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

Letter from Warwick: 19 of 2008

Dear Family & Friends, 28 June

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

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

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

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

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

Such was our week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 18 of 2008

Dear Family & Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s it for another week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 17 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 14 June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn