Letter from Warwick: 29 of 2008

My dear family & friends, 22 September

What a wonderful weekend we had. I was startled to be confronted with a cloudless blue sky on Friday morning, and it stayed like that all the way to Sunday evening. Lucia said it gave her energy and revitalised her. I'm sure all the plants agreed with her.

Late on Friday morning I walked the dogs from just outside Warwick to the cafe at the top of Hatton Locks. I’m glad I wasn’t doing it on a narrow boat; there are 21 locks which represent an awful lot of opening and closing of lock gates. This would be punishing work in the ordinary course of life on the canals, but it must be doubly so in the heat of a late summer’s day. Up at the cafe we cooled down under the shade of a giant parasol while I enjoyed a cappuccino and the dogs lapped up a bowl of water. I suspect I shall be going back to this cafe more often as it’s under new management that has revived what had become a dowdy tearoom. They make a really good cappuccino whereas the previous proprietors didn’t even have a cappuccino machine. How can anybody expect to get anywhere in this day and age without a cappuccino machine?

In the evening, I took the dogs up to our local pub where I arranged to meet Lucia after work. The day was just too gorgeous to stay indoors. Edgar was a hit with most of the customers. We always get some disapproving looks, but Edgar has learned to ignore them. He is a true aristocrat. Only such blue blood would get away with sticking a cold, wet nose into your groin as a greeting. Well, mostly. I never forget walking on Camps Bay beach late one afternoon in Cape Town, when Edgar walked up quietly behind a very comely young lass wearing the skimpiest of G-stings and, before I could call him back, stuck his nose right in her butt. It was one of the funniest things you ever did see, and I fell about laughing. It was a pity then that her (very big) boyfriend didn’t see things quite the same way. An awkward situation developed. It might have got really ugly had an even bigger bloke not advised him to lighten up and take a hike. Anyway, back at the pub in Warwick Edgar introduced himself to Errol (Errol had a packet of crisps and Edgar loves crisps) whom I quickly deduced had very South African accent. Errol had been a policeman in SA and is now working as a carer in the UK. He and his wife live just across the canal from us. This place is truly teeming with South Africans. Edgar met another one at a coffee shop in Leamington this morning. This one was a test pilot who worked for Rolls Royce; the Rolls Royce plant is just outside Coventry.

On Saturday morning we walked the dogs along the canal and through St Nicholas Park to the Pastelaria Portuguesa where we received the welcome of old friends from Helder, the baker. We sat at one of his two tables on the sidewalk watching a road crew dig up a portion of the road and prepare it for new tar. It might have been less noisy inside, but the sun was shining and we had the dogs with us (and you never know when a jobsworth health inspector may decide to pay a visit.) If they were guide dogs, there wouldn’t be a problem. And besides, I think Edgar and Hazel should be granted guide dog status – they help centre my karma and guide me in life. I’m sure Edgar was a guru in a previous incarnation and that’s got to count for something. (Pity about the sheep though; for sure he’s not going to get past this incarnation until he can get over the sheep thing.)

On the walk home, we passed the lair of the vicious vermin swans just next to the footbridge in St Nicholas Park. Hazel plunged right into the river as usual despite the protestations of said vermin, and paddled merrily around followed by hisses and squawks. And while we were distracted by the antics of Miss Cuteness, Edgar somehow managed to rip a claw on the little jetty. At least we assume that’s where it happened because Lucia only noticed the blood on the carpets when we got home. So, while Lucia went to have her hair done in the afternoon, I took Edgar to the vet. The hairdresser cost more than the vet.

We had intended to go walking in the Clent Hills west of Brimingham on Sunday, but Edgar’s injury put paid to that idea. Instead we went to Ironbridge (which I have written about previously.) We had good day touring the museums of the area all dedicated in some way to the history of iron and the importance of this region to the Industrial Revolution. We started at Blists Hill, a model Victorian Town (http://www.ironbridge.org.uk/our_attractions/blists_hill_victorian_town/), and ended up at the Darby Houses, the homes of the Quaker family whose fortunes are so entwined with this area. We had lunch at a pub next to the river in glorious sunshine.

As for the rest of last week, the highlight was a dinner invitation on Thursday evening from Rebecca, one of Lucia’s co-workers. This was our first invitation from anybody at Lucia’s work. It’s one of the things that has really rather surprised me; I would have expected to have been invited to dinner, or lunch over the weekend at least once by one of Lucia’s bosses by now. It hasn’t happened. I know that in a similar situation in SA it would have been expected. That said, Rebecca and her partner, David, put on an excellent spread for us, and we had a wonderful evening. I look forward to doing it again.

My big achievement last week was to get our home network to work as it should. Forgive any jargon for the uninitiated. It was easy when I was simply trying to network two XP computers together. But now my new computer is running Vista while the old laptop, which is connected to the LCD TV downstairs as the home entertainment centre, is running XP. I know Microsoft was criticised because XP was too “unsecure”, but now they’ve gone completely the other way. I’ve spent months on and off trying to get the two computers to talk to each other over the home network. In retrospect I can say that there are some basic and simple elements to making it work, but it was near impossible to find the relevant information. In the end, it was a lucky guess based on the properties of the public folder on my Vista machine that got it to work. But would it really have been such a trainsmash for Microsoft to have provided the information on their website. And when I say “information” – I mean keystroke by flipping keystroke. The heading would be “Networking a Vista to XP” followed by “Step 1. Click on this ...”, “Step 2. Click on this .... “ etc.” If you want to Share a folder on the computer running Vista, do this “Step1...” etc. If anybody from Microsoft reads this – you suck!

And, finally, for anyone who thought I was talking shit about the level of global indebtedness and the threat to the financial system: 1.) I told you so, and, 2.) it ain’t finished.

Let me leave it for another week on that bright note
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

The picture book: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 28 of 2008

My dear family & friends, 14 September

We’ve been home for a week. I must admit that it was quite a come down to land at Coventry airport last Sunday amid dull, grey, rainy skies after the bright sunshine and clear blue skies of the Algarve. The weather remained dull for the rest of the week until yesterday (Saturday) when we could finally enjoy a dry, mostly sunny day. We made the most of it, first walking the dogs to Warwick in the morning to try out a new Portuguese pastelaria (patisserie), which belongs to somebody we met at the Portuguese pub during the Euro2008 soccer extravaganza. Helder, the owner, is clearly a good baker and he is also offering very keen prices on his goods. I think I shall become a regular. In the afternoon, we followed another favourite route through Newbold Comyn Park and along public footpaths across farmland to a flooded ford over the River Leam. We spent half an hour throwing sticks into the river for the dogs before heading back to the pub at the car park where we enjoyed more of the much-needed sunshine and a couple of beers.

The second week of our holiday was just as good as the first. (You can see all the pictures of our holiday at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) I won’t go into detail again, b ut let me outline some of the highlights.

On Monday we headed off into the southern Alentejo where we had booked ourselves two nights at a farm herdade, the Herdade de Vale Côvo, near Mertola. (http://www.herdade-valecovo.com/.) Mertola, sitting on the banks of the Guadiana River to which it owes its life, has a heritage going back to the Phoenicians; next it was the Carthiginians followed by the Romans and then the Moors. The town finally passed into Christian hands of the Portuguese in the 1200’s. It’s an archaeologist’s wet dream. Lucia and I passed through the town when we visited Portugal over Christmas 2006 and we resolved then to spend more time in the area when we next ventured to Portugal.

The herdade is about 20km outside Mertola along a single track road, passed two sleepy villages and then down a bumpy dirt track. The silence was pierced only by a gentle breeze, birdsong and other occasional country sounds. It’s the type of place that really does allow you to stop.

The next day we drove to Pulo do Lobo (Wolf’s Leap,) a series of waterfalls and rapids on the Guadiana River, and then to Serpa, an ancient walled town further up the River. At Pulo do Lobo I stripped off and paddled in the warm waters of the Guadiana while Lucia lay back under the shade of a tree. Driving to Serpa from the falls was somewhat, um, interesting. We had one map that said there was a direct road between the towns, and another that said there wasn’t. If you know me, you’ve got to know that I chose to believe the optimistic map that wound a precipitous dance down a mountainside, across a drive river bed, and up the other side. As I said to Lucia, it just goes to prove that rental cars are the best off-road vehicles ever designed. Even an underpowered Renault Clio. We did get a bit of a strange look from the occupants of the only vehicle we passed, a rugged-looking 4X4. That was my adrenalin rush for the holiday.

Back with Barbara and Terry in Espargal, we spent Thursday and Friday exploring the islands and beaches of the Formosa estuary which we had never got around to on our many previous visits to the Algarve. I’m glad we did as it gave us the idea to rent a cottage on one of the ilhas for a couple of days when we are next able to find some time for a vacation on the Algarve.

And back at home there hasn’t been much to record. The only event of any significance was a trip to the licensing office in Birmingham on Thursday to exchange our South African driving licences for British licences. We expected queues and a long wait – we’re from South Africa after all – but that’s not the way bureaucracy works in the UK. We were in and out in 20 minutes, and our new licences will be mailed to us within three weeks.

I experienced another example of this extreme efficiency when I bought a book – Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness – on the WH Smith website on Friday morning. It arrived in the post on Saturday; now that’s impressive.

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

Letter from Warwick: 27 of 2008

My dear family & friends

We’re in Portugal. Right now the sky is mostly overcast and I detected a few drops of rain on the window a short while ago – but the temperature is still up in the mid-20s (that’s centigrade, not Fahrenheit for the Brits.) That said, the weather has been mostly of the type with cloudless skies and bright sunshine – just the right antidote for the British “summer”.

But we nearly didn’t make our flight thanks to Edgar after he managed to pull out some of the stitches in his neck last Thursday night, leaving a gaping wound. He had to be restitched on Friday morning – remembering that you have to give animals general anaesthetic to stitch them up. Then on Saturday morning, the day we had to take the dogs to the boarding kennels, Lucia noticed that Edgar developed some fluid under the wound. So we had to take him back to the vet to drain the wound with a syringe. While I was at the vet, Lucia was at home cutting up and sewing an old scarf to button up around Edgar’s neck to make sure that he couldn’t scratch the wound. Unfortunately, that was no guarantee that the fluid wouldn’t develop again and we had to decide whether or not to postpone our departure for Portugal. The vet, whose parents live in Napier in the Cape, assured us that it wouldn’t be a problem to attend to Edgar at the kennels. That was like tempting fate. On Monday I got a call from the vet to say the kennel owner had brought Edgar back because there was more fluid sloshing about under the wound and he had had to put a drain in. He also kept Edgar in the infirmary on Monday and Tuesday night. He went back to the kennel on Wednesday, but was brought back into the vet on Thursday because he had been scratching at the wound. I’ve just had a call from one of the other vets at the practice to say that everything seems to have healed, that they’ve removed the drain and the stitches, and that he’ll be going back to the kennel later today. I really hope this is the last of it. I shudder to think what the vet’s bill is going to be when we get home.

Apart from Edgar’s dramas, we’ve been having a wonderful holiday. I don’t intend to give you a detailed account of everything that we’ve done, but you can find pictures of our adventures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.

The flight from Coventry to Faro on Sunday was uneventful even if I am convinced that many of our fellow passengers proved Darwin’s theory of evolution. As I said to Lucia, “I think we’ve found the missing link?” When we landed, the skies were blue and the air was filled with the rich, fragrant aroma of the Algarve and that is all that mattered. We retrieved our hire car from Auto Algarve and headed for hills and Barbara and Terry’s (my sister and brother-in-law) home in the village of Espargal (which is in the freguesia [parish] of Benafim in the conselho [council] of Loule.)

Since then, we’ve been taking our days very slowly. Lucia always joins Barbara and Terry as they begin each day walking the dogs; I join them when I can motivate myself out of bed. The walks have to be early to avoid the heat of the day – even so, it is still a warm exercise. Back at home, we mull over what to do for the rest of the day after showering or freshening up. My favoured breakfast is to go to a village cafe for cheese and ham sandwiches, espresso coffee and a small glass of medronho, a local fire water that is distilled from the fruit of the arbutus tree, wild strawberries.

The advantage of having visited here many times is that we don’t feel we have to rush around and see everything because we’ve seen most of it already. So far, our excursions have mostly been to the beach and the shops. We’ve learned that the best time to go to the beach is at high tide because the water is much warmer having had a few hours to bake in the sun. I found a good website that shows the tide tables in an easy to understand graphic format to help us achieve that target, and a weather forecasting website that predicts the weather by the hour.

My one misadventure so far is to have been stung by a bee. I was paddling happily along in the pool belonging to Barbara's and Terry's neighbours – David and Sarah – when the little bugger zapped me right in the soft tissue between thumb and forefinger. I’m mildly allergic to bee stings and it still hurts like blazes although the swelling has started to go down.

As for the evenings, we have either had a barbecue or gone out for dinner to one of the local restaurants or cafes that Barbara and Terry know so well. More to the point, the evenings are warm allowing me to stroll around in shorts and a T-shirt, my favoured form of dress. Lucia and I broke the mould yesterday evening when we went to the feira (fair) at Fatacil, one of the biggest feira’s on the Algarve summer calendar. We spent a very pleasant few hours strolling around the stalls offering everything from local handicrafts, to property developments and agricultural implements. For dinner we shared the most delicious plate of cured meats and cheese over a couple of beers while we watched the passing parade.

Let me leave it there

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 26 of 2008

My dear family & friends, 18 August

It’s just six days to go until we’re off to Portugal for two glorious weeks. We’re checking the Algarve weather everyday on the Internet and we are greatly heartened by the little sun icons day after day with temperatures in the high 20s. I think I might be quite miffed if we were to find overcast skies when we land in Faro on Sunday. Here in Warwick, it’s raining again as I sit here and write this. Summer seems to be the sunny spells between showers. It’s quite an adjustment.

Edgar was the source of some drama last week when he developed a lump in his neck. Rhodesian Ridgebacks are susceptible to problems related to the dermoid sinus tract which can get blocked and form a cyst in the neck. This is the second time Edgar has had to have an operation to have such a cyst removed. What caught us off guard this time was how fast the lump developed. We first felt a bit of a bump last weekend which then grew to the size of a golf ball by Wednesday evening. I took him to the vet on Thursday morning, and he had the cyst removed on Friday. The vet’s bill of £601 stunned me into momentary silence, but I just handed my credit card over and smiled. What else can you do? Professional services here in the UK are exorbitantly expensive. I have a theory about this which involves class expectations and bitter envy but is dressed up as fairness which just results in inflation and insurmountable debt.

I had my own wars with some little insects which seemed to fly up out of the grass in the park and bite me while I was walking the dogs. The little buggers keep on getting me whenever I wear shorts. They look like midges (or a miggie as we call them in SA), but their bites caused angry, itchy and painful welts to swell up on my legs, and which took days to go away. It was even painful to walk at one point.

It was just as well then that I had a job which kept me at home for a whole day. The partner of one of Lucia’s colleagues is a publisher who is always looking for proof readers. Lucia told her I was a journalist in SA which then raised the possibility that I could do some proof reading. The first book, which I had to read last week, was a test – a book that has already been published this year. It was a crime thriller called “The Blood Detective” by Dan Waddell. I found lots of typing and type-setting errors, but I still don’t know whether I passed the test or not. Proof readers get paid £75 per book.

Edgar’s operation meant that we couldn’t really do much this weekend. He stayed wobbly all the way through to Saturday night after the anaesthetic. We did, however, go to dinner on Friday evening at the Portuguese restaurant with one of Lucia’s colleagues, Rebecca, and her partner, David. We had a really pleasant evening. Although Rebecca is Australian born, she spent all her school life here in the UK. I think she’s more Australian though despite her English accent.

On Saturday morning, we left Edgar at home and sought out a village fair at Leek Wootton which I had seen advertised on the side of the road. Leek Wootton lies between Warwick and Kenilworth. When we got there we discovered that the fair, which was to be held on the on the village green, only started after lunch so we went to Kenilworth to kill some time. There isn’t really that much to see or do in Kenilworth. We strolled up the high street giving Lucia the opportunity to visit all the charity shops looking for interesting clothes which might fit her. I waited outside with Hazel who just loved having all Lucia’s and my attention to herself. Later we left her in the car while Lucia and I perused the goods on offer in the new Waitrose store and Lucia cast her researcher’s eye over the customers. I wonder how suspicious we looked to the store detectives.

The new soccer season also got under way this weekend – not that I got to see much of it. It is, in fact, rather ironic, that South Africans with DsTV see more English soccer than the Brits do. DsTV’s advertising slogan for its coverage of English soccer was “Every second of every game” – and one was, indeed, able to watch every single game in the Premier league if one was so inclined. Coverage in the UK, however, is far more limited by the need to get fans into the stadiums to watch the games. Fair trading and business competition rules also mean that all television services which want to show soccer must get their fair share so long as they can pay for it. (It is regarded as grossly unfair and a breach of monopoly regulations that any one television service should be allowed to buy up all the television rights even if they have the money to do so.) Sky did show two games on Sunday afternoon, but I forgot and watched a movie that I downloaded instead so I missed Chelsea thrashing Portsmouth 4-1. Bugger.

That’s it for another week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 25 of 2008

My dear family & friends

Have you heard of Darren Whackhead Simpson? I hadn’t until our neighbour, who is a military policeman in the British Army, brought a CD called “Serial Prankster” around to us this weekend. I think his daughter’s boyfriend brought it back from South Africa – something like that anyway. Darren Simpson is a morning presenter on Radio Highveld (94.7 Highveld Stereo in modern parlance) in Johannesburg. His speciality is telephone pranks, and many of them are hysterically funny if somewhat un-PC. You can pick up a lot of them on Youtube. (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darren+whackhead+simpson.) The Zimbabwean border post gag had me struggling to breathe, as did the Indian trying to join the AWB.

I’ve had quite an eventful week. On Thursday I drove to Peterborough to visit Andreas, Michelle and their daughter (my goddaughter) Natasha. The journey was made necessary by a new addition to their family – a 12-week-old Tibetan Terrier called Oscar. (You can see the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) The journey there was an experience in itself when I was caught in a deluge on the A14. I think most people would find it difficult to see a change in the rain ahead when it’s already raining. So it was that I drove into a cloudburst at 80mph that reduced visibility to zero and turned the motorway into a river. I just took my foot off the accelerator and tried best to steer the car based on the dim glow of the few tail lights ahead of me that I could see. Even more frightening were the few cars that continued to whizz past at speed – real death wish artists. And then, just as suddenly, it stopped raining altogether, and a couple of miles further on the sun was shining.

I took the dogs with me to help socialise Oscar. Well, certainly Hazel helped. Edgar’s been a bit iffy with smaller dogs ever since a Cocker Spaniel bit a hole clean through his ear at the Deer Park Cafe in Cape Town when he was a teenager. He slunk away with a low growl every time the new bundle of joy came close. Hazel, on the other hand, played with Oscar more-or-less non-stop. Andreas, an anaesthetist, worked an early shift, so he was home by midday and we walked to the village pub for lunch. Back at their home, we spent a lazy afternoon gathered around the patio table passing the time of day. Oh, and I mustn’t forget the delicious chocolate cake that Michelle baked.

Lucia and I had a busy weekend – that’s why I’m only writing this letter today. We had thought of spending the day at Ironbridge on Saturday, but the weather forecast didn’t look good and we weren’t sure how busy the town would be on a Saturday in the middle of school summer holidays. Instead we drove down to Chipping Camden, an ancient market town, which is about a half an hour away just on the edge of the Cotswolds. We covered the town on foot amid a fairly persistent drizzle. We stopped for cappuccino and cake in a cafe at an arts and crafts warehouse which welcomed dogs. A sign on the door said: Dogs and children welcome, and sometimes adults too. The cafe roasted its own beans filling the air with a rich aroma of coffee. Lucia and I took it in turns to go upstairs to the silversmith’s workshop where the proprietor plies his trade using traditional techniques.

Afterwards we just drove around to become more acquainted with the area. Our first stop was Hidcote Manor where we signed for membership of the National Trust. This gives us free entry to any of the hundreds of properties owned by the trust for a year. Hidcote has beautiful gardens spanning several hectares; the house and garden where donated to the Trust in the 1940s by Lawrence Johnston who designed and developed the gardens. From Hidcote we drove to Ebrington (pronounced Yubberton by the locals), then to Paxford and Brockely and back to Chipping Camden and then home.

On Sunday morning we decided to take advantage of our new membership of the National Trust and drove to Baddesley Clinton, a moated manor house which is several hundred years old. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baddesley_Clinton). As usual, I tried to imagine what it was like to be born into such privilege and then how the peasants might have felt about it. Probably not too happy. The house was only bought by the National Trust in the late 1970s when it appeared Richard Branson was interested in buying the estate. Afterwards we drove to Solihull, which is only a few more miles up the road, so that Lucia could browse for work clothes at the local mall. The mall was good enough as malls go, but the town centre is a bit drab – not the ideal place for a Sunday afternoon.

Let me leave it there.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Letter from Warwick: 24 of 2008

My dear family & friends, 3 August

It’s just three weeks today until we go to Portugal on vacation and we are counting the days. Lucia is particularly looking forward to the break after a hard year. In fact, it’s been just over a year since we made the decision to leave SA, and the intervening period has been full of stresses and strains from find a job, to selling the house, packing up, moving and resettling in a foreign environment. I’m just looking forward to two weeks of sunshine and deep blue skies. Our weather up in Warwickshire tends to be a lot greyer than in London and south-east England. The city of London itself generates so much heat that it creates its own micro climate that tends to make the weather a lot milder.

Having said that, we had a lot of sunshine last weekend with the temperatures rising as high as 30C according to my car thermometer. We wilted. It proved to us how quickly we had become accustomed to the cooler temperatures of England. We felt sorry for the street performers during the Warwick Folk Festival which took place over the whole of last weekend. (You can see pictures at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones as usual.) We walked into Warwick on Saturday morning with the dogs to take in the sights and sounds. Edgar, poor soul, didn’t like being too close to the drums. He objected even more to one of the dance troupes which dressed up all in black (with a bit of yellow trimming) and with black-painted faces. He bared his teeth and shrank away with hackles raised when one of their number came too close. I had to keep him on a very short leash after that. I think I’ve mentioned that he’s a very sensitive fellow.

The festival is probably the biggest event on Warwick’s calendar and the town closed off part of the high street and a few of the side streets for the festivities. We searched in vain for a spot shade at a pub or one of the local bistros where we could sit down for lunch and which permitted dogs. We eventually gave up on the idea as an impossible task and slowly made our way home in the humid midday heat. The dogs were glad to hurtle into the river just next to the footbridge over the Avon in St Nicholas Park. An attending swan, however, was most displeased at the intrusion on what he/she believed was rightfully his/her domain. I tried to explain to him/her that he/she would pay in blood if he/she so much as harmed a hair on the head of our darling children. Swans are vicious vermin.

In the evening we were invited to a braai with some fellow South Africans, Keith and Gail Helfett. Gail’s brother, Jeremy, went to school with Lucia’s brother, Justin. Their father was the SA comedian Pip Freedman. Keith is a former chief designer at Jaguar. One of the projects he is involved in now is an electric car prototype which is being built in Cape Town. Even though I’m an eager user of modern technology, I still marvel at how it enables people to work anywhere in the world as if they were just down the road from each other. (Skype, of which I was an early acolyte, reduces telephone costs to zero.) Be that as it may, Keith and Gail went to much effort to entertain us and we had a wonderful evening at their home in Kenilworth (which lies between Warwick and Coventry.) We only got to meet one of their daughters, Charlie, because the other, Nicky, was working as waitress at the Saxon Mill nearby on the River Avon. We know the Saxon Mill fairly well – it’s a so-called gastro-pub which essentially makes it a smart restaurant.

I was really interested what Gail said about how tips are dealt with at the Saxon Mill which really put much of the service I have experienced in the UK into perspective. Let me add here that there has been a big brouhaha about tips in the UK recently because it came to the attention on of newspaper editors (and others who can smell a good headline) that some restaurants were using tips as part of the minimum wage paid to employees. The Hard Rock Café in London, for instance, pays its staff around £2,50/hour against the minimum wage of £5,50-something and robs the tips to make up the rest. This is legal but now but some union and other lobbyists are trying to have the loophole which makes it legal closed.

But here’s my issue: all tips at the Saxon Mill are pooled and then shared amongst ALL staff. Many restaurants do this because it’s FAIR. One hears a lot about fairness in the UK. Now, talking as someone who put himself through university working variously as a waiter, maitre d and barman at Ferrymans Tavern in the Cape Town Waterfront for five years, a tip is about INCENTIVE: fairness doesn’t come into it. I fail to see why anyone would give any better service than was required if they weren’t going to derive a direct benefit from their superior service. And that’s what we’ve seen: the service has been average to adequate at even the better establishments – and I’ve really been trying to understand why. And that is probably it. Where you do get superior service, it’s most often from a foreigner whose incentive is merely having the job.

I made out like a bandit at Ferrymans. Nobody else ever made more money in tips or sales turnover than I did. We had a brilliant manager who taught me the meaning of service and so many tricks to make a customer feel special. I was driven; it was simply a matter of survival. As kitchen closing time approached, when all the other waiters and waitresses were trying not to take any more tables, I would take them all. Then I’d run myself ragged until sometime between midnight and 1AM, but walk away with several hundred rand. I would pick up any and all shifts. I just cannot imagine doing that if I’d had to share the benefit of my sweat. We were expected to give at least 10% of our tips to the runners and barmen, and another 10% to the kitchen staff. But I gave it gladly and frequently gave more for the simple reason that I knew I would get better service from them in the long run. It’s called a tip. I just don’t see the same motivation here.

Another highlight of the week, was our braai on Monday evening. Like the weekend and most of the preceding week, Monday started out bright and hot. At lunch time I decided that we would have a braai for dinner. Admittedly the skies had begun to look ominously dark by late afternoon, but I hadn’t prepared anything else. A few drops of rain started coming down shortly after I lit the fire so I put up the garden umbrella to defend my fire. (See pictures in the usual place.) Within five minutes the few drops had turned into thunderstorm with lightening streaking across the sky and thunder sending Hazel scurrying for cover. (Strangely thunder has never seemed to bother Edgar much.) But the umbrella is a decent size and kept the fire and me dry. I had Lucia join me under the umbrella when she got home. We stayed there and then moved the umbrella to the garden table where we ate our dinner when the chicken was cooked. The evening was warm enough and it was fun. I’m not sure what the neighbours thought though.

This weekend has been a bit more limited. There’s been the Hungarian Grand Prix and Lucia’s had work to do. We did walk the dogs to the Saxon Mill which is on the outskirts of Warwick. It’s a very pretty excursion. One follows the canal (which is a few yards from our house) until you get to the aqueduct over the Avon, and then follow public footpaths along the Avon that take you through a housing estate and across the wheat fields that border Warwick.

That’s it for another week

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

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