Letter from Warwick: 4 of 2008

Dear Friends, February 22

Lucia’s had a long week. She started getting sniffles last Saturday which developed into full-blown ‘flu by Monday. But she soldiered gamely on, prodded by looming deadlines and the demands of a new job. On Wednesday she told me she was just going to go to the office for an hour or two to sort out a project, but eventually only got home at around eight in the evening. Although she stayed at home on Thursday, she spent most of the day shackled to her computer at the dining room table. This morning she was out the door with the sparrows again, leaving a trail of coughs behind her. I know she’s looking forward to the weekend for a brief respite.

The thing that struck me most this week was how quickly the days are lengthening. When we arrived four weeks ago, it was virtually dark by half past four in the afternoon. Now, there’s still light in the sky at six in the evening. The weather swings between mild and extreme. On Tuesday, my car thermometer registered minus 5C as I headed off to the dogs and cats. Everything was frozen, leaving a thin sheet of white covering the fields. Today (Friday) the thermometer touched a high of 14C somewhere near Rugby as I ambled home on B roads and other minor roadways. What really fascinated me though was how short some of the skirts are that were worn by young lasses on their way to school despite the cold. The route to Lucia’s office passes three schools, and I struggled to keep my eyes on the road rather than the sidewalk when I took her to work on Tuesday (while the pool car was getting serviced.) Apart from the fact that these girls would probably be sent home to change into more “suitable” attire in SA, it really is very cold indeed and some of them must surely have been risking an embarrassing case of frostbite. I can only imagine what it must be like for young boys trying to concentrate on quadratic equations or logarithms with a very long, curvaceous leg peeking out from the desk in front. But then that comes from the perspective of someone who went to an all-boys school. It reminds me of a line from one of Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe novels where he described a particular woman’s looks and figure as “fit to make a priest kick a hole through a stained glass window.” That’s one of my favourite lines that had me crying with laughter when I first read it.

We had a pleasant start to the week when Andreas, Michelle and daughter Natasha came from Peterborough to join us for lunch on Sunday. I suppose Peterborough isn’t that far in South African terms, but it’s still a 90 minute drive at least. Brits seem to be used to this sort of commute. Some of Lucia’s new colleagues drive an hour and more to get to work, and this isn’t even London. They really do live all over the show. One of them even has his primary home in Brighton and spends three days at the office in Warwick, staying two nights with his brother in the area. Hmm! Brighton. Seaside. Seems like a good idea to me. The dogs will certainly think it’s home. If Lucia is ever given a permanent posting in London, I think I’ll lobby her to live in Brighton which has good rail links into London.

But I was talking about Sunday lunch. We took Andreas, Michelle and Natasha to the Saxon Mill which is sort of around the corner and down the road. (http://www.saxonmill.co.uk/) (Or should I say they took us; we chose the spot – they paid the bill.) The setting in an old water mill right on the Avon overlooking a ruined stately home is really quite stunning. The food is very good too without being exorbitantly expensive. The service could be better, but we haven’t found many places here in the UK where we’ve been impressed with the service. But here, once again, this comes from the perspective of someone who spent five years working in a pub/restaurant when I was at university second time around.

On the acquisition front, I bought a (cheapish) digital terrestrial television receiver in the hope that we would be able to extend our viewing options. The normal analogue signal only gives us five channels – BBC1, BBC2, ITV Channel 4 and Channel Five. The freeview digital terrestrial signal offers another 30. (The UK is slowly changing over from analogue to a digital terrestrial service.) Quite why I bought the device when the freeview website (http://www.freeview.co.uk) clearly said we probably wouldn’t be able to get the digital signal where we live is a mystery even to me. The guesthouse is in a dead spot which won’t get the digital signal for another year or two. Our new home, two miles away, should be able to receive said digital signal, but we’ll probably get a Sky box then (satellite). What I’m saying is that I probably wasted £20 unless I can flog the box. But I’ll wait until we move into our new home.

Still on the subject of buying things, I am completely staggered by the price of freshly baked bread rolls. These sell for between 20p and 32p at Tescos or Sainsbury’s – let’s just say anything from R3 to R5 in SA money. For a poppy seed roll! I was paying 80c at Spar, and I bought two or three every day. But then the fresh pastries cost £1, or even 80p if they’re on special which is much the same as one would pay at Carlucci’s (same quality) in Cape Town. Explain that.

The animals are all fine (thank you to everyone who asked) particularly Edgar who is much improved. He now weighs 47kg, two more than he did in Cape Town. I give him extra food everyday and spend at least half an hour playing with both of them in the cage to exercise them. They don’t leave the cage, ever. That’s what quarantine is. Edgar had dropped well below 40kg when we arrived in the UK. I blame the owners of the kennel who didn’t provide proper bedding for the animals; they didn’t tell us we had to provide the bedding which we would gladly have paid for if we had known. But then what can you expect from people who promenade around in Ferraris and other fast cars; clearly they live an egocentric lifestyle which has little empathy or understanding for any creatures beyond themselves. We haven’t said anything. I’m waiting until the day we take them home.

If I was fascinated by the hedgerow mowers two weeks ago, now I have to put up with the muck spreaders. I drive past them nearly every day near the kennels as they spray their cow and sheep shit on the fields. It honks. I couldn’t live anywhere close to that. My preferred morning smells are roasted coffee beans and croissants.

That’s it for now.

Love, light and peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 3 of 2008

Dear Friends, February 16

We are developing a routine. Lucia goes to work, and I visit the dogs and cats. I spend about two hours with them every day, depending on how long it takes my toes to get cold. I’m one of those people who just handle cold toes. I’m only cold when my toes are cold.

And that has to be the most significant feature of the week. While the Brits wax lyrical about the record high temperatures for February, with some areas of southern England registering day time highs of 16C (yowzer!), what they don’t mention are the morning lows which dipped below zero (Celsius, that is) most mornings, leaving layers of frost where ever you look. I have never had to scrape ice off my car’s windscreen in the morning before in my life. I know this fairly a regular winter occurrence in Johannesburg (if you are unfortunate enough not to have your car stored in a theft-proof bunker), but I was 13 when my mom and I left the Big J for Cape Town, and I don’t really remember what frost looked like. Capetonians are quite unfamiliar with frost. I think the rule is this – when you see grass frozen white, it’s fucking cold outside. On Wednesday I headed out of our flat/apartment at the same time Lucia left for work to go and photograph the frost in St Nicholas Park here in Warwick. (See the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) My ears started aching with cold long before I got to the park. It may sound like a cliché, but it was beautiful. There were lots more photogenic opportunities driving to the dogs later in the morning, but I don’t think my fellow road users would have appreciated random stops to take pictures.

Tuesday’s major event for Lucia was a trip to the Job Centre in Coventry to register for National Insurance. Goodness alone knows why she couldn’t do it Leamington Spa, which also has a really big Job Centre - but let’s not try to reason with the Government. She still managed to get lost, despite having detailed maps and directions from Google, not to mention the fact that I had driven over the route with her on Saturday. But she got there – I have to give her that. I met her there after dropping of my newly acquired Honda CRV at the dealership to have a small problem sorted out. The service at the Job Centre was friendly, efficient and helpful – we are continually amazed at the level of service here in the UK (notwithstanding the Nazi tart at Port Health at Heathrow.) Afterwards, we had cappuccinos at Starbucks in the city centre watching the remains of a bus accident (which caused havoc with city centre traffic) being cleared away. (Two bus drivers had clearly been playing chicken with each other early in the rush hour with the inevitable consequences.) I had difficulty identifying all the agencies milling around trying to sort the mess out – police, fire brigade, ambulance, officials from the two bus services, ultra-heavy towing vehicles, and I’m sure the Health & Safety dudes weren’t far behind (South Africans wouldn’t understand this.) In SA, we would have just driven around the prang, mounting the pavement (sidewalk) if necessary. In Coventry they closed down the main access roads to the city centre, which includes the city centre bus terminus. I know this caused havoc from the traffic reports I listened to in the car later, but we enjoyed our coffees in peace.

After Lucia and I parted, I spent a couple of hours strolling around the city centre. It’s hard to describe what it looks like. Somebody from Johannesburg would recognise it fairly easily. It’s all sort of new in a kak face-brick way. Brits are schooled on how the Germans flattened the city in November 1940. English and US bombers returned the favour over Dresden in 1944. But it’s really quite jarring to turn a corner and find the skeletal remains of Coventry Cathedral, with its towering spire still intact, standing before you as a permanent memorial to the follies of war. It must have been a beautiful city. Now it’s a monument to face-brick and concrete. I saw on the news that night that the Government wants to spend £1bn regenerating Coventry’s city centre. I don’t suppose dynamiting the whole lot will go down to well.

Lucia says I have to tell you that I made her a wonderful Valentines dinner. I thought it was rather good myself. Duck breasts fried to medium perfection, with cranberry and port sauce and grilled Mediterranean veggies. This was accompanied by Australian sparkling wine (Jacob’s Creek, going cheap at Tescos), and rounded off with orange Lindt chocolates (special at Sainsbury’s) and glasses of port (the same port that went into the cranberry sauce). This is what we do for Valentine’s Day – forget cards, flowers and whatever else the merchandisers are trying to flog. We agree with Terry (my brother in-law in Portugal, for those that don’t know) that Valentine’s Day is a commercial rip-off. I do note, however, that Tescos has got some really good post Valentine’s Day bargains on champagne.

I have taken to varying my route to and from the Bayton Lodge (the kennels) to get to know the area better and I’m beginning to get a mental image of the roads in my head. Occasionally, I lose my bearings and find that I was driving north instead of south. But that’s the nice thing about England – there’s always another road that gets you back to where you were going fairly easily. Except if you are on the motorway – you can drive for miles and miles on these roads without finding an exit. It could easily cost you 20 minutes if you make a mistake on the motorway.

But I’ve found quite a bit of interesting stuff on my journeys that have had me searching Google and Wikipedia as soon as I get home. For instance, I had never ever heard of Christadelphians before in my life, but they certainly seem popular around here. Warwick, Leamington Spa and Kenilworth all have Christadelphian temples, halls or churches – whatever they call them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christadelphians) I now drive with a notebook and pen close at hand as an aide memoire. Clearly age is catching up with me – if I don’t write it down, there’s a good chance I will get home and ponder for hours what it was that I was trying to remember. I invariably remember as I drive past it the next day.

Some experiences don’t require any notes. One morning, driving to the kennels, I had to brake sharply as I (and all the cars around me) suddenly approached a long tailback caused by an accident. The unfortunates were a car and a motorbike. The motorbike was lodged upright in the front of the car. I shivered and was gripped by a flashback to a very similar accident I was involved in about 15 years ago on Campground Road in Cape Town. I was studying at UCT and was on my way to work at Ferryman’s Tavern in the V&A Waterfront. I came to a halt behind a queue of cars that were waiting for turning a garbage removal truck. The only reason I braced was because of the look on the face of a black guy walking on the side of the road. Think of that picture “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. That was the look. And I gripped the handle bars, and braced. The car hit me from behind a fraction of a second later. I remember flying up in the air, but holding to on the handle bars for dear life. In my memory everything happens in slow motion. I remember wondering when I would hit the car in front of me – I just knew that if that happened I would be in deep, deep shit. I thought I was going to die.

But it never came. Much later I realised the bloke in front of me (driving a brand new VW Golf) had seen everything happening in his rear view mirror, and had simply driven up onto the sidewalk. And that’s what saved me. And my helmet. I remember staggering up and storming over to the driver’s window of the car that hit me. I had my helmet in my hand and vengeance in my heart. I remember screaming at the driver – a school teacher from Bergvliet High School – and, as he turned and looked at me, a single tear dropped down his cheek. I walked away.

What really pisses me off now, is that the bike was never the same again. Yes, his insurance paid up – but there’s always something that’s missed. Not long afterwards the bike developed a mechanical fault that that rendered it beyond economical repair – and I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find the money to replace it just so that I could continue juggling work and studying and keeping my head above water. How does insurance pay for that?

Anyway, this reminds me of the old joke – what do doctors call motorcyclists?
Donors.

And on that bright note let me bring this to an end. Two hours ago, I was just going to write a few words.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 2 of 2008

Dear Friends, February 10

This letter is coming to you from my new computer, a birthday present from last year. My old laptop had so many extra devices hanging off the USB ports and PC card slot that Lucia felt it was time for an upgrade. I agreed. What I did suggest though, was that we wait until we moved to England where prices for electronic and computer are much cheaper – largely due to absence of the import duties imposed on such goods in SA. I spent ages poring over computer specifications on various websites and I was really struck by how few high spec machines come with a 14 inch screen. This was standard in laptops a couple of years ago, but it just doesn’t seem to be an option now. The choice is either a 15,4 inch or 17 inch screen which, to my mind, rather defeats the basic premise of a laptop which is mobility and portability. Just try and open a laptop with a 17 inch screen in economy class in an aeroplane and see how much space you have left. They’re heavier too. Stupid.

I eventually settled on a model with a 15,4 inch screen which just fits into my old laptop bag. Perhaps more surprising to those who know me really well is the fact that we bought a Sony Vaio. I had always felt that the Sonys were priced a bit too extravagantly for what was on offer. Two points here: 1) this one was on sale and 2) it was the same price as the laptop I had been looking at in SA, but bigger, better, faster with all the bells and whistles, including a Blu-ray disc. It’s zooty.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t have a few issues setting it up. For a start, it just wouldn’t work with the 3G broadband modem I bought two weeks ago. After fiddling around for two days, calling both the Vodafone and Sony helpdesks, I was eventually put through to someone who knew what he was talking about. The short answer to the problem was that that modem would never work with Sony, Dell, Toshiba or Advent. I would need to upgrade to the newer, faster modem. I went to the nearest Vodafone shop expecting to be told to go back to the shop where we bought the modem in the first place. But this is where I find service here in the UK so good. They were able to look up the sale on the network and they exchange the modem immediately, although I did have to pay a bit extra for the new model. Anyway, I took it home, plugged it in, logged on, and then it died. So, back to Vodafone in Leamington where they gave me another new one without a quibble. It’s still working, touch wood.

Then I tempted fate. I installed my Portuguese dictionary on the computer and it hit a snag straight away. Every time I tried to launch the dictionary, I received and error message (in Portuguese) saying that the programme wasn’t registered yet which I knew it bloody well was. I had to wait until the following morning to call the makers of the dictionary in Portugal, and asked in a huff and in my excruciating Portuguese why my dictionary wouldn’t work. The answer, in fluent English, was that it had nothing at all to do with their software, but was rather a security feature in Windows Vista. All I needed to make the programme work was to run it as an administrator. Stupid bloody feature.

Other than those two issues, I’m really pleased with my present.

But week hasn’t been entirely about computers. I visit the dogs and cats at their quarantine kennel every day, and stay with them as long as it takes me to read the paper after playing with them for a bit. I sit in a folding chair right next to Edgar and Hazel’s baskets, and they find a position where they can lean against me, or at least keep a paw on me. I do need, however, to correct the impression given by the photographs I mailed to you that there is a great big radiator in their kennel keeping them warm. The radiator you see doesn’t actually work. They get their heat from the light which is also an infrared heating lamp of the type you might find in a restaurant kitchen. It seems to keep them warm enough, at least I hope so. It’s been really cold.

On my drive to the kennels at the beginning of the week, I was fascinated the by machine cutting the hedgerows around the fields. It’s essentially a tractor with a big lawnmower attached to a mechanical arm which then drives up and down mowing the sides and tops of hedges. I’m not sure how I thought they cut the hedges (a couple of hundred people wielding garden shears), but I certainly didn’t imagine that it was done with a lawnmower. I stopped the car to watch the machine in motion and take some pictures, but then my camera wouldn’t work. By the time I got home though, the camera was miraculously working again. And the next day the machine wasn’t there.

Another big event was our first snowfall. Most our days have been bright and clear, and it has only been the very low temperatures to remind us that it’s actually winter. After many dire warnings on the radio and TV at the beginning of the week of terrible storms just waiting to sweep the country with destruction, we had 30 minutes of snow on Tuesday afternoon. And then the sun came out again first thing Wednesday morning. The inclement weather certainly passed us by. The snow was really pretty for as long as it lasted. Everything goes deathly silent as the snow damps and absorbs all the sound. Everything also takes on a fuzzy outlook as the falling snow blurs all the natural and man-made lines. But then, as I said, the clouds went away and the sun came out.

Shopping also continues to engage me. Those chicken breast fillets I was rambling on about last week are at least twice the size of anything I ever came across in SA. I was able to make a stirfry with just one fillet that was more than enough for two people. The pre-prepared foods that just need some time in a microwave to make them edible are often much better value than the similar product in SA. It’s just that shopping here requires a much higher degree of involvement than that which we are used to. Even buying a newspaper requires a mental choice every time made even more interesting by the goodies (usually CDs or DVDs) to entice you to buy a particular paper. I’ve been buying a different one each day, even the trashier tabloids. I suppose it could become tiresome after a while, but I think it will take me a long time. Much to my delight, I discovered that both Tesco and Sainsbury’s stock Mrs Ball’s chutney (at a reasonable price), something no South African kitchen should ever go without. The price of freshly baked bread rolls came as a bit of a shock though – 35p each. Each. They should come with share certificates attached. Tesco also offers the very novel concept of self-service checkouts. Now there’s something that might not go down so well in SA. That would be a bit like parking your car in Khayelitsha and leaving the keys in the ignition.

Shopping for clothes is just as much of a challenge if only because we don’t know which stores appeal to what market. So we have to go into all of them. So far, all we’ve bought is a rather nice Harris Tweed jacket for me which has already been put to very good use. It’s just too cold to go without a jacket of some sort.

We’re taking it easy today (Sunday) after a full day yesterday. To give you a brief run through, we went shopping in the Saturday market in Warwick’s main square, and then drove to our animals via Coventry. We had to go into Coventry to find the Job Centre Lucia must go on Tuesday to register for National insurance. From the dogs we went to meet Richard and Anne and their daughter Polly at Hanwell Castle near Banbury in Oxfordshire. Anne is a former Millward Brown colleague of Lucia’s. The castle, more like a very big house, has acres of beautiful gardens as well as an observatory that is open to the public. It has what will become the largest private refracting telescope in the country set in its gardens. After the walk went to tea at Richard and Anne’s home in the hamlet of Winderton in the Warwickshire dales. When we got home in the evening we decided to go out for dinner. Our path took us past the imposing structure of St Mary’s church where people were hurrying in the doors. On investigating we discovered that there was a concert on for which I had misread the date in the advertising fliers. So we went to the concert instead of going to dinner straight away. The concert was by the Oriflamme Ensemble (a smallish orchestra) in aid of Amnesty International with works by Fauré, Ravel, Vaughan Williams and Brahms. It was a thoroughly enjoyable event even if I became distracted by the conductor whose sometimes wild gesticulations bore no apparent link to the music being played. The oboe soloist also left me wondering if he was able to breathe in and out at the same time; he blew so hard and so long without apparently breathing in that I kept expecting him to pass out from oxygen deprivation. And then we went to dinner at a little Italian place around the corner.

Lucia has had a tough week finding her feet in her new job. They do the job differently here, and the ambience of a corporate office with 400 employees, as opposed to an office of seven people in Cape Town, is also entirely different and a bit alien. Also, most of Lucia’s work in SA was related to management issues, whereas her job function here again has a greater emphasis on research. And the first week in any job is likely to be tough as one feels for one’s place and role in the business.

And that was another week in Warwick. We’re looking forward to moving into our new home at the end of March; the little apartment we are in is very small compared to the space we are used to.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn