Letter from Warwick: 40 of 2008

My dear family & friends

We’ve been to Portugal and we’re back. The weather didn’t quite play along with our plans, but it was good enough. Well, better than it was here. The Avon is full to overflowing and has burst its banks in several places, which means that it must have truly poured with rain while we were gone. The fields under the flight path into Birmingham Airport looked quite sodden as we glided in to land. Today has been dull, grey and overcast, but it hasn’t rained. That didn’t bother the dogs too much though as they were overjoyed to see me when I picked them up at the kennel this morning. I took them out for a long walk as soon as we got home, first to the Pastelaria Portuguesa and then to St Nicholas Park in Warwick. The dogs made a great game of chasing each other through the shallow, flooded areas in the park. I watched with interest as Edgar edged closer and closer to the river bank hidden beneath the flood waters. Finally, and inevitably, ground gave way beneath his front paws and he pitched into the river nose first with bum following over the top in a great splash. Slightly embarrassed, but undeterred, he reappeared to scrabble up the river bank and charge off after Hazel again. I wish I’d had a camera to capture the moment.

But let me skip back to last Thursday when we set our alarms for 03h30 so that we could get to Birmingham for our 07h00 flight to Faro. We could have slept another hour; it only took us about 20 minutes to get to the airport which meant that we had to sit around for nearly two hours until the flight was called. We did have one heart-stopping moment when we arrived and couldn’t find our airline or our flight listed on any of the boards. It’s just that second of panic when your heart skips a beat and you can hear blood rushing in your ears. As it turned out, however, Birmingham Airport has two departure terminals more-or-less right next to each other, and we were in the wrong one. A short walk through a shopping concourse took us to our check-in desk.

We were met by (my sister) Barbara and (husband) Terry at Faro Airport and proceeded straight to Faro Beach where we hunted around to find a café that was open and would afford us either a view of the beach or a view across the estuary to the city of Faro. Most of the cafés and kiosks (a quiosque in Portuguese) were closed and shuttered for winter. We settled on “O Electronico” (The Tram) where we ordered coffees, ham and cheese sandwiches, and medronho (meh-dron-yo), a Portuguese firewater distilled from the fruit of the arbutus, wild strawberries. Lucia and I basked like cats in the bright sunshine. Later Lucia and I strolled down to the water’s edge before driving inland to Barbara and Terry’s home at Espargal in the Algarvean hills.

I’ll give you a précis of our time. (The pics are in the usual place at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) On Thursday evening we went to dinner in the village of Benafim with a few of Barbara and Terry’s expatriate neighbours. The proprietor of the Café Coral and his French wife were a somewhat surprised to see us because Thursday and Friday had got a little muddled in French when Barbara made the reservation. On Friday morning we walked the dogs with Barbara around the fields and hills of Espargal. Terry recently injured his knee and has been unable to participate in the twice daily ritual. We began the walk in bright sunshine, which turned to cloud by the time we got home over an hour later, and then to a drenching downpour. We took Barbara to lunch in Alte and then to view the wares a local art gallery and one of the town’s many handicraft shops. In the evening it was out to dinner again with David and Dagmar Davies, old neighbours and friends of Barbara and Terry’s in Portugal. Saturday was more of the same: Walk the dogs down to the Algibre River in the morning, and then off to Loulé to pick up a few bits and bobs in the market. In the evening we had dinner at the Adega in the village of Nave do Barão (the nave of the baron), a favourite of Barbara and Terry’s.

And then, on Sunday morning, it was time to leave again, all too soon. The bright sharp light, even behind clouds, and some afternoon snoozes did us a world of good. Lucia was combing the web for more dirt cheap flights last night.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 39 of 2008

My dear family & friends, 8 Dec 2008

You probably noticed that I didn’t write a letter last week. I’m hibernating. It gets dark here sometime between 16h00 and 16h30 and it’s difficult to motivate oneself to carry on with the day as if the sun were still shining. I’m ready for a beer by 16h15 as if the day is over, even if the sun did only poke its nose above the horizon at around 08h00.

It has also been cold, very cold some mornings; cold enough to freeze the bird bath solid and leave the canal with a thin layer of ice. Have you ever seen a duck ice skating? Me neither, but I’m hoping to see it soon. I usually see plenty of ducks on the canal but they seemed to disappear when the canal froze over. It’s like they’re hiding. I’m just waiting for one of them to forget. I have this image in my mind of a duck trying to keep its balance while making a duck landing on solid ice. I’m expecting a good laugh.

The dogs are quite good at avoiding slippery patches on the sidewalks and paths on their twice daily excursions. I follow them closely but still occasionally find myself practicing the wild ballet of someone trying to keep his balance on ice. I haven’t fallen yet, but I know it’s going to happen. At night, when I take the dogs out to lift a leg before turning in, the frost on the ground and the roadway looks like millions of tiny diamonds sparkling under the streetlamps. I have also finally learned the difference between frost and hoarfrost. Frost is when water vapour condenses on the ground (or other objects) and then freezes as the temperature drops. A hoarfrost is when water vapour freezes in the air and then the ice particles settle on the ground; it almost looks like a light dusting of snow. We’ve had a couple of hoarfrosts over the past two weeks.

I’ve felt the cold as I have never done before. When I was 17 I jumped off a roof (after retrieving a tennis ball) and snapped the heel of my right foot. They call it a parachute fracture because it’s the most common fracture experienced by skydivers. The point now being that I can hardly walk in the morning or when it gets very cold. At these times my foot feels about as sore as it did when I broke it 25 years ago leaving me limping around.

It’s coldest after a clear night with no clouds to trap the heat in. I like to go outside and look up at the stars which seem to manifest themselves so seldom behind the clouds. I always look for Orion which is clearly visible in both the northern and southern hemispheres. When I can see Orion it means I’m not too far from home.

There haven’t been too many happenings over the past two weeks. Most important was that our landlord wrote to tell us that she will not be renewing our tenancy agreement when it expires at the end of March. So we’re looking for a new place to stay. Our landlord would clearly like to get a higher rental from the property which we have also clearly indicated that we won’t pay. It’s just a bit of a bitch to have to go through the process of looking for another place to stay which is a bit more difficult because we have dogs. Landlords aren’t keen on dogs.

Last weekend we went to a birthday party for one of Lucia’s Spanish colleagues, Monica, who is spending a couple of years here in the UK. I met a journalist and someone in the PR business here in the UK and arranged to meet them again during the week to discuss the industry and jobs. Like any other sector it seems that they are going through a tough time given the global economic difficulties. I wasn’t too surprised by that, but they did give me some leads.

This past Friday night we had Ann, Richard and (daughter) Polly around for dinner. They stayed overnight to beat the zealous drink driving rules here in the UK, which left Richard and I to debate the problems of the UK and the world until 03h00. The others went to bed.

And last, but not least, I bought a new Skypephone from Amazon. (Our old one was still useable but was giving problems.) This one plugs directly into the broadband router as well as the telephone line. This means that we don’t need a computer to use Skype, and that we can use both Skype and the normal telephone line from the same handset. It works like a dream. Well, I say that, but I had to buy a separate telephone ringer because the Skypephone doesn’t ring loud enough for me (because I’m going deaf in my right ear and it’s getting worse.)

This coming weekend we’re off to Portugal for a couple of days. The long range weather forecast says we can expect bright sunshine from Thursday through to Sunday. We are so looking forward to it.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 38 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

We had more shit from the landlord’s family this week. Some background first: our landlord is Rajvinder. She and her older brother, Dal, inherited around 50 properties from their father when he died two years ago. All the properties are mortgaged to the hilt. The entire portfolio was managed by Dal, or should I rather say mismanaged. Now it appears that 1) the rentals are not covering the mortgage payments on many of the properties and, 2) Dal has been using some of the money for living expenses. The result is that the family has fallen into arrears (given the credit crisis), and the banks and mortgage companies have begun repossessing a number of the properties.

Now Rajvinder, a doctor, has removed the management of the properties that were in her name from her brother. The house we live in (which was the family home years ago) is in her name. The house that Dal (her brother) has been living in is also in her name. She gave him the use of the house on condition that he paid the mortgage. He hasn’t been paying the mortgage and the house is being repossessed in two days time. So Dal, ostensibly, doesn’t have a place to live.

This then brings us to the SMS text message I received from Dal at 10PM on Thursday evening: "Llelwyn (sic), i will have to give a months notice for you to vacate the property from today as due to the credit crunch and properties being repossed and dont want to leave you homeless. We have lost over a million pounds. Sorry about this but noone for saw the credit crunch. Sorry again. Dal"

I immediately sent an email to Hipesh (Rajvinder’s new property manager) and Hurjit (the estate agent through whom we rented the property) requesting an explanation and clarification of our rights and obligations under the year-long lease we signed in March. Hurjit confirmed that we have a legal and binding lease, and Hipesh told me to tell Dal to “fuck off”. I didn’t tell him to fuck off, no matter how much I was really tempted to do so, but I did respond by text message that I would no longer be accepting any correspondence from him with regard to the house we live in.

He then sent me a text message saying that his sister would send me written notice to vacate the property, and followed it up with an email indicating the legal grounds on which she would do so. It would appear under British law: “Mandatory Grounds for Possession: Ground 1 - This ground can be used where a landlord (or his spouse) has occupied the dwelling as his only or principle home at some time, and having given notice of his intention to return, now wishes to do so. Successors in title may also use this ground provided they did not purchase the dwelling.” (But he would still have to give us a minimum of two months notice on these grounds.)

I then phoned Hipesh again for an explanation and confirmation that Rajvinder would abide by the lease. He stated categorically that Dal had never held title to the property we live in, that he had no right or standing to require us to vacate the property, and that his client (Rajvinder) had no intention of resiling from the contract. I then phone Dal and, while I didn’t tell him to fuck off as I so desperately wanted to, I told him that any further harassment from him would cause us to bring legal action against him. Five minutes later he backed down with the following text message: “Just spoke to raji and she said if you are not willing to vacate you may stay on.” I still didn’t tell him to fuck off. I didn’t say anything.

And that’s where it stands. I hope that’s the last bit of grief from the landlord or her family for the time being.

In other events this week, I cooked an inedible dinner for Lucia this week for only the second time since I’ve known her. I bought a discounted “wild mallard duck” for only £3,50 at Waitrose. I suppose the word “wild” should have given it away; I’ve never really liked the taste of game. I didn’t like the smell when I opened the packaging, but I cooked it anyway hoping that hour in the oven would make it smell better. It didn’t. I still cut off a small piece to taste it, and began retching immediately. I wrapped it in five layers of plastic carrier bags (to make sure the pungent aroma never escaped again), and threw it in the dustbin. We had cheese and crackers for dinner.

The first inedible dinner I cooked for Lucia was shortly after we met way back in 2001. I was cooking a Chinese stirfry dish which called for “cracked” black pepper. I wrapped a tablespoon of pepper corns in a dishcloth and then smacked the hell out of them with a hammer on a bread board. I then tossed the lot into the dish. I remember Lucia asking me if we really needed that much pepper, but I assured with great bravura that I knew what I was doing. It doesn’t take a tarot cards to work out that the meal was inedible. I’ve never used a hammer on anything that I’ve cooked since then.

Our weekend was quite busy. We went to dinner on Saturday evening with a colleague of Lucia’s who used to work with her many years ago in South Africa, and on Sunday we went to Peterborough for lunch with Andreas and Michelle. Their daughter (my goddaughter), Natasha, kept us entertained changing clothes from her ballet costume through to something that looked like a wedding dress. Oscar, their six month old Tibetan Terrier, joined in the fun chasing her around the kitchen. Oscar is growing up to be a really cool dog; he’s a ball of fun, but he’s also obedient.

Let me leave it there for another week

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 37 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

I came across this quote from Mark Twain which, I think, quite encapsulates the business and political bumbling that chivvied the world along to this parlous state of economic affairs: “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

I’ve been shopping around for a new, bigger LCD television with the particular bells and whistles that I want. It struck me last week that there must be bargains around given the distress in the retail sector, and I wasn’t wrong. (The second largest electronics retailer in the US filed for bankruptcy last week.) Prices are down by nearly a third in the range that I’m looking at. I’m betting that the discounting will get even keener as we approach Xmas. I remember watching Sky News last year and being astounded by the fact that the after xmas sales started on xmas day here in the UK. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started before xmas this year.

I know Edgar would appreciate it if we bought a new TV. He joined us on the sofa last week to watch a programme on cheetahs on the National Geographic Channel. He watched the screen intently as the cheetahs hunted down a warthog for dinner. He stood up and walked over to the TV and sniffed at it curiously. He stood back, looked at the screen again, and then peered behind the screen and seemed a bit surprised to find Tigger huddling down on the (warm) satellite decoder. Then he took his place next to us on the sofa again and watched the rest of the programme; his eyes never left the screen. I remember someone (who shall remain nameless) once alleging that Ridgebacks were fairly stupid dogs; well, not mine bru, not mine.

Our adventure this weekend was a trip to Nottingham on Sunday. Nottingham had always been high on my list of places to visit for three reasons: 1) The stories of Robin Hood; 2) It has a (ruined) castle which played a major role in the English Civil War; 3) Nottingham Forrest was one of the leading soccer teams when I first became interested in English soccer about 30 years ago. It also has some really beautiful Victorian and pre-war architecture. But then it also has some fairly crap post-war architecture too. I blame it on the Americans for not writing off British war debt and introducing Britain to American architecture.

But there’s one thing I really don’t understand about the Brits though: why is there so little leisure activity focussed on their rivers? The River Trent, for instance, runs through the middle of Nottingham; if this were anywhere else in Europe there would be dozens of cafés and kiosks lining the riverside, but we certainly didn’t find any in Nottingham and I was really looking. You just don’t find that here, and I don’t know why. Perhaps somebody would like to enlighten me. The Leam and the Avon run right through the heart of the area we live, and I guarantee that I would be a permanent feature at a riverside café if it existed.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 36 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

The ground is so wet that every footstep is a squelch. It’s quite difficult to keep the house clean. I understand why guests immediately offer to remove their footwear as they pass the threshold. I have to hose down the dogs’ paws and legs and then dry them off every time we go out. We’ve even had to take up the rug in the downstairs hallway; it was just getting to grubby. The ground can’t absorb any more water and The Leam and The Avon are full to bursting. I’m sure both rivers will burst their banks if we get much more rain in the next few days. It seems like the sky has been grey and overcast forever. I did see a little bit of sun on Friday when I went to Hull.

I went to Hull (full name Kinston-on-Hull) because I wanted to see the Humber Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Bridge). It’s the fifth longest single-span suspension bridge in the world. I’ve got a thing for big bridges; they are such marvels of engineering and technology while at the same time displaying such aesthetic beauty to my eye. On the way there, I followed the motorways to Nottingham and then the A-roads to Lincoln which owns a most beautiful medieval cathedral and castle, and whose ancient streets are a big draw card for tourists. I strolled around for an hour-or-so and made a note to return with Lucia sometime soon.

From Lincoln I followed the A15 to the bridge and carried on in to Hull. The effect of the Credit Crunch and deepening recession is plainly visible in the city. The Waterfront facing on to the River Humber is almost a ghost town. Bars, clubs, coffee shops and the remnants of a fruit market have all shut down. Windows are shuttered with steel. Business looked much better in the city centre, but I would have expected more activity for lunchtime on Friday. At The Quays, a shopping centre in the middle of town, the Burger King had shut down for good as had the shops next door. It just had a vacant feel to it. The upper floors of the centre still appeared to be trading as normal, but there weren’t that many people about. I had a hotdog for lunch, filled the CRV with petrol and followed the highways all the way home. An accident on the M1 outside Nottingham backed up the traffic for 20 miles (36km) and added more than an hour to my expected journey.

And talking about economic meltdown, there was an article in The Times last week that really caught my funny bone (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5093545.ece). The reason I found it so funny was because people have been threatened with fines for not sorting their waste correctly. So here we’ve all been sorting through our waste to make sure it goes into the correct recycling box, bin or bag, and nobody wants it. It appears to have no economic value whatsoever. They want to store it on disused military bases in the hope that somebody will want it in the future. The do-gooders were so focused on correctness, they forgot about value. They’re the sort of people that think commanding you to make a profit is all that it takes to ensure business success. What also really struck me was that all this waste was being shipped to China for recycling there. Why? They couldn’t do it here? Really? They had to export all our old wine and beer bottles to China so that they can be turned into new wine and beer bottles for export straight back to Europe. That means the cost of labour in China must be so low that it more than compensated for the cost of transport. Pure logic says there’s something wrong with that picture.

One of the coffee shops I used to visit in Leamington, the Cafe St Jacques, also went bust last week. The owner blamed the demise of the business in the local newspaper on the fact that custom had dropped by more than 30 percent in the last two months. He didn’t mention the crap service and barely adequate cappuccinos. When you are right next door to Starbucks, you’d better make sure that you do everything better than they do on every level. He didn’t.

Having painted this picture of general gloom, you may perhaps understand that I was a little concerned when we received a letter on Saturday from the County Court addressed to our landlord “AND ALL OTHER OCCUPIERS” giving “Notice of Eviction” in two weeks time. There was a handwritten note that it referred to a property where old landlord (our new landlord’s brother) lives. But that additional stipulation referring to “all other occupiers” had us a bit worried. I had images of us trying to find a new rental in two weeks that would accept pets. I spoke to the lawyers listed in the eviction notice, as well as the new landlord’s property manager this morning, and both assured me that the eviction notice does not refer to our home. I bloody hope so.

Our weekend adventure was a drive to Gloucester on Sunday. It’s about an hour’s drive; the city is 10 miles from Cheltenham which, you may recall, we visited a couple of weeks ago when we went to the steam and vintage rally at the Cheltenham Racecourse. Gloucester’s two main attractions are its Cathedral and waterfront on the River Severn. The city’s importance as a trading port declined with the development of the railways, leaving the waterfront to decay until some clever property developers figured they could make a bundle redeveloping the old warehouses into offices, apartments and shops. The shopping complex isn’t finished yet and I’m wondering how the developers are feeling about the economic climate. Gloucester is certainly interesting, but not necessarily worth visiting again in a hurry.

That’s it for another week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 35 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 3 November

What I forgot to mention last week was that Lucia and I have booked ourselves a long weekend in Portugal in mid-December. One of the factors which influenced our decision to move to England was the opportunity it would afford us to flit off to anywhere in Europe for a weekend at a moment’s notice. Of course it doesn’t really work like that in the real world. Work constraints mean it’s difficult to find the time for Lucia, and kennelling for our four animals at £30 a day can easily double the costs. We were also really disappointed that Thomsonfly, the airline wing of the travel company, has cancelled its service from Coventry Airport. That makes Birmingham airport our nearest alternative.

It was while I was researching the airlines and services out of Birmingham airport on the Internet that I discovered some flights to Faro and back (allegedly) for £4,99 each way on Monarch Airlines for the weekend in mid-December. I called Lucia straight away to check that she could take a day or two leave, and then my sister, Barbara, to find out if we could stay with them for the weekend. Then I booked the flights. Now let me say here that this the one instance when I am entirely in favour of state intervention. The advertised price for the return fare was £10, but this excluded “taxes” which came to another £45 each. Then we had to pay another £6,50 each way to put a bag in the hold; that is, the bag’s journey was more expensive than my own. Then Monarch popped on another £5 credit card “charge”.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s still cheap for the 2500km journey each way. I just don’t think these con artists should be allowed to advertise prices which aren’t “all-in” rather than the misleading bullshit which they splash on their websites. From my own searches, it seems that Easyjet and Thomsonfly are the only “discount” airlines which advertise all-in prices; all of the others are almost certain to add layers of costs to the advertised price.

As to the week, the big event was the snowfall on Tuesday. Apparently this is the first time it has snowed in October in The Midlands since 1934. (See pictures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) It was also the first time that our dogs and cats had discovered snow up close and personal. I don’t think Edgar was quite convinced at first that snow could be fun. He’s the sort of dog who normally objects to big rain drops and wet grass. I loaded them into the back of the CRV after I’d finished the ironing and took them to Victoria Park in Leamington. Edgar did not want to get out; I had to grab his collar and yank. The first couple of snowflakes to land on his nose really bothered him, but then he discovered that it was quite fun to chase them. I soon had both dogs chasing after snowballs. Then a few more dog owners appeared out of the gloom and a great big game of rough-and-tumble ensued as the dogs chased after one another. There was even a three-legged dog who could move faster than most his four-legged friends I’ve come across. I would have stayed longer, but I got cold. By the time I got the dogs to the car, Edgar had a look that seemed to say “why spoil the fun now?”

Back at home, I tried to get the cats into the spirit of the occasion by picking them up and putting them down in the middle of the garden. I don’t think they felt quite the same way about the snow as the dogs. In fact, I’m fairly certain they were quite upset with me for disturbing their equilibrium as they tried to find their way out of the cold, wet stuff with slow, giant, clown-like steps.

On Wednesday the sun was shining bright and by Thursday the snow had all melted.

Then on Saturday we had one of Lucia’s cousins from London, Barbara, and her husband, David, around for lunch. I cooked my favourite Portuguese chicken and rice dish again which had everybody going back for seconds. I’m going to have to come up with another dish for guests soon.

In the evening Lucia and I went to the annual bonfire and fireworks display at Warwick racecourse. It was pleasant enough, if a bit cold at first. Then it began to drizzle just as the bonfire of wooden pallets was lit. The drizzle turned to rain and we took shelter behind a wall waiting for the fireworks. Now anybody who has studied a little bit of physics will know the percussive force of an explosive bang is likely to cause even more rain. So it was that it rained harder and harder as the fireworks lit up the sky. I dashed off to one of the mobile food vendors halfway through the display to buy a polystyrene plate of chips (which I smothered with tomato sauce) to keep us warm. We made a dash for our car along with two or three thousand other people as the reverberations of the last bang died away.

Still, I enjoyed the display. I loved fireworks as a child, and I still do. I love the smell of cordite and gunpowder, and sparklers are guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. We were particularly spoiled at our home in Pin Oak Road in Cape Town which gave us a ringside seat for the many fireworks displays in the V&A Waterfront. The display in Warwick couldn’t match up to the grand displays we witnessed in Cape Town, but still I loved it.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 34 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 27 October

After my last letter my friend Greg Marsh in Cape Town offered to bear witness to the fact that I did indeed predict a world financial crisis sparked by excess credit years ago. Greg’s a lawyer so you’d better not contradict me.

In all seriousness though, I’ve been watching the European and US governments throwing more cash, credit and misplaced guarantees at the problem, and it reminds me of Nick Leeson’s more and more desperate bets that eventually brought Barings Bank to its knees in 1995. The problem now, as then, is the human flaw of thinking that you can get something for nothing, or that somebody else should pay the price for your gamble.

Let me put this into a personal domain. Last week we got a letter from our new landlord. The new landlord is our old landlord’s sister. The house we live in is one of many owned by the wider family. She wanted to increase our rent by nearly 50% “due to the fact that the mortgage on this property has increased” – this despite the fact that we have a lease that runs until April next year. I then called the letting agent to establish what our rights were, and she called the new “property manager” to explain that we actually have a legal and binding lease. I then called Hipesh, the property manager, to reinforce our position and he “offered” to keep the rent the same.

Now it wouldn’t be great leap of imagination for those of you who know me fairly well to jump to the conclusion that I told him fuck off and take his family with him. In which case, you’d be wrong. All I can offer in my defence is that I’m getting older and that approach would simply have taken far too much energy. What I said to him was: “Actually, we have a contract. We can discuss it again next year.” End of conversation. What I was thinking is irrelevant. The result of this episode is that we have been looking at rentals in the local papers as well as the windows of the local estate agents. My conclusion is that we should offer less than we are currently paying when the lease comes up for renewal next year. And if that doesn’t pay the landlord’s bond, then she goes bust. It’s not personal; it is simply the unacknowledged element of risk. The possible returns to risk are exponential, but SO ARE THE LOSSES. I’m not paying for somebody else’s risk. We’ll find something else if needs be. I don’t know how long it will take for the full effect of the years of speculation to feed into property prices. What I can say is that the bust is going to be spectacular, particularly here in the UK.

I have many other fears of what the consequences of this crunch will be. It’s one of the major reasons for why we’re here.

But that was just one event of our week. In a completely different vein, I drove down to Oxford last Tuesday in order to visit a shop on the outskirts of the city which sells South African goods. I was missing Lunch Bars and Bar Ones (I don’t really like Mars Bars) and Granadilla Twist. I spent over £20 on chocolates, cold drink and Mrs Balls STRONG chutney (the one with the green lid). I only discovered later in the week that Lunch Bars are almost identical to Picnic bars.

Having driven all the way down to Oxford it would have been a waste not to park the car and stroll around the town. It took all of two minutes for Edgar to introduce me to another South African. I reckon South Africans can pick out a Rhodesian Ridgeback at 500 paces. I suppose it makes me more aware of the South African accents around me. I discovered last week that Sarel van der Merwe (the racing driver) lives on the outskirts of Leamington Spa (according to the South African test pilot for Rolls Royce that I met at favourite coffee shop No.3.) I hear a lot of Afrikaans around and about. Not long after we arrived here Lucia and I overheard one side of a heated telephone argument in Afrikaans at a shop in Leamington Spa. I couldn’t contain myself and exclaimed “Sê vir hom” as we passed by. The rest of the argument was conducted in much lower tones hidden behind a hand cupped around the telephone. Ag shame, nê.

That said, I really enjoyed the Granadilla Twist, and Bar Ones go particularly well with Port.

Our weekend was another adventure that took us down to London for Becky and Katie’s wedding. (You may remember from my last letter that we met Becky in Zanzibar two years ago.) It’s the first reception for a gay wedding we’ve ever been to and the party was just the same as any other. The newlyweds are off to Curação for their honeymoon for which I envy them greatly. The reception was held at Searcy’s House in Knightsbridge (http://www.30pavilionroad.co.uk; http://www.searcys.co.uk.) We partied late into the night. Pictures in the usual place at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.

Our problem though was the zoo. I had no idea that it would be school holidays until I tried to book them into kennels for our overnight sojourn in London. We were rescued by one of Lucia’s colleagues Shayla, a Canadian, who offered to come around to our house and let them in on from the garden and feed them on Saturday evening, and let them out again on Sunday morning. Thank you, Shayla.

We stayed at the Express by Holiday Inn on Belgrave Road in Pimlico. The hot water wasn’t, the bed was hard and we couldn’t figure out how to turn the heating on. We didn’t sleep well, if at all. This was compounded by the fact that clocks went one hour back at midnight. So what felt like 6am was actually 5am. It was a long night.

Sunday dawned cold and raining. We had arranged to meet friends of Lucia’s, Tim and Patti, near Kingston-on-Thames at 11am, but we were up early (or should I say that we gave up trying to sleep on the cold, hard bricks that “Express by Holiday Inn” had covered with a thin duvet. But then maybe it was just Room 406. Fuckers.)

After a breakfast of tea and toast (well, that’s what I had) we ventured out into the soft drizzle of Pimlico to discover more of London. (We should have driven down; there was LOTS of free weekend parking in Pimlico.)We walked down Belgrave Road, past the Pimlico tube station towards the Thames. The drizzle turned into rain. The more we walked, the more I was convinced we had to come across a coffee shop ... soon. The rain turned into a squall as we walked from Vauxhall Bridge towards Lambeth Bridge next to the Palace of Westminster. Lucia snuggled in close as we took shelter behind a plain tree. Across the river the curtains of rain driven up the Thames on an easterly wind blunted the sharp edges of the MI5 building on the South Bank. When the squall passed, we continued our stroll up Millbank past the Tate Britain, across Lambeth Bridge, and then back towards Vauxhall on the south bank. I finally spied a Potuguese café-bar near the railway station, and we ducked inside to escape the inclement weather until it was time to catch our train.

We met Tim and Patti at L’Amandine, in Teddington, one of a small franchise of French boulangeries around London. Lucia had been wanting to meet up with them ever since we arrived in the UK at the beginning of the year, but it’s difficult to make plans when you live 100 miles apart. Patti also suffered a serious stroke last year and is confined to a wheelchair. I can’t remember how long we stayed chatting at the café, but we had to drag ourselves away to get back to London to catch our train home. Lucia said “I knew you’d get on with them” as we walked away. And indeed I did. I look forward to meeting up with them again soon. I hope they feel the same way. (My perennial fear is that I meet someone and afterwards they say: “Jeez, I never thought he would shut up.”)

I’ll leave it there for another week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 33 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

I don’t write a diary (unless you regard this letter as a type of diary, in which case, yes, I do write a diary.) My theory is that if I can’t remember what happened or what I did, then it’s not worth writing about. What that means is that I don’t have much to write about this week. But that doesn’t mean that nothing happened though.

High on the event scale was a trip into London for dinner last Tuesday evening. Lucia had to go into the city for work, so I emailed Becky (whom we met in Zanzibar two years ago) to find out if she and her partner, Katie, would be free for dinner that evening. Becky and Katie will be celebrating their civil union this weekend, and we were particularly keen to meet Katie before the big day. We had tried to meet up before, but circumstances had mitigated against this. So, after a couple emails backwards and forwards, we agreed to meet at a pub called The Woolpack near London Bridge station.

I caught the train into London in the afternoon to take advantage of the cheaper rate. The return fare for arrivals in London (from Leamington Spa) plus a London Travelcard before 10h00 is £75, from 10h00 to 14h30 it’s £29, and after 14h30 it’s £21. Travel is very expensive in this country. Anyway, I arrived in London some time after 16h00, leaving me with just over an hour to kill before I met Lucia outside the Yahoo! offices on Shaftesbury Avenue. I took the tube from Marylebone Station, the London hub for the Chiltern train service, to Picadilly Circus, and then zigzagged my way through Soho, Chinatown, around Leicester Square and Covent Garden to the Yahoo! building. I walked past the building several times; given the company’s profile on the Internet, I had expected it to be emblazoned with big neon signs advertising Yahoo!’s presence, but it was actually all very English and understated. You had to know what number you were looking for on Shaftesbury Avenue.

I love the vibrancy and feel of London and I’d love to live there if we could – maybe we still will. It would certainly be interesting trying to find a property to support a small family which includes two big dogs. You might then be able to catch the hint of a glint of hope in my eye as I watch property prices begin to slip in the midst of this credit crunch.

When I met Lucia after her presentation, we walked down Charing Cross Road to Leicester Square tube station and caught the Picadilly line to Holborn and then the Central line to Bank in the middle of the financial district. We had intended to catch the Northern Line the two stops to London Bridge from there, but we hadn’t considered how busy Bank station would be at peak hour. It was hot and stuffy and jam-packed with bankers and brokers crowding around the pedestrian tunnels down to the Underground platforms, and so we decided to escape to the open air and walk the last bit instead. Our route took us past the Bank of England and across London Bridge as the gloom of night began to settle in. I had to consult my London map book several times under street lamps to make sure of where we were and where we were going, but we found our way to the pub easily enough.

We had a great evening. We really like Katie, the food and wine were good, and we could have stayed and chatted far longer if we didn’t have a train to catch back to Leamington Spa. The last train from London arrives in Leamington way past midnight, so I had targeted the second last train which departs Marylebone at 21h30. We made it with just a minute to spare.

Let me jump from there to Saturday. We had a longstanding arrangement to meet Richard, Anne and (daughter) Polly at Snowshill Manor, one of the National Trust properties near Broadway in the Cotswolds, for the Snowshill Apple Day. The day was advertised as a big event for Snowshill, but, I must confess, I was expecting a bit more. I was expecting tastings of apple juice, cider and, of course, apples, and a big sort of party atmosphere. What it actually consisted of was two smallish marquees, each with a long table of every type of apple one could possibly find. There must have been more than 100 different types of apples which was quite surprising for someone, like me, whose sole experience of apples was the fruit aisle at the supermarket.

After the apples and strolling through the garden, Richard and I, followed one of the gardeners for a short talk on compost heaps. Did you know that the temperature at the core of a compost heap rises to around 55C during the most active part of the composting process? No, me neither. Make no mistake though, we still enjoyed ourselves; it’s wonderful to be outdoors when the sun comes out and there is a bit of blue sky above you as autumn turns to winter.

From Snowshill we tracked back to Richard and Anne’s home in the little hamlet of Winderton near Shipston-on-Stour for dinner. I loved watching the sun set across the hills from the warmth of their glass enclosed sun room. Over coffee after dinner Richard, Polly and I started an impromptu drumming session on the goat-skin drums that they brought back from SA. I don’t think we were very good, but Lucia and Anne smiled anyway.

And that’s it for the week really. I also started reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the follow-up to Fooled By Randomness. One of his theses that I find particularly interesting is the retrospective distortion of written history – call it 20:20 hindsight. Along with historians, journalists are also particularly guilty of this – after all, you’ve got to fill those pages somehow, and there’s a new page day after day after day. Simply stated, it is that humans have a habit of fitting reasons to behaviour and events after the fact as if those events were then predictable. So, for instance, it’s easy now to say that it was obvious a Credit Crunch was coming, yet most people were still surprised when it arrived. Even though I believed that the crunch was coming, I couldn’t tell Lucia when it would arrive and what would be the spark that lit the tinder. If I’d known that, I would have shorted the shit out of the banking sector and I might have been writing this to you from a palm-fringed beach somewhere in the tropics. But I’m in Warwick and it’s raining outside. I buy lottery tickets every week.

That’s it for now

L

There are a few more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 32 of 2008

My dear family & friends, 13 October

I couldn’t help but watch with a wry smile as global markets tanked last week. Most of you will have had to endure me rambling and ranting on about the extent of global indebtedness since about 2001. I’ve been put down and, worse still, ignored. I was, after all, just some freelance hack in shorts and a T-shirt walking his dogs to the nearest coffee shop every morning as opposed to some smartly dressed investment banker, fund manager, financial analyst or the CEO of a multinational company. But to me it was just so obvious. I’ve always loved history – reading about and learning what happened before. One of my favourite quotes is: “Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.” That history told me that we were in the middle of a speculative boom driven by easy credit that would end in an almighty crash. The evidence was plain to see. What stuns me is how people didn’t see it. I fear that there may be some way to go yet. Now Gordon Brown wants the world to follow his example for sorting out the crisis without a hint of embarrassment or recognition that it was the sort of policies he propounded which led us to this point in the first place. Watch this space.

Talking of history, our dinner last Tuesday for Lucia’s team from work appeared to be a roaring success. I had initially been told to expect 21 people, but that was whittled down to 16 on the evening. I had several requests for the recipe of my Portuguese chicken and rice dish, and one of Lucia’s Spanish colleagues said it was the best dish she had eaten here in the UK. My chicken pasta dish didn’t do as well, but I suspect that was because I was a bit over generous with the use of Mrs Ball’s chutney. Leftovers were donated to the dogs. Edgar and Hazel love pasta.

I’ll leap from there to the weekend. I’d seen posters about for a “Steam & Vintage Rally” at the Cheltenham Racecourse. I did my best to convince Lucia that it would be a great day out. It only occurred to me afterwards that Lucia may not have seen it quite that way when she said that she had enjoyed herself far much more than she had expected to. (You can see the pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) We arrived soon after the gates opened on Saturday morning and spent three or four hours strolling around the exhibits swathed in a haze of steam and smoke. It was the sort of thing that I can place a tick in the box next to it to say that I’ve done that and feel much richer for the experience. We were also lucky in that it was the most gorgeous autumn day with the changing colours of the leaves and gentle breeze providing a picturesque backdrop.

Afterwards we drove into Cheltenham to look around. It’s a lot bigger than Leamington and Warwick and more “sophisticated”. The town centre was all the busier for The Times Literature Festival which started on Friday and carries on all this week. We just walked around for a bit taking in the sights and sounds, and ended up drinking cold drinks in a park before driving home. On the outskirts of Cheltenham we drove past GCHQ (General Communications Headquarters), the big government listening centre that eavesdrops on telephone calls from spy satellites crisscrossing the earth. I somehow expected the location to be far more secret, not perched right next to the A40 between Cheltenham and Gloucester for all to see.

On Sunday, we watched the Japanese F1 Grand Prix early in the morning and then walked up along the canal to the coffee shop at the top Hatton Locks. Again it turned out to be the most glorious autumn day much to our delight. In the afternoon I mowed the lawn and prepared a late afternoon braai (barbecue) for the two of us. Life here is so focussed indoors and inwards that it feels like a special treat to be outdoors when a good day comes along. Afterwards we walked to the Portuguese pub, the Lock, Dock & Barrell, for coffees and bagaçeira (Portuguese fire water), and then back through the park.

Along the way home a car came speeding past us, careened around the next corner with squealing tyres and was followed by the sickening thump of metal on metal as it collided with several other vehicles. Lucia and I dashed up the road to see what had happened and were met with quite some scene of destruction. There were six or seven cars caught up in the melee with varying levels of damage; airbags had deployed in at least two of the vehicles. Lucia and I debated/argued about whether we should hang around to tell the police what we saw. Lucia pointed out that we didn’t actually see anything, only heard it. There were also plenty of other people around who had seen what happened, so we went home. I was just disappointed not to see the speeding (and probably inebriated) maniac get locked up.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 31 of 2008

My dear family & friends

A really funny thing happened last Tuesday. In the morning I walked the dogs to the Pastelaria Portuguesa in Warwick but stopped off at the newsagent first to buy The Times. As usual, I commanded the dogs to “DOWN” and to “STAY” just outside the door of the shop. Returning a minute later with the newspaper under my arm, I saw that Edgar had broken the down-stay command; he was standing, wagging his tail in delight as he spied me coming out of the shop. I was a bit annoyed at him, and commanded him to “WAIT” in my deepest, most authoritative voice. Just at that moment a young lady, who was about to step into the shop, stopped dead, her eyes wide with fright. I couldn’t suppress a sort of half-laugh and told her – as airily as I could – that I was actually talking to my dog, but I’m not sure that she particularly believed me; she wouldn’t step into the shop until I had left.

The big adventure last week was our first trip to the Symphony Hall in Birmingham for a concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on Thursday evening. The programme for the evening included Saint-Saëns Symphony No.3 (The Organ Symphony), which is one of my favourites. Lucia had strict instructions to be home in enough time to allow us to leave by 6pm. Still, I was surprised that it took us over an hour to drive the 25-or-so miles to the centre of Birmingham, and we arrived with just enough time to pick up our tickets at the box office and make a pit stop at the toilets before taking out seats.

The concert was quite fantastic. First, the purpose-built Symphony Hall has near perfect acoustics which allows the audience to hear every nuance of the orchestra. Second, the Hall was filled to its capacity of 2200 people. (Remember, I’m used to the relatively poorly attended concerts of Philharmonia at the City Hall in Cape Town.) Third the performance was electric. The programme started with the Mother Goose Suite by Ravel, followed by Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto before the interval, and finished with the Organ Symphony. I’ve always enjoyed the organ, probably because the sound is just so big. I love the feeling of the big 32ft or 64ft tubes which you only find on the biggest organs; you can’t actually hear them, just feel them. The whole building vibrates. It was such a thrilling evening.

At the interval, we discovered that the tradition is clearly to buy ice cream. While Lucia and I headed to the bar for a glass of wine (we’re from South Africa after all), most of the audience queued at the many ice cream fridges. I reckon that at least half the audience bought and ice cream at £2 each. To put that into perspective for the South African’s, that’s about R33 000 worth of ice cream sold in five minutes – when the outdoor temperature is about 5C. Lucia and I agreed that we would definitely share an ice cream next time. I like ice cream, but in small doses.

Other important markers of the week included entertaining Polly, Richard and Anne’s daughter, on Tuesday evening while Richard and Anne went to a parent’s evening at Polly’s school in Leamington. (Anne is a former colleague of Lucia’s.) Polly recently started what we would call high school in South Africa. She is a bright, intelligent and independent young girl whom I would like to say to say reminds me of me, but I suspect that she is a lot brighter than I ever was. On Friday evening, one of Lucia’s colleagues, Rebecca, and her partner, David, came around for drinks after work. The plan had initially called for Lucia and a few of her staff members to repair to The White Lion on the Radford road for drinks after work, but last minute work demands put paid to that idea.

Then we had a busy weekend again. We went to Worcester on Saturday morning to get a better feel for the city without having to rush home for an important sporting event like a Formula One Grand Prix. I was really intrigued and fascinated by the city. Worcester wasn’t a big target for German bombers during WWII – and it managed to wrong-step city planners of the 50’s and 60’s – so a lot more of the medieval city survives. I find it beyond understanding that city planners after the war simply wanted to condemn buildings that had been around for 600 or 700 years. I can only surmise that their bloody-mindedness represented the same anger and class bitterness that brought us the French and Russian Revolutions. Luckily there were enough individuals with sufficient reverence for history and architecture (and money) who managed to preserve little corners of England for all posterity. Most fascinating was The Greyfriars (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-thegreyfriars), a merchant’s home built in around 1480, which is still standing and is open to visitors.

We also went back to the Cathedral to complete the tour we started last week. I was delighted that the tower was also open and paid my £3 to climb the 258 stairs to the top while Lucia meditated in the church below. Lucia doesn’t really like enclosed places which includes medieval stairways. On this occasion she probably got the better end of the deal though – I could feel the tower swaying in the breeze when I got to the top, which is not really quite the ideal sensation in a 1000-year-old edifice. I wanted to take some pictures of the stunning views, but I was too chicken to let go of the iron railing. I’ll go back and get those pictures sometime when the wind ain’t blowing. We went to the Portugues cafe we discovered last week for lunch, and then drove home via Tewkesbury and Evesham.

Sunday was given over to shopping and cooking. I had suggested to Lucia that she invite some of her staff members around for dinner. I wasn’t expecting everyone. So while Lucia baked some deserts, I cooked three different dishes which will be easy to reheat for the event on Tuesday evening. Please hold thumbs for us that all goes smoothly.

Love, light & peace

Llewellyn

Picture book: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 30 of 2008

My dear family & friends

We had a busy weekend aided and abetted by some gorgeous autumn weather. On Saturday morning we loaded the dogs into the car and headed for the Clent Hills on the outskirts of Birmingham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clent_Hills). You may recall that we had planned to do this last weekend until Edgar managed to rip a claw on the jetty near the lair of the vicious vermin swans in St Nicholas Park. His paw recovered sufficiently last week allowing us to pick up our plans this weekend. Although we were greeted by a thick, freezing fog on Saturday morning, the weather forecast promised us that it would burn off by midmorning. We took the weather man at his word and I’m glad we did.

Getting there was both easy and difficult. The route was easy: M40, M42, M5 then A491. The fog made it interesting. Big electronic signboards next to the freeway alerted drivers to the fact that they were indeed driving in dense fog. The difficult bit was finding the Clent Hills and the National Trust parking area and cafe. The word “hill” is clearly a matter of definition. In South Africa we’d call them “koppies”, but, come to think of it, even a koppie is bigger than a hill. This was complicated by the fact that there were no road signs pointing us in the right direction – which was really quite strange because the National Trust properties are usually really well signposted. But some clever guessing and the satnav eventually got us to where we wanted to be. By that time the fog had lifted and presented us with a clear bright day to go walking. (See pics in usual place: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.)

We spent about two hours walking up hill and down dale. We kept Edgar fairly close because there was plenty of evidence of horses. The first time Edgar ever saw a horse was when we went to the Animal Welfare Society in Philippi in Cape Town looking for a second dog. There was a horse in the paddock next to the road as we drove into the rescue centre and Edgar went ape-shit. The car shook as he screamed blue murder at what must have looked like a very big dog to him. The second time he saw a horse, he was off-lead and he bolted leaving me trailing far behind in hot pursuit yelling at him to sit. He has come relatively close to horses here in the UK without overreacting, so I live in hope that he has got over those fears like a child eventually stops being scared of the dark.

Our route took us to the highest point in the Clent Hills which, at 309m above sea level, still isn’t as high as our house in Pinoak Road in Cape Town. If you ask me what I miss most from our previous life in South Africa, it is simply the view: to be high up and stare out into the distance. There is something so serene about a view. I remember reading somewhere a long time ago about studies of the chemical/physiological change in your body when presented with a “long” view that created a feeling of well-being. You don’t find many high places in England. And when you do, no one will let you build a house there. Sheesh!

We had lunch back at the cafe at the car park. Their menu offered thick slice sandwiches: bacon, sausage, bacon and sausage, bacon and egg, sausage and egg, bacon and sausage and egg; tomato or mushrooms were 60p extra. We opted for bacon and tomato. Edgar and Hazel got many admiring glances, not only for their looks, but for their obedience as well. Where most of the other dog owners struggled to control their animals, Edgar and Hazel stayed down right where I told them to no matter what happened around them. All those Saturdays at dog club in Pinelands have paid off in leaps and bounds.

From Clent we drove to Kinver which is probably most well-known for a couple of houses that were gouged out of a sandstone ridge. (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-kinveredgerockhouses; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinver.) It was quite late in the afternoon by the time we had finished exploring and we traced a route home that got us back on to the M42 by way of Bromsgrove.

Sunday was a bit tighter because we had to be home for the start of the Singapore Grand Prix at lunchtime. Although there was a thick, heavy fog again, we left the dogs at home and headed for Worcester 30 miles away where I was particularly keen to visit the cathedral, one of the most magnificent in all England. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Cathedral; http://www.worcestercathedral.co.uk/.) We got there at 10h30, just as a morning mass by Vaughan Williams was getting under way. Peering in through the door, the rows of seats were so empty it seemed as if the choir was singing to itself. According to a report on the BBC over the weekend, less than a million people in England now attend church regularly which is less than a third of the attendance in 1950. You probably know my feelings about any and all religion. My interest is strictly limited to the breath-taking architecture and the history. I’m with Richard Dawkins on this one.

We didn’t stay for the mass, partly because we hadn’t had breakfast yet and so chose to stroll the pedestrianised streets of the city centre. Worcester is really attractive – you’ve just got to ignore the “strurm-und-drang” architecture of the post war years. We even found a really pleasant Portuguese pastelaria/cafe where we ordered cheese and ham sandwiches for breakfast. Everything about the cafe, including the widescreen television in the corner, could have been lifted straight out of Portugal. We made it back to the cathedral at midday via the riverside walk – which was a bit of a problem because the grand prix started at one o’clock and I’d forgotten to set the recorder. Still the cavernous building resounded with music as a young boy practiced on the cathedral organ under the strict tutelage of his master. We didn’t stay long, but we agreed that we will go back soon. We like Worcester.

Other notable events last week included the arrival of our new British driver’s licences. Lucia is really relieved she didn’t have to do the licence all over again. I’m still amazed that we could simply swap our SA licences for British ones. Still more amazing was that they arrived in the post as promised without being stolen. Can you imagine trying that one in SA? Everyone would get robbed blind except the postal workers who would be driving around in Ferraris. (The postal workers themselves would use courier services.) Lucia had to include her passport with her drivers licence application, and even that was returned to her by NORMAL post. Yowzer!

Right now I’m waiting for one of our landlord’s mates to come and fix the downstairs loo. Although he spent a couple of hours struggling with the cistern on Friday afternoon, it started flooding the room when we tried to flush on Saturday.

My landlord tells me that the housing bust has cost him £1million. I didn’t have the heart to say that I think we have yet to see the bottom of this market.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn