Filed words

Weather 3

I am sorry we carried away your good weather – I don’t know where it got mislaid on the way as it certainly didn’t get here with us. We were woken last night with the roar of another downpour and it’s been drizzling most of the day.

We had a lot of rain. But the valley worse. One or two side-valleys there inundated with mud where new subdivisions on hillsides descended gobbets. But only 2 lives lost – a child engulfed in a slip and a man by heart attack. Miraculously few.

The wind has been awful – a dormobile was blown down a 20-foot bank on Saturday and the guy opposite who is building a new house had his roof flattened like a pack of cards last night. As he had to wait 4 weeks for trusses last time, he is NOT highly amused.

I’m sad for you you’re going into the ‘dark’ just as we’re getting lighter evenings – changeover last Sunday.

I’m glad you’ve got spring round the corner – Oh to be in England…

Whilst X was away it deluged – the river rose in a brown torrent and the creek came down so fast and furiously it carried all before it – including the drum our water supply filters through into a pipe. This dislodged a vast boulder about 3×4 ft which fell on top of it and crushed it so my hot and cold water was off. The neighbours lost sheep and talked of cutting their fences to get cattle off the low-lying land. We had 3 slips on our road. When X phoned to say which train he was arriving on, the best I could do was get a friend to pick him up and bring him to the other side of the last slip and I’d meet him t’other side and he’d have to climb over (about 10 ft high all across the road). I felt v. foolish when I got there to meet them head on – the clearing gang had arrived just after I’d been down to see. Fortunately, they saw the lorry carting it away so knew it wasn’t a good story!

This summer was and still is SO hot and humid. Thankfully I am still working 3 days per week in air-conditioning. When at home in the heat I just want to sit and do nothing. I listen to a lot of music and do Sudoku puzzles!!!! At least the brain gets exercised.

Voluntary work

We went on a Scouting bottle drive which was a great success. 13 cubs, 5 scouts and about a dozen parents managed to collect 700 dozen beer bottles and 50 dozen lemonade bottles in 3 hours – worth about $220.

I’ve had a trip each of the last two weeks to meet up with a couple of others on the committee. Maybe doesn’t sound very interesting, but I enjoyed it. Three people can actually listen to each other and cooperate where each member of a large group had to shout everybody else down to put over his idea. Funny actually because when I joined this committee about five years ago I regularly fought at its meetings with one of these two. Wonderful how age mellows you, or something.

Shared likes

It was interesting to find their book shelves with all our ‘usuals’: Graham Greene – hasn’t he got a macabre mind – surprising with such a striking face [?] – and Mary Stewart, Dick Francis and so on.

We’ve recently re-read Nevil Shute’s In the Wet written 1953 about 1970. V. interesting NOW [40 years from its publication].

It was lovely just to hear you after so many months last Sunday. What is actually the subject of conversation doesn’t seem to matter very much. It’s just the fact of direct and instantaneous communication that is important.

Holidays 8

We had X over to lunch on Sunday. She made a long trip home earlier this year, going via Hong Kong, Pekin and the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow. But we didn’t gather that she really enjoyed it very much – she said that the ordinary Russian people seemed to be very frightened of being seen talking to foreigners, so she didn’t really feel very welcome; and the hotel was rather like a prison – your passport was taken away when you were signed in (and it was literally signed in – the young man from Intourist who met them off the train and took them to the hotel – they didn’t know which one, until they got there – actually got a receipt for them!) – and they were given an identity card which had to be shown to get either in or out of the hotel. The last straw was at the Polish border when they were just about to heave signs of relief, only to find themselves hauled out of the train because, owing to the train’s lateness, the witching hour had struck and their visas were a day out of date! However they were allowed to proceed after some anxious moments – and I gathered that X was not contemplating a return trip.

When we reached the camp, it was on the one hand a bit scruffy and ‘tripperish’ and in addition occupied by millions of invisibly small insects which were delighted with us as ‘afters’ to their ordinary lunch – so we were depressed. But walking on the beach came across an old dear who had been helping her 80 yr old husband wheel his fishing boat home on a beach trailer, and stayed to gossip about his catch, their golden wedding trip last Easter, and her opinions of the local camps – from which we returned to make a reconnaissance of this second camp and booked in for this morning. There was this to be said for the old place – it was about the only camp shower I recall which was too hot – the cold supply just couldn’t cope with any regularity with it! We managed to get packed up in time to drive out and park 200 yds down the road next to the church for an 8.45 service – and only missed the first hymn.

[from Big Bend, Texas] Just watched the sun go down – the wind is getting up in the trees and owls are hooting.

We didn’t know it was a service motel – no cooking facilities and expensive hotel attached for dinner etc. Praise be we’d had a super lunch so declined dinner and boiled eggs in the electric jug (laid on for coffee) but the damn things cracked and froth flowed out the top. I added a generous shake of salt to no avail. We were both hysterical by then. I thought I’d never get it clean but we’ve had coffee from the same jug since and it was OK.

[from the Ngamoko Track, NZ] I went up there! Just out from doing the big walk round Waikaremoane. 4 days of between 4 and 6 hours walking, including up to the top of the bluffs, and another 50 minutes today to get picked up by water taxi back across the lake. The bush was lovely and we met nice people. My legs held out very well but got a couple of sore blisters – otherwise I’d be ready to keep going… perhaps!

Had the bill for all the travel yesterday, though I haven’t got to pay it yet – and it is fairly shattering. But the main worry is (a) will they be fighting in Bangkok by the time we want to stop there on the way out and (b) will Russia have invaded China by the time we want to go to Hong Kong on the way back – or shall we get to UK and find we can’t get back at all? I don’t think the news is at all happy.

We had an ecstatic letter from X, all about the fun it was walking through her PNG forest, climbing over tree roots and wading rivers up to the armpits! But her house 2 days walk from the nearest village has running water and a loo thanks to having been built for people on a 5-year research scholarship!

Pets 3

We spent the weekend with X and her wild young – how she copes I can’t imagine – they had 8 cats, then when we went to the school some of the boys came and asked if we knew there was a cat and 3 kittens under the passenger seat! They were brand new – she hadn’t made a sound. X was very apprehensive as he had so many cats. They already had 3 new kits from another cat. The child and I hid them away in a box in a shed but he must have found out and drowned them which upset the boy a lot – and me.

They have a new small kitten and the dog spent all her time trying to make the beast’s acquaintance, snorting and blowing under doors to find it, and rushing round when they were in the same room to find which side of a chair she could get nearest to the cat underneath – all she got for her pains were a number of smart raps to the jaw with claws very much to the fore, but it didn’t deter her much. I think it was friendliness too, and not mere aggression as I have never known a less aggressive dog than her. She will even trot down the drive past the neighbour’s goose which occasionally invades us, studiously ignoring it at a range of three or four feet. I’ve even seen her try to do the same with a rabbit, but it was less trusting than the goose, or more mobile, and departed in the middle.

Our boxer bitch came on heat 3 days after joining us and went on the PILL for eight days and we trust all is well but I strongly suspect she’s now embarked on a phantom pregnancy – woe is me – I trust it is at least phantom. I feel a bit guilty at the amount she eats when people are starving. A big attraction is she doesn’t yap all the time – she didn’t bark at all for 10 days then a friend of the neighbour’s came up here with him while we were heading off a sheep up our drive and she took an instant dislike to the friend (we don’t like him either!) and strained on the lead barking and hackles up – I was quite relieved to see she could rise to the occasion.

I heard fierce hissing whilst I was serving coffee in the drawing room and looked down to see Charlie Brown his white cat stretched out at my feet and suddenly realised there was a large man standing on both her back feet! Yes, he’s a she – they found out when she produced.

[from one reporter] I don’t really want to be tied with a dog but feel I need one here if X has to be away and other people have remarked the same thing. I thought I’d like a boxer and phoned a kennel I was told of, to find they bred beagles – which reminded me that was really what I meant to have (just like the man my grandfather knew…!) [???] so we went off miles into backwoods – they were delightful but v. exuberant and the owners said they were v. difficult to train and handle and did just what they wanted if you weren’t v. firm with them. Fortunately, they’d only got a dog pup (gorgeous) and I want a bitch. So then I saw an ad for 2 boxer bitch pups – phoned there – and the 8 1/2 month one left chased sheep. When I said I didn’t really want too young a dog she came up with the idea of a 4 year old bitch who’s had 2 litters of 12 and 14 pups and she felt should be retired. Being a new idea I’m thinking about it but I think it’s the answer – X and I are hopeless at training dogs and I don’t want that chewing up stage again – so we may go and have a look. The idea of having to exercise her on a day like this doesn’t appeal!!

[and from partner]

We have just acquired a boxer bitch, 4 years old, generally well trained and of a pleasant temperament it seems. One good point, she is almost entirely mute, apart from snuffling noises when curious.

What if…

It’s always I wonder … I can think of a number of times life could have changed course ‘if only I …’ but I suspect each turning would have its own set of trials. Now and then in my more fey moments I wonder if each person starts a whole train of events after some decision, whilst another person has a different set of circumstances, so all is really in the mind (like the tree in the quad). If taken too far it gets very complicated!!

He has been accepted without an interview at X but hasn’t heard yet from the Y interview which sounded much more interesting and probing. He’s almost hoping not to be offered a place there as then he’ll have to make a decision.

Yesterday I was shown a house, next to a river touching the house and a tar factory: I can imagine the smell in the summer. No doubt ‘idiot’ is still written on my forehead.

If we took down the back porch which has all the odd bits in, logs box, shoe cleaning cupboard and my house plants, which X is averse to my having indoors, we would be able to see the hills – it all proves you can’t have everything! (but I’ll go on wanting it!)

I’m getting quite excited about the Mars probe – I’ll be so cross if I die too soon – the next quarter century will be amazing – tho’ I fear with little grace.

Doctors 2

The surgeon offered a nice bit of plastic surgery to change the shape of his nose, which he politely refused on the grounds that he was used to it as it was thank you – at which the surgeon was apparently quite put out. He apparently fancied himself as a nose-modeller.

This man does the op at the General, and also at one other place which is still run by nuns and at neither of those does he charge for his services. He keeps a list for people who need the op more urgently than the waiting list of eighteen months at the General but have no insurance. Then he charges enough for three if you have insurance. And the hospital is equally expensive – they charge the use of the theatre by the minute! I think it’s a good thing I am only having a local: I can see they don’t waste any time saying good morning! I suppose it’s a fair enough system, except of course that our insurance only covers 80% of the actual charges. The whole system is a bit reminiscent of panel beaters, I think, though the surgeons probably wouldn’t like the comparison!

Earning

Our dentist – the one who sold half his practice – now charges his remaining patients double and spends the rest of his time modelling (most beautifully) the most terribly twee and often-disproportionate little figurines. His stuff sells like hot cakes.

She has the chance to be a sales rep. for this odd man (I don’t really trust him!) who gives her so many odd jobs, from modelling to hostessing at the Fair and being receptionist for his office whenever his secretary lets him down.

The millennium

We went for a picnic in the park at the end of my street to watch the sun set on the old millennium. Very low key – we were the only ones there. I even have some very poor photos of the last sunset over X for the next millennium (they may be worth a fortune by the next if they survive that long). Then we caught the tram to X where there was entertainment and after all the excitement of the clock ticking was over we walked home and had a cup of tea and lamingtons.

Of course, like just about everyone, we went to a big bash to celebrate the Millennium. The village put on a terrific do with wonderful food, fantastic disco and a really spectacular firework display to round off an absolutely marvellous start to the New Year.

Languages

I’ve been learning Tsonga – the mother language of the ones spoken around here – recently. It seems quite easy after Russian, but not very guessable – as most European languages are.