Letter from Warwick: 23 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

CharlieBrown, our black and white tomcat, came marching in through the patio door with a shrew in his mouth while I was cleaning this morning. I saw him coming and tried to shut the door on him, but he was quicker than me. He bounded through the house and up the stairs with me in hot pursuit. He dropped it when we got to our bedroom to leave me to chase it. I quickly caught it and set about pondering what to do with the little blighter. It’s my experience any animals that I’ve saved from the clutches of the cats are usually mortally wounded. For that reason I don’t generally interfere; I just keep them out of the house. The worst experience was having Tigger bring a small snake in at our home in Cape Town. The shrew was no exception to the mortality rule; it wasn’t doing well when I let it go outside. When next I looked, Tigger (who was still outside) had found it and was heading over the fence with it. I can tell that CharlieBrown is pissed off at me for having stolen his prize.

On Tuesday morning I took the dogs to the boarding kennel where I have booked them in for our holiday at the end of August. The owner likes to make sure that the dogs will be able to settle in before she will definitely accept them as paying guests. As such, I had to leave Edgar and Hazel with her for the morning. Hazel did not like being left behind, but they still passed their test with flying colours.

While the dogs were at the kennel, I went to Warwick Crown Court for a look around and to exercise my right to witness the law in action, or, in this case, inaction. There had been an “administrative error” which resulted in one of the courtrooms staying closed for the day. The courthouse is a beautiful old building with high vaulted ceilings built in the mid 1600s. The walls are adorned with the original javelins used to protect the judges 400 years ago. In a quadrangle outside one can still peer down into the dungeon which was built at the same time as the courts. Back then people awaiting trial were tossed into the dungeon without food. Their families were expected to throw food to them from the aperture at the top of the cell. Outside and around the corner one can still see the marks on the wall where the gallows were set up for the public executions.

The first case I sat in on was the sentencing of two 18-year-olds who had pleaded guilty to assault occasioning grievous bodily harm. The story, as best I could gather, was that the person who had been assaulted had arrived at the front door of one of the boys in the dock with a baseball bat. A stolen bicycle was at issue. But it appears that the alleged thief had a posse of friends with him waiting for this character to arrive. When he saw that he was outnumbered he threw his bat away ran like hell with this gang of youths hot on his heels baying for blood. They inevitably caught him and beat the hell out of him, smacking him a number of times with a shovel as well for good measure. The two boys in the dock were the only ones who had been caught. The more thuggish-looking of the two had a record as a youth offender going back nearly 10 years (remember he was only 18 years old.) He was sentenced to a year in prison and his accomplice (a first time offender) to eight months. The judge said they would have to serve half their sentences before being considered for release. Their family and girlfriends, who were in the public gallery with me, melted into tears. I was fairly outraged myself that they should get off so lightly.

The second case was also the sentencing of two bothers for shoplifting, theft and burglary. Both were drug addicts. They had several cases against them outstanding in various districts. They would get caught stealing something, get bailed, and go right out stealing again. The older of the two was given a drug rehabilitation order and sentenced to 70 hours community service over 12 months. I thought that was fairly lenient too. The younger brother is to be sentenced at a later date after a probation report.

The third case was against three older teenagers for aggravated assault and robbery. They beat up someone on a bus, stole his keys, and went and robbed his house. The case had begun the previous day, but there had been some negotiating overnight which led to guilty pleas on the lesser charges of assault and burglary. The jury was called in and dismissed. Sentencing can only take place after a probation report.

All through the day I had the tune “Duelling Banjos” from the movie “The Deliverance” playing in my head. But it was interesting; I’d like to go back again.

Yesterday I went exploring again. This time I drove west looking for our nearest beach in Wales. I took the most direct route in my map book, driving west to Worcester and then following the A44 all the way to Aberystwyth. It took me nearly four hours to travel about 160 miles (about 250km). The problem is that if you are not on a highway or dual carriage way here in the UK, the roads are narrow and very windy, even if it’s a fairly major route. As a South African I’m used to straight, wide roads that also have a nice wide hard shoulder. Here the roads zag and zig on an ancient path around somebody’s cow pasture and there is no hard or soft shoulder. The hedgerows remove all forward vision making it next to impossible to overtake. And when you do get the opportunity to overtake, you have to floor it, and you don’t take your foot off the accelerator until you are past and back in your lane. One hears and sees a lot in the media about the causes of accidents here – drink driving, reckless youths, unsafe cars and many more. But it’s interesting that no one ever blames the roads or the hedgerows which I think are the most dangerous elements of driving here in the UK. Straighten the roads, add a hard shoulder of at least a metre on either side of the road, and introduce a new law that bans hedgerows within three metres of the side of the road, and I reckon the accident toll would decline quite significantly. Just the “A” roads mind you; not the “B” roads and country lanes. And then there will be those who probably think that I should be shot for merely suggesting this assault on the English countryside.

Anyway, once I got to Aberystwyth, I strolled about the town and the castle ruins for a while, and then sat down for a baguette and a coke for lunch at a beachside café. Aberystwyth seems to be a fairly popular beach resort town in the British mode – not something that I really like. I prefer space (not a lot of that to be found) and white sand. So after I’d let the dogs run on the beach in the designated area, I loaded them in the car and drove north where my map book showed there were more beaches. I found some really nice beaches at the mouth of the Dovey River; the village of Aberdovey also fit my mould for a place where I could enjoy a beach break although I suspect that it wouldn’t be cheap to stay here. I found more pleasant beaches heading north past Tywyn, Llwyngwril and Barmouth.

At Llwyngwril I took the dogs down onto a nearly deserted beach and threw sticks into the sea for them to retrieve. There were only two young teenagers nearby taking pictures of each other leaping into the air in various poses. It looked to me like they were practising for a hoped for career in modelling. Like my experience in Devon, the water wasn’t really that cold and I disappeared behind a rock to change into my costume. I waded in to the sea and eventually took a dive into the water. It wasn’t quite as warm as I thought, but it was still bearable. After swimming and splashing about for a while, I heard the two girls shouting and waving wildly and pointing out to sea. I thought “SHIT”, there cannot be sharks here while I was sprinting out of the water as fast as I possibly could with the dogs behind me thinking this was all part of some game. It’s amazing how fast you can move when you think you might be about to become shark bait.

Well, it wasn’t sharks, it was dolphins, and all the young girls were trying to do was share their excitement with me. They’d never seen dolphins before. Ja well, I never thought I was about to be eaten by a shark before either. I went back in for another swim when my heart rate returned to normal. When I gathered the dogs to trek back to the car, Edgar kept looking behind him as if to say: We aren’t going already, are we? Ag no.

For the drive home I headed for Shrewsbury so that I could pick up the highways through Birmingham. I really didn’t feel like another four hours of sitting behind some tosser driving at 40mph. I did see one old dear nearly roll her car though. I have no idea how she managed keep the car on the road and carry on driving as if nothing had happened. I would have had heart failure.

That’s it for another week. I haven’t taken many more pictures, but you can see them at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 22 of 2008

My dear Family & friends, 21 July

My letter is later than usual this week because we had houseguests over the weekend. Our friends Johan and Linda came up from London by train on Friday evening and stayed over for two nights. Much like my brother-in-law Terry, they commented on the comfort of the bed in our spare bedroom which I find quite curious. I never liked that mattress. It used to be Lucia’s and my mattress until I insisted that we buy another for ourselves. Although it’s firm, I find it just too bouncy; if one person shifts about a bit, the other person bounces along with them. We now have a firm, non-bouncy mattress. Be that as it may, the weekend went by all too quickly before we had to take Johan and Linda back to the railway station shortly before the German F1 Grand Prix yesterday afternoon.

The Grand Prix didn’t go the way I would have wanted it to. I was much distressed that the McClaren Mercedes had the Ferraris completely outclassed – so distressed that I promptly fell asleep on the sofa while Lucia worked away on her laptop next to me.

Last weekend was also fairly busy with the highlight being a visit to Lucia’s cousin, Sue, for Sunday lunch. Sue lives with husband Chris and their two children in Tidmarsh, near Reading. Sue’s mother, Lorna (Lucia’s aunt), was also visiting from Cardiff for the weekend especially for the lunch. A good part of the early conversation revolved around when last everyone had been together. The answer, as best I can remember, was a very long time ago. I seemed to crack the nod of approval from this branch of the family whom I had never met. Later in the afternoon, Sue’s brother, Sean (also from Cardiff), his wife, Alison, and their three children arrived just in time for desert. The adults sat and chatted amiably away (occasionally ducking an errant ball) while the children cavorted gaily and squealed with delight. The afternoon zipped by in a flash and it was early evening before we were on the road back to Warwick. The late afternoon sun on our journey home turned the yellowing wheat fields into gold.

The big event of the week was our trip down to London on Tuesday for Lucia’s visa “interview” at the Portuguese consulate. The first thing we had to decide was how we were going to get down to London – car or train. If the train to London arrives before 10am, the return ticket costs £75 against the off-peak fee of £30 for arrivals at Marylebone station after 10am. The interview was set for 11am which meant that we would need to catch an earlier train to be sure that we would be at the consulate on time. That then makes it vastly cheaper to drive down to London. I always park at Brent Cross shopping centre near Hendon where the parking is free and it’s just a 10 minute walk to the nearest tube station. We left Warwick at 8am thinking that it would be more than enough time to get down to London, have a leisurely coffee somewhere, and then stroll to the consulate. The drive took us a lot longer than we thought it would, but we were still able to make it to the consulate by 10:45.

We had expected to be seen at the given time, but were instead given ticket number 26 in an automated queuing system. Progress was painfully slow. When we arrived, number 11 was still being seen to. Twenty minutes later, number 11 still hadn’t budged. Then there was a flurry of activity before the queue got bogged down on number 16. At noon, Lucia and I started taking bets as to what time we’d be seen. Eventually, at quarter-to-one, number 26 flashed up on the board to signify that it was our turn. The “interview” lasted no more than 120 seconds (and most of that time the interviewer was on the telephone talking to someone else.) She ticked off our documents against a marking sheet, smiled, and said the multiple entry visa would be ready for collection on Friday.

We pondered later why it was that our interview was so short and the others were so long. For a start, we definitely had every document that they could possibly want. (Bank statements, credit card statements, a copy of my (British) passport, a copy of our marriage certificate, a copy of Lucia’s UK settlement visa, a letter confirming Lucia’s employment, pay slips, a notarised letter of invitation from Terry and Barbara, copies of their Portuguese Residência’s, and letters from Lucia and me motivating the grant of a multiple entry visa.) But I think the most obvious reason was simply to be found in the sea of humanity from all corners of the earth in the waiting room who want to get into Europe any way they can. If you are from a first world country and have a job, then the visa is no problem, otherwise you get grilled.

After the interview we went to a cafe for lunch on Great Portland Road. We managed to snag a table on the pavement from where we could watch the world go by. Given how expensive things can get in London, I was surprised at how cheap our lunch of sandwiches and cool drinks was. Lucia still had work to do, so after our lunch she caught the train home, while I wandered around London. I strolled through Regents Park and then caught the tube to Notting Hill so I could investigate the market and antique shops along the Portobello Road. It’s a funny thing – although Paddington Bear was my favourite character as a child, I’d never been to Portobello Road on all the previous occasions I’ve visited London. For those who don’t know Paddington, he took his elevenses everyday with Mr Gruber at Mr Gruber’s antique shop on the Portobello Road. And now that I’ve been to see the Portobello Road, I feel hard done by that I had never been there before.

It’s a riot of colour from the fruit and veg stalls on the street at the lower end of the road to the up-market antique shops higher up as one approaches Bayswater Road. In between there are plenty of chic boutiques, quaint coffee shops, smart restaurants and bright ice cream parlours. One is as likely to hear reggae music blaring from a ghetto blaster, as the strains of Vivaldi from a busker around the corner. The mix of cultures is represented by the polyglot of languages and accents that one hears all around you. I wouldn’t mind living around here ... when we win the lottery. Perusing the windows of the ubiquitous estate agents it quickly becomes clear that one can't find anything of a decent size for less than £1 million.

I went back to London (by train) on Friday to collect the visa. To add some interest to the day (and despite twisting my ankle on the stairs outside the consulate) I thought I’d make the trip to Arsenal to go and see the Emirates football stadium. It’s one of the newest and most spectacular stadiums in the English Premiership. It cost a couple of hundred million pounds to build and can seat around 66 000 people. In fact, it’s only a tad smaller than the new Wembley stadium. I wanted to take the tour of the stadium and was even prepared to pay the £12 fee – but, much to my disappointment, all the tours were booked up well into this week. I find that so curious – if the tour is that popular, why not provide more tours?

So, anyway, I took the tube back into central London and walked from King’s Cross down to Covent Garden. Along the way, somewhere just off Drury Lane, I walked past James May from Top Gear surrounded by a camera team. (For those who don’t know, Top Gear is an iconic BBC motoring television programme.) And when I say “walked past”, what I mean is that I tripped on a paving stone, stumbled, and yelped in surprise and pain. (Remember, I had already twisted my ankle earlier in the day.)Of course I completely interrupted whatever May had been saying and the whole production team (cameraman, soundman, light man, make-up artist and a few others whose jobs I couldn’t figure out) stopped and stared. I felt like such a twit. A young lady asked me if I was alright; I assured her that I was as I hobbled off.

At Covent Garden I had a sandwich and Coke for lunch while listening to a quartet of buskers go through their repertoire of chamber music and other classical pieces. I stayed till the end of their set and then made my way back Marylebone for the train ride home.

Lastly, what I forgot to mention last week was that I finally received my NHS hearing aid. It makes quite a difference. Occasionally it feels a little irritating in my ear, but then I just take it out for a while.

That’s it for now. Pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones usual.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 21 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 12 July

This seems to be the week that I annoyed a few people. First, I annoyed a farmer on Tuesday while walking the dogs across farmland on public footpaths on the outskirts of Warwick. I had scoped out a circular route between Warwick and Leek Wootton on my ordnance survey map, and set out on the assumption that finding my way would be easy. The first part of the route took me along a tarred farm lane. My map seemed to suggest that I would need to turn right after some farm buildings. But, as I approached the farmstead, there were signs warning that I was entering private property. I’ve seen similar warnings right next to way markers, so I proceeded with caution. I reached a dead end at a gate leading a very pretty stone farmhouse and beat a hasty retreat. When I stopped at the last way marker I’d seen to consult my map, I heard someone shouting behind me. Given that I was in the middle of farmland with nary a soul about, it didn’t take much to come to the conclusion that the person was shouting at me. In his opinion, I was either a gypsy casing out his farm to steal his farming equipment at night, or a diesel thief looking for his tanks. (Stealing diesel and heating oil in the dead of night has become a lucrative business for brazen thieves taking advantage of the rocketing oil price.) He was also somewhat ticked off that Edgar and Hazel were not on lead. I shouted back that he had mistaken me for someone else and took a different path, but it quickly became apparent that that wasn’t the right way either, so I turned back again in the direction of the now very annoyed farmer. A heated conversation ensued which involved me pointing at the map, and him pointing at the way markers. He eventually conceded that I was neither a gypsy nor a diesel thief, and pointed out my map-reading error and the correct way to me. We parted on civil terms, but I still wanted to tell him that he was an uptight tosser. A short while later it started raining – really chucking it down – which only exacerbated my now foul mood. I followed that footpath onto a golf course where the way markers eventually just seemed to peter out. I retraced my route for a few hundred metres to another footpath I’d seen that crossed the golf course and took me back to my car along a different route to the one I had planned. I was half expecting someone else to challenge my presence on the golf course, but I only received polite half-nods and a few smiles.

The other people who got really annoyed at me were the owners of Bayton Lodge, the quarantine kennel where our animals served out their six month prison terms. It seems that someone pointed out the criticisms I’d made about Bayton Lodge on this blog. You will recall that we were unhappy at Edgar’s condition when we arrived in January, and were extremely pissed off at the lack of proper bedding for the dogs. They say they found my comments by searching on Google, but I’ve been unable to replicate their searches. Anyway, Lucia received an angry call from Lorraine with her husband Dale breathing fire in the background. You may also recall that I was waiting for our animals to be released to tell them how I really felt about the bedding and Edgar’s condition – but, when the time came, I just wanted to be done with it and, so, said nothing. Well, guess what? Now they know how we felt. (They seemed to miss the inherent compliment in the blog where I said they were better than all the other quarantine kennels we had seen.)

I really don’t have much more to report from the week. The weather has been continuously crap. It’s like Cape Town in winter, only a bit warmer. (In fact, the winter weather when we arrived in January was much more pleasant, if a touch cold with -3C morning lows.) I’ve been revising some of my Portuguese grammar lessons in lieu of doing something outdoors and in anticipation of our vacation at the end of August. I’ve been watching the weather forecast for Faro near where Barbara and Terry (my sister and brother-in-law) live, and it shows nothing but little suns with highs in the late 20s and lows in the high teens. I’m really looking forward to some sun therapy.

With nothing much happening, I’ve had few extra pictures of our life to put up on the web (at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) Two of them are pictures of me vacuuming Hazel. She just loves it although Lucia isn’t sure that it’s just the attention she loves. Edgar too isn’t as frightened of the vacuum cleaner as he used to be. The only problem with desensitizing the dogs to the vacuum cleaner though is that they no longer leap out of the way when I’m trying to clean the house. Now they need to be prodded.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 20 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

I was thinking about ducking out of writing a letter this week – not because nothing happened, but because I was in one of those immobile moods. You know, the spirit was willing, but the motivation had its feet up watching TV. The weather has also been particularly crap for the past few days, adding a soporific somnolent element to my outlook. But then I called my sister, Barbara, in Portugal to ask about possible dates that we could visit her and husband Terry for our intended vacation at the end of August. Both of them wanted to know where my weekly letter was. So, after booking our flights to Faro from Coventry Airport online, I put on my new thinking hat, cracked open a beer, and sat down to write. Such pressure. Lucia wanted to know why the hell I was wearing my hat sitting at the computer. Let me add that Terry has written a weekly missive to his wider family for nearly 30 years since he was appointed as the SABC correspondent in London in the early 1980’s.

And talking of booking the flights online – sometimes I really get quite maddened with the way some companies and other Internet businesses screw up things that should be so simple. Lucia found flights from Coventry on Thomsonfly at a really good price. Then we took some time to discuss the dates and then, finally, Lucia pressed the “Continue” button – at which point a little box popped up saying “Your session has ended. Redirecting to booking page.” That was annoying, but then we tried to find the same flights at the same price again and we couldn’t. So I booted up my computer, and we both sat there on our computers trying to find the deal Lucia had initially found. If you have found it once, surely it should be such a simple matter to find it again. But it’s my experience that that seldom happens when you’re dealing travel companies or airlines on the Internet. I always get this uneasy feeling that they’re just trying to screw me. In this instance, the price differential was more than £100 (say R1500). We eventually did find the deal we were looking for, but only by telling the Thomsonfly website that we were looking for something completely different. Anyway, we have booked and paid, so we’re going to Portugal at the end of August. Lucia has booked a visa interview at the Portuguese consulate in London for next week. And that’s a different story. In SA, we just had to hand in a visa application at the consulate; here in the UK, you have to go for an interview which is booked out months in advance. It’s crazy. We are going to try and get Lucia a multiple entry Schengen visa so that we don’t have to go through this circus every time we want to go to Europe.

But jumping back to last weekend, we had Richard and Anne around for dinner on Saturday and had a wonderful evening. (Anne is a former colleague of Lucia’s from MillwardBrown.) Lucia made the starter of litchis and blue cheese, and I cooked my favourite Portuguese chicken rice dish as the main course. Desert nearly didn’t happen because the raspberries I’d bought from Sainsbury’s on a “buy one get one free” (bogof) deal had turned sort of black and soggy. Anne picked through them one by one to rescue the edible fruit which we then served with Hagen-Dazs ice cream. Richard and Anne stayed over for the night which meant that Richard and I could continue talking way into the small hours long after Lucia and Anne had crashed into bed. Richard and Anne were wonderful company and I gained a lot more insight into life in the UK.

On Tuesday I continued with my project of trying to find the nearest “beach goers” beach. This time I headed south down the M5 motorway stopping first at Weston-Super-Mare which is a few miles past Bristol. (You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) Weston-Super-Mare ain’t it. It’s still very much on the Severn estuary and the beach consists mostly of brown mud that has washed down the Severn over millions years rather than golden sea sand that I was looking for. The estuary is shallow and at low tide the sea can retreat more than a kilometre out into the bay. Across the bay, 20 or 25 miles away, one can just make out the industrial expanse of Wales’ southern coast. The town itself is a bit like Fish Hook – it has lots of retirement developments and has the same unhurried feel. John Cleese was born here and one can immediately see where he got his inspiration from for Fawlty Towers. By midmorning the promenade was full with people out for a stroll or just sitting on the benches looking out to sea passing the time of day. Tour busses full of excited school children out for a day at the beach disgorged their squealing passengers to the waiting seaside attractions. I let the dogs go for a run on the beach in the designated area and then sat down for a cappuccino at a Victorian cafe before getting back in the car to continue my search.

I hugged the coast to the town of Minehead where I lunched on the patio of a seafood restaurant at the furthest end of the beach one could still reach by car. Edgar and Hazel were the delight of my fellow diners, all of them retirees. I provided them with even more amusement when a seagull crapped on my head. (Nothing that water couldn’t fix.) The restaurant parrot was a bit more unhappy with the dogs and kept up a steady stream of hellos, bugger off, fuck it, give us a kiss, and ahoy there throughout lunch. The pensioners said he hadn’t uttered a sound until the dogs arrived.

From Minehead I stopped next at the fishing village of Lynmouth, and then crossed part of Sedgmoor and Exmoor to Barnstaple. My map book indicated that I would find some sandy beaches facing the Atlantic Ocean just outside the town. By the time I got there it was late afternoon and the promised storms were beginning to blow in – but I certainly wasn’t going to let a little rain get between me and the beach I’d been looking for. It felt so good to feel fine white sand between my toes again. I was expecting the water to be icy but, believe me, it’s a hell of a lot colder on the Atlantic seaboard in Cape Town. Edgar and Hazel were in their element. They seemed to be asking me why we hadn’t been to the beach for such a long time. I walked three or four kilometres down the beach before the ever darkening skies seemed to suggest that I should turn back – but the skies opened up and gave me a drenching anyway. Back at the car I dried us all as best I could with the only towel I’d brought along .... and then drove the 190 miles back home.

Next time I’ll drive west into Wales and see how long it takes me to get to the sea that way.

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