At the bus stop – 2

Hello.

Hello.

Have we met?

Yes, I believe we have.

Is that so?  Did I tell you I am 87 years old?

You did mention it, yes.

I can see you don’t believe me.  Look, here’s my ID card.  Look at the date.  87, see.  I’m 87 years old.

As you were, I recall, the last time we met.

Clearly I’m older now than last time we met.

That is true.  Just as I, too, am older.

But you have aged more than me in the interim.

Well, I don’t think that’s …..

It’s a fact.  Look here, I’m 87 – did I mention that? – and over the last two weeks I have grown 0.044% older.  If you are 65 then you will have aged by 0.059% and a youngster of 40 will have aged by a massive 0.095% in the same time.  So, unless you are more than 87 – and I can clearly see that you are not – then you must have aged more than me in the interim.

(I confess I was at a loss for words)

But anyway, aren’t you the fellow who likes tomatoes?

I have no problem in recalling our previous conversation on the subject, sir.

Well, it’s no good expecting me to supply you with tomatoes every time we meet, you know.  I don’t have the capacity to carry the stock.

I was not ……

Besides it’s a new moon.  You shouldn’t eat tomatoes when there’s a new moon, you know.

I had no idea ……..

Oh yes.  And if you eat one while the moon is shining on you through glass then, well, I don’t like to talk about it.  So don’t ask me again.

I’ve never heard ….

I’ve got some beans here somewhere.  (He rummaged in a small plastic bag that was draped over his arm, eventually finding a dried haricot bean which he held between his first finger and thumb and examined as if he had never seen one before.)

But anyway, let me tell you something important about this Greek thing.

You mean the Greek budget deficit?  The 130 billion euro rescue plan?

I’m talking about the Greek restaurant at the bottom of the road.

Oh, I see.  I have to admit I’ve never been there.

They could use some of the 130 billion euros to smarten the place up, that’s for sure.  And a bit more to employ a decent chef.

I don’t think they’ll be spending any of the 130 billion on our local Greek restaurant.

You’d be right. But they should.  I mean, they’re not going to actually spend any of the money on the Greeks, are they?  Greek people aren’t actually going to get their mitts on the filthy lucre, are they?

I don’t think so.

It’s all going to go to the banks, you know, and the others who caused the problem  in the first place.

Well …….

So, business as usual then.  And that’s why they should spend some of that money on the restaurant.

I don’t quite follow.

Well, the owners of that restaurant aren’t Greek, you know.  And I’ve heard that if you go in there you pay a lot of money and get very little back in return.  Just like a bank run by people who aren’t Greeks.

So …..

So they should get some of the money.  As long as no Greeks get their hands on the money it’ll be OK.

What you’re saying is that to solve the Greek financial problem the money should be given to anyone but the Greeks?

That’s about it, yes.

How is that going to work?

I have no idea how it is going to work.  But then no one else has got a clue anyway, especially those duffers in Brussels, so it’s got as good a chance of working as anything else.  Of course, they could give all the money to me.

What would you do with it?

I wouldn’t give it to the Greeks, that’s for sure.

Just like the EU then?  I see your point. There is some logic to your argument.

Oh yes. Well look, here’s my bus.  See you.

Bye.

At the Bus Stop ……

Hello.

Oh, hello.

I know you, don’t I?

Er, we’ve met. Briefly.

Good.  That’s good.  Did I tell you that I’m 87 years old?

Well, actually……..

Yes, 87.  Look I’ll show you.  Here’s my identity card.  It’s here somewhere.  I always keep it handy to show people who don’t believe that I’m 87 years old.  People don’t, you know.  I don’t look 87, do I? Yes, here it is.  Look. See.  Look at that date.

Well, I’d never have ……

Amazing , isn’t it?

I am given the hard stare, a look from a man whose rheumy but still penetrating eyes can enter the soul and seek out deception.  I grin inanely and try to avoid direct eye contact.  It isn’t easy.  I stare, instead, at the ID card held close to my nose.  I nod in a dumb way.  As if I were hung from the back window of a car.

You know we’ll be paying our electricity bills directly to the suppliers soon, don’t you? (The grizzled head nodded towards a shop across the road)

I don’t think I understand……

You do know that the Chinese have bought the national electricity company?

I had heard that they had bought significant shares in it.

They’ve bought it.  Our electricity is now Chinese electricity.

I think it still comes from the same sources.  Hydro-electric from our rivers and imported from Spain and France.

It’s Chinese now, wherever it comes from.  Did you know Chinese electricity is hotter than our electricity?

No, I didn’t hear ……

Oh yes, it’s hotter, so we have to use less of it.

Oh but really ……

Use less of it.  And the prices have gone up.  We use less but pay more.  Very clever.  Cunning, these Chinese.

I’m not sure…..

It’s a fact.  And that’s why they have all these places around; to make sure you pay up and hand over your cash.  Like the one over there.

The venerable gentleman pointed a knobbly finger towards a shop across the road.  In the window of this shop were many items displayed, from clothes to batteries to children’s toys to toilet paper.

And do you know you have to pay in cash now? And do you know that you have to pay every week now?  (And here he lowered his voice and leaned in as a co-conspirator).  And do you know that you won’t be getting any electricity bills anymore?  They know, you know.  Each one of them know exactly how much you’ve used.  Every week.  You just walk into that shop and they will just look at you and they will know.

He looked across at the Chinese supermarket without malice or resentment.  It was just another one of life’s inevitable outcomes.  He pulled out of a reverie and put away his ID card which he was still holding in his left hand.

 

Anyway, something that is more important young man: do you like tomatoes?  Huh?  Do you?

Indeed I do, sir.

Good, good.  Do you know that tomatoes don’t grow in China?

I really don’t think that ……

It’s a fact.  It’s the light.  It’s the wrong kind of light there.  Do you know that during the day the sky is green in China, and at night it is a sort of purple?  Tomatoes don’t like that, you know.

Oh come now, sir, I really …….

It’s a fact.  Encourages pandas but discourages tomatoes.  Now look at this.

From his coat pocket the ancient one pulled a large dark red tomato.

I grew this myself.  You can have it if you want.  (He gave no indication of passing it me).  But I tell you what, (and here he leaned in conspiratorially again), I left one of these hidden in that shop (the wavering finger pointed yet again to the emporium of Chinese bric-a-brac) and guess what?  It disappeared!  Gone.  Disappeared into thin air.  (He looked around furtively and then spoke in a stage whisper).  It’s the electricity, you know.  Too hot.

Now really…..

Ah now, here’s the bus.  Are you catching this one?  No?  Well it was a pleasure to talk to you sir.

Ceia de Natal

Christmas Eve Supper

It’s best to go properly prepared for these things.  Robert Falcon Scott failed to prepare properly for his expedition to the South Pole, and look what happened to him.  This will be no less demanding.  But I’ve learned something from Scott: I’m not taking horses.

•  Extra thick thermal long-johns.  Check
• Two pairs of socks – cotton underneath and thick wool on top.  Check
• Thermal long sleeved t-shirt.  Check
• Moleskin trousers.  Check
• Double thick brushed cotton shirt.  Check
• Thin lamb’s wool jumper.  Check
• Thick, chunky Aran jumper with collar.  Check
• Thick soled, lined boots.  Check
• Fleece-lined winter jacket bought in Helsinki.  Check
• Various scarves, woolly hats, ear muffs, fur-lined leather gloves.  Check

All set for supper at the in-laws then.  Oh, one more thing before leaving.  Put on all the clothes in the house and sit on top of the radiator for ten minutes.  Ensure maximum warmth through body from the beginning.

They’d been a partial reprieve and I didn’t have to be there until the meal was almost served.  The missus would ring me when they put the potatoes on to boil, she said.  The drive takes nearly an hour.  An hour to boil potatoes?  I knew that the cabbage would have been cooking already.  As for the salt cod ……..

•  Turn heater in car to maximum.  Check
• Horses safely stabled.  Check

One way to tell it’s Christmas Eve at the in-laws – there is a log fire burning in the dining room.  It’s the only day of the year.  Mind you, it doesn’t do much good as it sits in a corner and only heats part of a wall.  The icy mountain air drifting in from the windows and doors defeats any calorific boost in seconds.  Still, it’s the thought that counts.  Deposit my freshly made Stollen with all the other cakes lining up for execution on the sideboard.  First time I’d made my own marzipan.  Would family settle for me dining exclusively on Stollen?  Remove treacherous thought.  Arrival cunningly timed and the twins have just left.  Lovely kids, the twins, but they bring cresting waves of noise in their wake.  That leaves another nephew and niece but they’ve grown beyond the noise stage.  In fact, only ten of us.  A small family party.  Was double that last year.  Curiously, though, the same amount of food is prepared as if for twenty.  Just in case, if you ever asked.

Father-in-law is sitting in the only armchair, wearing his outdoor coat, a fine hat and is draped with two warm blankets; clearly he’s dressed for dinner.  I risk taking my fleece-lined Finnish jacket off but insist on sitting with my back to the sideboard, away from the windows and doors.  Others aren’t so plucky and keep outdoor coats on, tightly zipped up.  Time to bring on the bacalhau.  Under the table a vicious little wind starts to tug at the stored heat in my feet.  Makes mental note: next year bring blanket for knees as well.

Boiled bacalhau smells like a pub taproom the morning after a darts match.  It probably tastes the same, but I have yet to try eating a morning-after taproom.  Each year my amazement that boiled salt cod, boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage is the gastronomic highlight of the seasonal calendar is heightened.  Even as I look and smell the mountainous heap of steaming, and rapidly cooling, mush I mentally try to shake off disbelief.  A plate of fried bacalhau appears next to my plate.  Knowledge of my dislike for the boiled variety has travelled to the kitchen.  There are ten large pieces of cod on the plate. Mum-in-law, ever concerned for my well being, says they are all for me.  On a normal day I could manage about half of one.  The look in her eye makes it clear that she will be checking from time to time that I am doing my duty.  I calculate a kilo and a half of fish on the plate next to my plate.  I eye the Stollen longingly.  The potatoes, cabbage and some washed out carrots appear together in two huge pots.  They had clearly given up the fight to be vegetables long ago.  Now are just loosely connected fibrous tissues covered in primeval gloop.  I remember my attempts to bring the knowledge of crisply cooked vegetables to the family table and the polite but firm rejection.  Plates are filled with taproom cod and sticky gloop and olive oil poured over with relish.  I pick at a piece of fried fish.  I can see mum-in-law watching me carefully.  She’s sharp, that one.  No pulling wool over her eyes.  Pulling wool over my knees would be good idea though.

Nephew avoids putting on ‘Christmas music’ by turning the volume down to virtually inaudible.  Complaints, and he turns it up to reveal what sounds like an early Handel opera.  This is not Christmas music but nephew mysteriously claims it was given to him by me.  Preposterous accusation, but so is any other explanation.  Quasi-early Handel replaced by a CD of music that has clearly been copied from the Christmas Muzak library from a supplier of muzak to shopping malls and elevator companies.  A suitable background for quickly freezing gloop.  I push a second piece of fish around my plate, and I can feel a pair of eyes on me. The trick, I learned long ago, is never to arrange knife and fork in the ‘I’m finished’ position.  Also, always make sure there is some uneaten food left on plate.  Refusal to accept fourth, fifth and sixth helpings always offends.

Niece decides to take photos of the assembled, be-coated and blanketed revellers.  She steps back to frame the photo, and a guttering candle seizes the synthetic material of her hooded, polyester-lined tartan jacket and it goes up in flames.  Various frantically flapping hands save her long curly hair from following a similar fate.  The smell of burned plastic improves the perfume from the meal briefly.  I close my eyes and think of marzipan.

As the plates are cleared I realise my mistake.  By sitting with my back to the sideboard I am a long way from the door.  My escape route is inaccessible and it is too late to arrange an alternative.  Brother-in-law appears with a collection of rosaries and the family prayers start.  This consists of multiple incantations of the rosary at breakneck speed and various worthy causes are nominated by family members.  Normally I would be sitting in the car with the heater blowing out hot air at this point.  Never mind.  Close eyes and think of the marzipan that has just been eaten.  After a while I realise why the parts of the rosary are called decades: that is how long they seem to take, even at breakneck speed.

And then presents.  Mercifully modest and mainly useful presents are distributed.  No flashy, gaudy knick-knacks here and nothing that costs more than pocket money.  Tick ‘approved’ box.  Then time to travel back to the city just as it turns midnight and fireworks explode from villages hidden in the darkened valleys.  “Baby Jesus is born”, says the missus, and I bite my tongue.

β(g) җ gα + α ≤ 1

β(g) җ g^α + α ≤ 1

I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with the Large Hadron Collider or the first glimpses of Higgs Boson being reported from that mysterious space under Switzerland, but I have recently witnessed at first hand the elasticity of time and its fickle nature.  Actually, the Higgs Boson is about mass, not time, but they are obviously linked because I have it on good authority (alright, very tenuous authority) that time dilation and mass changes are one and the same phenomena.  You can see why I’ve been quiet for a few weeks, can’t you?  Anyway, while the boffins living underground, dwarf-like, in Switzerland and France have been getting their quarks all excited, I have solved a few mysteries of my own.

Time, you see, changes speed depending on what is controlling it.  For forty years or more I have had other people – entities really – pulling the clock strings (think Swiss cuckoo clocks; note the LHC connection) and this has caused actions to be done in a certain way which, even at the time, you knew was actually wasting a lot of time.  This is true even when (or especially when?) time seems to be stretched and to last forever; those moments when clocking-off time seems never to come, though it does as it must, but just the anticipation of it exhausts you.  When time is like this it is very unsatisfactory because there is little to show for it when the section of it you are measuring is over.  The other result is time running too fast, when impossible deadlines and unreasonable demands from the same entities that pull the strings all collide, like electrons rushing around under Geneva, and the huge jumble of results that is the consequence is as unsatisfying as those clock-watching-moments which produce little.  The fact that both extremes are controlled by these entities – let’s call them evil entities for want of a better description – is both contradictory but unsurprising because the overall intention had not been to control time but to control you.

For the first time in my life I am (more or less) in control of my time.  Yes, I know that there are other external factors beyond my control, but they have assumed a minority status and I find that I don’t care too much about them.  The effect of being in control of your own time is a heady experience and I doubt I shall get used to it for months to come, but first results are very encouraging.  In the first place my blood pressure has come down to somewhere less than a pressure cooker about to blow its release valve for the first time in years and, as important, I’m actually getting work done in the shake of a lamb’s tail or, due to the actual work I am engaged in, the shake of a lamb’s tale and I am absurdly pleased with how much I can do when I’m the only one deciding what I shall do and when.  Of course that means that I then have swathes of time left over when I can do whatever I want, and one of the things I want to do at the moment is to walk around with a huge contented grin on my face and annoy people who are still being whipped by the evil entities.  You have to get your pleasures where you find them, I say.

Of course, the picture in the spare room, which has been waiting for a picture hook to be hammered in the wall on which to hang for months, is still waiting, collecting dust, on the top of the suitcase where it was left.  There is no appointed time for that action.  It appears on no list of mine. It will happen when it happens.  Maybe I’ll do it before I finish this sentence …….. no I didn’t.  The difference is that the lack of picture-hook-hammered-into-wall is no longer the issue it was when most of my time was in the hands of the evil entities; it had always been simply one of those jobs that ought to be done but when, oh, but when?  As such it was an object that caused stress, which is not what a water colour ought to do.  And so it is with a zillion other little tasks: there is ample time to do them thus they no longer cause me a problem and thus they get done from time to time.  What a generous expression that is: from time to time, one bit of time piled on the other or with gaps in between, or meeting each other back to front or upside down.  See how one’s perspective of time can change?

Now it’s time for ……. whatever I want to do next.  Perhaps I’ll have a little nap while I think about that.  Or perhaps I won’t.

Welsh Morning Song

The grey, gull-grey sky grazes grassy tufts, grazed too by Gareth’s ram.  There is enough for both but the dull, gull-grey sky drifts greedily; on the look-out for lush hollows to sneak into, perhaps.  Gareth’s ram takes no notice but listens to the muffled sound of Tudor’s sheep higher up the hill.  They are being lined up by the farmer, his long coat overlapping his tall rubber boots, to get a better signal for the mobile phone, he says.  Black nose to snaggled tail they stand forty strong –‘ For goodness sakes’, girls, keep it steady or we’ll never get 3G in this weather.’  Gareth’s ram waits his chance for the digital ewes to return to ovine opportunity, the sound of their bleating baffled by the foggy dew and Tudor’s cadenced entreaties.

It is another morning in the Ogau Valley though it feels like yesterday evening and tomorrow afternoon rolled up together as damp, murky whirls of the gull-grey mist tangle the eyelashes.  A slow low-buzzed fly is overwhelmed by the futility of November and lands on its back, legs kicking feebly, wings all buzzed out.  Silence.

Quiet now at the other end of the valley where Mrs Olwyn Owen – who went to bed with a full set of teeth and awoke with none, a victim of dant y tylwyth teg, an overzealous tooth fairy being the only explanation – has supped some tea with gummy slurps as she stares out at the dark light of a shrouded hill. A shadow passes by. Gareth looking for his errant ram, maybe. And Gareth, thinks Mrs Owen, is a tolerable man, unless he is in a good mood, of course.  The mists close behind the shadow.  Today, no doubt, he’ll be a tolerable man.

Time now to plan the day until time for bed again, sleep again when the grey of the day slips unnoticed into grey half-remembered sleep.  With enough tea the day will be conquered.  The fly twitches its legs unheard in an unseen finale and Tudor abandons his experiment with data-driven sheep and Gareth’s ram picks up its head and moves up the slope as Tudor moves down unseen, with a swish of coat against rubber boots.

The low, gull-grey sky hugs the ground more tightly in anticipation and Mrs Owen pours another cup of strong tea before searching again for her teeth.

By a Whisker

I should have known it wasn’t going to be the best of journeys.  Even getting to the car was a struggle.  Our garage is on the other side of our street, and to cross the street required an ankle length raincoat tightly zipped and buckled and a hat rammed so tightly over my head that I swear brain matter was oozing out of my ears.  Of course, the full length gabardine acted like a sail and I fair floated across the road, which was probably just as well as the surface was more like a river than a road.  As if that wasn’t warning enough, once I was in the car and driving back down this river-like road I stopped at the pedestrian crossing to allow a diminutive old woman holding a blown-inside-out umbrella like a sword in front of her, to creak oh-so-slowly across the crossing and looking for all the world as if she had walked straight out of Pieter Breughel’s The Witch of Malleghem.  The warning signs continued as I got onto the inner circular road around the city and crossed the Arrábida Bridge, seventy metres above the river.  I do believe I was at seventy metres plus a centimetre or two because I’m not sure the car was actually touching the road surface at that point, and the steering wheel had become little more than an ornamental display.  In an extraordinarily reckless display of stupidity I carried on driving towards Coimbra, some 110 kilometres away, where I had promised to give a plenary talk followed by a workshop to a group of trainee teachers.

Normally the journey time is 75 minutes; it’s a journey I know well.  Because of the weather – the warning had been increased from Yellow Alert to Orange Alert overnight (number 3 in a scale of 4 levels of danger) – I was going to double the time needed, and I motored along at an uncharacteristically sedate pace along the inner lane of the motorway.  Of course, there were cars being driven as if it were a bright, dry, windless day, roaring at 150 kph on the outside lane in a fury of spray.  These vehicles are driven by those who sit behind the wheeel in the firm belief that injury and death are what happens to other people. I, meanwhile, wasn’t happy about sharing a lane with trucks, but there wasn’t really that much choice.  Except I could have gone by train, so why hadn’t I?  Earlier, the time I would save by driving had seemed well worth it.  Now I wasn’t so sure.

The rain reached that particular intensity when double speed wipers simply won’t handle the amount of water hitting the windscreen, which is usually the point when I consider pulling off the road to let the worst pass.  Just as I had that thought it was as if the car had read my mind and I found myself going sideways onto the hard-shoulder in a strange, crab-like movement.  I was vaguely aware of something not quite right behind me, such as headlights very close and at a curious angle and a distinct feeling that the back end of the car was going to reach the hard-shoulder before the front end.  Which it did just as the curious headlights behind spun away in a graceful dance and came to a sudden stop some ten or fifteen metres behind.  I stopped gingerly in the middle of a roadside lake just as a second car appeared in a splash in front of me, facing the wrong way, the white face and black, terrified eyes of the driver staring towards me unseeing flick flick flick through wipers as they tracked across the windscreen.  The noises then seemed to catch up with the visuals, as if the sound track wasn’t synchronised with the action, thumps and wet squeals apologetically arriving late.

I’ve been in accidents before and a familiar calmness, surrounding a slight detachment from reality, descended on me.  With a clarity of mind that I lost later I realised that the car behind and the car in front had collided and as they spun out of control had involved me, without so much as a by-your-leave, the cheek of it.  I had stalled my engine, and I simply turned off the ignition, turned off the headlights and put on the hazard lights and vaguely wondered if the reflective waistcoat that is obligatory wear at such ignoble functions was in the pocket behind the driver’s seat or in the boot.  That was the most important thing that I thought about for thirty seconds.  The subsequent thirty seconds were spent contemplating the fact that I was going to have to go wading through the temporary lake to get to the boot where other obligatory things like warning triangles would be found.  Leaving the warmth and comfort of the car didn’t seem like a good idea and it occurred to me, just for a fleeting moment, that I should simply drive away and pretend that it had never happened.  After all, the driver of the car in front was still staring his petrified look and surely wouldn’t notice if I quietly slipped away, but my reverie was broken by a thump on the window.  The driver of the car behind was somewhat hysterical.

It took a little while, and a lot of rain to run down my neck, before I was able to persuade the overwrought fellow road-user that I was an innocent pawn in this game of fate.  In his mind everyone on the road was to blame for his woe, except himself of course, and on hearing my thick, foreign accent he jumped to the usual conclusion that as it is always the foreigners fault, he was talking to the main culprit.  By this time the other driver had snapped out of his journey to Hades and was also standing forlornly in the rain, though seemingly oblivious to it.  We were joined by others who had either seen what had happened or were simply responding to the aftermath and seeing if help was needed. One by one they were all rounded on by our overexcited friend who accused them each of causing the accident.  Someone, it seemed, had already called the police.  No one was hurt so we didn’t need ambulances or fire engines or mountain rescue teams, but I thought that a life boat would have been useful at this stage.  It occurred to me only then to look around my car and survey the damage, but when I looked I could see nothing except the merest whisper of a scrape on the rear bumper where Mr Hysterical had gently steered me onto the hard shoulder.  Another millimetre or so and he would have missed me entirely and I would have probably motored on, oblivious to all that was happening.  Or else I would have driven straight into the car that was now facing the wrong way in front of  me.

There was nothing to do but wait for the police.  I sat in the car and tried to start the engine so I could put the demister on.  The motor turned but didn’t catch.  I put my head on the steering wheel – which suddenly had a use again – and rued my decision to delay having that sticky valve in the fuel injector seen to.

The rest rolled out over another hour or more.  Phone calls were made, plans were cancelled and the police came with their clipboards and breathalysers and I gave my version of events, such as it was, and they told me I could go.  If only.  The engine eventually cooled enough to start and get hot all over again, and I proceeded in the most cautious way possible to the next exit, where I looped the loop and headed back home where I poured the water out of my shoes, changed my clothes and had a very strong cup of tea.

The lesson is beware of old ladies crossing the street with inside-out umbrellas – they are a sign that one should go no further.

Autumn Flavours

Two ways to know it is autumn:  I’ve spent more time than I had anticipated making jam in the kitchen – that’s one sure sign; the other is that it is raining outside in a manner that Noah would have recognised.  Perhaps I should have been busy with hammer and nails and planks of wood instead of chopping up quinces with a large, heavy Sabatier knife.  Perhaps.

I’ve commented recently in a Stateside magazine about the word ‘quince’ and how it seems to grab the attention of a lot of people.  Some, like Stephen Fry, like it for the sound, and Mr Fry puts it amongst his favourite English words.  Others, like Melvin Burgess, obviously find there is an essential social-fabric requirement to have quinces around (in the garden, hanging from trees, for example) and to talk about them rather more than is common.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr Burgess has a quince app on his phone.  Perhaps he’ll tell us.  A brief survey of students at the British Council recently brought the word ‘marmelo’ – the Portuguese for quince – quite high on the list of their favourite words.  Obviously this curious fruit is more important to us than some have given it credit for.

Brother-in-law brought us kilos of quince from his in-law’s farm and, as usual when you get over 20 kilos of any fruit, you start to look at ways of turning it into jam.  The standard Portuguese way to use quince is by making marmelada (which is where the English word marmalade comes from, by the way, but has nothing to do with oranges) and which means that there is a surfeit of the stuff around at the moment, so I wanted to do something different.  By happenchance the box of quinces got put down next to a pile of vegetable marrows – our kitchen looks a little like Harvest Festival at an Anglican village church at the moment – and so it seemed obvious to try and match the two.  The marrows were an accident in as much as we threw down some seeds from last year’s bumper crop, expecting little as we didn’t plant them, rather than cast them in an old fashioned sort of way.  Up they sprung. We never quite make the courgette stage – one week they are too small to pick and then the following Saturday when we return to the farm they have taken over the field and have to be manhandled by six burly men and an ox to get them out of the ground.  My mum reckons we should plant the seeds on a Wednesday so we could catch them midway.

So quince and marrow jam it was to be.  Happenchance of food stuff has become a way with me, ever since the chickens got out and laid eggs under the lemon tree and I suddenly remembered lemon curd.  I have a wonderful, long-out-of-print book by Beryl Wood called ‘Let’s Preserve It’ and it contains a most eclectic collection of weird and wonderful recipes for bottling fruit and vegetables which go beyond the normal imagination. Beetroot and ginger jelly, anyone?  The page with the quince and marrow jam recipe fell open when I took the book from the shelf, and since then a pan large enough to make soup for every hungry person in the city of hungry people has been filled with fruit and vegetable and sugar and now, following  a higher than expected use of calorific energy, is two thirds full and the colour changed from pale white and uncertain green to rich yellow and finally to a warm, sumptuous orangey-red.

Proper autumn colours.  Pity about the rain.

Patience is not a virtue, more a way of life

I’m not getting my hopes up too much, but the builders say they’ll start on the renovation of our house in the country on Wednesday.  Normally, you might think, that would be a fairly positive piece of news, but the problem we have with this information is that it has been six years since we started this project and we aren’t any further forward with it than we were then.  First it was the architects, who listened carefully to everything we wanted done, and everything we didn’t want done.  Then they went and produced a beautifully made model of precisely the opposite of what we wanted done, and consequently had designed exactly the kind of house that we would never dream of living in.  Of course, like all architects here, the design of a house is based entirely on what would look good as photos in the trade magazine, regardless of what it would be like to live in.  Some friends of ours have a house that ought to have great views of the ocean but doesn’t because the architect eschewed traditional windows for narrow slits – like on a castle battlements – claiming this would give tantalising cinema-like glimpses of the ocean rather than boring views of dull old Atlantic sunsets.  Naturally it got a good spread in the trade magazine.  Our architect was therefore most disappointed when I offered to crush the cardboard and balsa wood model under my heel.  So literally back to the drawing board, and eventually – three attempts later – we got something approaching what we wanted.  Eighteen months had now passed.

Time to get permission from the council to do the work.  One of the treasures of the relatively remote town of Celorico de Basto, where the council offices are located, is their ability to hang onto every last scrap of red tape left over from the old days, when Salazar ruled with an iron fist and rubber stamps, and incorporate it seamlessly into the modern state’s byzantine system.  It was a matter of who you know rather than what, and we knew no one, so we had to rely on Tricky Trickster, the architect, to help us.  Another year slips by.

Getting builders quotes ought to be a fairly simple job.  I’d have thought so, especially in the current economic climate.  The architect’s own pet builders had quoted us an extraordinary amount, so we sought some quotes from other builders.  This involved numerous on-site discussions, and visits to the various trade suppliers that would provide the kind of stone we wanted for the walls, the kind of iron we wanted for the railings, the kind of wood we wanted for the floors.  A full year after asking for a quotation we were still waiting to be sent one, from any of the three builders.  Another reminder.  ‘What was it you wanted us to do again?’  More on site meetings with (by now) seriously amended architects drawings because, in the interim, we’d refined our own ideas.  The plans submitted to the council and approved by them were beginning to look less and less like the plans we were discussing – again – with the builders.  Should we resubmit?  I still wake in terror in the night at the thought of doing that again.  We plodded on without the added weight of even more soul-sucking bureaucracy.

Eventually, six months after that, we got a quote we had asked for only eighteen months previously, and from only one of the three builders we had contacted.  It was half the price of the original quote from Slick Alec’s, the architect’s buddies.  Perhaps it had been worth the wait.

For the next couple of years we wait hopefully for the builders to turn up.  We wondered if we should abandon the whole project, but we’d already sunk a few thousand into it so we’d better hang on and make a bit of noise.  Though that won’t do.  These are local builders and known to all the community, including the family.  Can’t have them being upset by us making too much of a noise.  Besides once they’ve done that house over there down the hill, and the one further up the hill, see – the one with orange roof? – then they will come to us.  No panic.  I was telling all this to an acquaintance, also an ex-patriot Brit, and he nodded his head.  He’d ordered a new immersion heater to be put into the farmhouse he owned, and had been surprised when the item had been delivered in its box within a week.  Six months later he was still waiting for the plumber to plumb it in.  He complained about the amount of time he had been waiting.  The plumber, it seems, had looked at him with baleful eyes and said ‘You city folk.  Always in a hurry.’ and shambled off for another two months before connecting it, a  job that took less than a morning.

Of course, other jobs have come in since, between the houses up and down the hill, and they seem to get these jobs done reasonably quickly.  An emergency arises, as they do, and ‘We’ll do that first’ is heard against our protestations.  ‘It’ll only take three days’ and a month later they finish the three day job.  This caused us to ask a few questions.  It seemed that most people were paying by the day for the work to be done: no one else had asked for quotes for the whole job.  We, it seemed, were the exception.  The people who had the three day job had paid for a month’s work.  Clearly we were at the bottom of the pile and would have to wait for more lucrative jobs to be cleared first.  Meanwhile we suspect that the good weather is running out.  The first job is the roof.  No doubt they will use the turning of the weather as an excuse not to do the work until the weather clears.  Perhaps next year or, with global warming being what it is, possibly the year after?

Which is why I don’t actually believe the builders will arrive on Wednesday.  And even if they do, I don’t expect them to stay longer than it takes for a cigarette and a beer.

Odd numbers

There are some journeys which, in themselves, are pleasant and uneventful and yet memorable for curious reasons.  Last week I had to go to Segovia in Spain for a spot of literary hobnobbing, tied in with some work, and because I had to take quite a lot of gear (most of it ‘just in case’ stuff) I decided to drive.  The round trip is a little over a thousand kilometres – six hours in each direction – and the missus jumped at the chance of half a week in a mediaeval city on the sistema central rather than in the office.  She’s funny like that.  It also meant we could take turns with the driving, making the whole trip little more than a pleasant jaunt.

The outward journey was easy enough, crossing the eerily deserted border at Vilar Formoso/Fuentes de Oñoro and then via Cuidad Rodrigo onto the hot, dusty northern meseta under peerless blue skies.  I love this country, though I suspect I would hate to live there: empty, endless brown and yellow plains with excellent and empty roads connecting the sudden, gloriously amazing sight of Salamanca with the rugged walled city of Ávila.  We’d stopped off in some fly-blown village, Peñeranda de Bracamonte, for petrol and to be stared at by a population of aged beings who had clearly never seen a foreign plated car before – unabashed, hard staring.  In all, nothing to talk about at all, until we arrived, five hours and forty minutes after setting off, at the city limits of Segovia where we were greeted by a flash of lightening and a sudden roar of thunder and rain so heavy it rivalled a lake for density.  For those who don’t know Segovia then what you need to know is that it is built on a steep hill, of course, with a Disney-like castle at one end (Disney, in fact, modelled their trademark castle on Segovia’s El Alacazar), a wedding-cake of a cathedral in the middle and a magnificent Roman aqueduct at the other end.  The roads leading steeply up to this little marvel are all cobbled with granite setts which, when wet, become treacherously slippery, especially when wet after a long dry spell.  In other words in precisely the conditions we found ourselves in on arrival.  Now I wasn’t concerned about our car – it had four spankingly new tyres and had just been serviced and would have leapt up the greasy roads like an impala being chased by a lion.  What did concern us was the bus in front of us which was clearly not at all happy with the state of roads.  The back end of the bus, if you’ll pardon the expression, was sliding about sideways like a hippo in mud, clearing a swathe through the traffic.  I’ll give the driver his due: he wasn’t put off by the alarming antics of his bus and didn’t seem too concerned for the emotional well being of his few passengers either.  Up he went, slippedy-slidey all over the place, fighting for traction at every bend and occasionally sliding backwards.  And in case you haven’t got the picture quite clear in your mind, we were directly behind it.  Less and less directly so, I have to admit, as I allowed more and more slippage room between us and the beast, though ignoring the missus’s increasingly shrill calls to pull in and let it disappear out of sight.  All was well.  The bus made one final slide against the old city gate as it waddled through, the road flattened out, and off it sped.  The rain stopped and we found our hotel – actually a palace, but enough of that.  There was no more rain for the next five days.  It had simply been arranged for us to have this elaborate and faintly absurd entrance into town, I’m sure, and I spent the next few days looking forward to meeting the Mayor of Segovia so I could thank him.

The journey back was on even quieter, even hotter roads.  At 33C in the shade, it was considerably warmer on the burnt plains as we retraced our steps.  We had got back onto the autovia between Salamanca and Cuidad Rodrigo, where elaborately painted cows grace the side of the road, when we saw the first sign to Portugal. 111 kms to the border, it said, and we thought that a very neat number.  The next sign said 77 kms and the one after that 55 kms.  Interesting coincidence of numbers, we thought, and I mentioned that we ought to have one that said 11 kms and another that said 1 km, just for good measure.  And we did.  Was that deliberate? we mused.  As we crossed the border the overhead auto-estrada signs in Portugal said that the time was 13.31, another oddity, while the temperature was 31.  It was beginning to feel a bit creepy.  I then remembered that the only bit of toll road we’d used, a tiny stretch on the A6 before Ávila, had cost the weird sum of 1 euro and 11 cents: €1.11.  There’s more.  We arrived back home five hours and twenty seven minutes after starting the engine in Segovia – I know that because I looked at the clock on the dashboard precisely at the moments of departure and arrival.  That’s 333 minutes, in case you haven’t worked it out.  And the total distance travelled since we’d left home? 1, 111 kms.

Creepy, I tell you.  Damned creepy.

Elegy for a goldfish

Why is it that pets always seem to die on Sundays?  It’s been over ten years since the finest mutt in all the world, ever, died, and that was on a Sunday night.  The second best dog in the world died about fifteen years before that, also on a Sunday.  In between all that, two cats died on a Sunday, though another one – always a cantankerous old puss – chose a Wednesday at the vet’s to shuffle off the feline coil.  Even the Bassett Hound that belonged to friends of friends, a huge, sulky hound that I’d promised to look after while aforementioned friends of friends went on holiday, morosely made it until 15 minutes into Sunday before expiring in a series of tremors that must have registered on the Richter scale while in the back of my car while I was waiting at traffic lights in Fazakerley, Liverpool.  The police car drawn up beside me had in it two uniformed policemen who observed the midnight spasms of the giant pooch, but they wisely decided against intervening, and sped away before the lights had even changed.  Possibly they remembered they’d left the kettle on.

This Sunday it was the turn of the little goldfish.  I know it’s not usual to mourn the loss of individual fish (we usually wait until we’ve wiped out a whole species before we do that) and, let me be honest, I eat enough fish in a week to be considered a mass murderer, but let not the passing of this small creature go unrecorded.

Until two years ago I gave no more thought to goldfish than most other people.  Little orangey things they were, that swam around in circles in bowls and who were well known for their short memories and for being prizes at fairgrounds.  So what?  It’s not as if we can bond with fish like we do with other pets – it would be counterproductive, for example, to take the fish for a walk, or to sit in front of the winter fire and stroke it upon one’s lap.  No fishy purring to be gained that way.  No finny sprints after sticks in the wood.

The missus had been given a goldfish by some weird company she did business with who thought that giving people live fish for Christmas was an acceptable thing to do.  She hid the wee beastie at work for some weeks before bringing it home.  She knows I take animals seriously. My position on this is that if you are going to take care of animals – whatever they are – then you should either do it properly or not at all.  Predictably, then, I was outraged at the cartoon-like round bowl the poor thing was trapped in, did my research and bought a proper tank with pumps and filters and lights and things.  And a kit to test the pH of the water, and another to test the nitrates and another to test the ammonia levels.  Doesn’t come cheap.  The fish looked awfully lonely in this big tank, so we went and bought it a companion.  It was the companion fish who has just died.

The fish – which was only ever known as ‘little fish’ (you may now easily guess the name of the other fish) was, of course, the one that got bullied by the other but also the one which displayed innate cunning and a distinct sense of humour.  Oh yes, this was a fish who knew a good practical joke when it saw one lining up.  Like it’s bigger companion it quickly got to recognise our voices and developed a set of endearing party tricks when it thought that a feed might be on the way.  Being a goldfish it thought that a feed might be on its way in almost any daylight hour.  That’s how they are.

The pair made a fairly decent comedy routine, with the little fish playing the straight man, leaving the showing off and the antics to his bigger companion.  I could swear that, at times, the little fish would glance at me after his mate had done something foolish, like dislodge all the aquarium plants, with a look that clearly said ‘Tch!  You can’t take him anywhere.’  You might say he was the quiet thoughtful one.

A couple of days ago he got sick and started to ignore food and slouched near the bottom of the tank.  His bigger, flashy companion took to pushing it up to the surface to eat – or at least, that’s what it looked like.  He certainly carried his ailing companion on his back for a bit. Googling for all known complaints for stressed goldfish didn’t help.  It wasn’t Ick and it wasn’t ammonia, nitrite or nitrate poisoning (we checked). We discovered an extraordinary and almost surreal website called, I kid you not, Goldfish Emergency 911, and we asked the young man at the pet shop.

I rummaged around in the garage for the older, smaller aquarium to convert into an emergency hospital room.  Little Fish seemed to revive for a while in the special solution we had prepared and floated in the last rays of the sun as they shone through the window into his hospital tank.  Then, as the sun sank, so did he and then followed a rapid decline.

So, goodbye Little Fish, and thank you for your winning ways.