Rica started to impinge upon her consciousness as a possibility, which
soon became a definite after her friend plus child decided to join this raw
food vegan community on the east coast and felt very welcome. She was having doubts about spending another
cool winter in La Palma, at the less-than-welcoming Pacha Mama
almost-community, with its lack of aims, changing dynamic, as folks came and
went, and too much smoking and drinking.
So when she split up for good with Davor (partly because he found Manué
really difficult), who did much to help her find foraged food on the island,
and failing to find anyone else with whom to share her foraging lifestyle, she
decided to pack up her summer camp idyll in the beautiful forested caldera
(UNESCO Biosphere Reserve), and head for possibilities new … again …
Our month of living in a confined space with a
frustrated Manué was … interesting (!).
For a Thomas the Tank Engine obsessed little boy, it was a shame that he
had to leave all of his engines, and associated accoutrements behind on La
Palma with his friends. This made all of
his extra track here somewhat redundant.
Unsurprisingly, this did not go down too well with Manué. When the weather was OK, we did manage to
distract him with long bike-rides through sheep fields and playing Pooh Sticks
in the river at Baunton (local posh village), but mostly, he’d have been much
happier if he’d been here in the 30° heat of summer, in the buff! This month-long tantrum-filled endurance test
culminated in four (!) trips to the dentist just to fill two holes (sigh). Apparently, Manué had endured a bad
experience with a dentist on La Palma, and was so traumatized by the whole
experience that, even though his teeth hurt, wild horses couldn’t have dragged
him through the door! Tamsin was almost
reduced to tears trying to reason with him, whilst trying to unpeel each little
finger from the door handle. On the
second occasion, he promised to at least go into the dentists, and play with
the toys, but absolutely refused to go into Jonathan’s treatment room because
‘it smells funny’. However, Jonathan
chatted very patiently with Manu, and managed to persuade him one more step
along the way, to come in again, where he promised to check out his teeth in
the ante-room, amongst all the toys, even giving Manu his own little dentists
mirror to play with, as well as lots of bribery in the way of stickers! Manué was impressed! We were impressed! And then Jonathan unveiled his master-stroke
… the DVD player above the dentist’s chair!
Manu was hooked … yes, he would definitely allow Jonathan to fill his
teeth next time, if he could watch any film he liked, and could have more
stickers. Deal done! And amazingly, Jonathan wouldn’t accept any
payment! Jonathan, being an
anti-fracking activist, would, however, accept in lieu of payment, the delivery
of lots of anti-fracking posters around town, which Tamsin and Bob were happy
to do. Tamsin was over the moon, as this
is absolutely the way that she loves to operate. She prefers to exchange skills rather than
monetary transactions. In La Palma, she
gave an English lesson to the daughter of the previous dentist who treated Manu
… hmm … perhaps it doesn’t always work out?
Tamsin does have some amazing language skills
– we’ve seen her in action at Gatwick, sorting out problems for a Spanish
family, who didn’t speak much English, with officials at Gatwick, who of
course, knew no Spanish (sigh).
Apparently, she did a lot of this sort of thing with tourists in La
Palma. Since she has ‘alternative’
friends from many European countries, and has lived in a fair few, she
apparently is fairly fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch and Italian,
even a little Danish. Very useful. Even Manu discovered that speaking another
language can pay off. Whilst at a local
food market here in Cirencester, he heard Italian being spoken on the gelato
stall, and promptly announced that he could speak Italian. After a little conversation with the
stall-holder, he was rewarded with a free ice-cream! Actually, according to Tamsin, he’s been
known to correct her Italian grammar! At
that age, children just seem to absorb languages like a sponge, especially when
playing with friends, as they’re just so desperate to fit in. I remember listening to Rupert speaking with
his street friends, when we lived in Namibia.
They were chatting to each other in a wonderful mish-mash of English,
German, and Afrikaans! Of course, they
all spoke the different languages, but not well enough to use one language with
everyone, so they’d made up this pidgin language – very inventive!
And so, on November 10th, Costa
Rica awaited the arrival of the intrepid explorers after the true meaning of
how to live a good life. After two
flights (via Orlando) to San José, the capital, a knackering four-hour bus
journey, and no sleep (at least for Tamsin), Tamsin and Manué were made to feel
very welcome by all who met them at the bus stop in the local town, Cahuita, even
giving them the best bedroom for the night to recover! I think this overwhelmed her, and she took it
as an auspicious sign that all would be well.
Manué has celebrated his 6th birthday with his new friends, and has even
taken to occasionally eating salads! It’s
amazing what kids will eat if they want to fit in with their friends! I'm imagining everyone on the beach with a
warm sea and warm sun ... ah, what a life! In reality, the humidity,
mosquitos and potential dengue fever might take the edge off Paradise
somewhat! Tamsin really has got down to basics, as washing clothes is a
bit of a chore, with nothing ever drying properly, so she's mostly taken to
wandering around naked instead. She
seems to have become involved in writing the rules that will govern the
community, and has been down to the community’s several hectares of cleared
jungle to plant some fruit trees and see the ‘lie of the land’, so to
speak. There are aspects of modern life
which she sees as an intrusion, such as everyone owning their own cars, and
there are some downright silly suggestions as to how to continue to ford the
large river that cuts off their land from the road when it floods, i.e.,
filling it full of large boulders!
Ha! As Tamsin pointed out, the
full force of a river in flood at 3 metres higher than usual will sweep away
any number of large boulders! It would
appear that there are a few naiive folks among this community. Hey, ho!
Tamsin may need all the communication skills she can muster. As she says, for quality of life, she would
have stayed in La Palma, if she could have found people who wanted her to
stay. However, these people in Costa
Rica have welcomed her, and for the time being, she’ll see how things pan out.
Rupert’s
life, by contrast, is pretty much ordered, though in a chaotic sort of a way,
i.e., his calendar fills up with paid gigs, rehearsals, work shifts, and
teaching drums, but is subject to crazy changes of plan at short notice, often
down to failure to co-ordinate brain with calendar (… where? … what? … why? …
). Jess, his girlfriend, is very
long-suffering, as some days they only see each other for evening meal, or
sometimes not even that, as Rupert embarks on yet another night shift
accompanying disabled Tom to a night-club, mini-festival or gig. Nice work if you can get it! Jess works in retail, and this can mean
starting as early as 7 a.m., or finishing at 7 p.m. depending on the day. Neither work ‘regular’ hours. Amazing that they ever see each other at all,
especially at this time of year, when Jess is busily working on artistic
commissions for Christmas presents in her ‘spare’ time, and Rupert’s bands all
have Christmas gigs! Welcome to the
‘gig’ economy (groan …)!
The
alien (to us!) concepts of sport and keeping fit appear to have taken over
whatever passes for ‘free time’ in Rupert’s life. As he points out, one needs to keep fit to
play the drums, and the cycling just sort of developed from that. The hardest challenge appears to be finding
good outdoor gear supporting ‘Fair Trade’!
Then there was the ‘Tough Mudder’ challenge – not what you’d think of as
‘normal’ Rupertly activity. This
involves putting yourself (as part of a team) through all sorts of sometimes painful,
almost impossible, obstacle challenges in as short a time as possible, whilst
relying on your friends (in this case Amber and Antoine, Tom’s brother) to drag
each other over and under however many metre-high barriers are in the way of
that long, hot shower at the finish. Think
of those hated school obstacle courses, only infinitely worse, but run by ‘The
Demon Headmaster’! Lying face down in
mud whilst trying to avoid being whiplashed by dancing electricity cables conjures
up an interesting image! And it is deliberately
very, very muddy!
Gig-wise,
Rupe seems to have been on a year-long ‘tour’ with ‘Jenny Darren & the Lady
Killers’. She reached the first round of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ until one of
the tabloids apparently uncovered something from Jenny’s past that didn’t fit
their expectation of what a rock’ n roll granny should be (!), but which had
the effect of getting her voted off the show.
However, this did create a flurry of excitement for a while! ‘Dealer’, meanwhile, has a faithful Belgian
fan, who always comes to their gigs in England, as long as they’re within a
certain radius of the ferry port, so that he can slip into work the following
morning (presumably with very dark sunglasses).
‘Ow!’ … (pfizz!) … oh, a little pile of dust … where’s that Igor when
you need him? Now that’s one helluva
fan! And thus came about the Belgium, Germany and France festival mini-tour in the
summer. Fame at last … yay!
Dealer’s name is at least getting known in Europe … whoohoo!
Meanwhile,
the rest of us lead rather prosaic lives (well, mostly me). Bob is definitely getting into this
retirement thing. Mostly, he’s into
environmental activism … Green Party, People’s Vote, anti-fracking, Friends of
the Earth … However, earlier in the year, he started going to T’ai Chi classes,
which seems to involve learning lots of complicated moves, which follow on from
each other, and executed with grace, poise and good balance (!). (Arghh! … cognitive dissonance … the words
Bob, grace and poise in the same sentence do not compute … ). The process of learning complex moves helps
with sustaining mental and physical abilities, without actually stressing you
out, or making you sweat profusely! Now
that sounds like my sort of exercise!
Unfortunately, the guy running it became ill, and the lessons
stopped. Then Bob discovered ‘The Men’s
Shed’. As the title would suggest, this
is an all-day club for blokes who like making things. You just turn up and use the tools that are
there, and meet other like-minded folks.
Odd projects happen there. For instance,
a trebuchet … yes, someone was constructing an actual working scaled-down
version of a Roman trebuchet! What a
whacky, but fun idea to have come up with!
After many tweaks and alterations, it was finally ready to … um … pound
the garden wall? Hmm … maybe it could be
adapted for tennis practice …
It
was mid-August, a hot day down at Y Ddôl, and Joy the Intrepid was feeling
rather tired after the many skirmishes with the evil briars. Suddenly, a wave of nausea took over … was it
the water? (the filter hadn’t been changed for … um … two years) … could it be
too many blackberries (the briars’ revenge)?
After about a week, the problem subsided, though never entirely went
away. For 7 months, I had been feeling
on top of the world, so maybe the briar-killing ought to cease for a while, to
allow us oldies to gather our strength for the next onslaught. Meanwhile, it was scan time again. The results were a bit grim, or rather v.
grim. More poisoning … noooo!
Just when my hair had grown back and was looking good … curses! Those sneaky tumour cells had developed cunning
plans and clever tricks in order to sabotage our containment plan. The cancer
had out-evolved the ability of the Tamoxifen to contain it. So now, my life revolves around twice-weekly
visits to the hospital, interminable waiting, long slow poisonings, and feeling
like death warmed up. Hmm … reminds me
of life in a Victorian melodrama, where the heroine is slowly being fed arsenic
by her wicked uncle in order to obtain her fortune … except the fortune bit …
haven’t got one of those!
The
good news is that I’ve finally finished the paper on our joint pyrite decay
project in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History that had been
started three years ago with Phil Hadland, who also used to work at the Museum
– yay! I’ve sent it off to ‘Geological
Curator’, and I’m hoping that they will accept it for publication, as they are
producing an issue totally devoted to things pyrite sometime in late Spring
2019. Fingers crossed! With a bit of luck, there won’t be too many
alterations, or I can’t guarantee that the old blitzed brain will be able to
cope … what’s pyrite? … what’s a paper? …
I’m
so sorry that this letter is so late (due to the above circumstances) … but on
the bright side, it is still officially Yuletide … though possibly a little
late for Christmas as we know it, Jim.
So, we’ll wish you all a Happy Yule instead! Unless you’re in Iceland, where the evil Yule
Cat may get you …
Lots
and lots of love and best wishes from Joy, Bob, Rupert, Tamsin and Manué
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