Letter from Warwick: 19 of 2008

Dear Family & Friends, 28 June

Lucia has her new car. It’s a tanzanite-blue Mercedes C180 Compressor which was delivered to her office on the back of a great big truck on Friday morning. (You can see a picture of her posing with her new chariot in the usual place at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) Ironically it comes from the Mercedes-Benz plant at East London in South Africa. She didn’t tell me it was due for delivery preferring to keep it as a surprise. I took it out for a drive as soon as she got home and I was most impressed not to mention a touch envious. It’s comfortable and it goes like clappers with a little bit of pressure from the right foot. Otherwise is drifts serenely along. It’s got a few neat little bells and whistles which Lucia is learning how to use from the rather chunky manual that is delivered with the car. I think the styling is fantastic too; it exudes a rakish gravitas (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron.)

The other very important feature of the week for Lucia was her haircut last Saturday. You will recall that this was the third hairdresser Lucia was trying in her quest to find a stylist who understands what she wants. As my friend Denise in Cape Town said: “As for the quest for the least scary hairdresser, tell her I can relate! There is nothing more upsetting than leaving the house looking like yourself and returning much poorer with an identity crisis!!” An expensive identity crisis! -- I thought that was rather good and oh so true. So let me say here that we were both much pleased with the outcome. I think the photographs that Lucia took along of her last haircut in SA played an important part of ensuring that she got what she wanted. Lucia said the stylist referred to them several times. But isn’t that so true of everything; if you want something done properly, draw a diagram. Or maybe that’s just the male view. Anyway, the success at the hairdresser meant that a celebration was in order, so we went out for dinner to the Portuguese restaurant I found last week. It’s a really lovely little place and I’m certain we’ll be frequenting the establishment quite often.

I was watching the TV news on Tuesday morning when they had an insert about the town of Ironbridge just outside Telford which is about 50 miles away. (I remember watching part of the Euro 2004 soccer cup final between Portugal and Greece at the Telford services. I was driving back from the christening of Andreas and Michelle’s daughter Natasha at Dolwydellan near Betws-y-Coed in North Wales to Luton Airport to catch a flight to Portugal.) Ironbridge is in the Severn Valley and is named for the fact that it has the world’s first ever iron bridge. Wikipedia says it’s the “birthplace of the Industrial Revolution" because it’s near the place where Abraham Darby perfected the technique of smelting iron with coke (rather than charcoal), allowing iron to be produced much more cheaply. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbridge). So I loaded the dogs in the back of the car and off we went to Ironbridge. It’s a fantastic place; this is a beautiful part of the Severn Valley with a rich history and several excellent museums. (http://www.ironbridge.org.uk/) Having the dogs with me limited what I could do, but I walked around the area for a couple of hours and ended it with lunch at a pub alongside the river. I’m looking forward to going back with Lucia soon.

Closer to home, I was fascinated watching a funfair being set up in the Pump Room Gardens in Leamington Spa. First to arrive were the caravans of the funfair owners and staff although the word “caravan” doesn’t do justice to one or two of the mobile homes which need powerful trucks to tow them from one venue to the next. Then came the amusements bit by bit, slowly transforming the park into a funfair. We went along yesterday evening to see what the funfair was like in full swing. It was all lit up and sparkling with flashing lights and noisy music and piped laughter coming from all the attractions – but there was nobody there. Yes, okay, there were a few small groups of people milling around in a lacklustre way, occasionally trying out a ride, but that only emphasised the fact that there was nobody banging away on the dodgems, no shrieks from the octopus, no one buying candy floss, no one trying to win outsize teddy bears and other fluffy toys at the impossible (and probably rigged) games of skill. One ride carried the warning: “This is a very boisterous ride! Not suitable for persons of a nervous disposition, persons with a heart condition or expectant mothers. Watch before you ride.” But there was nobody there to pay attention. There’s nothing quite so sad as an empty funfair.

In contrast, the parade along the High Street in Warwick this morning to kick off the Warwick Festival was much better attended, but still a bit thin on the ground. Edgar and Hazel helped swell the numbers. The parade was led by the Town Crier in a bright blue coat and top hat who got the ball rolling with the cry of “Oyez, oyez, oyez.” Behind him was a fire engine followed by the Warwick Girls Marching Band and a couple of floats representing the Scouts and Guides, the Warwick Hospital ... and then we lost interest and went to Cafe Chai for a cappuccino.

Such was our week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 18 of 2008

Dear Family & Friends

Today is officially the first day of summer in the UK – June 21, the summer solstice. It’s raining. In fact, it looks suspiciously like a drizzly, rainy winter’s day in Cape Town outside. Lucia has gone to the hairdresser to have her hair coloured and cut. There’s a big client function next week and she wants to look her best. This is the third hairdresser she’s trying. The other two did what they wanted rather than what Lucia asked them to do. She was really unhappy when she came home the last time, an unhappiness which was only exacerbated by the look on my face. It's not that it was a disapproving look – I tried to look as sympathetic as I could, but that only emphasised the fact that the look and style was not what Lucia would have wanted. This time Lucia is taking along photographs of her last haircut in SA so that there can’t be any mistaking what she wants. I don’t have these problems – I cut my own hair. I’ve been using a barber’s hair trimmer on myself ever since the top of my head started showing more skin than hair. I cut it to a number two. But I never really had a problem with the way hairdressers cut my hair anyway. Only once did I say to a hairdresser that I was looking for something new and different, and that was all it took to ensure that I never said the same thing again. She cut horrible stupid steps into my hair which I had to take to a barber to shave out the very next day. I couldn’t live with it. From then on, when I sat down in the hairdresser’s chair and she sweetly asked me how I wanted my hair done, I simply said, “Conservative and classic. Think banker.”

I had to go to the hearing clinic at the NHS hospital in Warwick this week for another hearing test and to be fitted for a hearing aid. The test showed quite conclusively once again that the hearing in my right ear is about 15dB to 20dB less than the left ear in the low frequency ranges – the range of the human voice. The hearing in both ears is below average. My hearing aid will be ready in the middle of next month. What really shocked me though was that I had to pay £3 for one hour parking at the hospital. £3. That’s outrageous. But then I suppose that’s what happens in economic terms when state intervention causes the hospital service to be mispriced (£ zero.) The hearing aid and the ancillary professional service are worth a couple of hundred pounds, but I get it free.

My great discoveries of the week in Leamington Spa have been a Portuguese deli, a Portuguese pub and a Portuguese restaurant. I discovered the deli, the Luso Patisserie, just walking past. I went in and ordered a coffee and enquired in my halting Portuguese where all the Portuguese people went to watch the Euro 2008 soccer. I eventually worked out with the help of another customer that the venue was a pub called the Lock, Dock and Barrel just up the road on the canal. I had noticed the pub previously while out walking the dogs, but only because it looked like such a dive. Be that as it may, Lucia and I went there to watch the Portugal-Switzerland game last Saturday and again on Thursday to watch the quarter final match with Germany (which Portugal lost 3-2.) Anyway, on Thursday evening at the pub, we bumped into a Portuguese South African who is the manager of an Italian restaurant here in Leamington Spa. (The restaurant is owned by an Iranian who also owns an Italian coffee shop run by a Spaniard with Polish and French waiters. The Portuguese deli and pub are owned by an Indian. Still with me?) The Portuguese South African told us there was a Portuguese restaurant on the “wrong side” of Leamington Spa railway station. This restaurant is actually owned by a Portuguese person from Porto, but the waitress is Brazilian and one of the chefs looks a little too blonde to be Portuguese.

I went to the restaurant, called Alfonso’s Place, on my own yesterday evening while Lucia was attending a work function. It was great. There’s a big weed-filled concrete slab across the road that looks like it used to be part of the bus depot. The dilapidated wooden hoardings surrounding the site that are supposed to keep people out are a multicoloured array of graffiti. They stopped keeping people out a long time ago. The local council has big ideas for the site, but one gets the feeling that it will be a while before anything actually happens. The restaurant is in a yellow-painted prefabricated building that looks like it dates back to the war. But there was a big, friendly greeting from the Brazilian waitress who was happy to let me practice my Portuguese on her. The food was inexpensive, very tasty and dished up in Portuguese-size portions. I’ll definitely be taking Lucia along sometime soon, maybe even this evening (depending on the haircut.)

And talking of things Portuguese, I was searching for my Portuguese language books this week among all the boxes of books stacked in the garage. I knew that I should find them (and my English Thesaurus) when I found my big Collins dictionary because they were all together in my study in Cape Town and should have been packed together. Right? Wrong. I’d love to know what the packer from the removal company was thinking when he packed our books. They are nearly all packed spine down so you can’t see what they are. The only way to find anything that isn’t obvious by it size (like a dictionary) would be to unpack everything (that’s something between one and two thousand books). I found the dictionary and left it at that. I’ve ordered another copy of the text book I was looking for from the WH Smith website (it was cheaper than Amazon or anything I could find on eBay.)

I also watch live Portuguese television on the Internet in the hope of improving my language skills, but I still struggle to understand what they’re saying. The only thing I can completely comprehend is the weather forecast, but then they give you a great big hint with the weather icons. (Come to think of it, I’m not too bad with the traffic reports either.) It’s amazing what one can find and do with such high-speed interconnections in the UK. For the last group matches of Euro 2008 (when games are played at the same time), I was able to watch one match on television and the other match live on the Internet. Theoretically, I could have watched both the matches on my computer.

Finally, I forgot to mention last week that I scratched my car. It’s not a big scratch, but I was so annoyed with myself. I reversed into a wooden bollard at Warwick Castle. The CRV is just so high and long that it’s very difficult to see low things behind the car and to judge distances while reversing. (The new CRV’s have a reverse camera which comes up on a screen in the dashboard.) I didn’t see the bollard at all. Thank goodness it was wood; it would have done some serious damage if it had been concrete.

That’s it for another week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 17 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 14 June

I had to go to speed class yesterday as punishment for driving at 37mph (59km/h) in a 30mph (48km/h) zone. It was either the class or have my license endorsed with three penalty points. You lose your license once you have accumulated 12 points. The points remain on your license for three years. This in no way alters the fact that the operators of mobile “safety” cameras probably had a deprived childhood, and are almost certainly visiting unspecified power fantasies upon unsuspecting motorists. They wouldn’t be allowed to if I were in charge. In fact, if I were in charge, they’d be doing something really useful to suit their skill set, like sweeping the streets. I was half expecting the “speed awareness programme” to be filled with a hardened criminal underclass of dodgy speed demons, but nothing could have been further from the truth. My fellow students were mostly mild, middle-aged, law-abiding men and women who got done for driving around a few miles an hour over the limit. Most of the three-hour class was about the causes and effects of speeding, and included some fairly unlikely accident scenarios. I mean it was fairly obvious to me that subject A managed to crash his/her car at 35mph on a straight road in broad daylight because he/she was a complete tosser who should never have been given permission to ride a bicycle, let alone drive a car in the first place. The only really effective part of the programme to me was the public service advertisements of people being knocked down. They are quite shocking and do give one pause for thought. At the end of the class we had to fill in a biased and manipulative mini survey which asked 1) if we thought speed caused accidents, 2) slowing down saved lives, and 3) if we thought that we (personally) should/would slow down. I delighted in answering no to the last question. I have already slowed down – right after I calculated the petrol consumption of my Honda CRV. And I slowed down again as the petrol price cruised through £1,10/litre. Barbara and Terry, my sister and brother-in-law, have just got back from Canada where Barbara tells me the maximum speed limit is 90km/h (just over 55mph). I guess I won’t be visiting Canada any time soon then.

But let me jump back to last weekend. You may remember from my last missive that I was hoping the weather would remain sunny and warm for the weekend so that I could show Lucia the town of Broadway in the foothills of the Cotswolds about 25 miles away. Well, it did, we went, and Lucia was quite as captivated by the town as I was. (Pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) So thank you once again for the recommendation Andreas. We strolled down the high street peering in at the galleries and estate agents before stopping at a pub for a late morning cappuccino. Along the way Edgar got many admiring glances and a few people stopped to make his (and our) acquaintance. Then we strolled back up the high street on the opposite side of the road following much the same procedure. Outside a wool and tweed outfitters shop I noticed they had PG Field winter weather gear – a brand and style of clothing I really like – on sale at half price, and I managed to buy a waterproof overcoat for a song and a brown felt fedora hat which had also been marked down. Lucia had less luck and came away with nothing much to her chagrin.

After my shopping spree we stowed the purchases in my car and walked up to the Broadway Tower along the public footpaths. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Tower; http://www.broadwaytower.co.uk/.) We had to put Edgar on lead every time we came across sheep lazily grazing away in their fields. Edgar was the picture of terror – tail between legs, walking low on his haunches, and staring nervously around every time he heard a lamb bleat. The poor boy; as I said, he gets very emotional about these things. Hazel, on the other hand, had to restrain her instinct to herd the sheep. For my part, this entailed much whistling and yelling. At each sty between the fields I was physically manhandling the dogs over the obstacle until Lucia sweetly pointed out that one just had to lift the wooden gate thingy alongside to let the dogs crawl through (see pics). (How was I to know that you just needed to lift the damn thing? This is England after all; there should be instructions with a detailed diagram which have been specially approved by the Health & Safety Inspectorate.)

The view from the tower down the escarpment towards Wales is stunning and must look truly spectacular on a clear day. The funny thing is that even though Broadway Tower sits at the second highest point in the Cotswold Hills, it’s still lower than our house was up the slopes of Devil’s Peak in Cape Town. It’s what I miss most from SA, not being able to see for miles and miles. The tower itself is a folly built for the Earl of Coventry in the early 1800’s. My dictionary says a folly as a building constructed strictly as decoration having none of the usual purposes associated with the structure. So while the tower looks like a defensive bastion dating back to the middle ages, it was actually built much later by some dude for fun because he was rich and he could.

On Sunday morning we took the dogs to Draycote Water. (In South Africa we’d call it a dam.) I called before hand to check that we could take the dogs in and was told that they were only allowed in the park and not around the reservoir. What they didn’t explain is that it really isn’t worth the effort if you can’t take the dogs around the reservoir which is a pity because it’s a very pretty area. So after briefly acquainting ourselves with Draycote Water we took a slow drive around the villages winding our way to a hilltop farm shop/ tea room near Leamington for lunch. Except all the outside tables were reserved when we got there, and the only thing for lunch was the Sunday roast. I don’t do daytime roasts. A sandwich and a cool drink or beer is fine for me. So we drove around a bit more towards a pleasant-looking pub we had seen nearby. When we got there, we left the dogs in the back of the car and went in to ask if they had an outside table for us and whether our dogs could join us. They told us to take any table we wanted and said the dogs could join us on lead. Lucia went to get a table and I went to get the dogs. I let the dogs out of the car and, as I was connecting Hazel’s lead top her collar, Edgar bolted off in the direction he’d last seen Lucia. By the time I caught up with him he was causing pandemonium among the guests in the starched-white, stiff and formal dining room. And he knew I was the bliksem in with him and had no intention of being caught. I had to rush outside to yell to Lucia to call him. Once she had collared him, I yanked him back to car along with a couple of hefty cuffs to his rump. I suppose it was quite funny in retrospect, but I was just very embarrassed at the time. (Well, not so embarrassed that we actually left; we stayed for lunch.)

My only other adventure of the week was my search for “water” leisure spots. The dogs always loved a trip to the beach and need little invitation to plunge into the Avon when we walk to the park (despite the objections of one particular swan.) On Tuesday, I took them to Ryton Pools between Leamington Spa and Rugby on the recommendation of one of Lucia’s colleagues, and then to the Boddington Reservoir near Daventry. Richard (as in Richard, Anne and Polly) had mentioned that he goes sailing there, and I couldn’t find any objection to the presence of dogs in my research on the Internet. The reservoir was built as one of the feeder reservoirs to the Oxford Canal in the 1800s and covers about 60 acres. While dogs are not prohibited from the site, there are 120 fishing positions around the dam, and it’s my experience that fishermen don’t really like dogs plunging into the water near where they’re fishing. I eventually found a spot on the far side of the reservoir where I was able to send them in chasing after sticks. I ambled home on the back roads taking the measure of the villages along the way. Wormleighton (http://www.bmsgh.org/parish/warw/tyaiw/wormleighton.html) particularly caught my eye with a manor house dating back to the early 1600s. (Check pics for To Let sign next to 500-year-old barn.)

That’s it for now. There’s soccer on TV.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 16 of 2008

Dear Family & Friends, June 6

The sad news is that a favourite pair of shoes died this week. It’s a pair of Timberland boat shoes I bought in the International departures area of Johannesburg airport three years ago when Lucia and I were setting off on one of our trips to Portugal. There were two pairs of shoes that I liked going relatively cheap and we bought both of them. I remember the occasion particularly well because our luggage didn’t join us on the flight to Lisbon. It was a daylight flight which meant we arrived late in the evening when all the shops were closed. We also had an early departure on the train down to The Algarve the next morning well before the shops opened. The only change of clothes I had was the two pairs of shoes in a paper bag from Johannesburg airport. I had made matters much worse by washing my underwear and then burning a hole in them while trying to dry them over a light bulb in our room at a pensão near the airport. I was not happy. The second pair of shoes is still going strong.

On the upside, Lucia has finally mended from the bug which kept her in bed most of last week and is greatly looking forward to the weekend when she can join me walking the dogs again. I have been making full use of an ordnance survey map of the area I bought showing all the footpaths, minor roads and other byways. Not that the paths are always as clear on the ground as they are on the maps. On Tuesday I took the dogs out for a circular walk around Offchurch, a small village just east of Leamington Spa. I had the route clearly laid out in my mind and on the map, but when I got there, I often found myself thrashing through waist high fields of rapeseed or wheat, or picking my way across meadows filled with sheep and the inevitable sheep shit. Edgar doesn’t like sheep; I think he sees them as big, scary, woolly dogs. And they bark funny too. We already know that he doesn’t like horses having seen his reaction when we drove past one in Cape Town with him on the back seat of Lucia’s car. The back window was wide open for him and he barked and screamed blue murder at the horse such that it made the car shake. Edgar doesn’t often come across animals bigger than him, but he gets very emotional when he does. Poor boy.

The very high level of grass pollen in the air at this time of year can make the walks a little unpleasant for me. Not even halfway through Tuesday’s walk my nose and eyes were streaming, and there wasn’t very much time to breathe in between sneezes. Even Hazel was sneezing. But the dogs loved it, haring across fields in great leaps and bounds and then racing back. Hazel flushed more than a few pheasants and rabbits.

The fantastic thing here is that there is such an infinite variety and choice of places to walk. In Cape Town I either walked straight onto the mountain from our house, or took the dogs down to Camps Bay beach; anything else would first have required a bit of drive. Here, one needn’t do the same walk twice very often so longs as you have an ordnance survey map to show you the way.

On Wednesday I took the dogs to Broadway at the foot of the Cotwolds in Worcestershire at the suggestion of my friend Andreas whom we had around for lunch last Saturday along with his wife, Michelle, and daughter, Natasha. Broadway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway,_Worcestershire) is a very pretty little town built of yellowing limestone and very popular in the art community. It was beautiful sun-drenched day showing off the village at its best. The high street is dotted with several expensive art galleries and restaurants and there is a plethora of picturesque walks around the town and through the fields. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to pack my walking boots in the car, and the fields were a bit too damp and sodden under foot for my Timberlands. I had a lazy lunch in the sun at one of the inns with the dogs lying at my feet in the shade of a brolly. I drove home across the minor roads via Chipping Camden (also a really beautiful limestone town) where an annoyed driver got out his car to remonstrate with me for hooting. I told him I wasn’t hooting at him, I was hooting with him (at the car in front of him) which he accepted. I thought that was hysterically funny afterwards: I’m not hooting at you, I’m hooting with you – although it might not have been so funny had he chosen to take offence. (Pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.)

I’m rather hoping that the weather behaves this weekend so I can go back with Lucia, this time making sure to take our walking shoes with us. That Wednesday evening the good weather was too good to pass up and I made our first braai (barbecue) of the season. How’s that; we’re only having our first braai two weeks away from the summer solstice. I had bought some frozen sardines weeks ago for just this occasion. I defrosted them, coated them in olive oil, salt, a touch of pepper and mixed herbs, and grilled them for fifteen minutes turning them often. With some salad and a bottle of Zondernaam Sauvignon Blanc, it made for a perfect evening.

Another item which really caught my funny bone this week was drawn to my attention by Andreas while we were out walking in a local park with Natasha last Saturday. Apart from public bowling greens, Victoria Park also has public tennis courts for which users pay an hourly rate. Andreas pointed out the third price on the rate card attached to all the gates: “Under18s/Disabled/Unemployed: £1,50 per hour.” Disabled?

And talking of quirky things, I had really expected to see more dogs here. It’s just one of the stereotypes one is brought up with about the English. But none of our immediate neighbours have dogs, and there are very few in the neighbourhood. I’ve noticed that people are a lot more timid around dogs, especially dogs as big as Edgar. And while one place was happy for patrons to have dogs on lead in their beer garden, another was adamant that it was against the law because food was being served. One cafe let me have the dogs with me at their outside tables, another said I couldn’t. I expected something completely different. But you know what they say about assumption then, don’t you?

And another bizarre thing happened to me yesterday. I was walking down a side street in Leamington Spa with the dogs and I heard this real commotion going on behind me. I turned and saw these three yobbish youths shouting something at someone which included the words ponce and tosser. I sort of ignored them and only realised they were yelling at me when I crossed the road. And then they were gone. I’ve got absolutely no idea what it was about. Something similar has happened to me two or three times now, each occasion just as baffling as the last.

That’s it for now
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn