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.

Closing In, Opening Up V

The tongue and groove boards were to be nailed to the top of the rafters, turning them into internal rafters, so all the joins would be invisible. Each rafter was 50mm wide, which meant even the crookedest end or the worst cut - or even both together - would also be hidden. To me, this was the equivalent of telling a bogan there were no speed cameras in the South Island. Full steam ahead!
The only foreseeable difficulty was getting the timber up there in the first place. There’s just no easy way to move 800 metres of T&G sixty metres down a grassy path and up to a point five metres off the ground. It doesn’t matter how you do it, you just have to do it. But I’ve never been content plodding along and finishing one job at a time, so although it may not have been the most efficient approach, I alternated between carrying, and continuing the building.
I’ve got more empathy with the hare than the tortoise. Run like mad then have a sleep appeals more than slow and steady wins the race. OK, so the hare didn’t win the race, but what did he lose? I don’t recall the tortoise being particularly elated by his win either. Life’s short, play hard. Maybe life’s too short for playing hard? Or perhaps life only seems short when you’re busy playing hard. Just look at how much you must lose in order to win. How many hours squandered preparing for ‘the game’? How many days recovering? How many opportunities foregone? Is it better to be number one in a single race, or to compete in them all? Life’s short, play!
So the long process of nailing 800 metres of T&G began, starting at the apex. The tongue of each new board was slotted into the groove of the attached board above, squeezed together, then nailed. Sometimes, if the board was vaguely straight, I could simply use my hammer and a spare piece of T&G, gently tapping until they clasped each other tightly.
But having too many straight boards would have contravened not only the laws of nature, but The Builder’s Tenth Maxim - the only way to keep timber straight, is to nail it straight onto the house. Storing timber correctly is supposed to stop it from warping, but I’ve never seen any timber which remains straight long enough for me to stack it correctly. Once it’s released from its wire straitjacket, you’ve got about an hour.
Even then, it’s usually a losing battle. If you stack it lying flat with heavy weights on top, it warps sideways. If you stack it lying on its edge, it warps upwards. Sometimes it seems like it’s trying to assume a crash position, reliving the trauma of its felling. Or is it expending its final drop of growth potential, reaching sunward one last time?
More frequently than I wished, my legs were needed to coerce the board’s tongue into the groove, using the battens to generate leverage. Twice I generated a little too much leverage, dislodging the batten and sending myself sliding down the rafter in an avalanche of boards and a shower of nails. Fortunately neither slide ended in hospital, but with my legs dangling over the edge after my flailing hands managed to halt my fall by hooking into the top of the frame.
Despite such minor mishaps, the ceiling progressed rapidly, getting easier as I descended. Once the ceiling was finished, the house not only had a definite shape, but also the first whiff of atmosphere. From inside I could begin to imagine the kind of life that I would live beneath its swirling caramel canopy. For the first time I felt some gratitude towards the sawmill, too. The specifications had indicated radiata pine throughout, and not knowing any better, we’d allowed the sawmill to dictate the type of T&G used, with the prime consideration being cost.
In retrospect, it was an entirely ludicrous, and risky, approach. A home is such a huge investment, it pays to spend that little bit extra to ensure the final product will be exactly what you wanted. There may be areas where budgetary corners can be cut, but for something as important as the lining of the ceiling, walls and floor - the very essence of the house - what’s a few thousand dollars more or less?
In this case, we’d been extremely fortunate that the sawmill had, for whatever reason, a special on larch at the time. Despite the fact it’s a very brittle wood with a tendency to split if nailed within a centimetre of any edge or along the tongue. It’s actually recommended that you drill each nail-hole first, unless, like me, you don’t mind a house with lots of character. It's also a very dangerous wood, syringing inch-long, semi-transparent splinters beneath your fingernails with unnerving regularity. It’s saving grace is it's also a very beautiful wood. It varies in colour from oregon peach to radiata cream, and the texture covers the gamut from gently undulating pastel barcodes to hypnotic spiralling vortexes of vibrancy.
Over the next month, I also discovered it darkens under the influence of rain and frost. It wasn’t something I necessarily wanted to discover, but I just didn’t have an 80 square metre tarpaulin, and my ragtag assortment of smaller tarpaulins were barely managing to keep the unused timber protected. Perhaps I should have continued with the roof first, especially as winter was rapidly approaching, but the first heavy frost had already deposited a crusty skin of ice over the house, and I had little enthusiasm for inventing any new alpine sports.
By now the apple season had finished, and David offered to help with the cladding. He had no deadlines, so was happy to stay as long as it took to finish the shell. I accepted his offer, glad for his assistance and his company, and he moved into the shed with me.
Although we managed to live quite harmoniously together, we quickly discovered we had vastly different (often conflicting) working styles. This was not only a reflection of inherent differences in our approach to life in general, but also our different motivations. I was comfortable compromising a degree of accuracy in return for speed, while David strove for precision. I just wanted to move in as soon as possible, while he wanted the experience in case he decided to return to Rainbow Community and build his own house.
My safety procedures extended no further than immediate dangers (ensuring the cord wasn’t lying in a pool of water and minimising the chances of my falling from any height), while David was also concerned for his long-term well-being (protecting every bodily orifice from potential harm). For me, the house was ample compensation for any future ailments such as powersaw tinnitus or chronic sawdustosis, while for him, they would just be a pain. While I believed improvisation would overcome any obstacle, David never felt comfortable without first planning each stage in detail.
Not that we struck many difficulties in the beginning. But then, we’d opted to close-in the bathroom first, simply because we could stay on the ground and get into some sort of routine before scaling any greater heights. It was all rather straightforward. Every board or batten was the same length, so David set about sawing the pieces, while I hammered them onto the framing.
In fact, the process was going so smoothly, we had visions of finishing the entire house in a few days ... until we realised we’d forgotten the building paper.
Attaching building paper is like wallpapering in a hurricane. As well as being a fire-retardant moisture-barrier, building paper is designed to create a draft-proof envelope. This quality is both its biggest advantage and its most frustrating disadvantage, because it might be draft-proof, but the environment in which you have to attach it seldom is. The slightest breeze causes it to parachute skyward, while a sudden gust transforms it into a spinnaker of a Whitbread yacht in full sail. And try stapling that to your house!
Of course the process was further complicated by not having a stapling gun, but rather ‘improvising’ by unfolding my old school stapler until it lay prostrate across the paper like a Moslem at Mecca, then pounding it with my clenched fist.
There was also the issue of reaching the points we needed to staple, and later, nail. The un-papered framing was ideally suited for reaching every point of the house, so I never did get around to buying a ladder. But as soon as we attached the first metre-wide strip of building paper, access became suddenly complicated. I had to hook my legs around the frame and, dangling almost upside-down, stretch out like Cheetah reaching for Tarzan’s hand. It wasn’t the most orthodox building method, but if there was a Builder’s Olympics, I’m sure I’d get at least a few points for style. (Though my points for technique would almost certainly rob me of any chance of a medal.) And it got the job done. Which was, in my view, the only thing that mattered.
But it was about this time that building site tension began to mount. I think it all started one cold, sunny afternoon while I was dangling from the western frame waiting for the next board to be handed up. Normally this was a straightforward procedure - I held one end of the measuring tape against the highest intersecting point between the next board and the roof line, then let the tape unwind down to David who took a measurement against the floor line. While I stayed entangled in the frame, David would find a board of appropriate length. Easy.
But there were four points along the way where the boards had to be cut to fit around the protruding piles. Normally it would be a simple matter of a quick measurement allowing a reasonable margin of error (or rather, erring slightly on the side of too big rather than too small), two quick pencil lines across the board then two quick cuts ... or so you’d think. Not, however, when the title of the show is Precision and Safety, Jane Austen’s little-known building classic.
I’ve always preferred watching buskers to full-scale theatrics, but as I hung there, waiting for the next board, the performance below seemed less like street theatre than a full-scale, complete-with-song-and-dance, twelve-Act melodrama. But I couldn’t just ignore the crumpled hat on the pavement and walk away, because I’d become an unwilling member of the cast - a captive participant suspended in a wooden cage high above the stage. I tried to relax and contemplate the sunshine or focus on the props and settings, but I could feel my impatience mounting as the drama slowly (oh so very slowly) unfolded ...
Our hero enters stage left. Measures the required length as described above. Finds board of appropriate length. Lays board on ground. Measures horizontally and vertically around intruding pile. Searches for left-over scrap of timber. Searches for pencil. Once suitable scrap and pencil found, scribbles measurements onto scrap. Re-checks measurements. Re-checks scribbled measurements correspond to re-checked measurements. Goes to board. Searches for tape measure. Finds tape measure discarded in grass beneath spot where measurements written. Returns to board with tape measure. Hooks tape measure onto end of board and begins unwinding. Drops tape measure when hooked end unhooks and snaps back inside. Picks up tape measure. Searches for a small block of timber. Returns to board. Hooks tape measure onto end of board again. Lays block on top of hook as anchor. Unwinds tape measure to end of board. Engages lock. Finds pencil. Finds square. Finds scrap of timber with measurements. Marks horizontal measurement in appropriate position. Lays square across board, pinning tape beneath. Marks horizontal line either side of tape. Removes square. Removes anchor block. Removes tape. Returns square to position and fills in the centimetre-wide gap in the line left by the tape. Removes square. Stands on tape. Swears. Disengages tape lock and rewinds kinked tape. Marks vertical measurement in appropriate position. Lays square along board. Marks vertical line until it intersects with horizontal line. Places square and tape on ground. Writes ‘waste’ on piece to be discarded. Scribbles squiggly lines outwards from word ‘waste’ to clearly highlight dimensions of piece to be discarded. Lifts board. Realises cutting blocks have fallen over, so drops board. Re-arranges cutting blocks. Lifts board and places across blocks. Finds powersaw and carries to blocks. Removes earplugs from pocket and places in ears. Removes handkerchief from other pocket and wraps around mouth. Finds goggles in grass and places over eyes. Lifts powersaw and places left foot on board. Makes horizontal cut to vertical line. Turns and makes vertical cut to horizontal line. Places powersaw on ground. Removes goggles and places on ground. Removes handkerchief from around mouth and returns to pocket. Removes earplugs from ears and returns to other pocket. Finds handsaw. Finishes horizontal cut. Finishes vertical cut. Places handsaw on ground. Carries board to house. Wakes up skeletal form passed out from thirst, starvation and boredom, hanging from frame. Passes up board. Nails board to house. Moves onto next board ...
Of course I appreciated David’s assistance. It not only reduced the number of times I had to scale the framing, but also simplified much of the process, making it far less strenuous and generally more enjoyable. Having someone hold that five metre board up while you hammer in that first nail is infinitely more relaxing than keeping a tenuous grip with one hand while trying to nail with the other. But at that moment I would have gladly traded the reduced strain and enjoyment for a little more speed. No matter how much I prodded and cajoled - “Little gaps don’t matter”, “Rough is good enough”, “It doesn’t have to be perfect”, “It’ll be covered over anyway” - David seemed incapable of changing his approach, or increasing his speed.
I chided myself for my lack of empathy and patience. I chastised myself for failing to heed the lessons learnt during that honeymoon cycling trip.
The first lesson had been ‘we should buy a tandem’, because there’s nothing more frustrating than two people with different levels of strength and fitness cycling together - or should that be trying to cycle together?
The second lesson had been ‘we do need more than five gears’, because there’s nothing more frustrating than walking half your cycling trip.
The third lesson had been ‘don’t wash dishes in the surf’, but that wasn’t at all relevant to this situation.
And, finally, ‘people have their own cruising speed’. No matter how incomprehensible it may seem, it’s just as difficult for some people to cycle any faster as it is for others to cycle any slower without falling off.
But although we discussed it over and over, and I knew I shouldn’t be annoyed, because progress might be slower than expected, but it was still faster and easier than doing it on my own, it never ceased to irritate me. “Why can’t he just work a bit faster?” I thought. “Why does he spend so much time trying to be precise when the finished product is invariably no more accurate than my imprecise work?”
In the end we had to resign ourselves to the fact that our approach to practicalities were like chalk and fingernails - one got the job done, while the other’s attempts just caused irritation. Though we probably both saw ourselves as chalk, I knew better.
Of course it was an arrogant and baseless assumption, but I plead for clemency on a stack of my father’s famous speeches. Who could hear his first-football-training-of-the-year speech (“There are only two ways of doing things... my way and the wrong way”) more than twelve times, and his twenty-first-birthday-party speech (“When Cameron/David/Kyle was younger he used to think he knew everything ... but now he knows he does”) three times (Raene missing out by virtue of being in Europe at the time, though it’s also debatable whether such sentiments applied to daughters), without being affected in some fundamental way?
Little wonder, then, that ‘knowing things’ and ‘being right’ seemed like such a noble (and natural) state of mind. How could I know it was all based on a lie? How could I guess the ‘things we know’ were just trees planted in our backyard to obscure the forest looming over the back fence? I’d believed my father had once braved that dark tangle to gather the finest seeds of truth for our garden, so there was no reason to venture far. In reality he’d never gone further than the local nursery of ideas, and had no intention of ever straying from his well-tended little patch.
His tales of bandits waiting to steal our treasured family pearls, of consuming pits of quicksand, of misleading trails and elusive shadows, of stumbling blindly through thick undergrowth and never finding a way back home, were mere superstitious myths. It wasn’t until many years later, until I succumbed to the lure of the forest, that I finally discovered the pearls were worthless trinkets gladly traded for a bandit’s song. The quicksand of ignorance was a hazard only for the unwary. Every trail was worth following, every shadow worth pursuing. The well-worn path was easiest to follow, but the untrodden path was lush with possibilities. And the only home worth returning to was the one which followed you into the forest.
I once thought to leave the forest and return ‘home’ to finally fell that sickly stand of ‘things we know’ one by one. But they were dead, hollow things, petrified by time and fear, and even the sharpest blade couldn’t bring them down. And my father had abandoned the forest edge to become a disciple of ‘them’. He no longer tended his own plot of ‘things we know’, because this mysterious clan of faceless, nameless men knew everything, and their cups of wisdom, scooped from the unsullied, undisputed, infinite font of Truth, raneth over. “They say it’s going to rain.” “They think it’s genetic.” “They use a flat trowel, not a pointed one.” “They mix concrete on a board, not in a barrow.” “They keep their pencils in their left pockets.” And how I despised their arrogant ignorance and the possibility genocide they espoused in the name of stability.
Further in my defence, at the time David and I were building together, I was relatively new to the forest. I was still gathering every musty fungus, every fragrant bloom, every shiny beetle that crossed my path, thinking they were valuable parts of some greater truth. Even when my pockets were bulging, weighing me down, I refused to abandon any of my precious jewels. Instead, I guarded them with feral jealously, locking them away at the back of my lair, away from greedy eyes and cold scrutiny. My priceless collection of treasures made me feel wealthy, powerful. The world was no longer a frightening place, because I knew, because I was right.
It was much later that I realised the forest is full of mysterious beauty and beautiful mystery, more ‘things we don’t know’ than ‘things we know’, with creeping lianas of doubt and a tangled profusion of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ beneath its canopy of confusion. It was much later that I discovered what I ‘knew’ was no longer what I ‘know’, and the most I would ever ‘know’ was a little more than nothing. It was much later that I learnt I wasn’t ‘right’, and the most I could ever be was a little bit ‘less wrong’. It was much later I read Emerson (“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.”) and felt the burden of ‘rightness’ slip from my shoulders. The world rotated not on an axis of fact, but of belief, so I was free to opine, argue, agree, discuss and dispute, with anyone, at anytime, and to do them all at once or to not do any of them, at all.
It’s strange, though, that it’s easier to forcefully disagree with someone’s opinion or to argue vehemently against their attitude, than it is to tell them you’d prefer coffee to tea. Why should it take at least two attempts to ascertain a beverage preference, and a minimum of three attempts to determine whether or not they want something to eat? “Tea or coffee?” “Whichever’s easiest.” “Either is no problem.” “What are you having?” “Tea.” “OK, then I’ll have tea.” “It’s no problem to make coffee.” “Are you sure?” “100%” “OK, I’ll have coffee.” “And would you like to stay for dinner?” “No, I better not, thanks anyway.” “Are you sure?” “I wouldn’t want to impose.” “It’s no trouble at all.” “I shouldn’t really.” “It’d be my pleasure.” “Are you sure?” “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.” “OK, thanks.” If such simple questions cause so much anxiety, it’s little wonder larger questions remain untouched. But though it’s often a struggle, I’m gradually learning to be comfortable with my opinions, or with my not having an opinion. So you’d better not ask me to dinner just to be polite, and don’t bother asking me whether you should wear brown shoes or black.
Despite David and I being unable to maintain a cordial co-operative working relationship, we were both determined to ensure this failure didn’t result in the failure of our friendship. So, after much discussion, we reached the conclusion that now that the complicated sides had been clad, there was no reason we couldn’t work independently of each other, providing assistance only when required. This would involve a degree of extra walking (since we had two hammers but only one of everything else), but it seemed like the most amenable solution. So while David finished the bathroom wall, I finished the verandah floor, thereby establishing a solid platform from which we could launch our assault on the last unclad wall.
Each board was the same length, so we cut enough boards to complete the entire front, and started cladding from opposite ends, averting the need for either of us to witness the other’s exasperating sawmanship. The only minor complication during this entire process was the constant need to avoid standing on Spindle who refused to move off ‘his’ stool, and continued sleeping between my feet as I worked.
With a minimum of fuss or delay, the house was soon officially (apart from the openings for the windows and doors, and disregarding the fact the floor was little more than joists and emptiness) closed in.
There was now plenty of storage room for timber slowly seasoning in the increasing frosts and rain, and for the bloated pink batt dummies which had been occupying the corner of the shed for the past few weeks.
The house still wasn’t entirely weatherproof. The windows were covered with taut panes of plastic, and the gaping door wound was temporarily healed with a plywood bandage, but the tongue and groove ceiling still occasionally trickled a cold tear down its cheek, and the wind still swept the floor with dust.
But I knew the days of stormy internal weather were rapidly drawing to a close. So let the wind have one last waltz inside. Let one more tear pass through my home. Soon there would be no more tears. Soon the dancefloor would hum with the whirling rhythms of life.
I had already cried enough, and I had been a wallflower too long.
My eyes were now filled with laughter.
And my feet were tapping impatiently on the earthy floor.

Closing In, Opening Up IV

Gossip is the linchpin of rural communities, so it didn’t take long before word of the dramatic events at the Minzion had filtered through into local consciousness. auddenly I was no longer the reclusive stranger building a controversial house at the Lonely Graves turnoff (though in the local farmer’s vernacular my property was still “Cassidy’s Place”, twelve years since Cassidy had last stepped foot inside the gate ... who said farmers were slow?), I was the deserted husband struggling valiantly to fend for himself. my weekly excursions to Faigans (the local store) for groceries and mail were an opportunity for the community to gauge how well I was coping with my setback.
My entrance was greeted with consoling smiles and small talk. Other shoppers shrank apologetically away as I cruised the aisles (all two of them). My groceries were scrutinised and their nutritional value assessed. (Was there a ledger somewhere recording my decline into unhealth? Would mutton casseroles and pavlovas magically appear at the front gate once I reached my nutritional nadir, or would the consequences of my vitamin deprivation be summoned to scare the village children?) No matter how extravagant the contents of my basket, they always seemed to spell ‘bachelor food’.
Food has always been important to me. I began cooking for myself when I became a vegan at eighteen. At first it was out of nutritional necessity - my father has never been a vegetable disciple, and his girlfriend’s rissoles are cannonballs fired across the bows of good health. Then economic necessity - my traveller’s budget barely extended beyond pasta and vegetables, occasionally stretching to a pita gyros or roadside bratwurst ... veganism having been abandoned at Brisbane airport.
Later, when it was no longer necessary, out of enjoyment. Though Marion had been nominally in charge in the kitchen - mainly because she’s fussier than I am - we’d always cooked together. So, over the years I’d become adept at replicating all her recipes, with my own modifications. Though I’d dropped a few items from the menu and increased the frequency of others, Marion’s departure had had minimal impact on my diet.
Now that I was a bachelor, however, sympathy seemed to trigger a form of maternal blindness. My basket was no longer overflowing with colourful culinary potential, it was weighed down by the bleak survival rations of the single man. The regiment of fresh produce, grains and pulses, canned and packaged goods, imported vinegars and oils defeated by the single can of baked beans, the dozen eggs, the loaf of bread ...
But there’s no such thing as ‘spinster food’. For a woman, the beans would be evidence of a well-stocked larder, the eggs of home-baking and Women’s Division morning teas, and the bread... well, the menfolk do like their sandwiches. But in a man’s hands, they’re symbols of laziness and ineptitude, of fry-ups and TV dinners, of mother’s boys, of refrigerator grazing and take-aways, of just surviving until another woman comes along.
Before I’d become afflicted, I’d clocked up thousands of miles on a heavily-laden tandem, but now people began offering to drive my groceries home as though fearful of discovering me overturned in a ditch, having finally succumbed to the combined effects of vitamin deficiency and love deprivation.
Bachelorhood was not only a debilitating condition, but a highly contagious one. It is, after all, primarily a social disease, and a fallen man is often a harbinger of disharmony and a purveyor of unease. At first there are consolation dinners and sympathy teas, but while he maintains his stoic silence, his reputation is slowly crippled by the poisoned barbs of the prosecution’s half-truths. Commiseration begins to sour as his fevered demands disrupt and contaminate his friends’ lives, until their beleaguered wives have no option but to insist the diseased limb be amputated from their lives.
You could see the cliques of stricken men huddled around beer-sticky tables at the bistro on Friday night, eating fish and chips disguised as a meal, scantily clad in a parsley g-string. (The fish and chips, not the bachelors.) You could hear them yapping like an abandoned litter, greeting the cook with drooling gratitude, a surrogate mother sprinkling salty affection across their plates. And when, late one night, the beer finally begins to speak of injustice, of loneliness and fear, there are no longer sober ears to hear their pleas.
Of course there was no way to prevent gossip from spreading. No tourniquet of silence would stem the flow of falsehoods. But I wasn’t about to let gossip cast me in the role of either villain or victim. Of sinner or saint. I didn’t want sympathy or scorn, and I wasn’t looking for a quick cure in the shape of ‘a good woman’. I just wanted to be allowed to continue living in peace, and to continue building my house.
Truth is weightless in the rarefied air of rumour. Fact and fiction are two kites carried on the winds of hearsay, the distance they travel depending not on their ballast of truth, but on the length of their string. Each repetition left undisputed unwinds another coil of validity, allowing one version of reality to soar towards acceptance. So I began handing out my own sanitised, suitable-for-public-consumption version of events to anyone who’d listen, filling the sky with low-flying counter-gossip. Counter gossip being opposing gossip, not gossip passed over the counter, though in Millers Flat, it’s often the same thing.
Does gossip ever have a physical source? Nobody ever claims “Someone told me ...”, it’s always “I hear ...”, as though the information had been relayed by Indian tom-toms, or read like smoke signals in the still evening air. There’s no smoke without fire, and the worst fires give the most smoke. Perhaps that’s just the nature of information. Why bother trying to distinguish a reliable source from all those other cranks and liars, when they can all wear an expert’s hat? Why bother trying to sift facts from old wives’ tales, when both can be disguised as truth? After all, truth is like a first-past-the-post political system - it’s supposed to be democratic, but the majority view doesn’t necessarily win against those of a self-serving minority, and it’s heavily weighted in favour of maintaining the status quo.
Not that I was aware of any gossip. Apart from my weekly ride to the store and the occasional brief gateside chat with neighbouring farmers as they sat in their four-wheel drives waiting for their idle flocks to climb the hill heading up to Beaumont Station, I had little contact with the outside world.
I could add that the outside world also had little contact with me. My only regular visitors were my neighbour’s cows stampeding across the creek looking for grass and shade. Not that I could blame them. My ungrazed paddock, lush with juicy clover and striped poplar shadows, must have seemed like a mirage after days in their bare, treeless desert parched by the summer sun. Incentive enough for them to stumble up the steep, muddy bank and over a sagging strand of barbed wire. And they weren’t the most welcome of visitors, nor the most circumspect.
A bull in a china shop has nothing on a herd of famished cattle in a newly-treed field. Within an hour they’d trampled a destructive path from the farthest point in the bottom paddock to the rocky knoll in the uppermost corner, casually snapping off branches and uprooting trees ... which isn’t intended to over-dramatise their immense strength, because they’re not elephants, it’s just that my trees were only 30 centimetres high at the time.
Later, when I complained to their owner, he insisted it was my responsibility to keep them out. Although I didn’t know he was lying at the time (though perhaps ‘lying’ is a little harsh, because it’s possible that he actually believes it’s true - there is, after all, the law and country law which, when translated, roughly means those practices farmers have gotten away with for years), I argued that it seemed a trifle unfair that those without stock should incur fencing expenses rather than those with stock. Would he remain loyal to this principle if I started farming kangaroos?
He shrugged it off - he was sorry about my trees, but his stock needed water, and it was ... a sudden commotion on the bridge, one of his bulls has escaped and is lumbering towards freedom ... my responsibility ... his dogs leap from the ute and race after the snorting beast, harrying it into a corner ... to keep ... the bull’s head pendulums ponderously, then it turns, and before my incredulous eyes, hoists itself upwards and crashes over the fence ... them out. (Of course, when a neighbour’s bungled burn-off turned his retirement forest into charcoal, I’m sure he berated himself for not having adequate fencing to keep the fire out.)
But no visitors meant no interruptions. Even the building inspector stayed away, leaving me free to devote every moment of sunlight to completing the house. Which, at this point, meant the ceiling.

Closing In, Opening Up III

A hectic couple of days followed. To gather together all the paperwork necessary to get married in Germany was going to take a team of researchers a lifetime (and where was I going to get a police certificate to say I wasn’t a known criminal?), but we could get married within three days across the border in Denmark. (In fact, a handful of border villages relied heavily on the marriage industry for generating revenue.) Despite the unfairness of the situation, it seemed like the only solution. Then Marion’s boss suggested we should apply for an exemption because it was unfair. A long chain of phonecalls later, and we ended up being put through to the Interior Minister’s office, where a sympathetic soul agreed to argue our case. A day later, I had my visa.
But suddenly the issue of marriage was on the agenda. Although we were both ambivalent towards this archaic institution, we recognised that life would be so much easier if we were married, whether we decided to live in Germany or Australia (because when it comes to international relationships, de facto is no more than de fictiono). We were committed to our relationship, marriage or not. We didn’t need a formal contract, but if it helped simplify our future ...
By now we were also starting to get itchy feet, and suddenly the concept of a wedding began to evolve into something more. Not only would we get married, but we’d quit our jobs, cancel our lease and leave the country on an epic cycling-tour-cum-honeymoon - all in one weekend! Our marriage would signal a new start, a new life, freedom. We’d give up everything and start afresh.
(But what was wrong with our old life? We were happy. We had fulfilling jobs, well-paid jobs. A bright future stretched out before us. So why did we have this sudden urge to abandon it all? Perhaps we valued too little what we had. Perhaps we valued too much what we didn’t have. We were giving up a home, but we believed our home was anywhere we were together. We were giving up almost everything, yet we believed we needed nothing but each other. A whole, complex, world suddenly reduced to just us. Was this where it all began to unravel? Was life simply too much of a burden for two people, alone, to bear?)
The wedding, in June, went without a hitch (though we both got hitched). It was a standard registry office ceremony, with Marion’s brother Sven, and Raene acting as witnesses. Well, perhaps not entirely standard. After all, we did turn up on our bicycles after a mad sprint through the rain (Marion dashing into a florist to pick up a wedding bouquet. “What colour’s the bride’s dress?” the florist asked. “Like this,” Marion said, lifting up her rain-jacket and untucking her dress from inside her rainpants...), and Sven and I did knock our heads together as we sat down in front of the celebrant, and although Raene didn’t understand a word of German she did manage to respond at the right moment (and so avoiding the necessity of having to find another witness - German authorities are adamant a witness should actually understand a little of what they’re witnessing), and there was an awkward silence when the celebrant insisted that I repeat my affirmation (I was, naturally, expecting something along the lines of “I do”, so was slightly taken aback when I was suddenly instructed to simply say “Ja”. After pausing a moment to consider whether I’d understood correctly, I finally managed to stammer “Ja” - a little uncertainly, I admit, since I was still half convinced there had to be more to it than that. But that wasn’t good enough for the celebrant, because the rules specified the “Ja” must be in a loud and clear voice... so I had to say it again, in a loud, clear voice which, to my ears, sounded like Basil Fawlty impersonating the Kaiser. Of course Marion will never forgive me for this faux pas - and in her version there’s a shrug and an exhalation of uncertainty before my “Ja” - claiming it sounded more like a “Why not?” or “I suppose so” than a definite “Yes”). But, all-in-all, a straightforward ceremony.
Then it was onto the reception. Because we were leaving two days later, we opted for a BYO affair (which was almost unheard of in Germany where having a party means providing everything, and on your birthday you are supposed to bring the cake and buy everyone drinks), and though there was much consternation from Marion’s relatives (a number of whom even refused to turn up to such an uncivilised event), it met with an otherwise enthusiastic response. Over 100 people squeezed into the hall (supplied by Marion’s employer), with live music (compliments of Marion’s father and Sven, who was also the band’s drummer), a table reminiscent of a banquet at Camelot, with enough wine and beer to lubricate the rustiest social machine. Our entire outlay had been 23DM (a last minute expense due to an organisational oversight - nobody had been assigned to supply soft drinks), but Marion’s relatives felt uncomfortable about bringing only food, so they brought money as well. So no matter what the future held, we would always be able to claim that our wedding was, at least on one level, a profitable experience.
Friends from all over Europe had also made the journey to Offenbach, which added an international flavour to the festivities, but also meant a full house for our final few days in our apartment. Two days in which we had to clean and vacate the premises (moving all the furniture to Sven’s new-and-luckily-unfurnished apartment), organise the bond return and fulfil our tenantic obligations... and we still hadn’t tried to pack our bikes yet.
So it was a relief when Monday morning arrived and we wobbled our way to Frankfurt railway station in the first straggling peak hour traffic. We didn’t want to set out from Offenbach in case we were tempted to turn around at the first hill, so we’d decided to catch a train to the Danish border and head north to Norway. And as we heaved our bikes into the goods carriage, we realised just how wise our decision had been. We had far too much gear, almost too much for the bikes to handle (we’d even had to tie plastic bags full of stuff to the carriers because there was simply no room for them), and it would have been tempting to ride back to Sven’s apartment and drop it off, maybe even stay a few days ... We needed to do some serious sorting, but we’d have plenty of time for sorting once we were away from here. Once we were alone ...
Now, after five years of travelling together, five years of just us, together, five years almost never apart, I was alone. Half a person with half a life ... and a half-finished house. The entire fabric of my existence had been torn in two, ripped into tiny pieces. With only such threadbare emotional rags remaining, how was I ever supposed to keep warm?
For days I sat by the Minzion, contemplating the flow of water, listening to its song, its consoling rhythm of words - accomplices in this strange solitude. What did it care for the problems of we stones sitting immovable, unmoved, along its banks? Problems were mere pebbles. Dropped into the stream, they cast ripples across the surface for but a brief moment, before falling, silently, away.
Marion and I.
US. Two lives sewn together to form a single garment. Two lives torn apart. How could a feeble S hope to survive alone?
But I wasn’t an S, I was an I. ME. No matter how much we believed in our unity, our oneness, we’d never been simply two halves of a single, separate whole. We were two pieces of a complex tapestry, two patches woven together, for a time, in a jumbled patchwork of interwoven lives. The threads linking us to every other patch formed the web at whose centre the many-legged I sat. They were as important as those fine stitches holding US together, yet for five years we’d ignored everything but US, sewing our lives together, tighter and tighter, each new stitch slowly compromising the integrity of the seam. Until, finally it separated, torn apart by a single, gentle tug. Parting either side of the overwrought seam, a narrow strip of our selves still attached, leaving a torn, ragged edge with so many loose ends.
I suddenly realised, sitting there by the Minzion, that I would survive. If I could build a house, I could certainly rebuild a neglected ME, a neglected life. It was, perhaps, still shaky from its ordeal, but it wasn’t yet derelict. And I wasn’t quite ready to hang out the ‘CONDEMNED’ sign.
But what state was it really in? How could I know when I’d never taken the time to inspect it thoroughly? The foundations seemed solid. The exterior seemed sturdy, weathering nicely, taking on a life-stained polish as the years battered its sides. So perhaps I should simply leave it at that. Did I really want to peel back the weatherboards and poke around the framing, the skeleton supporting the self? It had managed to withstand tornadoes and floods, so did it matter if it might be slowly crumbling from within, so many woodworm memories gnawing away, turning everything to dust?
Yes, it mattered. I wasn’t some real estate agent or a building inspector of the soul, and I wasn’t building a life for someone else. This was my life. This was ME. I wanted to make it as solid as I possibly could. So there would be no cutting corners, no filling cracks with putty, no painting over defects. I was going to strip it down to the bare timber, lift the floors, expose the beams and poke around in every dusty nook and cranny.
Marion was generous, kind, honest, open, giving ... everyone agreed. But she was now giving her love to someone else. She wouldn’t have become depressed if I had given her hope. She wouldn’t have gone if I’d given her a reason to stay. She wouldn’t have sought happiness elsewhere if I’d only given her what she needed. Did I drive her away? Was I so selfish, so dishonest, so detached, so ungiving that she was finally forced to look elsewhere? What darkness possibly lay within?
But there was no darkly creeping stain. No dry-rot of the soul. No more, at least, than in every one of us. A handyman special with many faults, so many weaknesses, yet nothing terminal, no fatal flaw which couldn’t be repaired or strengthened. A do-it-yourselfer with many positive features which, though tarnished and dusty with neglect, could be made to shine with lots of TLC and elbow grease. And although I never found the main switch of illumination, there were no dark passages I feared to enter, and no scratching whispers scuttling into the shadows as I passed.
And somewhere along the way I realised I wasn’t to blame for Marion’s leaving. Neither of us were responsible. Both of us were responsible. What I seemed, what I had become, wasn’t what I was, what I wanted to be. The same was true for Marion. The sticky threads of US had ensnared us both, manoeuvring us like puppets in a tragic passion play, coercing us to play many roles, to don many disguises, to repeat so many tired scripts, over and over, until we could no longer identify ourselves among the cast. And suddenly WE - Marion and I - were no longer the stars. OUR parts had been reduced to fleeting cameos, replaced by the multi-talented, the ever-flexible, the self-serving, the non-existent US.
Now there was no more US, there was just me. A cast of one. It would be the most challenging role I would ever play, yet an inestimably rewarding one too. A continuous impromptu performance with no scripts, no rehearsals, just me, alone on the stage, standing naked before the world. There would be no rave reviews or polite applause from the ever-vigilant critic standing in the shadows.
So - LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!

Closing In, Opening Up II

I’ve never been keen on travel guides. Not that I object to the concept - and I read the appropriate sections when I get the chance - but their relative value seems outweighed by their sheer size, and the arbitrary nature of much of the information. It’s better to carry an extra pair of socks than unreliable advice. So I didn’t know that Doolin was a village renowned for its music, or that it was the closest village to the majestic Cliffs of Moher and an easy jumping off point to explore the standing stones and sculptured rockscapes of The Burren. All I knew when I booked into the hostel (creatively called Doolin Hostel, and the only one open at that time of year) was what I could see - a narrow ribbon of road skirting frost-tufted fields and a string of pearly houses gently unravelling into the sea.
The hostel was typical of Ireland - a whitewashed sod cottage with an open turf (peat) fire... and freezing cold. The fire, though stacked high with turf, hardly warmed the earthy sausage-logs, leaving you the difficult choice between sitting with a frozen back, or standing to adopt a rotisserie approach and slowly revolving in front of the smoky flicker.
Hostel owners seem to believe backpackers value experience over warmth. So while we struggled to coax lazy flames from the usually damp peat - receiving more warmth from carrying the turf than from burning it - they would invariably be sweating in front of a glowing coal sun. The discrepancy was always greatest in the YHA hostels, where wardens would flash smiling signals through foggy windows to let you know they weren’t opening the doors before five o’clock, no matter how miserable you looked standing saturated beneath that tree ... even when the hostel was twenty miles from the nearest village and you were the only guest. But they happily took your money once you discovered “We’re just baking potatoes, would you like one?” is actually wardenesque for “Do you want to buy an outrageously expensive baked potato?” And in the morning you’d still have to Mister Sheen the banisters or try to polish the swinging glass door in the foyer during the check-out rush.
After a few days exploring the local area, I decided this was a place I could imagine staying for a while. Apart from the area’s natural beauty, there was a regular trickle of backpackers passing through, and the local pub, Connolly’s, was everything an Irish pub should be - warm and cosy, filled with cloth-capped old men and music on those rare nights when the old men felt like playing (and they always felt like playing if there was a cold Guinness on offer). So I quizzed Paddy, the hostel owner, about local employment opportunities, and he eventually offered me a job painting the hostel for the grand sum of 25 Punt a week plus a pint of fresh milk per day. I accepted. The next day I began painting everything in pastel shades of yellow and green.
So the stage was now set. Coincidence had brought me here, when I’d been heading somewhere else. Coincidence now kept me here, when I should have been continuing my journey elsewhere.
A few days later I was sitting by the fire reading when Marion walked in... with her boyfriend, Arne. Not that I paid much attention at the time (new people had come and gone almost every night, so it didn’t pay to get too quickly attached to strangers), but I did notice her sparkling glacier-lake eyes and a crooked smile which seemed to generate more heat than the fire. But they weren’t passing through, they’d come to stay a while. Arne was an Ireland fan, and he’d been to Doolin several times to enjoy the music and the atmosphere. Marion had wanted to go skiing in Italy, so she was a little unenthusiastic to start, but was beginning to see its good points.
They stayed a week - a week of excursions and long walks on misty, foam-flecked beaches, music-filled nights at Connolly’s or swirling reels in Lisdoonvarna, steaming porridge and potatoes hauled from the fire, spicy hot whiskeys revealing hidden futures among the cloves, and laughing evenings basking in warm conversation. But soon, too soon, they left. The hostel felt even colder than usual that night, and no matter how high I stoked the fire, there was no heat to be wrung from the soggy turf or from the soggy strangers sitting beside me. But I threw myself into the painting (though not literally) and consoled myself with the thought that I was going to see them again, sooner or later...
...and, as it turned out, I only had to wait three days. After Doolin, everything had seemed pale and lifeless, though neither of them would admit it, and they would have continued north if they hadn’t befriended two backpackers (Rodney, a fellow Brisbanite... but no, I didn’t know him before I left Australia; and Dave, an American) in Galway who were heading south - to Doolin. It was all the excuse they needed to return. And for the next week there was five of us squeezing into Marion’s Renault 4 to drive to the cliffs, or cheering encouragement as Marion danced with a withered grey leprechaun, or stifling our laughter as Rodney almost convinced a young Canadian that AIDS originated in elephants (though I’ll skip the details of his complex theory, especially the bit relating to how the disease spread to humans...).
There was also, to my pleasant surprise, plenty of time alone with Marion - much to Arne’s delight. (He was allergic to any symptom of what he perceived as undue ‘clingyness’. Such symptoms included Marion wanting to spend more than a few hours a week together, or objecting when he spent the night at one of his myriad ex-girlfriends’ apartments.) He wanted an open relationship between independent, self-sufficient individuals, and for once, Marion was quite happy to ‘do her own thing’ ... as long as it included me.
One night we even stayed up to watch the sunrise, tramping through a cow paddock and crouching beside each other in the shelter of a mossy stone wall as the darkness slowly dissolved around us. It could have been a romantic moment if Rodney hadn’t accompanied us (though we certainly didn’t begrudge his company), or if he hadn’t discovered he had so much in common with the cows. Their mutually (moo-tually?) enraptured moo-ing wasn’t exactly a dawn chorus to inspire romance. (Not so much a mood enhancement as a moo-ed interruption.) And besides, romance was the last thing I was looking for. So it was with mixed emotions that I watched them leave a few days later.
Two months later Raene and I met up again and both agreed it was time to head south again for a while. We looked for cheap flights to Spain or Portugal in London, but even the cheapest flight seemed an unwarranted extravagance, so we decided to hitch. Across the channel to visit friends in Belgium and to pick up the necessary visas. But trying to get a visa from the French embassy in Brussels was like trying to get pate from a live goose, so we opted to head to Turkey instead... stopping along the way to visit Marion and Arne.
Marion and I spent the next week talking and talking well into the early hours of each morning, continuing long after Raene had retired to the spare room (actually the storage room, since it was only a one-room apartment), and Arne had made a fleeting appearance. There seemed so much we wanted to say, so much we needed to say to each other, that it was simply impossible to stop until everything had been said. Until exhaustion began mugging each thought before it could take flight into words, and we had to surrender to sleep.
We knew we couldn’t maintain this level of intimacy without something happening. Our friendship had swollen with every word, every whisper of laughter, inflating like an emotional Zeppelin. I could feel it, now, tugging against its heavy anchor of indecision and fear. If I released the cables it would soar on the exhilarating winds, rising higher and higher, reaching heights as yet unimagined... but would it eventually crash into a mountain of doubt and despair, leaving only twisted wreckage and crumpled memories? But if I tried to deflate it, to pile on more ballast and keep it hovering sedately overhead, perhaps it would eventually collapse beneath the weight of its own sad inertia. I wanted to release it, but my hand was gripped firmly around the mooring line and refused to let go.
Until, early one morning as we reached another moment where words seemed too flimsy to carry the weight of meaning, Marion read a poem she’d written about me (well, about waiting for me). Suddenly I knew the feelings I had for her (she was wonderful, generous, beautiful, kind, funny ... perfect, in other words) were reciprocated... except, perhaps, for the beautiful part. Finally I could let go.
“I never had a girlfriend before,” I stammered as the enormity of the moment overwhelmed me. I’m still slightly embarrassed by my lack of worldliness at that moment. Was this the best I could come up with? If I’d only had a script and a few good rehearsals before a competent director, I could have been as nonchalant as Richard Gere. I could have said something seductive. Something cool. Something at least a little more memorable. Instead, I’d blurted out the innocent truth. What kind of a start to a relationship was that?
But it was the truth. I don’t know whether it was meant as a warning, or a plea for understanding, but it was the first thought which came into my head. Perhaps I was just letting Marion know that the ball was firmly in her court, that the next move was going to have to be hers, or there’d be no moves whatsoever. But Marion was a good mover, and she moved closer.
There followed joyful days. Each moment together brought new discoveries and a deepening contentment. I was in love! In love with Marion. In love with the world. In love with life.
There followed passion-filled nights. Of course I had nothing to compare it with - no ancient wisdom passed down from my father (in my family, sex was never mentioned, let alone the intricacies of relationships), no helpful institutional education (Banyo High School was hardly a holy shrine of late-70’s enlightenment), only a handful of movies, and the few furtive passages from The Joy of Sex Cameron got for his 21st birthday (from friends, not my parents ... so maybe I’d just been hanging around with the ‘wrong’ crowd?) - but once I stopped acting as though we were in some cheap Hollywood drama and began responding naturally, instinctively, it was wonderful.
Virtual reality, hyper reality. Why is reality never enough? It has to be super-charged, superfast, superloud, with a soundtrack and special effects. We’re too busy making movies instead of making love. Blockbuster sex full of ineffectual licking and groaning, but it only heightens our sense of unreality. How come Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger never ended up with a mouthful of short and curlies? No wonder we’re so easily disappointed. No wonder we’re all addicted to the lives of the rich and famous - surely they’re enjoying all this groaning and licking! If only we were richer or more attractive or funnier or more experienced - if we only had more - then we’d have a million dollar smile on our faces too. We’re forever stumbling through ignorant darkness across frozen fields of loneliness, searching for light in the blinding pyres of passion, searching for warmth in the consuming flames of lust. But it’s the constant flame which gives most light, the steady fire which gives most heat. Without the emotional and spiritual connection, sex remains just so much sweaty moaning.
I wanted to stay there ... forever, but I’d promised to travel south with Raene. Though I didn’t want to leave, I also thought leaving wasn’t such a bad idea. It would give us some distance, some perspective. I’d accompany Raene through the Eastern Bloc and meet Marion in Yugoslavia or Greece during her holidays.
After a long farewell at the autobahn petrol station, we headed south. But hitching was slow, and it took us all day to get to Munich. The success of hitching always seems to depend on your mood. The more optimistic and positive you are, the easier the rides. Or is it just that it all seems so much easier when you’re feeling good? I called Marion from Munich, secretly hoping she’d urge me to return, but she seemed somehow remote, wary... or maybe I was just misinterpreting it? Then we headed to Austria.
The route between Munich and Austria is a hitching blackspot of universal proportions. I’ve done it eight or nine times - in both directions - and my record is eight hours for the 135 kilometres. This time proved no exception, and by the time we arrived in Innsbruck, we were both exhausted.
I’d had enough. All I wanted to do was return to Marion. I called to ask her thoughts on the idea, and though she still seemed wary, she agreed. So after seeing Raene safely off on the early morning train to Greece, I walked out to the beginning of the northern motorway. I hoped the romantic nature of my journey (I was travelling from the land of Mozart along Germany’s famous ‘romantic street’ in order to live happily ever after with the love of my life) would prove a lucky talisman. (After all, didn’t Doris Day, no less, claim everybody loved a lover?)
But Austrians care as little for romance as they do for hitchers, and it took almost an entire day just to leave Austria. For much of the day I found myself walking along deserted back roads after some helpful soul had dropped me off on a ghost exit.
(I’ve become distrusting of anyone who claims to know a “good hitching spot”, because it inevitably turns out to be some weed-veined byway which hasn’t been used since the Nazi Occupation, or in the middle of a motorway junction where the slowest cars are travelling at 200km/h, except for the police car which cruises past to eject you into the forest - Do they think I want to be there? - and the next village is more than thirty kilometres away through crocodile-infested swamp ... But worst of all, you have to smile politely and thank them for their generosity, which feels very much like thanking Satan for delivering you to Hell).
Then I crossed at a border post normally reserved for smugglers and draft-dodgers, walked five kilometres to the first petrol station on the German side (always an encouraging development), then caught an interminable string of short lifts (none further than the next petrol station), finally climbing through Marion’s apartment window just after midnight (luckily the last lift had dropped me at the door) on the first of May. After she’d overcome her initial shock (I’d tried the buzzer but she was in the shower and hadn’t heard me, so she thought someone was breaking in), we fell into each others’ arms and ...
Hmmm, well, basically we weren’t out of each others’ sight for more than a couple of days after that. We spent long weekends exploring Paris and Amsterdam, New Year in Austria, outdoor pubs, winebars, long walks through the forest, swimming in a local waterhole, and generally developing a permanent, fulfilling, ecstatically happy relationship. We never argued (after I stopped leaving ‘brake-stripes’ in the toilet). We never disagreed about anything important. Life was truly carefree.
Of course I had a few visa problems - Germany wouldn’t be Germany without bureaucracy, the cornerstone of ‘efficiency’. I couldn’t get a visa unless I had a job. I couldn’t get a job unless I had a work permit. And I couldn’t get a work permit unless I found a job no German could do (understandable in a country which grants citizenship according to ‘blood lines’ - no German blood, no citizenship, no matter how many generations you live there). So I found a job teaching English in a private language school which only employed ‘native’ English speakers (which happened to be my only qualification for the job), but my application was turned down. I appealed and my hopeful employer protested (they were desperate for teachers, and I’d not only completed the intensive week-long instruction course - where we mainly discussed the World Cup - but had already been working ‘under-the-table’ for a month, so they were keen to make it official), and two weeks later I had my work permit.
I returned to the immigration department for my visa. Surely it was a mere formality ... so why were they ushering me into a back room? Because, a fuming bureaucrat tersely informed me, it was illegal for me to have a work permit when I didn’t even have a visa! How can I work when I’m not allowed to stay? I could be deported. I could be thrown in jail. But he was in a good mood, so he’d give me three days to leave the country instead!
Pale and disbelieving, I left and wandered into Marion’s office. She was incredulous - surely I must have misunderstood ...
But there was no misunderstanding. The bureaucrat was adamant.
OK, we’d get married. (Although we’d never actually discussed marriage, it seemed an entirely natural - and ultimately necessary - progression.)
The bureaucrat told us he frowned upon marriages of convenience.
We protested it may be a convenient marriage, but it certainly wasn’t a marriage of convenience.
He dismissed us. As long as I left the country within three days, he didn’t care what we did.