Right Angles and Fallen Angels III

By now the concrete had well and truly cured, and the building inspector had undertaken a casual inspection of the foundations. The frames were also finished. The only problem now, was how to get them down to the site and erect ...
Each frame consisted of between 100 and 150 metres of timber. Depending on the wetness of the timber, I can usually manage to comfortably carry between 15 and 20 metres on my own. But there was also the balancing issue to be considered, which meant that 10 two-metre lengths was easier to carry than 4 five-metre lengths. I don’t know whether this theory has any basis in fact, but that was the way it seemed to me. Also, because of the nature of framing (with more spaces than timber), I believed a person should be able to lift even more than that, because each would be supporting the other’s efforts.
So, I calculated, all we really needed was another three people (coincidentally all the help we could realistically expect to get anyway), and we arranged for John and Alan, as well as David (a friend of Tania and Gerardo’s who had come to pick apples that year), to come on the next dry weekend and help us carry the skeleton of our house to its final resting place.
David had worked together with Gerardo in Christchurch selling environmental guilt door-to-door, but he was never entirely comfortable thrusting himself arrogantly into other people’s lives, offering absolution for their transgressions in return for a meagre donation. So he’d opted to pick apples, while Gerardo continued his steady climb through the hierarchy.
Gerardo had no qualms about the work. After all, the organisation needed fuel for its cause, oil for its machinations ... and money for their noble hoards of professional collectors. It only took a minute and was entirely painless. If everyone would just give a few valuable moments of their time to listen to our well-rehearsed cries of injustice; if they’d give a few worthy dollars to allow their voice to be added to the organisation’s lone voice of reason; if they just accepted that important work needed to be done, and that the organisation was the legitimate - the only - honourable voice; if they just wrote out that cheque, then they could continue with their worthwhile lives secure in the knowledge that they’d done everything humanly possible to help avert catastrophe. Give us money, they said, and you can sleep easy at night in your coal-fired home. Support us and you can drive to work tomorrow in your oil-guzzling car with a smile on your face. Sign your name on the dotted line and you can continue to fill your home with trinkets made in prison factories from the skins of endangered species.
The organisation had long ago abandoned the suburbs in favour of the more necessary and romantic duties of jousting with oiltankers, swimming with whalers and sunning themselves beneath the tropical mushroom sun. That was where the money was needed. That was where the important work needed to be done. That was where their shiny fleet of helicopters and ships were most needed. Think globally and act locally was the all-too-familiar soundbite, but what was the point of the local when the global was in its death throes? And so on ...
After that, picking apples was a breeze.
The next Saturday morning was overcast but dry, and our volunteers arrived keen to get the job over with. So we stepped up to the frame pile and each took one side of the smallest frame - the bathroom wall. Bending our backs, we tensed, then lifted, and ... nothing. The frame simply refused to budge. Surely there was something wrong. We tried again. But no matter how much we lifted the edges, the centre of the frame remained unlifted. With a rueful, disbelieving shake of the head, I had to admit there was absolutely no chance of us moving a single frame ... anywhere. It was time to call the cavalry.
So Marion and David went to the cookshop to round up as many eager volunteers as they could find, luring them with promises of beer and lunch. Half an hour later they returned, and suddenly we had a rowdy team of fifteen workers ready to go.
We gathered around the unrepentant frame with vigilante enthusiasm, a noose of eager hands thrown around each bone of the timber skeleton, slowly tightening. And like some cheap carnival trick, the frame became suddenly weightless, lifting, almost floating over the ground before gently coming to rest on the back of the bathroom block. We hoisted it upright, and with another quick lift, slid it over the bolts embedded in the concrete. It wobbled once, then was still ... standing. A few pounds of the hammer and one end of a bracing beam was lodged in the hill behind the bathroom, with the other end wedged beneath the top plate, holding the wall steady. We had our first wall in place!
The east wall was heavier, but with so many hands groping it, it didn’t stand a chance. The north and west walls followed the same procedure, slotting perfectly into each other and the walls already erected. Finally, (astonishly) the south wall fitted into the allotted space. The box was complete. Suddenly the outline of the house took shape.
There was much celebrating after that, and most of the day was taken up with the festivities. It was a joyous moment.
A few days of clambering up over the framework like a monkey on a jungle gym, and I’d firmly attached all the walls to each other and the foundations. Admittedly it wasn’t entirely square, but it was within a few degrees, and despite a minor bulge in the centre, it was horizontal. And most importantly, it was solid.
But our new box was still missing a lid.
Putting a lid on a box is normally quite an easy thing to do, even when the box is eleven metres by five metres and made of timber. It becomes a slightly more complicated procedure when the top of the lid is more than five metres off the ground, you don’t have very good balance, and there’s just no room for a safety net.
For as long as I can remember, my sense of balance has been a disappointment. While Raene and Michael Gooding spent their afternoons fence-walking, back and forward, turning and spinning in mid-flight, over and over like circus performers, I could only sit and watch with feigned disinterest (or, in less altruistic moments, try to distract them and watch them topple). I envied their casual disregard for the narrowness of their path, their unhesitating progress, their sureness of footing. No matter how much I tried, the furthest I ever got was two steps before I’d overbalance and fall. It’s not as though I was afraid of falling, either, because that went equally for walking along gutters, logs or anything else less than a metre wide I tried to negotiate. (So I seriously doubt I was ever a pirate in any past life, though perhaps it was the trauma of walking the plank in some previous piratic incarnation which created my ‘affliction’ in the first place...)
Even now, after thousands of miles of cycle touring, I still can’t cycle with no hands, and as soon as I’m faced with any gap narrower than a driveway, my grip tightens with fear. I’m just not well-balanced, I suppose. Or perhaps my weight just isn’t distributed evenly across my body. Years of physical labour have left their deposits of muscle and sinew, but much of it has been added to my right side, leaving it discernibly larger than my left.
I’m still no Incredible Hulk, but neither am I a Stan Laurel, yet everyone still claims I’m skinny. I keep assuring them it’s all an optical illusion - I’m tall and have had a slightly concave chest all my life - but even my father continues to buy me ‘M’ T-shirts for Xmas, when I’ve been at least an ‘L’ for many years.
Good living and age have also made substantial contributions, though ‘middle-age spread’ has tended to mean my personal space is spreading more than my body. I need much more room for myself and my life than I used to, especially in bed. Marion and I comfortably slept in her single bed for the first six months of our relationship, but such ‘intimacy’ is only a memory now that a single fold in the sheet results in a sleepless night, and a hair resting crookedly causes me to burrow into the pillow well into the morning’s wee hours. I hesitate to even imagine the discomfort a pea under the mattress would cause.
Or maybe the problem is that I actually lean. Marion always insisted I was leaning on the tandem (she couldn’t help but notice, since her head was less than a foot away from my lopsided rear). So it was only natural she constantly tried to compensate by leaning in the opposite direction.
Far from correcting a perceived imbalance, it had the effect of overbalancing the entire bike, making the steering difficult under normal circumstances, and almost suicidal when swerving to avoid a pedestrian while speeding down a hill. The leaning issue caused regular friction. Marion insisting I was leaning when I knew that was impossible. Until a friend told us we were both right - I was leaning, but it was the normal lean of a male cyclist. It’s impossible for a man to sit straight in the saddle, so we’re all either lefties or righties. And because I automatically compensated for the lean, in effect I wasn’t leaning. (PHEW!)
The secret, as well as the major stumbling block of successful tandem touring is that the person in the back has absolutely no control - no brakes, and although the steering can be influenced, no steering either - so must trust the person in the front, who has total control, implicitly. We tried putting a foghorn in the back so Marion could issue warnings and give a friendly toot to passers-by, but after she’d caused a few old ladies to leap into the bushes in fear - though it served themselves right for walking on a cycle path - we gave up that idea.
In the end, her sole responsibilities revolved around looking back to see if the road was clear, and to wave. It’s amazing how much of a fulltime job this is on a tandem! Wherever we went we seemed to cause a stir, though it became somewhat of a cliche after the thousandth person yelled out “she’s not pedalling”, when the simple fact is we have to pedal together because our pedals are connected by a chain. If we’re not in perfect alignment and coordination - or when we’ve had an argument - the bike wobbles uncontrollably. So, although either of us sometimes pedals less, it’s discernible to the other person.
By the way, the reason Marion was in the back wasn’t because of any gender discrimination, rather that the tandem has a larger frame in the front, and a smaller one at the rear, making it exceedingly uncomfortable, if not impossible, for either of us to swap. The rationale being that the front person must also be the stronger of the two, otherwise steering becomes unmanageable.
Though my sense of balance is atrocious, I’ve always had a good head for heights. So the thought of clambering over the framework five metres above ground held no real fears. As long as I somehow made sure my footing was secure at every stage, erecting the rafters should be a reasonably safe proposition. The logical next step was, therefore, to erect the mezzanine floors in order to establish a safe platform for working on the rafters. And the first stage of this process was to lift the two supporting beams into place.
Each beam measured 200 x 100 and was four metres long - in other words, a serious piece of timber - and had to be lifted two metres high so that one end rested on the framing, and the other rested on a post secured to the foundations. With a few helping hands, it would have taken a matter of minutes, but I only had two hands - both mine. I could have waited until the weekend and sought help, but I’m not an instinctively patient person.
Besides, it was beginning to be a question of pride as well. The more people queried my ability to complete the project alone, the more determined I was to tackle it single-handedly. Offers of assistance were treated as insults and duly spurned. Did I need assistance to complete the foundations? No! Did I need assistance to build the frames? No, I’d done it all by myself. I hadn’t wanted to build the house alone, but now that I was, I was going to finish it ... alone. I needed to finish it alone ... it was the only thing keeping me going.
A little improvisation was called for.
Luckily both beams were substantially longer than the four metre lengths required. So I was able to heave one end up and slide it through the allotted slot, letting it rest on the frame while I lifted the other end onto the top of the pole. Once it was in position even with the pole’s edge and firmly attached, I could simply saw off the excess protruding through the framing. Simple, really.
Once I'd attached the upper floor joists, I had a solid second floor from where I could effectively launch my assault on the rafters - all eighteen of them! The ‘problem’ with a grass roof is that it’s extremely heavy, especially when wet. Nobody knew exactly how heavy, but Wallace had played it safe by designing a roof solid enough to support the Three Tenors and a full Symphony Orchestra... soaking wet. Each rafter consisted of two beams bolted together at the apex, and further strengthened by attaching collar ties to prevent the rafters from ‘doing the splits’. Each north-facing rafter (and half the south-facing ones too) was going to be a little over three-and-a-half metres long, while those over the bathroom in the south would be just over six metres long.
By now I had actually calculated the pitch of the roof (38 degrees, which was a number of degrees above the suggested maximum for a grass roof, but that’s just how it worked out), and although I still didn’t have an angle-thingee, I did still have my old school protractor, so I wasn’t going to be entirely in the dark when cutting all those angles at the apex of the roof.
To make things more difficult, the rafters weren’t going to be simply bolted together, each apex end was first going to be cut lengthways in half. Which not only meant more angles and precision cutting, but a lot of additional handsawing. If my power-saw cuts are somewhat crooked, my handsaw cuts are nothing short of epileptic.
To further complicate matters, another angled notch had to be cut out of each rafter so that it sat squarely on the framing. A grand total of 63 notches (and not one of them a buenos noches).
The only way I could imagine accurately determining the position and angle of each notch was to lay a rafter in position and mark it at the appropriate points. But first I needed to put the upper load-bearing beam in place. This was achieved by roughly repeating the procedure for installing the first beam, except this time I did get help, mainly because I was now an extra two metres above ground, and there was no floor across the central three metre space. So Cameron and Gerardo came along to give me a hand, and together we managed to hoist the beam up in three parts and attach them to each other, to the posts, and to the frames.
The problem with cutting notches is that by the very act of cutting out the notch, you alter the angle the rafter will follow as well as the level, which in turn alters the required position of the notch. I don’t know how builders work it out. My only successful method has been trial and error. Once I’d managed to get one rafter sitting comfortably and accurately across each notched point, I was able to use it as my prototype and cut out the rest of the notches accordingly.
Of course this assumed everything else was equal and consistent, thereby breaking The Builder’s Ninth Maxim - never assume anything is equal. A few millimetres here or there certainly don’t make a difference, but a few millimetres every metre across a length of eleven metres does. Once you allow for slight variations in angles and timber thicknesses, you can easily exceed even the most generous margin of error. But considering I had to carry 36 rafter halves almost sixty metres to the house, hoist one end up onto the top plate, clamber up the framing while dragging it behind, then crawl along a 100mm wide beam suspended more than four metres in the air to slide it into place, I wasn’t about to repeat the entire procedure twice just for the sake of accuracy! Somehow, my notches would have to do.
Once all the rafters were notched, the rest was relatively simple though tiring. Using the framing as a ladder, I hoisted each rafter half into position opposite its corresponding half, then bolted the halves together so that I had nine complete rafters at each end of the house. By dragging first one side across the framing as far as it could go, then climbing onto the beam and sliding the apex along, then down to the opposite frame to move that end as far as it could go, then repeating the procedure over and over, I ‘walked’ the rafters, one-by-one, into position. Fortunately, apart from a few minor adjustments, the rafters sat reasonably comfortably in their allotted position, and were then nailed onto the beam and z-nailed onto the frame.
Lastly, I had to attach the collar-ties, which again meant climbing onto that narrow beam. A braver man, an experienced construction worker, or even my sister might have calmly walked along the beam giving scant regard to the fact they were six metres off the ground in places. But I was too concerned for my personal safety to release my grip on it for more than a few seconds at a time - just enough to drill a hole or tighten a bolt.
Working alone certainly heightens your sense of vulnerability. In the back of my mind there was always the knowledge that if I fell or injured myself in some way, I’d have to somehow manage to get to my neighbour’s house in order to get any assistance. Either that or wait until someone came to visit. So I was always extra cautious whenever I had to work in precarious situations, and even when I was using powertools ... though this has less to do with any sense of vulnerability than with my lifelong fear - perhaps wariness is a better word - of electricity.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started, but I began to get my first whiff of it in Grade 2 when a classmate’s brother was electrocuted when a heater fell into his bath. The image troubled me for months afterwards. Later my father re-wired the range socket, mistakenly turning the switch upside-down in the process. For him it was a simple case of ON was now OFF, and he could never understand my mother’s unease with the new arrangement. But she never felt comfortable with it, and “Off-off-off-off, On’s-Off On’s-Off” became her pre-departure mantra, repeated over and over until my father’s second impatient beep of the horn dragged her reluctantly away. Though this ritual never ceased to irritate him, he never reversed the plug, and she never left her unease at home.
No matter where this wariness comes from, it’s effect is that I always make sure any plug is kept off the ground (especially wet ground), I never turn off a socket with moist hands (though just the thought of turning off a socket can make my hands instantly moist, which complicates matters) and my extension cords are never knotted or kinked. Yet, despite such anal precautions, I still managed to saw through my powersaw’s cord.
I generally avoid handling anything with sharp blades whenever possible. I can never use any blade without imagining what would happen if it suddenly sliced off my hand ... or worse. I think I must have watched too many cheap horror movies when I was younger. But I also can’t stand in precarious places without imagining falling - especially places like Pulpit Rock in Norway which has a sheer 600 metre drop straight down, and there’s not a fence or barrier within twenty miles - though this probably gets back to my poor balance ...
Yet despite it all - my poor balance, my wariness of electricity and blades, my inexperience with angles - we now had a solid, free-standing skeleton. I was jubilant.
But Marion was far from happy. To her the framework seemed more like a prison, and it was taking all her willpower simply not to flee. We needed to talk to someone before it was too late.

Consenting Adults IV

Christmas arrived. Our first kiwi Christmas! Our first Christmas in our new homeland, and we were keen to make it a memorable one. Not that the previous year’s hadn’t been memorable.
We’d originally planned to spend it with two friends somewhere in Queensland’s Far North, but they’d opted to do a scuba-diving course instead, so we’d headed south again, ending up in a campground beside Maroochydore beach. It was hot, unbearably hot inside our single-skin Gore-tex tent (which was so small we always slept facing opposite directions. But it was light, and enjoyable tandem-touring/wild-camping demands extremely lightweight gear.
At least that was the lesson we learnt after our honeymoon tour, when our old 5-speeds were so loaded down with the ‘essentials’, every time we bought food we broke a spoke! We’d naively believed pushing bikes up hills was all part of the adventure, and it didn’t matter how heavy our equipment was, because we didn’t have to carry it - we had wheels! So we hadn’t invested in good bicycles, and four kilos seemed minimal for a mobile home!
But such misconceptions had evaporated by the time we reached the first post office, where we gratefully jettisoned our first 5kg package of superfluous essentials. As we struggled against the Danish winds, gritted our teeth through long, dark Norwegian tunnels, then squelched a path in the Scottish mud, we developed an obsession for weight ... or more directly, weightlessness. Everything lightweight was slowly replaced by the ultra-lightweight. Every gram saved was a kilometre gained. We contemplated the weight differentials between plastic and cardboard, and the gains to be made by converting from full-cream milk to skim milk, tea bags to loose tea.
Groceries never left the store in their original packaging - we discarded cellophane wrappers, peeled off prices, tore off tags, cornflakes were stuffed into the spare water-bottle holder, and we even begrudged bananas their heavy skins. By the time we reached London we were hardly recognisable. We’d set off from Offenbach looking like gypsies straddling a teetering donkey caravan. Now we were the cavalry racing along on our glittering golden stallion. A lean, mean, honed-down, stream-lined, cruising machine aboard our Dawes Super Galaxy tandem with our single-skin, 1.85kg Gore-tex tent ...
Which is how we’d arrived in Maroochydore, though the tandem had temporarily been replaced by a 1961 blue/green Holden with bench seats, wrap-around windscreen and lots of fins ... though it didn’t travel much faster ... We could have driven another few hours and spent Christmas with my family in Brisbane, but my father’s partner had told us they’d be spending Christmas with her family that year (though she’d later deny it), so we’d opted to stay away. (Perhaps my father hadn’t heard her tell us, even though he was in the room at the time, because he was surprised when we didn’t turn up. Disappointed, even. Yet, if he’d only once said he’d like us to be there, or even hinted that it would make any difference to him, we would have driven the extra hour to be there.)
Christmas has never been one of my favourite celebrations. Once Santa Claus had become redundant, replaced by familial obligations (I bought you this ... even though you’re an obnoxious, spiteful hag! Oh, great, knee-high socks, you shouldn’t have ... I mean, you really shouldn’t have!), it was all downhill. Sure there was minor relief upon my initiation into the adult celebrations (and the discovery of an entirely new meaning of the Christmas spirit), but gluttony and inebriation have never been my favourite sins.
It was always supposed to be a family affair, but my family has never been very big on family ... especially our family. We were strangers coming together for one day a year (well, every second year, since the two ‘sides’ seldom felt comfortable in each other’s presence) more by default than desire - spending Christmas alone would be a sorry indictment on the family’s honour, and all our friends were likewise engaged in gatherings of other strangers.
The mornings were filled with hollow good humour and the exchanging of compliments and gifts, but by afternoon the good humour had evaporated in the heat or been throttled by the dark hand of alcohol, especially once my mother had left and Christmases were spent with different strangers with even stranger differences.
Far better to spend the festive season alone on a barren patch of sand in the middle of a tent city (a tent-ement?) battling a cyclone, than with family. Even then, the cyclone was the least of our worries.
First, we awoke one morning to find ourselves surrounded by guy-ropes, ensnared like a tiny brown-and-yellow beetle in some billowing spider’s web.
Campers are ‘special’ people at the best of times. Queensland beach campers are something else again. For most people the word ‘camping’ implies an element of ‘roughing it’, of living with the bare essentials, living simply - simply because space is limited. A normal tent is just accommodation - a roof over your head. For Queensland beach campers, a tent is a surrogate home - a fully-furnished, four-bedroom home with kitchen and en-suite... not to mention OSP - a half-size replica piled high with all their worldly possessions duplicated in canvas and aluminium. They arrive in the dead of night - after an exhausting day holding up holiday traffic through a succession of aborted attempts to overtake that ‘damn caravan’ - and immediately stake-out their holiday territory, dancing like moths through the headlight beams accompanied by a chorus of muffled curses and fumbled pounding.
There was, of course, no way our new neighbours were going to move (after all, they only had two weeks, and it would take them that long to decipher the de-camping instructions), so we pulled our six pegs from the sandy ground, lifted our tent (contents and all), and plonked it a few metres further afield.
Unfortunately, our new location was precisely on the toilet nexus - the point where every conceivable straight line drawn between any camping site and the toilet/shower facilities intersects. At this important nexus, everything becomes miraculously invisible! No matter what time of day. No matter how good the visibility. It is as though everything at this point simply does not exist. People tripped over our guy-ropes. Stumbled against our tent. Squeezed between tent and car. Even walked across our blanket ... while we were sitting on it having lunch! Some drunk even vomited right in front of our tent-flaps. Camping on an ant trail (or even on the main runway at Heathrow Airport) couldn’t have been any less convenient, but apart from camping right next to the toilets, there was nowhere else to go.
Then, on Christmas Eve, news filtered through the campground that a cyclone was due to cross the coast just north of us that evening. The word went out - batten down the hatches! We sat in front of our tiny tent watching all the ‘real’ campers set about tightening ropes, stowing loose ends and pounding pegs a little deeper. One-by-one our neighbours came to offer us sanctuary in their sturdy, canvas megaliths. One-by-one we nodded our thanks and reassured them we’d be fine in our “hurricane-proof” tent. One-by-one they walked away shaking their heads and leaving us with further promises of shelter “if it gets too bad”.
By six o’clock, the winds started buffeting the camp and the last campers circled their tents making last-minute adjustments, checking everything was in order. By seven, our tent was dodging and weaving against the wind’s furious assault, so we zipped up our sleeping bags and made ourselves comfortable. By eight, a flock of angry vultures had descended to ravage the night with howling shrieks and a violent fluttering of canvas wings. By nine, fragments of trembling words and hoarse cries began tumbling by, dragging us from sleep.
We poked our heads outside. A procession of plastic possessions pursued the plaintive Pied Piper polyphony towards the sea. Shadowy silhouettes shackled to shuddering sheets ... (Enough alliteration already! In other words, there were plastic bits-and-pieces tumbling everywhere, and nearly every tent-owner was pre-occupied with preventing their tents from becoming parachutes!) By midnight, the storm had passed, though we were asleep at the time. And in the morning we were greeted by sunshine and a new respect shining from our neighbours’ sleep-starved eyes.
But that was the previous year, in Australia. We knew our first Christmas in New Zealand was unlikely to be as dramatic, but we hoped it would be enjoyable nevertheless. At least we didn’t have family to consider. Nor even friends. There was just the two of us, and whoever we decided to spend our time with.
Not that there was much choice. Our flatmates, along with every other kiwi working on the orchard, had left on Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with their families. Ettrick was like a ghost town (though even ghosts are too bored to stay long), with only the locals staying around during the lay-off. And the only locals we were on a first name basis with were Noel and Dawn (who owned the Bengerview Tearooms.
There often seems to be a reverse correlation between the amount of view people actually have, and the likelihood they’ll name their place after it. Would any place with actual spectacular panoramic views of Milford Sound, call their place “Milford View”? Doubtful. More than likely, it’d be the pokey little house squashed between the local tip and cement works, with a sliver of water discernible beyond the railway yards - on a good day - that would have that honour. And if there was absolutely no view, they’d probably revert to that faithful old standby - Skyview. Skyview? How view-less can any place be?
Not to say Noel and Dawn’s tearooms-cum-post-office-cum-local- store didn’t have a view of Mount Benger. If you stood on the roof and craned your neck to peer around the macrocarpas, then Mount Benger was certainly one of the things you’d see. Who could blame them for not wanting to call their place the Coldstoreview Tearooms?
We didn’t want a family Christmas (even with someone else’s family), so Noel and Dawn’s invitation to join them at the Altenburgs Traditional Christmas Feast (or should that be Xmas Feast?), seemed like the best option. Christmas was the only half-day the tearooms were closed, and they didn’t want to spend it cooking themselves (or anyone else, for that matter), so they traditionally had an old-fashioned Christmas dinner (together with their son ‘Fish’ and the twenty or so other small-business owners who were open 364 days a year so didn’t want to spend time cooking themselves etc etc) at the only restaurant in Roxburgh open 365 days a year.
The food was good and abundant, with no pink icing to be seen. The Christmas crackers popped as they should, the jokes inside weren’t too bad, and nobody forced me to wear a stupid paper hat. The plastic chairs weren’t too sticky, and the plastic table-cloths had been freshly cleaned for the occasion. And the ceiling vent coped admirably with the fog of smoke, cheap aftershave and greasy fumes from the adjoining take-away. All-in-all, a valuable (never-to-be-repeated) kiwi cultural experience.
Boxing Day we spent picnic-ing with John (the orchard foreman) and his partner Alan, on our property.
The day after we were back at work. But there was no Nigel and no Rob, and we soon heard from Saskia that they’d opted to stay in Dunedin until after New Year. After all, nobody would miss them for two days, would they?
John missed them.
He passed his missing-ness onto Con.
Con sacked them in abstentia. When they returned, they’d have to leave.
In the meantime, there was another two days of thinning before the New Year break. After our sedate Christmas we were ready for some action - any action! Tania and Gerardo (a kiwi/Argentinian couple who’d arrived soon after thinning started, having recently arrived in the country via Argentina, where they’d stayed a year on his family’s mung-bean orchard, London, where they’d gotten married after knowing each other less than three weeks, and Israel, where they’d met on a kibbutz, with the result they were broke and needed work ... any work) were heading to friends in Dunedin, and asked us to come along.
It turned out to be an eventful evening as we joined an ever-growing convoy searching for an elusive action Eldorado. As the old year slowly wore out, we moved from a roomful of people sitting on mattresses playing charades, to a half-full house of half-full students, and finally to a raucous sardine-can jumble of inebriated souls in varying stages of undress. What had started out as a theme party (the theme being SEX), now took on an entirely new dimension as a dozen smaller parties began melding together into one huge party, until those in fancy dress (fancy undress?) seemed starkly, lewdly out of place. In each room, a massive video screen playing endless movies or music videos, overwhelmed conversation, and after a few attempts at communicating with the intoxicated natives, Marion and I made ourselves comfortable in a corner and watched the proceedings with increasing bewilderment.
By two o’clock, as the third half-naked unconscious woman was dumped onto the bed, we’d had enough. Luckily Marion had insisted on bringing our van along during each migration, so we were able to decline invitations to sleep over (for some peculiar reason, we have a prudish dislike for sleeping on vomit-stained carpets) and headed home to Ettrick. The night was warm, calm and full-moon bright. We were alone to enjoy the spectacularly clear sky, and to gatecrash the rabbit cocktail party in the Manuka Gorge that morning.
Two days later we were back at work.
A day later Rob and Nigel moved out, and Tania and Gerardo moved in.
We continued to thin apples, but now evenings were pleasantly filled with jokes and conversation. I spent as much time as possible walking around our property, digging up thistles, cutting gorse and broom ... getting ready. And always there was time to sit in the Minzion and to dream.
Marion seldom accompanied me on my private working bees. But that was fine. She’d already had RSI once, and we certainly didn’t want to risk another episode, especially undertaking unpaid work. Besides, I enjoyed the solitude, and I could understand Marion’s lack of enthusiasm. At the moment it was still just an idea. Once we had planning consent, once our dream could finally begin to unfold, I was sure she’d be as enthusiastic as I was.
There’s an old seaman’s myth that a drowning man rises three times to the surface ... But I always wondered at what point you knew you were drowning and not just treading water badly. Would it come in a moment of blinding, shocking revelation - a realisation so inconceivable, so breath-taking, that you’d have to check twice more before you could even acknowledge that you were drowning? Or was it simply a subtle shift in perspective... and expectations? I’ve always been a good swimmer, confident in the water. Maybe it has something to do with being a Pisces, though astrology seems such an unlikely buoyancy aid, and it certainly didn’t help in this case.
On the 14th of February, 1991 (precisely one year since we’d cycled into Ettrick), an envelope arrived in the mail - the COD Council’s golden logo (looking like some unfinished plans for a Roman amphitheatre) emblazoned across the corner. With our hearts in our mouths and Noel and Dawn hovering expectantly, we dragged out the contents.
The covering letter was brief, and certainly wasn’t giving anything away.
“Pursuant to regulation 38 (4) of the Town and Country Planning Regulations 1978, I hereby advise you of the decision of the Council on the above application.
A copy of the Councils decision (apostrophe’s retain semi-my’stical statu’s in the englis’h language... This comment wasn’t in the letter, of course ... in case you were wondering ...) is attached.
Your attention is drawn to section 69 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1977 which confers a right of appeal against this decision to the Planning Tribunal within one month after notification of the decision.”
There was no mention of the decision, however. Surely it would save a certain amount of undue heart tremors if there could be a heading at the top of the page simply stating whether the application had been approved or disapproved? At least you could then read the remainder of the letter with an appropriate frame of mind. There were no clues just yet, though the bit about our right to appeal sounded distinctly ominous to our impressionable ears. Appeal? Why should we need to appeal unless ...
We read on.
“Consideration has been given ... information submitted in support ... submission of Mr J F Barclay ... separate title ... previously occupied ... fire ... not undermine the integrity of the District Scheme ... limited potential ... public interest best served by granting consent ... will facilitate the maintenance of the site in a tidy condition ... not visible from Beaumont Station Road ... little significance ... minor departure ... Having regard to the reasons detailed above, the Council has resolved to grant its consent to the application pursuant to Sections 67 and 74 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1977 ...”
PHEW! Elation and relief swept over us like ... well, elation and relief.
But there was one page more.
“Consent is granted subject to the following conditions :
1. An adequate water supply for domestic usage shall be available to the dwelling house, and any bore water source shall be tested to establish that it is of wholesome quality.
2. The roof of the house shall be non-reflective.
3. The exterior walls shall be finished in a colour or colours to be selected from the range of browns, dark greens, grey and white and thereafter shall be maintained accordingly.
4. The proposed dwelling shall comply fully with the yard requirements of the Rural A Zone as detailed in the Tuapeka County District Scheme.
5. Electricity and telephone lines shall be laid underground.”
The conditions seemed peculiarly obsessive (after all, we were hardly visible from the road, and surely my neighbour’s sheep across the creek weren’t such aesthetes that they could object to any colour scheme we chose), but nothing to take issue with. Certainly nothing to appeal against.
We had planning consent! We could stop treading water and start powering towards the gleaming paradise which suddenly seemed so near.
But we weren’t treading water, we were drowning. The planning consent wasn’t the wind in our sails, it was another weight tied to our ankles, pulling us down. We were about to go under for the first time ...