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My dear family & friends, Wednesday 24 June
We’ve got some changes coming up. Lucia has accepted a new position within Millward Brown here in the UK which is going to keep her very busy for the next six months. She’s very excited and enthusiastic over the opportunity. More on this at another time. The changeover is going to happen fairly fast so we decided to take ourselves away to the sunshine of Portugal for a quick break this weekend. We are greatly looking forward to deep blue skies, bright sunshine and some proper scorching heat.
It’s just as well then that we got Lucia’s new multiple entry Schengen visa when we did. You will remember from my last letter that we went to London with Lucia’s mother for the visa interview after which we took her mother on a trip down memory lane. I went to fetch Lucia’s passport with the new visa the following week. As with all my trips to London, I try to make a day of it. (It would be a horrible waste not to given the price of transport. A return ticket to London from Leamington Spa with a day travel card for London costs £32.)
I had to wait a while at the Portuguese Consulate which appeared to be busier than usual. Afterwards I walked down the back streets parallel to Oxford Street from the consulate in Great Portland Street to Tottenham Court Road. Then I caught the Northern Line to Archway and headed for Highgate Cemetery which I had never visited before. You can see a picture of me next to Karl Marx’s grave in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones. I was way too early for a tour of West Cemetery and the grand tombs hidden in the undergrowth, and had to settle for strolling around the East Cemetery with its famous epitaph to Marx. From the cemetery I walked through Waterlow Park to Highgate Village where glamorous people gathered for lunch in the sunshine on the sidewalk sipping champagne. I kept a sharp eye out for movie stars. I didn’t see any. I looked in at the window of an estate agent just to see exactly what it is that I can’t afford.
I wandered through Highgate to the tube station and journeyed across London to Golbourne Road where it cuts Portobello Road for a late lunch at a Portuguese cafe. I also wanted to pick up a couple of bottles of bagaçeira (that’s what the Italians call grappa) at a small Portuguese-run supermarket. Looking at my map book over lunch I spied a pleasant looking walk along the Grand Union Canal from Golbourne Road to Maida Vale. So, with a much heavier backpack, I set off along the canal.
It wasn’t long before I came across a canal maintenance barge. The fellows on the barge were cutting back branches hanging over the canal and fishing out all the shit that people throw into the canal. There were THREE scooters (not the child toy variety), what looked like the remains of a sofa, and a lot of bicycles (ten, twenty, maybe more.) I have been surprised by the level of littering here in the UK. The parks only look pristine because the local councils pay quite a bit of money to cleaning staff to keep them looking that way. The author Bill Bryson is a leading anti-litter advocate and has succeeded in using his high profile to draw attention to the matter. But he might as well ram his head into a brick wall. The parks here in Leamington Spa and Warwick look like a tip on Monday morning if there’s been good weather over the weekend. The only difference between here and SA is that somebody comes to pick it up here (thankfully). It reminds me of an occasion many years ago when I was driving through Hillbrow, Johannesburg, with the Business Report photographer John Woodroof. His comment about what had become of the litter strewn warzone that was New Hillbrow was that the residents had “no fucking pride. No fucking pride whatsoever.” I really wonder why people do it – why they deliberately ruin a beautiful park with their litter even when there are LOTS of rubbish bins all around them.
I really liked John Woodroof. He was short and tough as nails. When some “people” tried to hijack one of The Star’s staff cars a number of years ago, John – a fluent Zulu speaker – stuck his camera monopod in the back of one of the hijackers and threatened to blow them all away if they didn’t put their hands in the air and slowly lie face down on the ground. They all surrendered. I just love that story.
At Maida Vale I hurried to the tube to get to Marylebone Station before the rush of commuters trying to beat a two-day underground strike due to commence that evening.
The next evening we had a big braai (barbecue) at our house for the farewell of one of Lucia’s Spanish colleagues, Monica, her partner and their daughter. Pyromaniac that I am, I made a huge fire that would be certain to cook everybody’s food. It was a good party. Monica’s partner – I’m not saying his name because I don’t know how to spell it – helped me doing the grilling. I couldn’t have done it without him. But it was a surprise party, and I’m sure that he was very surprised that he had to cook.
And so the weekend came where we said goodbye to Ann. On Saturday we went to Kenilworth Castle (got quite a few pics of that) and to lunch at the Heron’s Nest on the canal near Knowle. We were much exercised by a sign next to the canal which warned of deep water – 4ft. I bet the Health & Safety commissars came up with that one. On Sunday we took Ann for a walk in the park and then to the Pastelaria Portuguesa before driving her to Heathrow in the afternoon. The traffic was incredibly thick going in to London and slowed to a crawl as we passed an accident. I wished I had taken heed of Lucia’s warnings that we needed to leave earlier – but we got to Heathrow in plenty of time in the end. The drive home was a joy – in all the time we have been here I have never had such a free, open road that allowed me to do some of the speeds I used to do in South Africa. It seemed like everybody had just disappeared.
We haven’t really done much in the week and half since Ann left. My one task has been to get all debit orders onto our local account and also finally get my mobile phone contract into my name. It’s impossible to contract for anything when you first arrive in the UK until you have a provable address so Andreas wife, Michelle, took out a cellphone and mobile broadband account for me in her name. I sent the forms in to transfer the contract to my name months ago but nothing had happened. Dealing with the call centres at Vodafone or British Telecom is not fun. I ended up having a real row with Gareth, who sounded Irish, at Vodafone who promised that he had done everything that needed to be done and all that Vodafone required was a call from Michelle to confirm the transfer. Michelle called and was told that the full transfer couldn’t be completed because there was something wrong with my credit check.
So, I called back the next morning, and I was not happy. I spoke to Jose from Spain, and he just blew me away with his service. He chased everything down, and even found the original transfer of user forms I’d sent in months ago. Even though I was an angry customer, Jose was patient and won me over. When he was told that he would have to wait a couple of minutes for a piece of information he said: “Let’s talk. Where are you from?” And while Jose just got the job done, I guess that Gareth was still muttering that people shouldn’t be allowed to talk to him like that. Tsk.
And talking of service, I just have to mention Warwick District Council. Fast, friendly and efficient. We’re just not used to that from the organs of state. I know British people can sometimes complain about state service, but coming from South Africa there is just no comparison.
What else?
Lucia was right. There are TWO foxes in living around the playing field behind our house.( I got a nice picture of one of them.)
That’s about it.
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
My dear family & friends
It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote. I have been alternately busy or lazy or ironing or walking the dogs or something. We’ve been to Wales and London, and run the dogs on a sun-drenched, ice cold beach. A couple of you e-mailed me to check that I wasn’t dead. Thank you.
At the forefront of our thoughts this past week was the murder of another friend/acquaintance in South Africa last weekend. And a few weeks before that MillwardBrown in Johannesburg was the victim of an armed office invasion with Lucia’s former colleagues suffering the trauma of being held up at gunpoint.
But of the more recent tragedy: I don’t claim to have known Klaas Jonkheid well, but he was a former business partner of one of Lucia’s friends, he had dinner with us in our home, and Lucia had extensive business dealings with him. For those of you who don’t know, Klaas was murdered while attending the annual SAMRA (South African Marketing Research Association) convention at the Spier wine estate outside Cape Town. It appears that he had been hijacked. He was shot in the head, doused in petrol and set on fire. His (alleged) murderers were arrested two days later in possession of his cellphone, and the car battery and spare tyre from his hire car. It grieves me greatly that he died so cheaply. Klaas was the fifth person whom I personally knew that has been violently murdered in SA.
The manner in which Klaas died represented the greatest of my fears, particularly after my Aunt Eugene was murdered three years ago. I worried whenever Lucia had to travel to Johannesburg, or any distance at all for that matter. She, in turn, worried whenever I took the dogs walking on the mountain – and that was more-or-less every day. I remember so clearly flying home from Zanzibar after Aunt Eugene was killed – Lucia and I were sitting on the aeroplane after a glorious two weeks on the beach in the tropics, and I turned to her and said: “I don’t want to die like that. I don’t want to die in fear.” That was the tipping point for me that really got me thinking, and reading, and calculating. Most of you who know me might remember that I strongly recommended the book “When A Crocodile Eats The Sun” by Peter Godwin which had a significant effect on us and helped change our beliefs and expectations for South Africa. I still recommend that you read it.
As we struggled with our decision to leave SA and rationalise our thinking, one of you, my friends, bitterly shot at me that I/we were just like all the other people who had joined the chicken run and could do nothing but criticise South Africa to justify our choice. My answer to you now is this new tragedy to befall a friend, and the armed invasion of the MillwardBrown office in Johannesburg. That Klaas died in Cape Town (which is allegedly so much safer than Johannesburg) is especially poignant to me. The experience of relocating our lives has not been easy, and still isn’t easy, and we miss South Africa, but we breathe free air. We didn’t really know how much we feared for ourselves all the time – driving, parking the car, walking down the sidewalk , walking on the mountain, checking that the doors are locked at night (twice) – until we didn’t have to do it anymore. I cannot begin to describe to you how completely free of threat our lives are here in Leamington Spa. Crime means somebody’s car was broken into four weeks ago, as opposed to the daily theft epidemic where we lived in Vredehoek. Lucia always points out that she sleeps more solidly than she has done for years.
We no longer recommend South Africa as a tourist destination to anybody who asks – it’s expensive, it’s dangerous, and (most importantly) they don’t know the rules. Klaas knew the rules, and still he was caught out. The fact that he was caught out in that place at that time was entirely random, and it is that which most bothered Lucia and still does. I think it’s going to get worse. Global consumption has dropped off a cliff which means that nobody wants whatever SA was making (which was keeping the economy going), and there is a major problem on the horizon. I don’t think this bodes well for the soccer World Cup next year. Europeans just do not understand the “poorness” and desperation of Africa. Poverty in the UK seems to mean you don’t have SKY TV. They EXPECT people who live in Africa to behave like them, and I expect they are going to get a big surprise.
But that’s just a guess. I fear so much for all of you whom I love dearly.
That said, there’s been plenty to report in the lives of Familia Jones-Moir. It’s been a while since I wrote so I’ll just talk to the pictures which you can find in the usual place http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones. At the end of my last letter I said I was going to drive Lucia’s mother Ann to her sister-in-law in Cardiff the next day. I successfully accomplished the goal and then I went to Bristol. You may recall from a previous letter that Lucia and I really like Bristol and that I wanted to go back and spend more time exploring the city. Well, I still think it’s a lovely city. I could easily live there. Clifton, the neighbourhood which clings to the slopes of the Avon Gorge, attracts superlatives when I try to describe it. It reminds me of Paris, and Lisbon, and Porto and Bordeaux. It’s Bohemian and Classic. It pulses with life. I spent hours strolling up and down the streets drinking it all in before settling down to lunch in an inviting bodega. Afterwards I just drove around looking at what was there; it really is a pretty city. I was particularly fascinated by the Cathedral that no one needs anymore and which is being converted into apartments and offices – that is, as soon as the property market turns around. Now it’s just falling down. You probably know my feelings about any and all religion, so you’ll know that that appeals to my sense of order.
The following weekend Lucia and I went to look at Packwood House which is one of the National Trust properties in the area. The idea was that we would stroll around the house and gardens, and then have lunch at the canteen/restaurant. Nearly all the National Trust properties have canteens which provide really good, ordinary food. Just not Packwood House though. But I got some nice pictures of Lucia in the topiary.
Ann got back to us from Cardiff by train via a stop in London with more family. In the meantime, Lucia had been trolling the Internet looking for a reasonably priced holiday cottage in Wales where we could spend a short break over her birthday. She found a lovely home in the little village of Castle Morris in Pembrokeshire which welcomed dogs. But before our short jaunt, we went for a Sunday afternoon picnic in Stratford around the bandstand. It was a Bank Holiday weekend and Rob and Mandy, our friends from Leicester whom we met at the quarantine kennels last year, suggested an outing. I had been wanting to do a picnic around the bandstand, and Rob, Mandy and daughter Chloe liked the idea too. We had a wonderful time. A brass band played from around two to half past four in the most glorious summer sunshine while we caught up with each other’s news over a picnic lunch next to The Avon. It takes really shit weather to appreciate days like that, and, oh, what a wonderful day it was!
Sunday 7 June – I got sidetracked for a while there.
Then (relatively) early on Monday morning (this is two weeks ago now) we were off to Wales. I chose to drive to our destination along the A40, the more scenic route which took us over and around the Brecon Beacons. “Scenic” in Wales means fairly narrow and fairly windy roads. You’re screwed if you get stuck behind a slow driver. You can drive for miles before you find a straight enough piece of road to overtake – and even then you can’t hesitate. You have to change down a couple of gears and floor it. If you hesitate, or there’s a car coming the other way, it’ll be five or ten miles before you find another opportunity. And, of course, in summer time you can’t see terribly much because the hedgerows are in full leaf. I think hedgerows should be banned next to all “A” roads. This could be simply enforced by placing the liability for any road accident deaths on the owner of the land where the hedgerows are less than 3m (around 10ft) from the side of the road and are more than a metre (3ft) high. On the other hand, even suggesting this could very easily earn me a fatwa – so I won’t say it too loudly. I’ll try to suggest it to Jeremy Clarkson. The liberal, bunny-hugging brigade blames most of the road accident deaths in the UK on “excessive” speed. I beg to differ – I blame it on the hedgerows and the windy roads (and the doos who thinks he/she’s being a good driver by driving slowly.)
Trying to find a nice spot for dinner on that first evening in Wales a touch difficult. We drove into Fishguard (Abergwaun) but most of the nice-looking places were closed for Monday evening. How they justify this on a Bank Holiday weekend in the middle of summer is a bit of a mystery to me, but there you have it. The one really nice pub we found in Lower Town, called the Ship Inn, didn’t serve dinner. We eventually found a pub that served food, but it was forgettable. We went back to the Ship Inn for a drink afterwards. Much of the 1956 classic movie “Moby Dick” with Richard Burton was filmed in Lower Town in Fishguard, and the Ship Inn was their local during the filming as attested to by the the grainy black and white photographs on the wall.
The next day dawned bright, but cold and icy as a bitter wind blew in off the Atlantic. We went looking for the beaches and the sights. Our journey mostly followed the very, very narrow and winding “B” roads. We stopped in St David’s to tour the cathedral which dates back a thousand years. Newgale was our chosen beach for the day to let the dogs loose and enjoy themselves before lunch. Lucia and Ann dressed up like Eskimos to protect themselves from the elements. I didn’t think it was that cold. As you might notice from the pictures, I’m wearing shorts. I must be tough. My best picture of the day was a combine harvester raking up a crop on the cliffs above the beach. In the afternoon we cut across to Milford Haven because I knew the name. Whatever it was like before, it is now dominated by petroleum and gas terminals on the Cleddau River, and oil refineries just inland. In the evening, we celebrated Lucia’s birthday at The Famers Arms in Mathry just down the road from our holiday cottage.
On Wednesday morning, we packed up and followed the coast along Carmarthen Bay to morning tea at Saundersfoot and a lunchtime walk on the Pendine Sands. Unfortunately we couldn’t go far because the Pendine Sands are owned by the Ministry of Defense and a big red flag was flying which barred our access to the beach. Then we directed ourselves to the M4 which led us along the southern Welsh coast passed Swansea, Port Talbot and Cardiff to the Severn bridge and the M5 and home.
The next day we all went to London where Lucia had booked an interview for her next Schengen visitor’s visa at the Portuguese Consulate. One has to book these interviews weeks and months in advance. The annoyance is that the interview never takes more than a few minutes because (how shall I put this) we are of European heritage, have provable financial resources and Lucia is gainfully employed. If you are from South America, Africa or the Far East, you get grilled. After the “interview” we took Ann on a journey down memory lane to the secretarial college which she attended in Hampstead 60 years ago, as well as the Catholic boarding house where she stayed at 49 Fitzjohn’s Avenue. The boarding house is still a cloister for retired nuns. We had lunch in the sun just off Hampstead High Street before taking the bus to Brent Cross shopping centre (free parking) where I’d parked the car. The bus rode down the back of Hampstead Heath and through Golders Green to Brent Cross. I knew Golders Green was a well-known Jewish suburb, but I had no idea how Jewish it was. In some places it seemed that most of the people walking down the sidewalk were Hasidim – the men in their round black hats and suits, and the women wearing wigs to cover their own hair. I watched one ancient crone hunched over her cane shuffle slowly down the road – all topped by a flowing blonde wig.
Our adventure last weekend was a journey to Leominster for lunch with a childhood friend of Ann’s, Pam Pridham and her husband Michael. I took Ann to Coventry bus station on Monday morning to catch her National Express coach to Essex where she spent the week with more family.
And so I’ll jump to this weekend. Lucia – who has much more patience than I do when searching for stuff on the Internet – booked matinee tickets for Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Oliver at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane starring Rowan Atkinson as Fagin. I’ve had a soft spot for Oliver ever since I was cast in the Pact (Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal) production of the musical at the Civic Theatre in Johannesburg in 1978. (It was a spin-off of the London show with the same director and the same sets.) Most South Africans (of a certain age) will know exactly who I’m talking about when I say Gordon Mulholland starred as Fagin. It is still the only professional production I have ever been cast in. It ran for nearly five months and I earned R10 a practice and R15 a show which was a lot of money then, especially as a twelve-year-old. I remember Annie was also being staged at His Majesty’s Theatre near the Carlton Centre, and there was great competition between the two casts to see who could attract the bigger audiences. I just loved being on stage. There were school productions after that, and at University I was a participating member of the Cape Town Gilbert & Sullivan Society – but I wasn’t paid for my participation as I was in Oliver.
Jumping 31 years ahead to the Theatre Royal, I am as much entranced by the production as I ever was. The sets were incredible, and the set changes were incorporated into show with the same slick precision which I remembered form 31 years ago – except it was all so much more grand with modern technology. Another – slight – difference was that we were sitting in the back row of the balcony. If one was really unlucky to slip on the stairs while trying to find your seat, it could easily be written up as “Suicide In Theatre” by the tabloids. Lucia has never liked heights and she admitted afterwards to feeling some considerable vertiginous fright as she peered down at the stage from on high.
Afterwards we strolled around Covent Garden before catching a tube to Golbourne Road in Nottinghill, where we had been recommended to a particular Portuguese restaurant. We found a couple of Portuguese coffee shops and a deli – plus some Arab, Lebanese, Somali, Italian, Greek, Polish, Indian and Turkish establishments – but not what we were looking for. So we made our way down Portobello Road looking for something to entice us which we never encountered. We eventually gave up and caught a taxi to Marylebone High Street and an excellent Turkish Restaurant called Topkapi which we would wholeheartedly recommend to our London correspondents.
What else?
I have also posted some pictures of my new favourite cooldrink – Rubicon lychee (that would be litchi in SA) – along with a few of the other flavours in the range; passion fruit, pomegranate and guava. They only seem to be distributed by “independent” retailers and I only discovered them because I was looking for something like Granadilla Twist in South Africa. The range is only stocked by Costcutters in Leamington Spa.
We have a fox (Lucia says two) living in the field behind our house. He hurries across the playing ground every evening to a house where somebody throws out some scraps for him. When he’s done he dashes back again to get under the cover afforded by the copse of trees on the other side of our fence. We were concerned that he might represent a threat to our cats, but one of my neighbours tells me that the fox has already lost an eyeball-to-eyeball showdown with his own cat. I expect Tigger and CharlieBrown might also let him know he isn’t welcome. He certainly wants to keep out of Hazel’s way.
One of my sports in the UK is listening for South African accents. I was really surprised to hear the villain from the fourth series of “24” – which I’ve been watching back to back while ironing – speaking with a distinct South African accent. At first I was convinced it was somebody with whom I served in the army at the castle in Cape Town ... until I Googled the feller and discovered it was Arnold Vosloo from “Boetie Gaan Border Toe” fame. At least he isn’t pretending he’s an American like Charlize Theron. Every time I hear her talking in that fake American accent, I remind the television screen that she was born in Benoni.
Love, light & peace to you all
Llewellyn
