Land Escaping IV

 David had moved into a modernly comfortable suburban house with a terminal bachelor and two Samoyeds (dogs, not Russian natives), so I stayed there while I searched for a flat of my own.

          Flatting seems to be like driving - the longer you delay, the more difficult it becomes. And, as with driving, I think I missed my best opportunity to become a confident, or comfortable, flatter. My student years were entirely flat-free, due as much to laziness as convenience. Living at home was cheap and, apart from the occasional domestic squabble or my father’s girlfriend’s not-infrequent eruptions, trouble-free. Student life was also never appealing enough to lure me away, at first because I just wanted to get my degree as quickly as possible, and later because I just wanted to leave the country as quickly as possible.

And when, after University, I got a job as sports reporter on the Warwick Daily News, in a beef town west of Brisbane, I’d simply moved into my departing colleague’s half-house by myself. The editor had initially been reluctant to employ a ‘townie’, questioning my ability to endure the ‘quaint’ customs and ‘relaxed’ lifestyle of redneck Queensland, but I exaggerated my affections for country living and got the job.

For the next few months I cycled around my ‘beat’ looking for a ‘scoop’, but my heart was never really in it. I just couldn’t consider a distraught old man burning his sausages as news, even when it did result in a fire brigade call-out. The furore I generated by mis-reporting a minor traffic ‘incident’ - ‘accident’ is far too grandiose a word for two barely-scuffed bumpers - undermined my enthusiasm even further.

Though I gained a loyal following with my gripping and comprehensive accounts of the five-team rugby league competition, which made each match seem like a classic encounter between the world’s greatest exponents of the game instead of a confused huddle of dusty farmers, no amount of poetic license could disguise the fact each match report began to acquire a desperate sameness. This, combined with the fact it was impossible to save money on a cadet journalist’s wage, plus the offer of a well-paid job in Brisbane, resulted in my single solo-living experience being terminated.

Although the route from my father’s house to Marion’s flat to Miller’s Flat had been a circuitous one, I’d never needed to actively find somewhere to live.

Except for those few months in Brisbane after we’d fled my father’s house to escape the curious cockroaches and his girlfriend ... though not necessarily in that order. Things had begun to get tense after a few days - after I’d objected to my possessions being plundered in my absence, after my father had expressed a preference for rouladen over rissoles, after ‘her’ dog refused to leave my side - and had culminated in the great cockroach fiasco.

Cockroaches, those wide-eyed aborigines of the dark, have always been a part of the humid Brisbane nightscape, their whispering footsteps scrawling ancient secrets in the dust atop my bedroom cupboard. Most mornings would find a small clan sprawled on their backs beneath the sink like English sun-seekers on a Gold Coast beach. Occasionally, coming home late at night, the brazen light would interrupt their alien corroborees, and I would join their lino dance, my steps pursuing the scuttling Arthur Murray patterns across the kitchen floor.

Although cockroaches were an integral part of my childhood, I had no real urge to share such experiences with Marion. She’s always been squeamish about insects, and the closest she’d ever been to a cockroach was finding one obscenely exposed on her fork beneath its red cabbage camouflage ... and that was only a baby compared to the thumb-thick Banyo variety.

Once we were shunted under the house - the two unoccupied spare bedrooms being necessarily kept vacant in case my father’s girlfriend’s teenage sons decided to make one of their biannual appearances - there was little hope of avoiding such insectual reminiscences. It was definitely time to move out when she tersely interrupted a discussion of our latest en-cockroach-ment with claims we had imported them into her once-cockroach-free house inside our luggage!

We immediately vacated the premises in favour of a more relaxing environment ... anywhere. Though our Brisbane stay seemed terminally tainted after that, and when our new landlord/neighbour eventually began complaining about us laughing too much and walking too loudly, we decided to flee the country for New Zealand.

          So I approached my first solo flatting experience with some trepidation.

I wasn’t desperate. I could always simply pack up and go home, so I could afford to be choosy ... at least in theory. But I soon discovered it was entirely the wrong time to be flat-hunting, most flats being either fully occupied or full of occupied students.

My original list of demands - a ‘cosy’ flat, with ‘mature’ flatmates, in a ‘quiet’ suburb close to town - was quickly reduced to a single, un-negotiable particular - the flat must be willing to accept two cats. Because although Spindle had, in the meantime, disappeared, Momo was now accompanied by her daughter, Dudley.       

One night I’d come home to find Momo nursing five kittens. I’d never gotten around to getting her fixed, because before all the ‘drama’, we were still debating the various theories of female cat ownership - ie they must have one litter first versus get them fixed a.s.a.p. - and after the drama, cat-fixing was not only the last thing on my list, but hitching with a cat seemed too complicated to even ponder.

Once the initial ‘how sweet’ fog had cleared, I realised I had little option but to dispose of them as quickly as possible. ‘Disposing’ sounds like such a detached, clinical process, especially when farmers speak of it so casually. An unwanted animal, pet or pest? Either shoot it, or simply bang it over the head. It sounds so easy. Though I’m not at all squeamish about killing insects or mice or fish or even the occasional blackbird, cats are another kettle of kittens.

Once I actually did kill a possum by “banging it over the head”. It was a particularly destructive - is there another kind? - Timms-trap-shy, pole-vaulting, fence-climbing specimen which had been systematically stripping my only apple tree of apples and leaves. Losing my first crop of apples was annoying enough, but stupid/clever possums are part of rural life, and I generally console myself with the thought that there’s a speeding car or a speeding bullet waiting round the next corner.

When it began wantonly snapping off branches in the process, my annoyance developed a murderous tinge. So one night I waited for it to begin its nightly climb onto the roof, then confronted it with my torch and a length of window framing. “Just bang it over the head,” I told myself as I swung my makeshift club. But possums are hardy, unbelievably tough creatures, and it takes more than just one bang over the head. The memory of the skull-fractured creature dragging itself along the ground as I finished the job, haunts me still.

Since then I’ve often thought of buying a rifle, but shooting, like driving or flatting, isn’t something I’m particularly keen to do. So drowning seemed like the most humane, and viable, method. I should have done the deed right then, that night, before any of us were fully conscious of the repercussions. But watching Momo preen them with motherly pride robbed me of my willpower, so I went to bed, and by morning I had relented a little, convincing myself I could risk keeping two of the kittens and, hopefully, find homes for them, despite the fact the Molyneux Mail was already full of advertisements for give-away kittens. My change of heart did little to lighten my heart, because now I had to choose which kittens would be spared.

          The litter consisted of three black and two black-and-white, so ‘fairness’ demanded I select one of each. (OK, so I was groping for some rationale for the entirely random, divine choice I had to make.) I waited for Momo to provide guidance, and eventually she lifted a black kitten onto the sofa away from the litter, and sat nursing it. This, I rationalised, was her favourite. One down, one to go. But since she remained silent concerning any further preferences, the final choice was solely my responsibility.

So I studied the remaining players in this mini tragedy, looking for a sign. One black-and-white kitten quickly stood out from the mewing masses. It seemed to always be the odd one out, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog (or, in this case, the undercat) I now had my second candidate.

As soon as Momo left them alone to feed herself, I quickly lifted the condemned three into a plastic bag in which I’d laid out a few rags to make their final journey a little more comfortable, carried them to the river and gently lowered them into the icy water. They whelped for a few seconds, and I could feel them wriggling inside the bag, but I remained resolute. After a few, long minutes I lifted them out and buried them beside the river. But I still had two kittens too many.

          Eventually someone answered my ad, and since the black and white one managed to elude them by climbing behind the fridge, the young girl whose choice it was, chose the docile black one. There were no further calls. No queries.

Meanwhile, Spindle, who had been highly disturbed by the kittens intrusion, began to stay away more and more, eventually disappearing altogether. When he still hadn’t returned a month later, I decided to keep the kitten. He was supposed to be a male, so I called him Dudley. Of course, when I finally managed to get both my cats to the vet (I was determined not to have any more unexpected surprises, or be responsible for someone else’s surprise), it was revealed Dudley was a female. Though I’d already begun to have my suspicions when I saw him rolling provocatively on the ground in front of his father. Never mind, Dudley it was. He was always a wild cat, uncomfortable in anyone else’s presence, and he retained the ‘knack’ of getting himself into trouble throughout his life.

          Eventually the three of us moved into an old farmhouse a few kilometres out of the city with a single woman, her two cats and one dog, with her boyfriend and his dog usually thrown in for good measure. It was cosy, it was quiet, my flatmate was mature, and though it was three kilometres from the nearest bus stop, the most important thing was she was comfortable having two extra cats in the house.

But although she was, her cats certainly weren’t. They terrorised Momo and Dudley from the first day, making them virtual prisoners in my bedroom. I tried to intimidate her cats into leaving my cats alone, but I often came home to find Momo and Dudley holed up on my cupboard while the other two prowled below. So it wasn’t the most relaxing life for any of us, but until another option presented itself, we all had to compromise.

          Soon after, Marion bought her own home. It was a small bach (a 15 square metre kitchen/living room with a damp 4 square metre bedroom attached and no bathroom) in Waitati, a small community at the end of the motorway north of Dunedin. She was happy to have Momo and Dudley’s company, and I was happy to give them a more relaxing home, and to finally, for the first time, be relieved of the responsibility of cat ownership. Suddenly I was free!

          During the next six months, I spent weekdays battling bureaucracy and apathy in Dunedin, weekends battling window joinery back in Millers Flat, and many hours in-between standing on highway verges battling my growing frustration with hitching. It was during this regular commute, as the average length of my journey slowly increased from two to four hours, that I began to contemplate the relationship between hitching and a country’s dominant social-economic-political philosophy.

Hitching seems to be a reliable optimism indicator - the more confidence people have in the future, the more likely they are to stop for hitchers. This was an extension of the theory that the haves and have-nots are more likely to stop than the want-to-haves. For example, in Germany it’s the top-of-the-range Mercedes - though not the Diesel models - and the small Volkswagens/Renaults that stop, never the BMWs. (The one time a BMW did stop, it turned out to be a Mercedes driver who had rented the BMW while his car was in the garage!)

In Sweden, it’s the Volvos, not the Saabs. While in New Zealand, its the beat-up cars and the flash businessmen’s cars (I would like to say businesspeople, but it’s usually only men), and only those businessmen who are content with what they’re doing. Four-wheel-drives never stop ... anywhere. Cars towing caravans or boats never stop. Cars with roofracks full of skis never stop.

Of course, some people will claim they don’t stop because of fear, but the truth is that there are more hitchers killed or robbed every year than drivers, especially when you disregard cases of ‘hitchers’ who are really drunks coming back from a pub late at night. Though my theory is unprovable, the simple fact remains that hitching in New Zealand has dramatically worsened as self-interest, user-pays and the unfettered free market have tightened their grip on the country.          Such thoughts filled my mind as I hitched every weekend back and forward between Dunedin and Millers Flat. Except, of course, when I was singing my all-time favourite hitching songs (Rolf Harris, Leonard Cohen or meaningless drivel depending on my mood), formulating new insults to hurl through clenched teeth at passing motorists, throwing rocks at various targets, practising my juggling, or considering my next move in Environment Centre development or window construction.

           I had plenty to think about, and plenty of time in which to think about it.

Land Escaping III

          Although I had a workbench capable of all manner of extravagant tooling (and a router which was yet to be unpacked), I decided to simplify everything down to the basics. This also fit well with my preferred joinery style, which could best be described as “structural obviism” - which abandons traditional joinery techniques in favour of simply hammering or screwing things together. Who needs dovetails, dowels and precision cutting when a couple of nails is just as effective?

Yet, even adopting a primitive, pre-carpentric style didn’t mean making the door/window frames was entirely easy. There was still notches to be cut and grooves to be etched into the dry timber. Actually, I did eventually try to use my router for the groove, but all the heads from my ‘all-purpose multi-head router bits’ set I’d received free with the router seemed to have both a timber allergy and a violent anti- people streak. So I decided to use my trusty powersaw instead.

           Of course, once I’d completed the door frames, they didn’t just slide gently into place. Because although the door frames were reasonably square, the space they were meant to occupy wasn’t. So each frame had to be bullied and pushed and cajoled into place, then screwed into the surrounding framing.

I’ll never understand why screws are made more durable than screwdrivers, especially those of the Phillips head variety. I don’t know how many Phillips headless screwdrivers I now have cluttering my workshop. Either it’s a capitalist toolmakers conspiracy, or I’m making my holes one size too small.

          Once the frames were in, the doors themselves could be hung. Hanging doors is not so much an artform as a matter of trial and error. It might take a few attempts before it opens and closes smoothly, but it will happen ... eventually. Unfortunately, I didn’t consider closing mechanisms before I’d started, so there was some difficulty in finding latches which suited. Because both my doors opened inwards to the left, while all the available latches were designed for doors opening outwards to the right.

In the end, I had to turn the latches upside-down. Which has little impact on the door itself, but the key is now above the handle, and locking/unlocking operates in reverse. A small inconvenience for the joy of having doors opening the way you want them to open!

          In the meantime I was beginning to believe I'd never get my roof finished. I needed two fine days to dry out the pplywood, and two more days to glue the butynol. Five fine days all up. Surely we’d soon be in for a dry spell ...

          Twice in the next few weeks there was almost a false start. As soon as there were two dry days in a row, I’d prepare everything for an early morning start. But both times I woke to the familiar window of grey, so rolled over and went back to sleep. There’d be another time ...

          A week later there was a good, dry day. Then another.

          That afternoon I finished work early in order to get everything prepared, just in case. Two more days ...

          Later that afternoon my neighbour came across to pass on an urgent message from the hardware store. Don’t butynol roof, phone asap. I immediately cycled to the shop and called. The salesman was relieved to hear I hadn’t yet glued the butynol, because during a chat with the manufacturer he’d casually mentioned I was planning a grass roof. The stunned manufacturer had informed him that butynol wasn’t supposed to be used under grass rooves unless the seams were first vulcanised. If they weren’t, the root system would penetrate the glue and simply push the seams apart, causing a serious leaking problem.

The salesman would pick up the butynol rolls the next day, return them to the manufacturer, and they would vulcanise the seams, thereby creating a single, seamless sheet, free of charge.

          All the salesman’s information was second-hand, so I decided to talk to the manufacturer directly. The manufacturers had had experience with grass rooves. They were shocked that the hardware store had supplied their product without checking their specifications. We discussed various examples they’d dealt with (mostly near Nelson). It’s always a pleasant change to deal with someone who is not only experienced, but interested, so our conversation had the effect of dispelling some of my initial frustrations at being again delayed.

          As promised, the butynol sheet arrived a week later - all 60 kilograms of it. It was a huge, unwieldy lump, so I had to wait until John and Allan were available to help me get it onto the roof. The roof was, by now, damp again, but once we’d figured out which direction the sheet sat, and carefully unfolded it, it created a huge tarpaulin covering the entire roof. Of course. If I could just keep it in place for a few days, my entire roof would dry out regardless of how bad the weather remained.

          Which was a good theory. But if building paper became a spinnaker in the wind, a 100 square metre sheet of waterproof, windproof butynol was a mainsail. Naturally, a few calm days were outside the realm of possibilities. Even windy days seemed like too much to hope for under the circumstances. But surely the suddenly violent southerlies which swooped down to kidnap my butynol were uncalled for? There was little I could do but grit my teeth and endure the flapping, flopping struggle unfolding (and folding) on the roof. A few times I tried to intervene, dragging up hefty beams and untold metres of timber to anchor my butynol balloon, but the wind unleashed its fury anew and tossed my feeble efforts aside.

          As soon as the wind stopped, the rain would start. It was a conspiracy! The wind flipping back the butynol during the night to allow the rain to soak the plywood again.

Once this occurred while I was awake, so I was able to climb onto the roof and rearrange the crumpled butynol in time to prevent further wetness. But normally the transfer of power occurred in the night’s most secret moments. I berated the weather and God and Penelope (as long as weather presenters pretend to understand the weather, they’ve got to take some of the flack!) for their lack of compassion. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the weather had been my saviour a few weeks earlier, maintaining a protective veil of mist over my house until the hardware cavalry had finally ridden into town, saving me thousands of dollars and a lifetime of leaks and lifted seams. But who could be thankful at a time like this?

          The front was soon glued. Having a single sheet meant I only had to glue the edges rather than the entire area. With my rubber tarpaulin sheltering my roof helped dry out the rest. Apart from the back edge, which remained stubbornly damp.

With three sides securely glued, I thought it was a good opportunity to go to Dunedin for a few days and visit friends. But the next day a call from a local farmer informed me my roof had been “shredded” and was hanging limply over the side of the house. Panic-stricken and expecting the worst, I returned to find the butynol hadn’t been shredded, but the wind had peeled one edge away so that the entire back was blown over the side. The farmer had seen the ragged end draped over the edge from the road, and had assumed it had been torn. I breathed a sigh of relief, but became even more determined to finish the gluing as soon as possible.

          There were another few winds. Even with the edges glued, the wind wasn’t deterred, sucking the sheet high into the air, stretching and expanding it until it looked like a dirigible trying to lift off. No amount of timber would anchor it, but I continued this futile process simply out of fear that without some discouragement, the roof would peel off and sail into the creek. It never happened, but many nights I lay awake listening to loud music with the wind pounding time against the ceiling. Twice I rode the magic flying rubber carpet in the darkness as I struggled to increase the roof’s burden of timber. There were another few wettings, too. But the day finally arrived when I could glue the remaining edge, and confidently state I now had a waterproof house.

          David returned from his expedition overwhelmed by the audacity of the undertaking he was proposing. Establishing an Environment Centre in Dunedin was, he believed, a worthy and worthwhile project. But now that he’d investigated further, it also seemed such a monumentous task, fraught with obstacles, that he was no longer as confident of his ability to succeed by himself as he had been when it was still just an idea.

We discussed his proposal in detail, considering its benefits and its burdens for himself, for Dunedin, and for the green cause. Our strategies for overcoming obstacles and local inertia were diametrically opposed. David believed in intricately plotting every move beforehand to anticipate difficulties, while I believed in simply pushing ahead one step at a time ... as usual, David wanted to play chess, while I preferred checkers. But our thoughts about the Centre’s broader goals and philosophy converged at nearly every point. Suddenly it seemed he was embarking upon a Holy Quest to rid the world of ignorance. The Environment Centre would be the rallying point for the forces of goodness, the staging post from which the final assault on the world’s problems would be launched.

          At that moment, as we basked in the warmth of our momentarily shared semi-religious fervour, David asked whether I’d be interested in joining him on his great Crusade. I accepted.

          We should have known better ...

          Why did I accept? Establishing an Environment Centre had never been anything I’d imagined doing. I’d never even heard of such a thing until David came along. The thought of working in any public place full-time has never appealed. But the thought of doing something positive, of playing a small role in changing the world, even if the world was limited to Dunedin, of becoming an active member of a community after so many years of isolation, was an offer too tempting to refuse. Besides, my level of frustration with the world had reached saturation point - I either had to do something to change it, or stop complaining about it.

          That’s the community-minded, positive, charitable version, and I’d like to believe such sentiments were my prime motivation for making the decision to go to Dunedin and devote my immediate future to such a noble cause. But the waters of truth are always murky. So I can’t claim such purity of purpose.

Later, after the project had baulked at the starting gates, after it had stumbled and fallen at every hurdle, after David had torn up his betting slips and left the track, after it appeared permanently hobbled, destined only for the glue factory, only then was I truly gripped by an evangelical zeal. Only then, as I sat alone astride the lame creature, did I become determined to nurse it back to health. Only then, did I truly believe the project had to gallop again, that it had to win, not just for me, but for everybody ...

          But, at the time, I wasn’t so much going to Dunedin, as leaving Millers Flat. Leaving my house. The truth is I didn’t really care what the reason was, as long as it was reasonable. As long as I could persuade myself that it was worth leaving for, that I wasn’t just abandoning my life or fleeing from myself. I couldn’t have asked for a better reason to leave than to start an Environment Centre, because it seemed like such a positive thing to do. Such a positive excuse.

          So, despite my reservations about leaving the house in an unlockable state (with only a thin sheet of plastic between the world and all my worldly goods), I packed a bag of essentials and moved to Dunedin.

Land Escaping II

Since Marion had left, we’d stayed in touch. Our encounters were often uncomfortable, sometimes difficult, but we’d been too close for too long to loosen the ties binding our lives together too quickly, if ever. Marion had always been a happy, outgoing person, so seeing her now, muffled by sadness and numbed by anti-depressants, only enhanced my own sense of futility.

Life hadn’t been easy for her, or straightforward either, and often it felt like watching an amateur tightrope walker practising without a net. My friends counselled that I just walk away and leave her to continue her solo performance alone, but I couldn’t do that, as much for myself as for her. What joy could I get if she did fall? And despite everything, she didn’t deserve to fall. I might have given up on us, but I still hadn’t given up on her. We were still friends. Though I knew it was over between us, I hadn’t stopped loving her.

          Now she came to visit and offered to help with the floor. Was it out of guilt? Or pity? I didn’t care, I just wanted to get the floor done. After completing the ceiling, suspended five metres above the ground on a sloping surface by myself, repeating the process on a flat, low surface, with assistance, should be a piece of cake, despite the fact that mistakes weren’t going to be so easily disguised this time.

          First we had to drape underfloor insulation (reinforced aluminium foil with air-holes) over the joists. It seemed hardly worthwhile having such a flimsy barrier between the floor and the cold, but that was all that was required according to the specifications, and I certainly didn’t have any better ideas. But we quickly discovered that once the foil was draped over the joists, it was hard to see exactly where the joists were, and the foil itself made a poor safety net. So we only unrolled one strip at a time, stepping very carefully across the joists until we had a strip of floor to stand on.

          Because any mistake made now would be permanently visible, the process was a little slower. I even took my time cutting straight ends. But that was as far as I was willing to compromise. For me, a floor was something to be walked on, used, scuffed, kicked, have things spilled onto it, be stained, dented and generally lived on. It wasn’t supposed to be a monument to my building prowess or an advertisement for floor polish, and I’ve never been big on ballroom dancing.

So, despite larch’s tendency to split when nailed, I didn’t bother drilling each hole first. And despite the permanent visibility of any gaps or joins, I didn’t attempt to ‘secret nail’ the floorboards to the joists or clamp them tightly together. Any minor imperfections would soon vanish beneath the feet of wear and tear, so we simply levered each board onto the previous board, then hammered in two nails every second joist. Which allowed us to complete the ground floor in a single afternoon.

          If either of us had felt like dancing, we now had almost 55 square metres of open space in which to indulge ourselves. But dancing was still the last thing on our minds, so Marion returned to Dunedin, leaving me to finally move into my house. The roof wasn’t entirely waterproof, but the plywood seemed to be doing a reasonable job of keeping most of the rain out, so I was willing to take the risk and move all my stuff inside.

          When I was five, my family moved into a new four-bedroom home in Banyo. All memories of that day, along with most of my childhood,  now lie buried deep beneath the rubble of recollections casually discarded like last year’s toys. All except the memory of eating fish and chips battered with spicy optimism, breathing in the scent of newness and hope among the unopened boxes of the past.

My family has never had any tradition of oral history, of passing down stories, of valuing yesterday’s lives. Our river of memories flows like the Minzion, concerned not with its source, but only with reaching the sea. So I have no sense of ME prior to my awareness of my self. No sense of my past beyond the boundaries of my own mapping.

I’d always expected moving into a new house would be very much like that night so long ago. But the motorcamp only made fish and chips on Friday nights, my brash possessions shrank shyly away from the world’s sudden vastness, and sawdust was a poor substitute for hope.

          I was in my home. Living. Alive.

          Perhaps I should have waited until it was finished. After all, surely I deserved to experience that ‘new house’ feeling after expending so much energy on its construction? Surely moving in now would be like lending my new car to a friend before I’d even had a chance to drive it, or letting someone else eat the season’s first strawberry? It was tempting to delay, but faced with the choice between another few months living in an uninsulated, mouse-infested, overcrowded, flood-prone, draughty corrugated iron shed, and a solid, spacious, draught-proof, insulated house, all for the dubious pleasure of being able to eventually move into a complete new house, I opted to move in straight away. Besides, I was beginning to realise a self-built house is never truly finished.

          As it continued drizzling over the next few weeks, I was able to fully appreciate the wisdom of my choice. Although I’d never feel truly comfortable sheltering between exposed pink batt walls, and there was the inconvenience of having a perpetual game of musical possessions as my work and living spaces competed for supremacy, it was much more comfortable than shed-life. \

Once I’d set up a minimal power supply, complete with a movable lightbulb on the end of a six metre cord, and established a kitchen in the bathroom, things were even bordering on cosy. Plus there was the added bonus of being suddenly, enthusiastically even, available for night shifts.

Of course I could have worked nights before moving into the house, but once I’d made myself comfortable in the shed at the end of the day, it was difficult to drag myself back down to the house, particularly on cold, drizzling nights. But it’s difficult to sit watching television when you’re surrounded by unfinished work demanding your attention - especially during the ad breaks -  and the comparative advantages of the two options are obvious.

          Over the next week, while nightly frosts ensured the roof remained damp, I finished the rest of the floor. But the constant delays in completing the roof were beginning to get a little tedious. I was starting to get frustrated and a little paranoid. Possibly the first signs of ‘cabin fever’, since I only left the house to go to the toilet hole - I won’t even attempt to dignify this pathetic, muddy, slippery, board-covered, shallow hole by calling it a ‘longdrop’ - and Faigans, with a weekly visit to Wallace and Sheena for some intelligent conversation and warm company.

During most of this period, they were my only lifeline of sanity, my only accessible friends, and life would have been so much drabber and depressing if they hadn’t also somehow ended up living in Millers Flat. Though their story had started fourteen years previously.

‘Someone’ was causing this weather, I ranted. ‘Someone’ was responsible for all my miseries, I railed. Sometimes ‘someone’ was an unseeing, hateful God, sometimes a conspiracy of grey men, sometimes nobody but me. Yet no matter how much I condemned the world and life, the poor weather continued.

          Eventually Wallace and Sheena asked me to house-sit while they were on holidays in Marlborough, and I gleefully accepted. For a week I relished the civilised life, the warm life in a warm house, with a woodburner in the kitchen and underfloor heating in the livingroom. There was extravagant meals cooked on the range, exotic favourites baked in the oven (an oven!), hot showers, warm beds, lights in every room.

With my house so far away, I was no longer dragged awake at first light, and no longer lingered beyond the first sprinkle of dusk. Rather than fonder, distance only made my heart grow more distant, putting the house into sudden perspective. It wasn’t life, just a small piece of it. There were goats to feed, water to be carried to thirsty calves, books to read, music to drive the winter from its perch for a single, fluttering moment. There was more to life than building a house, and I lived it for a short week, unfettered by worry and frustration.

          It was a welcome and invigorating break from my builder’s life, instilling a new sense of the inevitable. One day I would finish the roof. One day the weather would assist rather than hinder my efforts. And until that day arrived, there was enough productive work I could be doing which didn’t require climatic assistance.

          For example, there was a door to be made. Ever since I first watched Mister Ed on TV, I’ve always imagined a house with a stable door. Not that I was ever intending on having a horse (talking or otherwise). I certainly didn’t want to convert the entire house into a Mister Ed memorial. And I couldn’t even foresee any occasion when having a half-open door would actually be advantageous. But it was my house, so if I wanted a stable door, I was going to have one. There were only three doors in the plan - front, back and bathroom - and I’d already bought two at the Roxburgh auction.

          Marion and I had gone to this annual fundraising event, eyes aglitter with the prospect of filling our new home with bargains. It was our first auction, and our list of requirements was endless, so everything looked like a bargain. Within an hour we’d acquired two armchairs, two handbasins - one for the basin, one for the taps - a toilet bowl, and a large sack of fluff which Marion claimed would make an ideal, though somewhat formless, beanbag.

We never identified the exact nature of the filling, but we did later discover some of its charming properties - such as the fact it was highly flammable, requiring a single shooting spark to set it alight. Or that the only way to ensure the contents won’t re-ignite is to dismember the sack and sift through each strand, casting any smoking, smelling, smouldering clumps of fused fibre off the verandah. And although it’s difficult to remove fluff from roughsawn timber, or charred fluff from grass, half a sack of fluff still makes an ideal, though somewhat formless, beanbag.

But after these few purchases, the auction split into two, with one auctioneer moving to the larger items outside, while the other continued with household items inside. So we alternated frantically between the two, coming inside in time to bid for thirty-two straightback wooden chairs (reaching a mutually agreeable agreement with the other bidder - after all, we only needed eight - which halted the bidding at $1.50 per chair).

Returning outside in time to beat other bids for the rimu door. Though we also had to take the two pressboard cupboard doors, the chipboard mantelpiece and a masonite interior door as part of the deal.

Back inside to lose out on a rimu table.

Outside again in time to join the bidding on a waterpump. Though, as it turned out, I was actually joining the bidding for the park bench upon which the already-sold waterpump sat. Coming in at $20, waving Marion impatiently away when she realises I am the ‘confident’ bidder behind her and tries to warn me, but there’ no time for explanations in the midst of a bidding war, and suddenly it’s SOLD to the man at the back for $35 ...

“Why did you buy a bench?”

“I didn’t buy the bench, I bought the waterpump.”

“No, you bought the bench.”

I had bought the bench, and what a useful, much-used bench it turned out to be!

          So the rimu door was ideal for the bathroom. Exterior boards could be attached to the frame of the masonite door thereby converting it into a heavy back door. But that still left one door to be made. And if I was going to make a door, it might as well be a stable door.

Actually, it was unlikely I’d even be able to find a suitable door anyway, because all my door openings are odd-sized, even compared to each other. The plan didn’t exactly specify the door measurements, so I simply considered my own height and width and allowed space all around, though with no degree of consistency. As with much of the house, each door would be made to measure, fitting my requirements rather than adhering to any standard size.

          A door is little more than a large, wooden window, consisting of a frame supporting a hinged bit which swings opens. And I’d already decided to build the windows myself. Quotes from joineries were in the $4500+ range, but the timber itself only cost $1500, and the glass $200, so I had little to lose and $3000 to gain. Of course, they were going to be an extremely simplified version of the windows specified, but as long as they kept the rain out and opened, it would be a huge bonus.

               So I decided to establish a production line and build all the frames together, rather than just the doors.

Chapter Seven - Land Escaping

Sometimes life seems like a cosmic game of craps where the dice are loaded and we’re chained to the table until all our chips are cashed. And it would be a comfort, sometimes, to believe it was only unfair because ‘someone’ was causing it to be unfair. To believe other players were involved in a conspiracy to prevent you from winning.

I’ve never been able to take conspiracy theories too seriously or too personally. I’ve always found it hard to believe anyone could win very much by making me lose, because life doesn’t seem to be a game where anyone really wins or loses, and we all break even in the end. Besides, any conspiracy which generates theories doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy to be too concerned about anyway ... though that could be exactly what ‘they’ want me to believe.

So I’m a sceptic. In fact, I’m even sceptical about being a sceptic. I never know whether I should rejoice in my scepticism and join a Sceptic Tank, or denounce scepticism and join a church, since faith is an anti-sceptic for the soul. But I’m more of an old-fashioned Sceptic with a capital ‘S’, because I don’t so much disbelieve, as refuse to believe on the basis that most things are unprovable, and it doesn’t bother me either way anyway.

I’ve never seen a ghost or had a spiritual experience, so I might doubt, but I don’t deny the possibility of their existence. I’ve never seen anything vaguely reminiscent of a UFO, and will likely never meet an alien, but I still have a soft spot for their notional existence. (Though filmed footage of such purported encounters always leaves me despairing of human gullibility. Why does it seem so easy to believe in the existence of an entirely alien culture, but not alien air traffic regulations?) But the concept of alien abductions troubles me. Not because it could be happening, but because of the aliens’ choice of abductees. Like the factory worker from Auckland who claims he’s been abducted every night for several years, no matter where he is, and without his wife, sleeping beside him, noticing. Could he possibly be that interesting, physically or intellectually, that anyone would want to spend every night with him? Maybe if he was Stephen Hawking or Arnold Schwarzenegger even, it might make some sense. The thought of aliens travelling light years just to abduct a factory worker from Auckland, simply fills me with unease. That’s just not the kind of aliens I want to believe in.

Yet that doesn’t make it not true. Maybe we all look alike to them, and maybe there’s nothing any of us could say that would be of any interest to them. After all, do vivisectionists converse with their victims? Still, you have to wonder at the rationale for abducting humans then letting them go on national TV to talk about it. Either it’s supposed to be a secret, or it’s not. So are they just space hoons playing practical jokes, or did they buy their memory erasers from some cosmic Warehouse?

Yet there are moments when the thought of being abducted by aliens and taken to some faraway planet does have an appeal ... even if just to have some memories erased. (Assuming, of course, that they’re an advanced species in every way, so the worst I could expect would be to end my days being gawped at in a comfortably humane zoo, and not on some slave planet shovelling nuclear waste.) Now, after six months of building, half a year of splinters, bruises, cuts and throbbing thumbs, endless muscle-weary days and infinite world-weary nights, was one of those moments.

For a fleeting, ecstatic moment I’d believed I had glimpsed the end shimmering on the horizon. Then the scorching rays of loss and futility flared anew, blistering my tender soul, and my momentary elation evaporated like a mirage. Suddenly it seemed a lifetime had passed since drought had first begun to ravage these fertile plains, transforming them almost overnight into a barren wasteland parched by the hostile sun, and Marion had abandoned me to my foolish fate. Why had I pushed stubbornly on, crawling across the emptiness until I’d gone too far to return, until I no longer had the energy to continue? And now, now that the last financial well had dried up, now that the vultures of loneliness and despair circled overhead, now that I could feel winter’s cold breath against my neck, only now did I understand that I could never reach the end. Not alone. Because finishing the house wasn’t the end, it was just the beginning.

I had been a King Midas, turning everything I touched, everything I owned, everything, not into gold, but into a house. I’d thought it would make me rich. Only now did I realise that as long as there was no life to fill it, the house could only make me poor. So desperately poor.

At that moment, being abducted by aliens would have been a blessed relief. But there were no aliens in the clear Central Otago sky (though, reportedly, just over the hill towards Tapanui is a major UFO convention centre), so any decision to be made was in my hands. I knew I couldn’t stay, but I also knew I couldn’t leave until the roof and floor were completed. And where would I go? This was my home, the only place I belonged. But I knew I had to leave, and I couldn’t return until I again discovered a reason to return, until I had a life to bring back.

June was slowly unravelling and the days were rapidly shortening. Most days were generally fine and sunny, making work bearable, if not entirely pleasant, but the nightly frosts were beginning to make shed-life uncomfortable, particularly in the mornings when the small gas heater struggled to thaw our breaths, and our numb fingers impotently fondled the icy tools. The temperature of the creek had also crossed the threshold from ‘bracing’ to ‘mind-numbing’ (not to mention what it did to all your other parts), so bathing was reduced to a minimum.

It was a simple, hermitic existence in our galvanised igloo, though occasionally we’d escape the evening cold by cycling to the village to shower at the motor-camp before heading to the tavern for a few warm hours by the fire. Such nights were always an adventure.

Firstly because cycling in almost-total darkness is always an adventure. Of course we had a torch, but it was an unwieldy thing, more suited to spotlighting possums than potholes, and it was impossible to grip the torch and the handlebars at the same time. If I didn’t have such poor balance, I could have ridden with no hands and illuminated a safe path home, but after my previous attempts at hand-less riding, I knew such a strategy could only illuminate a path to the nearest hospital. Of course I also still had the tandem bike-light, but as we’d discovered on that windswept night in Ireland when we’d needed it for the first and only time, it cast more light into my eyes than onto the road ahead. Besides, on a traffic-less, light-less road, your eyes quickly adjust to following that pale ribbon of road unwinding beneath your feet, and the feeling of detachment which overwhelms you makes it a strangely soothing experience.

Secondly, because I never knew what we’d find upon our return. One night a possum turning away in embarrassment over being caught dancing among the rafters by the sudden revealing light. Another frosty night a black-and-white tomcat huddled on the sofa between Momo and Spindle. Wasn’t it nice that they had a new friend, I thought as the tomcat dashed past us into the darkness. It was only later, after David had departed, that I realised the tomcat hadn’t been there for friendship.

By now we were both beginning to get itchy, and very cold, feet, so we were anxious to get the house to a waterproof, and insulated, state. In fact, I would have liked to move the entire house to a warmer state as well. So we tried to wring every drop of usefulness out of each hour of daylight. Unfortunately the prevalent frosty weather often meant the roof was icy until mid-morning, so there was often little we could do but drink coffee and wait for it to thaw (the roof, not the coffee... it wasn’t that cold). Because the front faces north, it usually defrosted reasonably swiftly, so we started work there, moving over to the south for a few hours as the poplar shadows lengthened across the verandah.

Preparing the roof for its meadow of grass required a number of stages.

Firstly, a framework of purlins had to be constructed. Followed by a layer of plywood to provide a smooth, flat surface for the butynol to adhere to. It was the butynol - an impervious rubber sheeting normally used for lining ponds - which would guarantee no moisture penetrated into the house. Operating from the verandah roof, with David cutting the required lengths as I nailed them onto the ceiling, the entire process proceeded smoothly, especially once we avoided working anywhere there were still patches of the night’s frosty residue.

A grass roof has an insulation value of approximately 6.0, which is more than two times the standard insulation values of a typical New Zealand home, but in a climate with harsh winter frosts and intense summer heat, every extra bit helps. So I’d opted to include another layer of insulation. Unfortunately, at the time I’d never heard of wool batts, and my initial queries regarding alternatives to fibreglass had been met with such bewilderment (as though I were seeking alternatives to oxygen), that I assumed fibreglass was the only insulation material available.

Suppliers usually exhibit symptoms of selective deafness at the first mention of insulation. When I eventually decided to insulate the shed, I was initially amazed at how abundant, and competitive, wool batts had seemingly become. “Wool batts? Yeh, we’ve got a whole warehouse full of them.” But when I went to pick them up, they’d direct me towards the vast pink mountain looming overhead. “But they’re not wool batts.” “Well, some of them are ceiling batts, but most are wall batts.” “No, we’re looking for wool batts, not wall batts. Batts made of wool? You know... baaaa!?” “Wool batts? No, we don’t have any wool batts.” It was to become a familiar conversation before the manufacturer finally gave me the name of a local stockist.

At the time, I’d never really considered pink batts as being potentially hazardous to your health anyway, so I wasn’t too concerned. When it comes to handling strange, artificial substances, I generally heed the manufacturer’s safety instructions. In this case, their only warning involved the threat of excessive inhalation of glass fibres while working with the material in a confined space. Since there was nothing whatsoever confined about standing on top of my roof exposed to the elements, I thought it would be relatively simple.

David was well versed in their perils and wasn’t taking any chances. Not only was he reluctant to handle them with his bare hands more than absolutely necessary, but draped his handkerchief across his mouth to avoid inhaling any glass-fibre fragments. This is not meant in any way to disparage David’s cautious approach - precautions, like religion, are a question of personal choice. I admit my own throat was itchy with sympathy by the end of the day.

But each time I glimpsed his bandana-covered face, I felt like we were recreating a famous train-top chase scene from one of those old westerns, though it required quite a stretch of the imagination to picture David as a ruthless desperado.

Now that all the major construction was complete, David felt free to leave. He not only wanted to escape the cold, but in the meantime had begun to contemplate establishing an environmental information centre in Dunedin. Not that he had any affiliation with the city, but it was one of the few major towns in New Zealand (apart from Invercargill) without such a centre. So he decided to spend the next two months travelling the South Island gathering information and assessing the degree of support from Dunedin’s green community.

While David set off on his journey of discovery, I continued building with renewed vigour. The sooner I could finish, the sooner I could also consider my options. There was still the floor to be completed, but I wanted to get the roof fully waterproof before lining inside.

Butynol is a relatively expensive material, but it seems to be the only option available if you want a grass roof. We’d investigated other possibilities, of course, but we doubted the building inspector would ever go for any of the more traditional methods such as birch-bark and pitch. It was a little daunting to think we’d have to replace our roof every ten years or so. (It was certainly less of a problem in the days when there was no expensive furniture or appliances to worry about. What’s a few leaks on a rough wooden, or even an earthen, floor?) So we’d had to settle on butynol, despite the cost of over $20 per square metre.

At first glance, a standard galvanised iron roof appears to be a much cheaper option. There are savings to be made not only on the roofing material itself, but also on the quantity of timber required for the heavy roof structure, the layer of plywood sarking, and the complicated guttering system. But when you consider galvanised iron’s maintenance requirements, then add the insulative and aesthetic values of grass (not to mention the sheer vindictive joy of depriving starlings of their traditional, first-choice nesting sites), the cost differences wilt faster than a cabbage sprayed with Roundup. Besides, costs suddenly become irrelevant when it comes between creating your ‘dream house’ and settling for an unsatisfactory compromise.

Meanwhile, the rolls of butynol had arrived, along with two drums of specially-formulated glue, which together smelt like I was about to repair the world’s largest puncture rather than waterproof a roof. After reading through the application instructions, I realised there was a slight hitch in my plans - it required the surface to be completely dry, and after two weeks of frosts and almost-constant drizzle, the plywood was anything but dry. So it would have to wait until I had a series of fine, dry days and frost-free nights ... quite a request for the middle of July.

In the meantime, there was a floor to be finished.