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

Letter from Warwick: 15 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 30 May

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's it

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 14 of 2008

My dear Family and Friends, 23 May

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 13 of 2008

My dear Family and Friends, 12 May

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's it for now

As ever
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 12 of 2008

Dear Family and Friends, May 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 11 of 2008

Dear Family and Friends, April 21

Lucia and I had a good laugh strolling through the local shopping mall yesterday (Sunday) at colourful message writ large in the window of a shop that was allegedly closing for business. “CLOSING DOWN SALE. New stock arriving daily.”

It’s indicative of one of the more interesting facets of the economy and shopping here in the UK – there’s always a sale on somewhere on some dubious pretext. “MID SEASON SALE” screamed the notices at Austin Reed, one of Leamington Spa’s more upmarket clothing retailers. What season would that be then (given that it’s only April)? Not that I’m complaining; I bought the most beautiful charcoal coloured overcoat for an absolute song. Coats and jackets are a bit of a priority at the moment given that I don’t have many. Lucia tried many times to cajole me into buying more coats and jackets as we were preparing to leave Cape Town, but I kept insisting that I had enough and that we didn’t need to be throwing money around. Well, um, yes. Er, sorry Lucia. If any of you are thinking of relocating to the UK, you’re going to need a stock of coats and jackets.

We’re gradually settling in and sorting ourselves out. By Wednesday last week, while Lucia was away on a training course, I had finally found everything that needed to be found, and had either filed it, placed it somewhere in the house, or stored it in boxes in the garage. There are LOTS of boxes in the garage full of books, files, pictures, curtains and other bits and bobs. There are also a number of suitcases storing some of Lucia’s summer clothes just waiting for the season to arrive. I believe summer is going on July 17 this year. It’s a Thursday.

I have also ordered SkyTV (satellite TV) which is supposed to be installed on Wednesday morning. I’ve bought a new amplifier and speakers to replace our old mini HiFi, so we have mostly got ourselves sorted out for home entertainment. My adsl (internet) line is also finally behaving properly. I had been having some considerable problem with the BT modem which kept dropping the adsl signal and with which the Indian call centre seemed unable to help me. It was at Maplins – which is about the only electronics and computer store with halfway knowledgeable staff – that a young student suggested that I should try plugging the modem directly into a wall jack rather than plugging it in at the end of an phone line extension cord. That seemed to do the trick. I have since discovered how easy it is to download movies from the Internet (don’t tell) and have several lined up for Lucia and I to watch. I have also tried out the services of Amazon in the UK, buying a book and a CD online. The CD arrived in a day and the book in two; I was seriously impressed.

The next task is to tackle the garden to make it presentable and liveable. It’s a bit overwhelming because I don’t really know what to do. The soil is different, the grass is different and the previous tenants didn’t really look after it, so it’s a bit of a mess. Those who know what my lawn looked like in Cape Town will know how important grass is to me. This may call for drastic action. We received a flyer in the letter box over the weekend advertising the services of a grass expert for “very reasonable” prices. I think I’ll give them a call later.

We haven’t really done much else other than visiting the zoo. I’ll be glad when they have finished serving their sentence for being born South African; it’s just another five weeks until we can bring them home. It’s a 70km round trip to visit them and I’m getting a bit tired of it now. That said, I’ve had the easy task compared to Lucia who is working long hours in a tough job with many challenges and problems. She is, however, I think slowly gaining command of her position. Spare a thought for her if you can.

We walked into Leamington along the river both yesterday and last Sunday. Last Sunday we were attracted into town by a French street market for which the town father’s had blocked off the entire main street. And I really do mean French – all the stall holders were from France as evidenced by the registration plates on their cars and trailers, not to mention their accents, of course. The only thing we bought was a pricey but disappointing sugar and lemon crepe. They have better and cheaper at Corleone, my favourite Italian coffee shop in the heart of Leamington. Yesterday we walked into Leamington under gray, miserable skies with the intention of having breakfast at a brasserie we have noticed which seems to be very popular. We went early to make sure we would get a table only to discover that they open late on a Sunday. So we went to Corleone instead where the waiters are beginning to give me the smile of greeting reserved for regulars. There we fell into conversation with an Australian couple with their toddler at the next table. Husband Ben is a new lecturer in some science filed at Warwick University and wife Caireen is looking for a job that would pay more than childcare would cost. Lucia suggested Caireen email her CV to her.

This coming weekend we’re looking forward to going to Dover with Johan and Linda.

As ever
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 10 of 2008

Dear Family and Friends, April 11

It’s been a busy two weeks as we settled into our new home and welcomed Barbara and Terry, my sister and brother-in-law, for a short stay over the past weekend.

The heating problem I reported two weeks ago was eventually fixed easily; it was apparently “just a loose wire” in the gas boiler. Quite why the plumber wasn’t capable of finding the loose wire on his first visit is beyond me given that he managed to isolate the problem in less than two minutes on his second visit. Perhaps it was because he figured he could earn a second call-out fee. Or perhaps he was just taking the piss out of us.

In retrospect, that problem was minor compared to what has quickly become a deep irritation with British call centres, specifically British Telecom (BT) and Vodafone. Obviously we needed BT for a home telephone line and broadband Internet access. The first problem related to a lack of knowledge and understanding about how the telephone line and broadband Internet access relate to each other in the UK. In SA, it’s one account; broadband access is part of your telephone bill. Here in the UK, on the other hand, they have somehow managed to separate these two services from one another. They are completely separate accounts with different account numbers. There is no unified billing. This is despite the fact that they enter your house on the same piece of cable. They also have different call centres, although there is only one call centre number. The one call centre is British and the other Indian depending on the first two letters of your account number. In my case, the telephone service is provided by “British” BT, and the broadband by “Indian” BT. I’m still waiting for the punch line.

I hit the first snag immediately in that I didn’t have our banking details with me when I first called to place the order. As such, I couldn’t place the order for broadband access because BT insists that this is paid for by direct debit. When I got home and called back with the correct details, I was told that, because the two orders weren’t placed at the same time, I couldn’t now place the order for the broadband Internet access until the telephone service had been installed. So I threw my toys out of the cot, and demanded to speak to a supervisor/manager otherwise I would take my business elsewhere. (You can actually do that here where there is a choice of telephone provider, as opposed to SA where you get Telkom, Telkom or Telkom.) So what they did was cancel the first order, and place the combined order again. We trundled along happily with this process until it got to our banking details for the direct debits. (I still hadn’t realised that I was opening two accounts. That came days later.) Our bank account is with HSBC in Jersey. The British part of BT happily accepted the Jersey account number and branch code (sort code for the Brits), while the Indian part of BT wouldn’t. At this point I must have mentioned something about looking for a different service provider, because they accepted the order without the direct debit that was allegedly non-negotiable. They promised to send me a manual/paper mandate form in the post which would arrive within a day or two. It took eight. Confounding the matter and confusing me was the fact that the paper communications from British BT were arriving in the letter box within a day or two.

The telephone service was activated within two days, while the broadband service took a week. BT gave me a free modem/wireless router, which they sent by courier, because I chose the top Internet package which allows unlimited downloads and top speeds. This was quite fortunate because I haven’t yet found my own modem/router which I assume is in one of the boxes with all our books which we haven’t opened yet. This new router also came with a complimentary IP phone which didn’t work because the service hadn’t been set up correctly. More, angrier telephone calls followed, hopping from continent to continent. Indian BT started with the proposition that it would take a week to set up the IP phone service; after some shouting, more demands to speak to supervisors, and threats of cancelling the service (which you can do in the UK without penalty within fourteen days of placing an order), they did it while I waited on the phone.

My problem with Vodafone was that neither I nor Michelle (in whose name I took out the contract) had received a telephone bill. I followed the same maddening process of calling a call centre which requires listeners to go through interminable lists of choices before you get to speak to a human. I figured out that you could get through to a person by pressing zero several times in quick succession. After being passed from person to person several times, it eventually emerged that we hadn’t received a bill because I had tried to register for online billing. I hadn’t completed the process because one needs information from the first paper bill to complete the registration. But because I had tried to register, the paper bill had been cancelled. How’s that for dumb? And nobody seems able or willing to help until you throw your toys out of the cot, which I inevitably did, and which saw the problem resolved immediately.

I have a theory that the call centres have a decibel meter on their phone lines, and the operators sit there and take the piss out of you until you hit just the right pitch. It certainly feels like it. It just takes so much time and effort for something that should be relatively straight forward.

Be that all as it may, I am very happy with our broadband Internet access. It really is blisteringly fast compared to what we’re used to. The BBC website has this device called the iPlayer where one is able to watch programmes again over the Internet for up to a week after they were originally broadcast on television. It’s quite seamless and one would hardly notice that it’s not a direct broadcast. Interestingly enough, the BBC News reported one morning that there is such demand for this replay service that the iPlayer is slowing down the Internet in the UK, and could well overwhelm the Internet infrastructure if the usage of the iPlayer continues growing at an exponential rate. I’m certainly one of those people adding to the weight. Above and beyond the iPlayer, it’s just as well that we signed up for the unlimited bandwidth service because my download habits must certainly be testing bandwidth capacity in the Warwick area.

The only problem now is that I am struggling to network our two computers. It was so simple in XP, but I’m really struggling to make the XP and Vista computer talk to one another. I have a suspicion that it is really Vista that isn’t up to scratch; it’s not like it’s unknown for Microsoft to release products before they’re really ready.

Anyway, enough of call centres and techno stuff.

We had the house looking acceptable enough for Barbara and Terry who arrived last Thursday evening. They must have wondered what they had let themselves in for when I was a touch over generous with the cayenne pepper in the Portuguese chicken dish I prepared that evening. It was a little hot.

Having passed that hurdle, we had a wonderful time with them. (See the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones). Lucia took Friday off and we went to Coventry in the morning to visit the bombed out remains of the old Cathedral and stroll around the new Cathedral right next door. For lunch, we went to a pub on the Grand Union Canal near Warwick, and strolled along to the Knowle locks afterwards where we watched a family of daytrippers start the process of moving up eight locks in their narrow boat. On Saturday we took them to the market at Wellesbourne, apparently the largest flea market in the UK. We hadn’t been to the market before and had no idea what to expect. As it turned out, it was entirely missable; just the usual Chinese knock-offs and other tat that one finds at such markets anywhere in the world. It’s just that this one was very big. We left shortly after it started raining and headed for the much more pleasant farmers market held every Saturday in Warwick’s main square. Later in the afternoon, after we had visited the dogs and cats, we took a stroll along the river walk into Leamington Spa. We bought some victuals at an Italian street market, and Terry and I went to the local Sony shop to check out the latest televisions and tech stuff while Lucia and Barbara tramped around charity shops hunting for bargains. We walked home along the canal which passes a stone’s throw from our front door.

We hadn’t really thought of what to do for Sunday given the dire weather warnings we had noted on TV. I was a bit confused when I woke up because I could see that there was a bright sky through our curtains. But when I flicked the curtain aside, I was greeted with a white winter wonderland. Everything was covered in three or four inches of snow, but the sky was bright blue with not a cloud in sight. This called for immediate action. Lucia went outside and built a snowman. (See pics at website.) Later we walked into Warwick through St Nicholas Park and enjoyed a breakfast of coffee and pastries at a favourite coffee shop. That was our day really. I can’t recall what else we did. On Monday, Lucia was back at work, and I took Barbara and Terry into Brimingham where we took in the sights of the city, visited the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (http://www.bmag.org.uk/ & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Museum_&_Art_Gallery), and went to a lunchtime organ concert at the Town Hall. Once again, I found the concert programme a bit obscure. It reminded me of an old Victor Borge joke: In the second act my left leg went to sleep; how I envied it. Afterwards, we went to lunch at All Bar One on the canals before heading home through the suburbs of Birmingham. I particularly wanted to show Barbara and Terry how attractive Edgbaston was, but I managed to get myself quite lost in the late afternoon traffic and eventually had to rely on the satnav to guide us home. In the evening Barbara and Terry treated us to a final dinner at a Turkish restaurant in Warwick which we had been wanting to try out. It was good; we’ll definitely be back. I finally took Barbara and Terry to Coventry airport in the early hours of Tuesday morning for their 6AM flight back to Portugal.

Today (Friday), I went to London to hand in Lucia’s application for a Portuguese Schengen multiple entry visa, only to discover that it isn’t done like that anymore. You have call a premium rate phone number to apply for an interview; you are then given a slot without much regard for the demands of your work or the fact that you may not even live in London. There is no website that explains this all to you, and the telephone number for the consulate simply rings unanswered. The red tape everywhere here can rather wear one down. Anyway, afterwards I walked through Mayfair and past Hyde Park corner to meet my friend Johan and join him for a pleasant lunch at a little bistro near his place of work in Belgravia. When we parted ways I walked all the way down Fulham Road to Chelsea Football Club’s grounds at Stamford Bridge. I thought I might be able to take a tour of the stadium - which I could have done if I was prepared to pay the £15 entry fee. I had a pleasant walk anyway noting several properties that I would consider buying if the lottery ever decided to shine on me.

Apart from visiting the zoo, I spent most of the rest of the week catching up with filing, doing accounts and domestic chores and generally doing the little bits doing the things you need to do before you can say: right, now I’m settled in. Things like changing addresses and other little bits. I’ve got the telephone and council tax in my name, and Lucia has the power & gas and water in her name. As I have noted before, these little bits of paper are vital to prove that you exist. There are some things in boxes in the garage that I would still like to find.

That’s it for now.

After reading an article in a new magazine about the tortured life of comedian and author Spike Milligan, Barbara asked me if I got the sign off “Love, light & peace” from Milligan. Exactly so.

So, as ever

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn