Letter from Royal Leamington Spa: 20 of 2009

My dear family & friends

I’ve been watching Edgar closely today for signs that I should take him to the vet. He must have eaten something – probably while we were out walking – that didn’t agree with him. I hadn’t realised there was a problem until I walked into the living room downstairs late yesterday afternoon to discover that he had been sick and poohed everywhere. I didn’t hear what was happening because I’d been listening to Portuguese radio while doodling around on my computer. Unfortunately I’m also not very good at noticing the signs of distress, unlike Lucia who seems to know what the animals want before they themselves know they want it. If Lucia had been home I would have left it to her to clean everything up – that’s the agreement we struck before we even got the dogs. If I had wanted to clean up sick and pooh from the living room floor, I would have had children. But Lucia wasn’t home, so I had bite back my gag reflexes and do it myself. You have got to know that I wasn’t happy. We left him in the conservatory with an extra heater overnight to minimise the effect of any accidents. Lucia woke up at 2AM to check that he was alright. I didn’t.

But it reminded me of a line I recently heard from some comedian on late-night television – it was probably Russell Howard. I forget what the skit was about, but he said: “After twenty minutes you couldn’t tell what was pooh and what was chocolate.” Did that gross you out? Yeah, me too. I laughed anyway.

And before you get the wrong idea about my television viewing habits, I don’t actually stay up all hours to watch this stuff. We’ve got one of these clever Sky satellite receivers that allow one to record hours and hours of television at the touch of a button. We then watch it at a more sociable hour (usually when I’m ironing.) I’ve recently been recording all the stand-up comedy shows on the Comedy Central channel. My conclusion is that there are a lot of not-very-funny people out there – although just enough to keep me watching.

There haven’t been many adventures since I last wrote. We did go to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens two weeks ago, but it started pissing with rain when we got there. We carefully viewed everything in the glasshouses in the hope that the rain would soon stop. It didn’t. We eventually ventured out into the wind and rain to see what was there. We were the only people who did. I think it would be a lot nicer in spring or summer. Afterwards I took Lucia to the South African shop in Harborne – a western suburb of Birmingham. She loaded up on Provita and I bought the last of the store’s Lunch Bars.

Last weekend we went into Birmingham again to do some xmas shopping and to see Birmingham’s Frankfurt Christmas Market. It rained again. We spent two hours wondering around the Bullring Shopping Centre looking for things that we never found. Then we ventured up New Street in the rain towards the Town Hall viewing the wares at the market and dodging puddles. Lucia didn’t have the right shoes on for the rain and her feet were soon sodden. There was a lot of repetition – stalls selling exactly the same tat as each other. There were few genuine independent craft stalls where one could pore over their goods. We shared some bratwurst at one stall and some beer at another as well as a plate of German fried potatoes and mushrooms. But we were getting cold and wet so we caught the train home.

And talking of disappointing markets, Leamington Spa has its own xmas market every Sunday down The Parade. But it’s mostly just tat that you can find at any market and a few rides from Barker’s funfair. It seems a waste to close the road for that.

On the technology front, I received my free disks (it was one of the benefits when I bought my new computer) for the new Windows7 operating system the other day. It might have been fun if they had sent me the right version. It took me two hours to figure that out that I had been sent the wrong thing, and then another two hours on the phone trying to make sure that I would get the right version. I ended up talking to call centres in South Africa, Estonia and Poland. Oh well, the post marks will be interesting.

Another interesting experiment revolved around my printer which was running out of ink. A set of the Canon ink cartridges costs nearly £60. But when I bought the printer (several years ago) I was told that generic ink cartridges would be available in a year or two. So I searched around on the Internet for the generic cartridges and bought four sets for £20. So the difference here is £5 for a set of generic cartridges or £60 for a set from Canon. No, I don’t know what the catch is either. Perhaps somebody can enlighten me. The generic cartridges seem to work fine although they are a bit messier when you change them.

What else?

I’ve been getting friendlier with Helder at the Pastelaria Portuguesa in Warwick. I usually time my morning walk with the dogs to get there just after he opens. We each have a coffee (a bica cheia for my Portuguese correspondents) and tell stories. He recently told me the story of how he became a baker because I asked him about his hand-written recipe book which looked well-used and quite old .

When he was 13 years old his family was so poor that he had to go out and get a job. His school had night classes for all the other children like him who also had to work during the day. His first job was in a foundry with his stepfather. After the first shift he says you couldn’t tell what was a bruise and what was blood on his shoulder. He stayed for a month to get the pay cheque and then asked his stepfather to tell the boss that he wasn’t coming back.

After getting that first pay cheque he went out for a drink with some friends after school. (Remember he was going to school at night.) They each had these very small beers (200ml) which you can buy in Portugal, and it was the 1970s so nobody really minded if a 13-year-old was buying beer. They ended up in conversation (as one does) with an older person who bought them some much bigger beers. They got pissed.

At some point the older person said: “Goodbye, I’ve got to go to work.”
Helder said to him: “It’s midnight, where do you work?”
“In a bakery,” said the older dude.
Helder asked: “Is it nice work?” and he said: “Yes” so Helder said: “Are they looking for people?”
And Helder went to work with him.
At the end of the shift the bakery owner offered him a full-time job.
His mother was fairly freaked when he got home at midday the next day (remember no cell phones in the 1970s), but he was able to give her the money for the night’s work that he had just earned.

And that is how Helder became a baker with a full-time job at age 13.

I find this story very humbling. We all like to tell stories of how hard we’ve had it at some point in our lives. But actually most of us have been coddled into softness. And then you meet somebody who really did have it hard, and we cannot compare.

That’s it
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn


http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Royal Leamington Spa: 19 of 2009

My dear family & friends

The clocks went back an hour from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time two weeks ago. That means that it’s dark by about quarter to five in the afternoon now. Getting used to the early darkness as a South African is quite an adjustment. It feels as though the day is ending just after it’s begun. I see school children walking home in the dark every day; I suppose it’s as quite normal and natural for them, but I struggle to get my head around the concept. I feel as though my day is being stolen.

In a more serious vein, Lucia and I received new debit cards from HSBC in the post a few weeks ago. I thought it was a bit strange because our HSBC UK cards were still valid for the next two or three years. But we carefully cut up our old cards into lots of small pieces. This was a mistake because the new cards were actually for our offshore HSBC account in Jersey which had changed their debit card service provider from Maestro to Visa. I only figured this out when I was doing our accounts and saw strange transactions on our offshore account which shouldn’t have been there. We had assumed that the new cards were for our onshore account because they were Visa debit cards. On closer inspection though, we later noted that the account number and sort code (branch code, for the South Africans) were clearly printed on the new cards. We sheepishly called HSBC to declare that we had destroyed the wrong cards and to apply for new ones. Mine arrived in two days.

One of the things that still amazes here is that credit cards, debit cards and chequebooks are sent to clients by normal postal mail. They stopped doing that in South Africa a LONG time ago when the banks suddenly noticed that none of these items were arriving at their intended recipient but were rather being stolen by the postal workers. The worst culprits were at the big sorting office for Johannesburg. I remember when the Post Office decided to put in some hidden cameras to catch the thieves. They did and they tried to fire them, but they couldn’t because it caused the most prolonged postal strike in South Africa ever. The workers essentially demanded the right to steal, and they won. Amazon, for instance, will no longer send items to South Africa by normal mail; they will only use courier services at vastly increased cost to the client.

Further to Lucia’s passport travails in my last letter, she went to London last week to apply for a Schengen visa at the Portuguese Consulate in London for our Christmas holidays. The Visa was refused because her British residency visa was valid for less than three months. She has to get a new UK spouse visa before she can get a new Schengen visa. The only problem is that the Brits will only allow new residency visa applications four weeks before the old visa expires. Lucia’s residency visa expires on 31 December which means that she can only apply for a new visa from 5 December. We have booked flights to Portugal on 18 December. The Home Office does provide a “same day” service for “simple” applications, but it costs an extra £300. Luckily the official at the Portuguese Consulate gave Lucia a letter that allows her to walk in at any time instead of having to book an appointment. So with luck we should still be in Portugal for Christmas.

Lucia has been working hard and long hours so there haven’t been many adventures over the weekend. We did go walking in the Clent Hills on the outskirts of Birmingham two weeks ago. You can see the pictures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones. We started our walk in bright sunshine, but were soon caught in a heavy squall which seemed to blow over as quickly as it arrived. We took cover under a stand of trees while it passed over.

We also went to the Guy Fawkes bonfire and fireworks celebrations at the Old Leamingtonian Rugby Football Club on Thursday night. (See pics.)We locked the animals inside and turned the volume up on the amplifier to placate the dogs, particularly Hazel who doesn’t like loud noises and bangs.

What else?

I nearly had a disaster with my latest batch of biltong. I salted and spiced it as usual and hung it in the biltong box in the garage. But I can’t help checking on it every day, and it was just as well that I did because on day four all six pieces were suddenly covered in mould. I searched on the Internet for a remedy to rescue the batch. At £60 I didn’t really just want to give the meat to the dogs. I found a site which said that I should dab the mould with vinegar. Never a person to do things by half measures, I fairly much bathed the biltong in vinegar. I also removed the biltong box into the conservatory along with one of our heaters to heat and dry the air. The doctoring seems to have worked.

Still on food, I recently discovered flambé. I was watching “Floyd on Africa” on the Travel Channel and I discovered how simple it was to add brandy to your food and set fire to it. As a pyromaniac this was a great discovery with which I had to experiment with immediately. Luckily we had some mini steaks in the fridge which greatly benefitted from the treatment. Since then I’ve even been experimenting with setting fire to my stir fries. It’s great fun. Lucia always looks around nervously for the fire extinguisher as I yell out “Whoosh!” followed by a pleased cackle.

Oh, and I also bought some more technology. A couple of weeks ago we went to dinner with Rebecca, one of Lucia’s colleagues. Rebecca’s partner David was in Japan recently and had bought a really small wireless hand-held keyboard and mouse touchpad called an Ipazzport which was exactly what I’d been looking for for our home entertainment centre. I emailed the manufacturers to find out where I could buy one in the UK and how much it would cost. They replied fairly quickly and it was really cheap so I bought it the next day. (See pics.) I now have everything I want for my home entertainment centre apart from the cabinet which I still have to build.

Finally, I recently noticed that the soles of my shoes have been wearing out very quickly. I bought a pair of (expensive) Timberland boat shoes which lasted just a few months. At first I thought I had bought fakes, but then I noticed that all my shoes are wearing out really quickly. It must be something in surfacing of the roads and sidewalks. Quite strange!

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