Letter from Warwick: 15 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 30 May

The week has been about the dogs and cats which we retrieved from the quarantine kennel last Saturday afternoon.
(Pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) The dogs knew that something momentous was happening as I fished around for their slip chains in the bag I was carrying. They both started jumping and running around the cage excitedly as soon as they actually saw the chains and leads. They also know my Honda well after seeing me arrive and leave in it when visiting them almost daily over the past four months, and Edgar, the ridgeback, looked as if he was about to jump in through an open window as we approached the car. They didn't need a second invitation to hop in the moment I opened the tailgate for them. The car was especially prepared for them: Honda installed a metal gate device behind the back seats to stop the dogs jumping into the cabin of the car, and I also bought a fitted rubber tray that covers the back floor of the CRV. They weren't cheap, but I can already see that they will be worth every penny given how muddy the dogs can get on our walks.

We settled the cats into their lock room – their space for 10 days as they get used to the new environment – when we got home, and then took the dogs straight out for a walk. We followed the canal and then the River Leam into Leamington Spa . At Victoria Park we let them off their leads. It's difficult to describe their reaction – lets just say “joy abounded.” They went tearing off after each other in ever wider circles, clattering each other to the ground and sprinting away again. I was a little worried that it might take a while to gain absolute voice control over them after six months in quarantine, but they behaved like gold, immediately returning when called, and sitting and going down and rolling over on command. Even at a coffee shop in Warwick on Wednesday I told them to stay down while I went inside to order my cappucino; when I came out they were exactly as I left them. This was all the more impressive because there were two lassie collies sitting with other patrons just a metre or two away, and guide dogs under training continually walking by. (There's a big guide dog training centre in Warwick.) In fact, one guide dog just wouldn't go past them; he barked blue murder, but Edgar and Hazel stayed down and ignored him.

But back to Saturday. We looped back home after walking through Victoria Park, the Pump House Gardens and Jephson Gardens. At the canal, Edgar tried to get a drink of water and fell right in. Hazel, who loves a swim after a walk, thought this was all part of the plan and plunged in after him before I could hold her back. At home in Cape Town she always headed straight for the pool after a long walk and would swim up and down for ten minutes to cool down. Unfortunately canals don't have steps like swimming pools do and the only way to get them out is to pull them out – but remember for a moment that Edgar isn't exactly the smallest dog around. You have to grab a front paw and some flesh and heave.

It started raining again on Sunday, but we went out anyway which possibly wasn't a good idea because Lucia had sniffles on Monday morning and a full-blown bout of flu by Tuesday morning. This is the third time she's been ill since we've been here. Our walk on Sunday took us to Hay Wood, sort of between Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon, and the public footpaths around Baddesley Clinton. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddesley_Clinton.) I love the footpaths. They're essentially ancient rights of way leading one through what otherwise might be regarded as private property. Our walk on Tuesday on footpaths outside Leamington, for instance, took us past an ancient (and privately owned) manor house that one wouldn't otherwise have known was there. After our Sunday walk we drove around trying to find a place for lunch. The weather was miserable and most of the pubs wouldn't allow dogs inside. We eventually found a pub on the Grand Union Canal that had huge umbrellas covering its terrace. We were still the only people sitting outside as a cold wind came whistling through. The barman looked at me a bit strangely when I said we were sitting outside, and I had to explain to him that we had dogs with us. He got a bit of a fright as Edgar approached when he brought us our food. He stood dead still and lamented: “I thought you said dog, not bear.”

On Monday, a public holiday (called a bank holiday in the UK) we walked around Newbold Comyn Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbold_Comyn), and on Tuesday (which Lucia had taken as leave) we went back to explore the footpaths we had seen signposted on the Comyn. At then end of all of this walking, Lucia commented that the dogs must think of home as a short stop-off point between walks.

On Wednesday Lucia was supposed to return to work but it was quite apparent when she woke up that she shouldn't be going anywhere. In the end, she went in for just a few hours to settle some important business, and then came home to bed. She stayed in bed yesterday (Thursday) and only went in to work for a meeting this morning (Friday).

I've avoided her lurgi, but have begun to suffer my yearly bout of hay fever. This is the time of year when grass pollen is at its most abundant in the UK, and I can certainly feel it. I was really miserable last night. My eyes itched like hell and swelled up, and my clogged nose made for difficult breathing between sneezes. I'm preparing myself for a couple of weeks of unhappiness.

And that's been our week really apart from watching some television and some shows I downloaded from the Internet. I was fascinated by a statement on a programme on TV last night about gridlock and road rage in the UK; they said that the UK was only second to South Africa in the world in terms of the incidence of road rage. Is that true? Does SA really have the highest incidence of road rage per capita in the world? Can somebody perhaps enlighten me? It did give me an idea for a bumper sticker though: “ Try me. I'm a South African.” That should warn the bastards off. We can sell it through the various websites flogging SA products to homesick South Africans in the UK. (For example, http://www.amapotjiepot.co.uk/.) Another of the commentators being interviewed had me rolling about for few minutes by referring to old drivers as “OAP coffin dodgers.” (OAP = old age pensioner, in case you didn't know.)

Talking of driving, I got zapped at 37mph in a 30mph zone by a mobile speed camera a couple of weeks ago. The first notice I received in the post required that I confirm who the driver was. The second notice offered me the choice of a £60 speeding fine and three points on my non-existent UK drivers license, or a half-day speed workshop. I'm going to the speed workshop to discover the causes and effects of speeding in two weeks time. The devil has a special place in hell reserved for parking wardens and mobile camera operators.

And speaking of driving, any of you South Africans thinking of relocating may be interested to note that you don't need to take a driving test again. You can simply swap your SA license for a British license. We still have to do it; one has a year after arrival to make the swap.

And, to end, a joke I heard on television last night:
A penguin walks into a bar and asks the barman: “Have you seen my brother?”
The barman says: “I don't know, what does he look like?”

That's it

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 14 of 2008

My dear Family and Friends, 23 May

Oh joy, oh bliss, the dogs and cats come home tomorrow. It's been a long four months visiting them nearly everyday, but it's given us peace of mind making sure that they're well cared for and I'm sure they rather appreciated it too. I'm fascinated to see what their reaction is going to be when we walk them out of the cage and out of the building for once and for all. For the moment they don't even try to leave their cage if one inadvertently leaves the door open; that's their life and they don't step beyond it. Edgar may poke his nose out, but will leap back the moment you say his name. I think it's a bit like how Europeans perceived the world in the Middle Ages – it was flat and you would fall off the edge and be consumed by dragons and fire if you ventured too far away from home.

On the way to visit the animals one day last week, I was intrigued to see a pair of caravans camped out on an open piece of ground next to the road near the kennels. These are the travellers – I believe it's not politically correct to call them gypsies any more. They've put up a rotary washing line, an outdoor toilet, colourful flower boxes, kennels for their dogs, and generators to power their televisions and satellite boxes. Depending on the time of day (and the weather, of course), you can see them sitting outside in their camp chairs enjoying the sun and a natter. It seems they have everything for comfortable home living. And in a little while, just before the local council finally gets an order to evict them, they'll pack up and leave, and go and find another patch of grass somewhere else. This was our second experience with the gypsies. A couple of weeks ago, a group of 20-or-so caravans pitched in the park down the road on the banks of the river Avon. Apparently, there was a big horse fair and market being held nearby. I drove past the park in the morning and thought: That's strange, I didn't know they allowed caravans to park there. It was only when the local knock-and-drop newspaper slid through the letter box that we discovered they were gypsies (much to the horror of the local residents.) They made their home in the park for about 10 days and left before the eviction order could be finalised.

The major event of the week for me was an MRI scan on Tuesday to find out if there was anything fixable going on around my right ear. I've had tapping tinnitus in that ear for quite some time. It's really irritating and is triggered by a range of different stimuli. It sounds like something is tapping or scratching on my ear drum when it gets going. Coupled with increasing deafness in the ear it's really unpleasant. An ENT surgeon in Cape Town wanted to try and treat it with botox – it's very experimental, but there has apparently been some success with it in Germany. However, we left SA before he was able to research the exact method and it's been getting quite a lot worse. I was referred to an ENT surgeon here who tested my hearing again and also wanted the MRI just to make sure there wasn't a neuroma or any other nasties affecting the ear. He didn't like the botox idea. The MRI took nearly 45 minutes and all that it showed was that I did indeed have a brain. I was interested to note that the attending doctor and nurse at the MRI unit were both South Africans. The ENT surgeon has referred me the the NHS for a hearing aid. It will take weeks compared to the private service of the ENT, but it's free.

So, I have the near perfect excuse for the time being: “Sorry, I didn't hear you.”

Lucia says I have to tell you that I've become a sucker for “specials” and other discounted goods at the supermarket. As far as she's concerned, this is a radical departure from my past behaviour and she never imagined that she would see me hunting down the bargains. Back in SA, I tended to ignore discounts and sales largely because I didn't see the value in the offering. Either the discount was to slim to tempt me, or the goods on offer was the crap that people didn't want. I mean, does it really matter how cheap the crap is, it's still crap.

Here in the UK, however, I really can see true value in the goods they're trying to flog at a discount. If you can buy two bags of crisps, or two boxes of chocolates for the price of one, that's real value. There is also real value to be had in the bulk offerings. For example, a single Mars Bar costs around 32p. A pack of ten, however, costs around £1,42, say 14p each. A pack of 20 will set you back £1.98, that is, just 9,8p each. The result is that I tend to bulk up when I see a good special. For instance, I bought 10 litres of the cranberry juice that Lucia particularly likes the other day. I think the difference between the UK and SA is that the competition is far more heated between the supermarket chains here and the price variation between the chains is very slim. The other place to find bargains is in the “reduced to clear” fridges. By-and-large British people seem to be super averse to anything that comes to close to its “sell by” date and these are all dumped in the discount fridge. The thing is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the produce so long as you cook it and eat it fairly soon. A leg of lamb for £4 or £5 is a bargain in anybody's book.

That's it for now. I'll take some pictures of the animals enjoying their first weekend of freedom and put them up in the usual place. (http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones)

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 13 of 2008

My dear Family and Friends, 12 May

The sun has been shining for 10 glorious days now and the long range weather forecast predicts that it's going to stay like this for the rest of the week. The next thing they're going to announce on television news is that we are in the middle of a drought – and some talking heads will come on to blame it all on global warming and my 4X4. No matter; it won't wipe the smile from my face. I've been wallowing in the sunshine in shorts and a T-shirt. It's been fantastic to sit in the cage with the dogs at the quarantine kennel reading my book in the sunshine. Every now and again a gentle breeze will blow through bringing country and farmyard smells with it. It's country quiet out there too with few cars to baffle the sound of birdsong or the occasional lamb bleating in the distance. The dogs will stretch out in the sun for a bit, but their winter-thick coats quickly have them nosing around for some shade. Edgar has a way of draping himself over the cool concrete for maximum benefit. We're counting the days until they can come home now in two Saturday's time.

The sunshine also meant that I had to turn some serious attention to the garden. I spent hours last weekend clearing the flower beds of weeds (and everything else that the weeds and soil just cling to.) I also had a tough job clearing the jungle weeds from a bed of gravel opposite our driveway. A couple of years ago somebody clearly thought that a gravel bed would be easier than tending to some greenery and dumped a huge load of stones in the flower bed. They then did nothing to ensure that it remained weed free with the result that it became a tangled mass of prickly, spikey weeds. Clearing it was back-breaking work to get the weeds out at their roots. I had to bang the garden fork into the gravel and then jump on it to get it right down under the roots. I then had to leaver it backwards and forwards to loosen the gravel and finally yank the weeds out with their roots. No wonder then that I managed to bend the teeth of the fork as I yanked and grunted and banged. When I was done, our neighbour Mark, the military policeman, said the driveway hadn't looked this good in years. Now I'm looking for something reasonably toxic to spray on the area to make sure that it stays clear.

While I was doing this, Lucia was catching up on work, trying to keep her head above water. She's been working long hours fighting fires not of her making. One of the problems is simply a lack of suitably qualified staff. Warwick is a bit of a backwater that isn't really attractive to bright young graduates who invariably prefer big city charms. Warwick attracts people who want to settle down, and that means babies. It makes it hellishly difficult to budget and plan.

We did manage to to get out for a bit on the Bank Holiday Monday. Out destination was a car boot sale at Long Itchington, a picturesque village not far from Warwick. It had rained overnight so the field where patrons had to park quickly became a bit of a mud bath. The farmer was standing by with his tractor to help anyone who got bogged down, but our Honda CRV laughed in the face of such adversity. With an eye for a bargain, Lucia loves these types of informal markets. This time, a compendium of Roald Dahl's works for just £5 that grabbed her attention. No doubt it will make a suitable gift for a child at some point. Slightly less enticing were the frilly, floral second hand bras somebody was trying to flog out the boot of her car. (You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) Afterwards we went for a bite of lunch at a nearby pub on the Grand Union canal and took a long, looping drive home along back roads and byways through yet more quaint, but very expensive villages.

On Friday I decided to go wandering again looking for our nearest beach. I drove east this time all the way to Norfolk. The problem with the UK is that all the major highways run north-south along the length of the country, with virtually nothing going east-west across its breadth. So driving east-west can be a bit of an obstacle course. I headed first for King's Lynn and then followed the coast road along the north coast of Norfolk all the way to Cromer. Along the way I discovered Sandringham Estate, one of the private homes of the Queen. At first, the coast is a bit mass market with lots of trailer parks and dowdy seaside towns. But it changes completely once you past Holme-next-the-sea. The villages look and feel more French than English and the coastline becomes much more rugged and windswept with a large inter-tidal marsh. A look in the windows of an estate agent revealed house prices that look more like telephone numbers (including the international dialling code.) It really is quite spectacular. It changes once again as you get to Victorian holiday hotspots of Sheringham and Cromer which, to my eye at least, looked quite drab compared to the cobbled villages a few miles away. (Pics at usual spot.) It was getting late in the afternoon as I got to Cromer and I had to head back home – a journey of 150 miles (240km), but which took me over three and a half hours.

This weekend was a bit more busy and social. On Saturday afternoon went went to visit our zoo as usual which is always a social event as we catch up with the many other South Africans and their stories which brought them to England. A large majority of the animals in the kennel are from SA.

Some of the stories are truly harrowing tales of the mindless violence that is now endemic in SA. Everyone is hugely relieved and much happier to be in England – but then we would say that, wouldn't we. The most common observation people make, particularly women, is how much better they are sleeping here. That was quite an eye-opener for me; I used to tell Lucia that she was being over-sensitive, but it must relate to some protective instinct in women and a drive to guard the “nest”. We have become particularly friendly with another family from Cape Town who now live in Leicester, and we're having them around for dinner this coming weekend.

On Saturday night we had one of Lucia's colleagues around for dinner, and on Sunday we went to the first birthday party of the of the daughter of the Australian couple we met at a coffee shop a few weeks ago. Husband Ben is a researcher/lecturer at the medical faculty at the University of Warwick. The birthday party was thus a gathering of foreigners and academics. One young Australian couple we met is about to move to Johannesburg where the husband has taken up a fairly senior post at Standard Bank. I had to bite my tongue not to say anything. But it was a wonderful afternoon and we met some really nice people whom we look forward to seeing again.

That's it for now

As ever
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 12 of 2008

Dear Family and Friends, May 2

I must say that this weather really can become a bit annoying. While I'm ready for summer, summer doesn't appear to be ready for us. I'm looking forward to an entire day of bright sunshine and clear blue skies. I remember Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame described English weather in one of his books as akin to a dirty, damp dish cloth. I understand the sentiment. I feel as if the budding, bright green trees and the riotous blooming flowers of spring are just mocking me. I'm a sun person. I was born wearing shorts, a T-shirt and sunglasses. But for the time being fields of blooming rapeseed appear to be taking the place of the sun. Everywhere you drive the fields are covered in a bright yellow. I only realised last weekend that rapeseed and canola are the same thing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed)

Last weekend we had our first weekend away. We drove down to Johan and Linda on the outskirts of London on Friday evening, and took a long looping drive through Sussex and Kent on Saturday and Sunday, staying overnight in Dover on Saturday. Johan gave me a crash course in English history at the town of Battle which is famous for the defining Battle of Hastings of 1066. It was at this battle that William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, defeated the English army of King Harold II and England essentially became a French nation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings) It suddenly dawned on that this was why so much of the English aristocracy have French names.

The seaside towns along this coast speak of a faded and peeling Victorian grandeur. But still Hastings, Hythe, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Ramsgate, Herne Bay and Whitstable remain ever popular resorts with Londoners despite the run-down feel to them. Traffic becomes gridlocked on sunny summer weekends as hundreds of thousands of people descend on these towns.

Back at home, I have started working on our garden, not that I really know what I'm doing. The lawn remains waterlogged and the flower beds are a mass of weeds. Trying to dig the weeds out is nearly impossible because of the clay like soil clings to everything with the result that you end up yanking everything out with the weeds. But that seems to be the way it's done looking at our neighbours gardens. Come spring, they pull everything out except the shrubs, turn the soil and start again. We had a specialist lawn man around on Monday to fertilise and spray the grass. We really need to improve the lawn before the dogs get here otherwise we are going to have bit of a problem with them walking muck into the house.

And it's not long before the zoo comes home – just three weeks tomorrow (Saturday). Oh happy day; we're really looking forward to that (and I'm sure the animals must be wondering what the hell they did wrong to be put in jail for six months.)

This weekend is a long weekend in the UK. We haven't made any plans (other than visiting the zoo, of course), but I'm sure it will include a anniversary dinner. We've been married six years. How time flies?

That's it for now. You can see a few more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn