Arthurs

What are we doing wrong? Surely we should be climbing the walls with stress at this juncture. We are only a few weeks away from a house move from one end of the country to another (some might say from one country to another), into a house that is so far away and difficult to get to that we will not see the place now until we arrive at the door with our furniture and, we hope, our own front door key. But with no toilet or sink yet installed in our Yeovil bathroom, are we really ready to leave? Well no, but we have Andrew, one of the builders who worked on opening up our living room, on stand by to fit the toilet as soon as the floor is laid and now that the bath is fully tiled up, the vinyl floor tiles will go down in only a few hours. So there is a plan, it seems.

Packing began in earnest today after Kate arrived home with armfuls of flat-packed boxes and a big roll of bubble-wrap. Already now I personally have assembled, labelled and sealed some of the boxes, a very satisfying experience because it also involves sorting through the contents and throwing out things we no longer have any use for. Of course this is a two-edged sword for it is inevitable, sooner or later, that we turn up the old photo albums and we both just know that as soon as these are opened the day is lost, neither of us can pull ourselves away and we end up drowning in the memories as they flood past our eyes.

Here are some examples, although I appreciate that these may be of limited interest to anyone who does not know these people. Pictured here are my brother, parents and grand-parents seated on a settee that I recognise and in a house that I remember well. I can even recall taking the picture and even the camera I used. Flash photography in the 1960s meant plugging a small blue bulb into the centre of a fan-like reflector. Triggered by current from a battery the bulb exploded, sometimes dangerously, in a single flare, after which the molten blob it had become was thrown away.

Just to put things in perspective, this second picture comes from Kate’s side of the family, her grandparents with their children. Kate’s mum is on the left with the bow in her hair and her age puts this shot around 1920. The difference in style is quite marked and as much as anything else this illustrates the development of the camera which brought about a change of role, from a professional’s tool to a piece of domestic equipment anyone could own. Each of us knows or remembers different things about our maternal grandfathers, just small fractions of the men that they were, and although they would never have known each other they did share a name, Arthur, which is sort of nice to think about.

Of course what is really dominating our thoughts from moment to moment is a Scottish landscape, soon to be on our doorstep. The Internet enables us to discover what hot issues are affecting the lives of our soon-to-be-neighbours living on the Kintyre peninsula. and top of the list seems to be the plan to use the sea close to Machrihanish for a set of generating towers, a wind farm. Its location lies on a track used by yachts sailing around the Mull and it is also not far away from the RAF base and airport, to say nothing of the golf course. (I didn’t realise this but apparently the game of golf is badly affected if the view is not just right.) All this is causing excitement and controversy locally. Bizarrely, until last year, the wind farm towers used to be manufactured locally, just outside Campbeltown and when Cirrus was berthed there in July we watched these vast tubes being loaded and shipped away. The factory has been a recent casualty of the recession, sad to say, but another hot news item. Will the plant be sold or broken up? Watch this space.

Clearing the dust

In a single moment and a yellow steel skip, five months worth of bits torn from our Yeovil house are carted away, captured (just) by Kate’s camera.

As each item was pulled from the rubbish pile in our back yard and placed delicately inside the skip there was a new memory triggered of where it came from, what it looked like before and what we had replaced it with. Each rusted nail had its own story, each broken tile held a dust-filled memory of how it had been chiselled free of the wall, every strip of flooring held the imprint of where it had fitted before my crowbar had pried it loose. The whole event is strangely therapeutic, a cleansing, a separation with the past. We feel we have achieved a lot in doing such a substantial house renovation and learnt a lot too, about houses, what they are made of and what goes on behind the skirting boards. There has also been much we have learnt about ourselves and what we are capable of taking on. So would we do it again? I think the answer is yes, we would, but maybe we’d go about things differently, putting ourselves under less pressure by setting a longer timescale.

One good thing is that I now have some amazing new tools to amuse myself with, very powerful and mostly red in colour, strangely. There is the random orbital sander (RAS to its friends) which vibrates at 13,000 cycles a minute whilst whining loud enough to wake the dead. Don’t think for a minute of using this little fellow to sand off an offending corn or bunion for it will have half your leg off before you can get to the power switch. I also persuaded Kate I needed a hefty circular saw for ‘cutting things’, preparing the ground for when we saw a nice orange and black one on offer in the store. This little babe will eat fingers, toes, arms, just about anything if you let it get away from you, all at great speed, projecting all the little pieces out through a nozzle in a glistening arc. I always do a detailed limb and digit count both before and after this one comes out of its case. Just because it hasn’t got me yet doesn’t mean I’m not on the menu.

One thing is for sure though. Taking on any house renovation work in the Highlands of Scotland will present a whole new set of logistical challenges. There will be no B&Q store close by and open seven days a week. I will not be able to stroll down the road and take my pick between five different plumbing suppliers nor will I have Screwfix at my beck and call. It is not an island we are relocating to but the location will present communication difficulties of similar complexity. We have already in the past come across the ‘Highlands surcharge’ on deliveries to this part of the world but we have now also witnessed an Argos van struggling around the hairpin bends just near Carradale’s long bay, which tells us that they do at least try.

What we can predict is that our car-free life is about to come to an end. Twice in our married life we have sold a car, our only car, without buying a replacement and we both have rather fond memories of the first time this happened and the car being driven away from our house in Faversham. No longer would it stand on the street soaking up our pennies and interfering with our green intentions. We both noted an immediate and distinct sense of relief and pleasure to give it away; the fact that someone was actually paying us money to take it off us even felt rather magical. Five years later and we had completely mastered the art of meticulous journey pre-planning which is the required skill for all those following this path. No journey is undertaken without studying bus and train timetables or fixing bike punctures and getting the family dressed up for the weather outside. No stepping from the house lightly clad and staggering into the shelter of the car for us. But we thought nothing of it, were proud of living this way – out of step with the rest of British life. When we needed a car again though, after our move to Devon in the late 1990s, we went straight out and bought one, only selling the thing after our move into London made ownership unnecessary again. Transport links in and around London are better than most places in the world and driving there today is one of the worst experiences you’ll get on four wheels. The decision was a no-brainer.

So here we are again, with yet another house move weeks away, reviewing our transport needs and saying yes, car it is again. How many other households today go through this process, I wonder.

Faces from the past

Just one trip to Scotland and back has turned into a life-changing experience for us both, far more than we expected when we set out.

Of course it is not every day that we end up buying a house on the west coast of Scotland – we need time for this to sink in, a little longer for the concept of living in Carradale to permeate our brains, time for our mental landscapes to adjust to accommodate the new place, the new land that awaits us. Chance was giving us no quarter, however, for no sooner had we left the Highlands when suddenly our path was swerving towards those of some friends whom I lost contact with over forty years ago.

A small collection of islands sat on the edge of the North Atlantic continental shelf they may be, but Britain is our home. Whilst being conscious of how it is home for our family and for those with whom we have daily contact, we forget how this place is also home to those whose lives have mixed with ours in the past, people we have known in a particular place or at a certain time and who have then passed out of our everyday lives. Each of us wanders along our own path through life, a meandering path that can often pass close to that of someone we know without ever crossing it. Two former friends might pass each other on different sides of the same street without ever re-uniting and of course as our faces change with age, recognition becomes less likely anyway.

It also seems very human to be intrigued by the past, especially by those we have known in our past. Wondering what happened to someone we once knew is so much a part of the human condition that it is hardly a surprise to find the Internet devoting such massive resources to bringing people together, enabling those separated by time and space to communicate freely. To pretend that this electronic medium is somehow less substantial and that the meeting, electronic or otherwise, is therefore less adequate than what went before is to deny the obvious. The great pleasure and satisfaction that can come from re-connecting with one’s past can be sensational, inspiring.

Having broken our journey south in Leeds to visit Kate’s brother Peter, and then in Sheffield to meet our son Ben and his band, Bang Bang Romeo, we begin to receive Facebook messages that for me in particular cast my mind back to 1967, to a time when my hair was long, my arms thin and my teeth all in place.

This was a time when the favoured mode of travel for me and a group of close but hairy friends was a succession of rather dubious motorcycles, probably considered old at the time but now looking like museum pieces. The Internet has enabled friends Geoff and Shelagh (Geoff far left, Shelagh the photographer?) to emerge from memory into present day, face-to-face reality. (I am centre picture, by the way, face partly hidden behind the windscreen of my pride and joy, a red/grey LE Velocette.)

We had diverted our journey home to visit my mother in the South-East and as a result, soon after the initial electronic contact we hastily arranged a meeting and over a pub lunch in Wadhurst there we were pouring over old photographs, hazy memories being resuscitated. In the faces around the table were the faces I once knew, subtly altered by time but easily recognisable - the human face is what we remember best of all when everything else is forgotten. Fortunately the Internet is no respecter of international boundaries so the fact that the life-paths of at least two of this group have taken them outside Britain has not prevented them now being part of a revitalised regrouping. And such was the warmth that flowed from those of us who were able to meet in person that it is hard to see how henceforth our lives will ever disconnect again. It really felt good to be part of this assembly. Thanks guys. Don’t disappear again!

Back in Yeovil we dropped down to earth with a dull thud as it dawned on us that we have but a few weeks to complete the house rejuvenation project that we started back in September last year, to pack our belongings away and transport the lot up to Scotland. It is one of the joys of the place that a house purchase there is a simple and rapid affair, although this now puts us under a lot of pressure. We have a deadline to aim for, achievable but buttock-clenchingly tight, one might say, so a plan of action is needed to guide us on our way. Fortunately this is just the sort of thing we do quite well. We have had plenty of practice.

Scottish adventure

Our train ground to a halt for the fourth time and we sat gazing out of the window as two men in bright orange vests strolled by on the track. Each had a large, long handled hammer slung over his shoulder, not a sight likely to inspire confidence in the rail network and as we waited, and waited, it gradually began to dawn on us that we might still be here when our flight from Bristol took off and flew over us. At last an announcement came, but this filled us with even more gloom as its tone was depressive, predicting as it did no end to the holdups on the line ahead. There were signalling problems on the network, delays on the ‘trunk line’ ahead and no sooner had the words come out when rumours about fallen trees blocking the line began to spread amongst our fellow travellers, which just goes to show how we hear either what we want or what we expect to hear, never what is actually said. So far as we were concerned missing our flight to Glasgow would scythe through our carefully planned timetable, the booked rental car and accommodation, the visits to friends and family on our return journey, as well as being a very costly experience. Our stress levels began bubbling nicely in the quiet of the railway carriage.

Fortunately the train eventually re-started and we did arrive at the airport in time so that little more than an hour later we were driving along the shores of Loch Lomond just as the dying light of the day was lighting up the freshly snow-covered mountain tops. We had been transported from the relative warmth of Somerset into the heart of a Scottish winter with ice crunching beneath the wheels of our hire car the moment the road climbed above sea level. Soon enough though we arrived at our B&B in Inverary and tucked into the tea and biscuits that was laid out for us, putting our travel worries behind us.

By morning there was a crust of ice on the car and the steps from the house we trod carefully, keeping our wits about us ready for the day for we were in Scotland to look at houses, to find a new home for ourselves. Our planned property viewings were lined up, all pre-arranged with the estate agents, so that we would see a different place at roughly hourly intervals throughout the day. This was the start of a new venture, our Scottish adventure into the Highlands of Argyll. Something is pulling us northwards like a magnet, drawing us in to a new life in this beautiful land, an area we have got to know very well over the two years since ceasing full-time employment and a place that is going to suck us in to its welcoming embrace.

When the Scottish winter can produce views like this, how can you resist?

We tramped first around Lochgilphead, a town which nestles snug at the northern end of a long sea loch, before moving along the shore to Ardrishaig where the Crinan Canal emerges from its journey across the land from the west. Here it is possible to live with salt water at the front door and fresh water at the rear as the canal runs close to the sea before it escapes. There were a few neat little properties here that interested us but winking away further south was a fishing village on the eastern shore of Kintyre and we had a rendezvous there at three o’ clock. We drove off south down the peninsula past East Loch Tarbert then turned onto a narrow road, wide enough for a single car with posts marking places where two approaching vehicles could pass. With nothing but a passing tractor to worry us, soon we were dropping down towards the sea, Kilbrannan Sound, and in the near distance the mountains of Arran rose large and dark.

The road wound its way on, the surface broken by winter frosts so our tyres crashed and splashed into large black, water-filled holes. Slowly, up and down the hills beside the sea, in and out of gullies and rills, we closed on Carradale where the river Carra drains the Kintyre and where a settlement of some five hundred souls have made their home. Here we found a small house that will soon be our home, for a day later the deal was done, our offer accepted; we are now Scottish property owners. This is not some vast country mansion but nor is it a holiday home to be used just in the summer months. No, this place will soon become a permanent home for us both, within a small, remote village on the edge of the Kintyre peninsula, the sea just five minutes from our door and in every direction, more wilderness than you can throw a stick at.

Perhaps it is Kate’s Scottish ancestry that has brought us here or maybe it is our joint insanity that has pulled us in. Whatever it is we are totally comfortable with the idea of joining the small community of Carradale to begin a new life here. This is not some sudden whim, much though it may seem so through the pages of this blog, but instead it is something we have talked about long and hard between ourselves, sometimes deep into the night. Probably from the moment we sailed out of the Caledonian Canal into Loch Linnhe back in 2009 we began to have the inkling of an idea to get our lives to the point where we could re-locate permanently into the Highlands and we feel that the moment and the opportunity has now arrived. So rather than sit around doing nothing about it we have plunged headlong into action, researching the Internet to come up with a shortlist of affordable houses and taking our very limited funds north to make our choice. We have settled on the village of Carradale not specifically for its remoteness (this is a subjective term anyway) but more for the chance to live in a lively community where a spirit of self-sufficiency is the norm, and surrounded by the most beautiful scenery that this country can offer.

The Saga of the Leak – part the second

Now the men of Wessex Water they make their own laws regarding when, where and how to dig to find a leak, when it is proper for sod to be turned, how deep to dig and when they should extract payment for doing so. And if their own people do not follow those laws and rules then the noble men who manage Wessex Water can exact penalties against wrongdoers or indeed may also award gifts to those who have been wronged. Such a gift has now been bestowed upon the bearded Malcolm and his good lady and this saga has already passed into the folklore of the men of water with their listening sticks and their spades. It pays to complain.

But such men do not take kindly to water hissing from their pipes and they do not like to be beaten. So they have paused for thought, weighed up the balance of skills and technologies available to them, planned a new campaign of assault and consulted the oracles regarding the most favourable day of the week on which to begin. Meanwhile the hissing of the leak continues unabated although the water still flows in the pipes and tubes so life continues with little change – until the Day of the Dig. This is the day the whole of Somerset will not forget, the day when the soil was peeled back so that the pipes beneath were revealed to all, a day when every substance which lies hidden below was exposed to human eyes, a day when the long-lost knowledge of pipes would be re-discovered, finally, once and for all time, never to be forgotten again.

On the morning of the chosen day the sun rose above the horizon but it hid its face from the men of Wessex and the wind it blew cold.

Those men they had arisen early, champing at the bit like stallions in protective clothing, their large boots thudding to the ground as they emerged from their coloured vehicles. They had brought with them their listening sticks, they had brought their spades but most of all they had brought their favourite machine, a rather nice grey and red one with a long arm for digging deeper and further. ”Let digging commence”, they cried with one voice as they laid into the ground. Rapidly the first hole appeared, swiftly followed by a second and a third. The men of Wessex fell over themselves to dig deeper and further, the competition amongst them was intense.

By noon and soon after their fifth cup of tea they had traced a pipe as far as the house of Malcolm and Catriona, the black plastic seeing the light of day for the first time for many years. There it was at last, the knowledge guarded by the men who built was at last revealed to the men who dig, the lost pipes had been found.

But what of the leak? What of the hissing beneath and the water that escaped to run away into the ground? Tracing the pipe is only part of this saga as despite eight holes having now been dug, we still have water seeping away into the night. No wonder there are floods around the other side of the world in Australia!

The men of Wessex departed to their homes and families no doubt to sing songs of pipes lost and found, to brag of the holes they had dug that day, to tell tales to those who would listen of great deeds and how many sugars they took in their tea. For the bearded Malcolm and his lady however the story had yet to end. The saga of the leak must have yet another chapter, the one in which the leak is finally quenched so the water flows no more. Make yourself comfortable where you sit and read on to the end of this tale.

Now the thing about pipes that lie hidden beneath the ground outside houses is that they work best when they are connected to pipes within houses or, as they say locally, “That’s what he do round here”. This final chapter in this saga is about connecting the without to the within and the men who do these things, not Wessex men but men from Sherborne, that is across the border in Dorset. So it was that a Dorset man, this one calling himself Sid, came to the house of Malcolm and his good lady to make a connection that would stop the leaking water from leaking and hissing away. There was much discussion as to the best way this could be done, whether if the water ran backwards in the pipes within the house it would still flow from the taps in the same way, so that the lady Catriona could bathe herself and make free with the oils and essences to purify her skin as she was wont to do. And at last ‘The Day of Connecting’ dawned, another day when the wind it blew hard and cold but nothing could prevent the connection being made for the lost pipes had been found by the men of Wessex and the Dorset man called Sid wielded his spanner for all to see. The pipes bent beneath his will and became one with the water inside and all was well at last. The deed had been done and the leak was no more.

So it is that the saga ends.

We now have a quiet house, one that hisses no more. Sleep is difficult, of course, as the noise of silence is deafening but it is pleasant to know that all is well with our pipes once more. This whole process has been a learning experience for us both although not a particularly enjoyable one. While waiting for this or that to happen we have felt trapped, unable to leave the house for any length of time in case someone turned up to dig another hole. We both feel like a break, perhaps even a holiday is called for, a term not generally applicable to retired persons, so where better than a few days in Scotland in mid-winter. Flight and accommodation booked, transport arranged, off we go!