Building a house is very much like a jigsaw puzzle, or playing with Lego. It’s simply a matter of finishing one stage at a time, one on top of the other.
The concrete block was completed in one afternoon, with the help of friends and a concrete mixer. There’s nothing exciting about concreting, so I won’t go into any further details. Except to add that I’m a great believer in contributing some natural ingredients. Concrete is, after all, just artificial stone, so why not add some of the real thing? It not only saves time and effort, but money as well.
Then it was onto the piles. Piling is very much like amateur Caber Tossing, especially when you’re doing it by yourself. Lifting a 150mm wide by 2880mm long tree trunk into a 300mm wide hole by yourself, isn’t for the faint-hearted (or the splinter-shy, for that matter). It’s all a question of balance (which allows you to quickly determine the point at which the pile will maintain its trembling equilibrium until you’ve managed to sufficiently brace it), nimble-footedness (which allows you to avoid being crushed beneath a pile you thought would maintain its trembling equilibrium) and perseverance (which stops you from simply strapping all your piles together into a makeshift raft and floating away down the river). Unfortunately, I’m not overly endowed with the first two of these attributes, so they were often replaced by simple brute force and a lot of hectic scampering from side-to-side.
But every pile has to stand up eventually ... one way or another. Once it’s in and sitting nicely, it can then be gently nudged into alignment - the centre of the pile should correspond exactly to the corner of the house (at the intersection of two strings) or some other marker along the string; it should be vertical (though it’s often a question of guesswork since most piles aren’t very straight); and the top of each pile should be level with the string (though a few swipes of the saw can make any pile level). Then it has to be securely braced so that it will remain in perfect alignment until the concrete sets.
Once the concrete has set, it’s time for the bearers. As the name suggests, their main function is to bear the weight of the house. So they’re reasonably heavy. Running across the bearers, were rows of joists which create the framework upon which to eventually attach the floor. In no time at all, the foundations were complete.
But rather than feeling satisfied with my physical efforts and motivated by the progress we were making, I began to become increasingly depressed and withdrawn, though I explained it away with faithful standbys - “I’m just tired” and “I’m just thinking”. We’d embarked on one of the most important journeys of our shared lives, yet neither of us were feeling fulfilled or content. What was going wrong?
It was a bewildering time.
For me, it stemmed from the simple fact that it wasn’t us making progress, it was me. I’d taken the plunge in good faith, but now that I was in it up to my eyeballs, I’d suddenly discovered I was swimming alone. I was doing all the work. I was doing all the planning and dreaming and deciding. And, on the one hand, I was happy to do it. I was willing to shoulder the burden if, in the end, our life together could be perfect. I began to suspect all my efforts would ultimately prove futile, because there wasn’t going to be any us.
For Marion, it stemmed from the fact that the whole project was simply too big for her, too scary. She didn’t understand building because she didn’t want to understand, so she didn’t believe we could do it. Now that we’d started, she’d again begun to suspect she didn’t want to even be here. We hadn’t resolved the issue, we’d just buried it beneath hopes and dreams. So she’d responded by escaping into meaningless work. As long as she didn’t see the house, she didn’t have to think about the house. As long as she was meeting new people, she didn’t have to face the fear that being alone with me wasn’t enough.
I imagined the marriage test dummies recreating our relationship. Unlike their counterparts in the accident prevention branch, it’s the absence of momentum which is fatal. Crashing into inertia is far more deadly than the speed wobbles. Momentum, in any direction, is vital. The relationship must be getting somewhere - developing, moving forward, deepening, enriching itself.
For the last year (perhaps longer), our relationship had stopped developing. We’d fooled ourselves into thinking we were getting somewhere simply by virtue of the number of miles we’d travelled, by the things we were doing. We’d kept moving, filling our lives with plans, filling our future with dreams, and we hadn’t taken the time to look at ourselves, or each other, afresh. We’d made decisions based on what we believed each other wanted, without deciding what we each wanted as individuals.
Eery new decision, every well-meaning but false decision we’d made had simply made things worse. We’d found a home, when we really just needed a place to stand still for a while. We were locals in a place where we never wanted to be locals. We were living in the country, not because we were country people, but because we each thought that was where the other wanted to live. We were building an entire future without knowing whether we had a future... together.
Now we seemed locked on a course which neither of us wanted, but from which neither of us could deviate.
I was determined to finish the house. I convinced myself that if I just kept going, if we could just hold on long enough to be able to see our future, things would work out. It all sounded very noble. But in reality, it was pure stubbornness. I’m a compulsive finisher. Once I start, I’ll push on to the end, whether it’s eating a packet of chips or building a house. To not finish was to fail. It didn’t matter how I finished, as long as I did finish. We would sort our lives out after the house was finished. Until then, I would simply ignore our problems, and maybe they’d go away ...
But they didn’t go away.
Marion did.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Foundations for Divorce II
Before we’d fled to Europe, we’d visited a sawmill in Tapanui to get a rough idea of the costs involved. We described our house, and the owner quickly calculated a figure around $4000. So we had no hesitation to return to Tapanui, hand over the specifications, and simply wait for them to send us the timber we needed. No quotes required. (What was a few thousand dollars here or there?)
Of course we were being lazy. We should have worked out our own estimates. We should have compared quotes. But we were novices, still overwhelmed by the strange language of lumber, still overwhelmed by our gall in thinking we could build a house. Maybe everyone else was right - maybe we should get a professional in to do the foundations, maybe we should get the framing and roof trusses ready-made, maybe we should buy a kit-set home instead of this complex extravagance, maybe we should settle for doing just some of it ourselves. It would be nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, we were in a hurry ...
Luckily, the manager wasn’t in a hurry. He persuaded us the best approach was to wait for their quote and go from there.
Three days later we had our quote - $27,345... just for the timber!!
Maybe we should ask around a bit after all ...
That meant we had to do our own estimates. To do that, we’d have to unravel the cryptic codes of buildspeak.
I delved into the strange realm of timber terms, treatments and grades. I learnt the true significance of the mystical H’s, all the way from H1 to H5, though I never met an elusive H2. The higher the number the more rot-proof the timber, and the more toxic the treatment chemicals used. What I didn’t realise at the time, and what nobody bothered to tell me, was that all the external timber didn’t have to be H3 tanalised. Some timbers, such as macrocarpa, are quite durable without treatment as long as you oil them every ten years or so.
I learnt the difference between No. 1 Grade and R.S. (which didn’t mean what I first thought it did, and actually meant roughsawn). I discovered that all big pieces weren’t beams, all small pieces weren’t planks, and timber was under no circumstances wood. And, in the end, I had my own estimates. Though, as it turned out, getting what I needed, wasn’t the same as getting enough to do the job. In my desire to be accurate and minimise waste, I’d ignored The Builder’s First Maxim - timber never comes in the right lengths. If witch burnings were still in vogue, I know where we could get some wonderful pyres ...
We sent out our list of requirements to two other sawmills and the two hardware stores in Alexandra. Only the hardware stores responded, asking for an opportunity to quote on the entire job.
A week later we had the winning quote - $15,135.39 for everything - timber, insulation, building paper, bolts, nails ...
Well, perhaps not everything. There was still all the electrical work, plumbing, drainage and windows yet to come, but this would at least get us a complete shell.
The first truckload wouldn’t arrive for two weeks. In the meantime, the site had to be staked out and foundations dug.
The Builder’s Second Maxim is don’t trust your eyes. Eyes are by no means the precision tools we credit them with being - just look at the Sky Tower of Pisa! They’re easily deceived by distractions, contours and plain wishful thinking. Of course, we didn’t know that, so our original sketches were based entirely on a quick perusal with string, measuring tape, thumb and eye. Now that we had to actually start digging, precision counted.
We drove a stake precisely where the south-east corner would be, and attached our line. From there we unwound eleven metres westward and five metres northward, and drove in temporary stakes at the end of each line. By repeating this procedure - 11 metres from our north-east point and 5 metres from our south-west point - we ended up with a perfect ... rhomboid. But it was supposed to be a rectangle with right-angles.
How do you convert a rhomboid into a rectangle? We wandered around aimlessly for a while, strings in hand as though trying to set a record for the largest game of cat’s cradle. Then Archimedes’ law sprang to mind... so we dropped our tools and went for a swim. But it didn’t help. Some people claim every problem can be solved by mathematics, that’s there’s a formula for life itself. Such notions are very much like mathematicians themselves - they may be right, but I certainly don’t like entertaining them! In this case at least, mathematics did prove useful...
Archimedes gave way to Pythagoras. His theorem is one of the few mathematical theorems I can still remember from Grade 6 mathematics - the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square root of the sum of the square of the other two sides. We now had the length of the diagonal. Once our three strings met, we’d have a perfect rectangle ... well, close enough.
We staked our newly-determined corners, and after three further checks, decided they were close enough. The floor area of our house was finally revealed. Shit, it’s big, we thought. It certainly looked huge. We panicked. We didn’t want a palace or an indoor football field. We wanted a cosy, small cottage. We had to change it before it was too late... And that was when Wallace revealed to us The Builder’s Third Maxim - a house always look too big at the foundation stage, too small at the framing stage, and won’t look about right until it’s closed-in. Once you’ve started, don’t panic. If you’ve thought about it carefully beforehand, it’s likely your original concept is the right one. So rely on your initial instinct, and leave the plans alone!
Thus reassured, our next step was to determine the levels. Again we were lazy and tried to take a sighting along our string using a metre-long spirit level ... but then we remembered The Second Maxim, so gave up that idea. Then someone suggested using a water-filled hose, which utilised yet another mathematical principle - that the water inside an open-ended container will find horizontal equilibrium. Sounded easy.
So we bought a long, clear hose, filled it with water, and with our fingers over the ends, walked to our designated stakes. I held my end at the appropriate level against the anchor stake while Marion stood at the other end of the southern wall, lifting her end to an estimated level. Then we let go... and water shot out of Marion’s end like a geyser! She reacted by thrusting her end skyward ... and water began to shoot out of my end! Back and forward, up and down. The process continued for a few minutes before the fluctuations subsided and gradually, with minor adjustments at both ends, we marked off our first true level ...
...and quickly discovered the site was a little steeper than we’d thought. But, never mind. Onward the process went for the remaining two corners, our string rising higher and higher as each new level was determined. Then we double-checked taking levels from opposing corners ... and presto! we had a level string surface outlined in space.
Since then I’ve been onto real building sites and have discovered not everyone uses the same methods as those we employed. Most builders build a solid, square, level wooden frame embracing each corner instead of hammering a thin, wobbly stake into the centre. This means the stake doesn’t have to be moved when you go to dig the pile hole, and allows for simpler measurements and levels to be taken. But that assumes you have enough timber to make a frame and aren’t just improvising with odd pieces of timber and branches you found lying around the property...
The original plans called for a low, concrete wall running the length of the southern wall, but that was no longer going to be possible now that one corner was over a metre aboveground. And to further complicate matters, the north-west corner was going to be well over two metres - which was fine by us, but not by the Building Code. If we couldn’t drop the level below two metres, we would need to follow a complex (expensive) bracing schedule. So an improvised plan had to be quickly drawn.
By twisting the entire house slightly north-west (which meant a repeat of the above performance in its entirety) and substituting the concrete wall for a concrete block under the bathroom (which would then act as an anchor for the rest of the house), Wallace managed to bring the highest corner down to 1.98 metres. So the entire main section of the house would now rest on piles - twenty-five in all, plus seven posts supporting the verandah. There was going to be a lot of digging ...
Marion has never been very good at digging, so she opted to take up an offer of a few weeks work at the orchard grafting trees. I could have used some help, naturally, and we certainly weren’t going to profit from her decision (the married dole is equal to a single orchard wage, especially if you’re not taking advantage of the free accommodation), but we’d quickly realised during the level-finding exercise that this wasn’t going to be one of those times when it was fun working together. This time we had no boss, and the fact we couldn’t simply leave seemed to create a certain amount of tension. Besides, we only had one shovel ...
So while Marion worked, I began the excavations.
Unfortunately, the back corner had slowly submerged into the hillside as the house was swung around to accommodate the structural modifications, until its newly-designated position now lay halfway to China beneath unyielding layers of shale and rock. Over a cubic metre of earth now had to be removed in order to create a level surface from which the bathroom foundations could then be excavated. It was slow, blistering work (though I was regularly lured away by the Minzion’s cool laughter), but the hill gradually succumbed to my sweaty advances, until what was once a gentle grassy contour grazed by sheep, had been transformed into a 4 metres x 2 metres, 60 centimetre deep pit draped with heavy-duty plastic and steel reinforcing mesh.
Then there were the thirty-two post holes to dig - 60 centimetres deep for most, but 90 centimetres deep for the corners! Most of the shallow holes were dug quickly, but on each of the corners, all traces of soil vanished at a depth of half a metre, replaced by the section’s ubiquitous shale. Which meant another week chipping away with a crowbar, centimetre by centimetre. It was mindless physical work, but the time quickly passed.
Then the first truckload of timber arrived ... and it was certainly a load. I’d expected there would be some kind of crane onboard to gently lift my precious timber to the ground, but I was about to learn The Builder’s Fourth Maxim - timbermillers don’t respect timber. There was no crane, just the driver, and I could only watch on in stunned disbelief as the front of the lorry gently lifted skyward, higher and higher. At first nothing moved (a house of timber strapped together makes two very big and very heavy bundles), but as it approached forty-five degrees, the whole load trembled once then began sliding forward in a tumbling, crashing timber avalanche. The longest pieces speared fiercely into the ground sending a shower of splinters shooting heavenward as the air was shattered by the wrenching and groaning of timber under duress. Then the lorry inched forward, sliding out from beneath its burden and allowing the other end to collapse to the ground, leaving a twisted pile of timber in its wake.
It took all morning to re-stack the timber in piles and to assess the damage. (And to get over the shock that the timber had come from the same sawmill we’d gotten our first quote from! How could the hardware store supply everything for several thousand dollars less than the sawmill quoted just for the timber?) Two long verandah poles had split in two, and much of my larch tongue and groove was missing a tongue. The mill would replace any damaged items without question, but it was the principle of their abuse which annoyed me.
While sifting through my stack, I myself contrived The Builder’s Fifth Maxim - sawmillers aren’t the world’s cleverest people. Because included among my house lot (so they obviously knew it was for a house) was a pile of short (and I mean nothing over 65 centimetres) 100 x 100 H4 poles. The size and treatment matched my verandah pole expectations, but as for the lengths ...
Considering H4 implied these posts were going to be embedded in the soil, and that any post embedded in soil would be embedded at least 30 centimetres in the soil, what use were poles less than 30 centimetres long? Then I noticed most of my verandah poles were missing ... or were they? I re-read my order, and upon further reflection, realised the poles were there, at least in spirit. What should have been one pole at 4.64 metres, one pole at 4.31 metres and so on, had been transformed into four poles at 64 centimetres, four poles at 31 centimetres etcetera etcetera. (Naturally the mill sent replacement poles, and decided I could keep the short ones. After all, what use were such short H4 poles? Though I must admit they have come in extremely handy in a variety of applications over the years.)
Which actually brings me to The Builder’s Sixth Maxim - measure all lengths in millimetres. Decimal points don’t seem to be a strong point with sawmillers or hardware guys. They’d much rather measure a 4640 millimetre pole than a 4.64 metre one. So, in respect to this Maxim, I shall attempt to keep all further measurements in millimetres. But the important thing was I had my timber, more or less. Now the real building work could commence.
Of course we were being lazy. We should have worked out our own estimates. We should have compared quotes. But we were novices, still overwhelmed by the strange language of lumber, still overwhelmed by our gall in thinking we could build a house. Maybe everyone else was right - maybe we should get a professional in to do the foundations, maybe we should get the framing and roof trusses ready-made, maybe we should buy a kit-set home instead of this complex extravagance, maybe we should settle for doing just some of it ourselves. It would be nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, we were in a hurry ...
Luckily, the manager wasn’t in a hurry. He persuaded us the best approach was to wait for their quote and go from there.
Three days later we had our quote - $27,345... just for the timber!!
Maybe we should ask around a bit after all ...
That meant we had to do our own estimates. To do that, we’d have to unravel the cryptic codes of buildspeak.
I delved into the strange realm of timber terms, treatments and grades. I learnt the true significance of the mystical H’s, all the way from H1 to H5, though I never met an elusive H2. The higher the number the more rot-proof the timber, and the more toxic the treatment chemicals used. What I didn’t realise at the time, and what nobody bothered to tell me, was that all the external timber didn’t have to be H3 tanalised. Some timbers, such as macrocarpa, are quite durable without treatment as long as you oil them every ten years or so.
I learnt the difference between No. 1 Grade and R.S. (which didn’t mean what I first thought it did, and actually meant roughsawn). I discovered that all big pieces weren’t beams, all small pieces weren’t planks, and timber was under no circumstances wood. And, in the end, I had my own estimates. Though, as it turned out, getting what I needed, wasn’t the same as getting enough to do the job. In my desire to be accurate and minimise waste, I’d ignored The Builder’s First Maxim - timber never comes in the right lengths. If witch burnings were still in vogue, I know where we could get some wonderful pyres ...
We sent out our list of requirements to two other sawmills and the two hardware stores in Alexandra. Only the hardware stores responded, asking for an opportunity to quote on the entire job.
A week later we had the winning quote - $15,135.39 for everything - timber, insulation, building paper, bolts, nails ...
Well, perhaps not everything. There was still all the electrical work, plumbing, drainage and windows yet to come, but this would at least get us a complete shell.
The first truckload wouldn’t arrive for two weeks. In the meantime, the site had to be staked out and foundations dug.
The Builder’s Second Maxim is don’t trust your eyes. Eyes are by no means the precision tools we credit them with being - just look at the Sky Tower of Pisa! They’re easily deceived by distractions, contours and plain wishful thinking. Of course, we didn’t know that, so our original sketches were based entirely on a quick perusal with string, measuring tape, thumb and eye. Now that we had to actually start digging, precision counted.
We drove a stake precisely where the south-east corner would be, and attached our line. From there we unwound eleven metres westward and five metres northward, and drove in temporary stakes at the end of each line. By repeating this procedure - 11 metres from our north-east point and 5 metres from our south-west point - we ended up with a perfect ... rhomboid. But it was supposed to be a rectangle with right-angles.
How do you convert a rhomboid into a rectangle? We wandered around aimlessly for a while, strings in hand as though trying to set a record for the largest game of cat’s cradle. Then Archimedes’ law sprang to mind... so we dropped our tools and went for a swim. But it didn’t help. Some people claim every problem can be solved by mathematics, that’s there’s a formula for life itself. Such notions are very much like mathematicians themselves - they may be right, but I certainly don’t like entertaining them! In this case at least, mathematics did prove useful...
Archimedes gave way to Pythagoras. His theorem is one of the few mathematical theorems I can still remember from Grade 6 mathematics - the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square root of the sum of the square of the other two sides. We now had the length of the diagonal. Once our three strings met, we’d have a perfect rectangle ... well, close enough.
We staked our newly-determined corners, and after three further checks, decided they were close enough. The floor area of our house was finally revealed. Shit, it’s big, we thought. It certainly looked huge. We panicked. We didn’t want a palace or an indoor football field. We wanted a cosy, small cottage. We had to change it before it was too late... And that was when Wallace revealed to us The Builder’s Third Maxim - a house always look too big at the foundation stage, too small at the framing stage, and won’t look about right until it’s closed-in. Once you’ve started, don’t panic. If you’ve thought about it carefully beforehand, it’s likely your original concept is the right one. So rely on your initial instinct, and leave the plans alone!
Thus reassured, our next step was to determine the levels. Again we were lazy and tried to take a sighting along our string using a metre-long spirit level ... but then we remembered The Second Maxim, so gave up that idea. Then someone suggested using a water-filled hose, which utilised yet another mathematical principle - that the water inside an open-ended container will find horizontal equilibrium. Sounded easy.
So we bought a long, clear hose, filled it with water, and with our fingers over the ends, walked to our designated stakes. I held my end at the appropriate level against the anchor stake while Marion stood at the other end of the southern wall, lifting her end to an estimated level. Then we let go... and water shot out of Marion’s end like a geyser! She reacted by thrusting her end skyward ... and water began to shoot out of my end! Back and forward, up and down. The process continued for a few minutes before the fluctuations subsided and gradually, with minor adjustments at both ends, we marked off our first true level ...
...and quickly discovered the site was a little steeper than we’d thought. But, never mind. Onward the process went for the remaining two corners, our string rising higher and higher as each new level was determined. Then we double-checked taking levels from opposing corners ... and presto! we had a level string surface outlined in space.
Since then I’ve been onto real building sites and have discovered not everyone uses the same methods as those we employed. Most builders build a solid, square, level wooden frame embracing each corner instead of hammering a thin, wobbly stake into the centre. This means the stake doesn’t have to be moved when you go to dig the pile hole, and allows for simpler measurements and levels to be taken. But that assumes you have enough timber to make a frame and aren’t just improvising with odd pieces of timber and branches you found lying around the property...
The original plans called for a low, concrete wall running the length of the southern wall, but that was no longer going to be possible now that one corner was over a metre aboveground. And to further complicate matters, the north-west corner was going to be well over two metres - which was fine by us, but not by the Building Code. If we couldn’t drop the level below two metres, we would need to follow a complex (expensive) bracing schedule. So an improvised plan had to be quickly drawn.
By twisting the entire house slightly north-west (which meant a repeat of the above performance in its entirety) and substituting the concrete wall for a concrete block under the bathroom (which would then act as an anchor for the rest of the house), Wallace managed to bring the highest corner down to 1.98 metres. So the entire main section of the house would now rest on piles - twenty-five in all, plus seven posts supporting the verandah. There was going to be a lot of digging ...
Marion has never been very good at digging, so she opted to take up an offer of a few weeks work at the orchard grafting trees. I could have used some help, naturally, and we certainly weren’t going to profit from her decision (the married dole is equal to a single orchard wage, especially if you’re not taking advantage of the free accommodation), but we’d quickly realised during the level-finding exercise that this wasn’t going to be one of those times when it was fun working together. This time we had no boss, and the fact we couldn’t simply leave seemed to create a certain amount of tension. Besides, we only had one shovel ...
So while Marion worked, I began the excavations.
Unfortunately, the back corner had slowly submerged into the hillside as the house was swung around to accommodate the structural modifications, until its newly-designated position now lay halfway to China beneath unyielding layers of shale and rock. Over a cubic metre of earth now had to be removed in order to create a level surface from which the bathroom foundations could then be excavated. It was slow, blistering work (though I was regularly lured away by the Minzion’s cool laughter), but the hill gradually succumbed to my sweaty advances, until what was once a gentle grassy contour grazed by sheep, had been transformed into a 4 metres x 2 metres, 60 centimetre deep pit draped with heavy-duty plastic and steel reinforcing mesh.
Then there were the thirty-two post holes to dig - 60 centimetres deep for most, but 90 centimetres deep for the corners! Most of the shallow holes were dug quickly, but on each of the corners, all traces of soil vanished at a depth of half a metre, replaced by the section’s ubiquitous shale. Which meant another week chipping away with a crowbar, centimetre by centimetre. It was mindless physical work, but the time quickly passed.
Then the first truckload of timber arrived ... and it was certainly a load. I’d expected there would be some kind of crane onboard to gently lift my precious timber to the ground, but I was about to learn The Builder’s Fourth Maxim - timbermillers don’t respect timber. There was no crane, just the driver, and I could only watch on in stunned disbelief as the front of the lorry gently lifted skyward, higher and higher. At first nothing moved (a house of timber strapped together makes two very big and very heavy bundles), but as it approached forty-five degrees, the whole load trembled once then began sliding forward in a tumbling, crashing timber avalanche. The longest pieces speared fiercely into the ground sending a shower of splinters shooting heavenward as the air was shattered by the wrenching and groaning of timber under duress. Then the lorry inched forward, sliding out from beneath its burden and allowing the other end to collapse to the ground, leaving a twisted pile of timber in its wake.
It took all morning to re-stack the timber in piles and to assess the damage. (And to get over the shock that the timber had come from the same sawmill we’d gotten our first quote from! How could the hardware store supply everything for several thousand dollars less than the sawmill quoted just for the timber?) Two long verandah poles had split in two, and much of my larch tongue and groove was missing a tongue. The mill would replace any damaged items without question, but it was the principle of their abuse which annoyed me.
While sifting through my stack, I myself contrived The Builder’s Fifth Maxim - sawmillers aren’t the world’s cleverest people. Because included among my house lot (so they obviously knew it was for a house) was a pile of short (and I mean nothing over 65 centimetres) 100 x 100 H4 poles. The size and treatment matched my verandah pole expectations, but as for the lengths ...
Considering H4 implied these posts were going to be embedded in the soil, and that any post embedded in soil would be embedded at least 30 centimetres in the soil, what use were poles less than 30 centimetres long? Then I noticed most of my verandah poles were missing ... or were they? I re-read my order, and upon further reflection, realised the poles were there, at least in spirit. What should have been one pole at 4.64 metres, one pole at 4.31 metres and so on, had been transformed into four poles at 64 centimetres, four poles at 31 centimetres etcetera etcetera. (Naturally the mill sent replacement poles, and decided I could keep the short ones. After all, what use were such short H4 poles? Though I must admit they have come in extremely handy in a variety of applications over the years.)
Which actually brings me to The Builder’s Sixth Maxim - measure all lengths in millimetres. Decimal points don’t seem to be a strong point with sawmillers or hardware guys. They’d much rather measure a 4640 millimetre pole than a 4.64 metre one. So, in respect to this Maxim, I shall attempt to keep all further measurements in millimetres. But the important thing was I had my timber, more or less. Now the real building work could commence.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Chapter Four - Foundations for Divorce
You’re standing in the middle of your section, a tiny patch of trammelled grass the only indication that something is going to happen, something which will change the complexion of the land, the complexion of your life, forever.
An image of your house suddenly flickers in the warm sunshine. Your house. It’s so clear, so disconcertingly clear, that you momentarily feel like Rip van Winkle, woken after a hundred years (or maybe just two) to find your dreams made solid. Your dreams. The air wrinkles with the sound of laughing chickens and clucking children. The grass whispers its respectful welcome, inviting you forward.
You take a single step ... and cold panic grips your ankles as it suddenly dawns on you that you’re standing in the middle of a minefield. Ahead, between you and the flickering, melting image, are a thousand rules and regulations (both written and unwritten), building codes and standards, all primed to blow up in your face when you least expect it.
Not to mention the booby traps you’ve set yourself - all those murky motivations, unrealistic expectations and unresolved emotional issues. How foolish you were to believe you could simply waltz through it all. How naive to believe the worst was behind you, that you were almost there. You want to turn and run, but you’ve burnt too many bridges to make escape simple. You want to stand there, still, forever, just waiting for something to happen, waiting for nothing to happen ...
But you also want your home. You want to go forward. You’ve already come so far by simply taking one step at a time, defusing each mine one by one. And here you are still in one piece with your dreams still intact. Surely (you reassure yourself) the worst is over. You’ve been travelling through hostile, unchartered territory (and been virtually blind the whole way), yet you’ve survived. Now you have a map. A plan detailing the reasonably straightforward, well-worn course ahead. It’s got to get easier. All you have to do is stay on track ...
But staying on track is no guarantee that your building project still won’t explode in your face. Because there’s one huge mine lying somewhere on the path ahead which is often difficult to detect and impossible to avoid. It’s not even on the map. Any map. Although it has nothing to do with the building itself, it is often triggered by the building process. It’s called “Divorce”, and it’s effects on the building project can be just as devastating as any earthquake.
Building your own home is an emotional experience. It’s a serious commitment, and as a result often forces you to consider other commitments - a process as likely to result in emotional clarity as confusion. Statistically, couples building their own home have a better-than-even chance of unbuilding their relationship in the process, leaving the home little more than a house at the end of it all.
Marion and I had often worked together. Whether it was counting cars or cutting onions, we always tried to make the most of it, to enjoy it, regardless of the work, the workmates, the boss, the boss’s wife ... We were an efficient, competent, honest, hard-working team - so we seldom fit in. The chef might have appreciated us not slobbering into the potato salad, but the kitchenhand just thought we were being snobs. The boss might have appreciated us not sucking expensive schnapps from the bottle, but his wife just forbade us drinking orange juice. Efficiency was rewarded with more work, competence with disdain, and honesty provoked hostility. We were skilled workers doing unskilled work, and as such, focus of much suspicion.
It didn’t bother us. We had each other, and we could always leave.
We thought building our home together would be like that. More enjoyable, even, because this time there were no bosses telling us what to do, no colleagues begrudging our efforts, no politics or personalities. This time there was only us. This time we were working for ourselves ...
So once we had our permit firmly in our hands, we were anxious to start. But there were still a few minor details to sort out - like a power supply and power tools and, well, something to build with.
We wanted an independent power supply. The thought of windmills and solar panels, of independence, of no power bills, no blackouts (though I have fond memories of the giggling scramble for candles and squinting games of scrabble in the half-gloom of the annual blackouts when ‘strike’ was still a familiar word in the Queensland power-station workers’ vocabulary), no meter-readers (with their friendly anoraks and jolly indifference... Actually I have a lot of sympathy for meter-readers. The mail-delivery-person may be greeted with semi-reverent anticipation almost in the same league as Santa Claus - because at least there might be something good in that bag of mixed blessings. But the meter-reader is always a prophet of gloom and a harbinger of dark tidings. Nobody’s ever glad to see a meter-reader ...), and no guilt, imbued us with a warm glow.
We soon discovered that maintaining that glow was going to cost us $22,000! Of course for that price we’d get a comprehensive system which not only generated enough power to run everything, but converted it into a regular 240v supply, with potentially enough left over to feed back into the national grid. Impressive, but it was exactly $22,000 more than we had, which meant some serious reconsidering.
We had to be rational about it ... but that didn’t mean we had to be fair. The independent supply already carried an enormous financial handicap, so it was only right that the normal supply had to jump all the hurdles. We calculated our likely power needs using different formulas (under normal conditions we’d obviously have everything running all the time, while with an independent supply we’d surely only need one light and a radio for half an hour each day in winter). We investigated cost-efficient alternatives to electric ranges and power tools. We discussed back-up generators and micro-hydro systems. We analysed our friends’ power bills. We compared costs, depreciation, savings and interest using only helpful figures. We assigned monetary values to every drawback of the normal supply (including imaginary ones), while the independent supply remained above reproach (factors such as extended set-up time, the vagaries of the weather and our complete lack of technical expertise, judged too trivial to consider). But no matter how we looked at it, one fact remained unchanged - an independent power supply just wasn’t economically feasible.
Of course, getting normal power wasn’t going to be cheap either. When choosing our building site we’d given due consideration to the direction of the sun, the prevailing winds, the degree of privacy and the view. We hadn’t considered the fact that the power board might charge $20 per metre for their cable.
We also hadn’t considered the ancient kiwi tradition of choosing a site solely on the basis of its spatial position in relation to the road. According to this tradition, building a house 60 metres from the front gate is bad. Building a house facing away from the road is very bad. A house built close to the road allows good vehicular access - meaning you don’t have to walk vast distances between car and house; you don’t have to carry anything far, especially after a tiring workout at the gym; and you’re not exposed to undue fresh air. A house built facing the road not only looks right, it’s good security - meaning rather than constantly getting up to find out whose car has pulled into the driveway, you just have to look up from your sausages and casually glance through the window above the television. Our house had failed on both counts - access was down a narrow grassy path, and it was impossible to even see the front gate. Despite the urgings of incredulous neighbours, we had no intentions of ever building a driveway to our front door, or installing a closed-circuit camera to allow surrogate surveillance of our intra-accessual security zone.
The power board gave us their quote, but we couldn’t think of anything polite to quote back to them. We were speechless! Sixty metres of mains cable at $20 per metre, plus another 60 metres of sub-mains cable back to the shed at $3.50 per metre, plus labour, plus the temporary fuse box, plus the wiring of the shed, plus a digger ... giving a grand total of almost $2000. Once we gave the go-ahead, they could have power on in less than a week, but we hesitated - $2000 was a lot of energy-efficient light bulbs!
We mulled it over for a few days, not because we thought there was any other solution, but simply to get used to the idea. If only our house had been another 50 metres from the power lines, maybe the solar/wind system would have been feasible ... I decided to at least try to save some of the cost by digging the trench myself. After less than five metres, I had to admit that digging a 60 centimetre deep by 60 metre long trench with a shovel wasn’t fun in anyone’s language ...
So we got our power supply.
But we still needed tools.
I like hardware stores. For me, they’re not simply shops full of tools, they’re stores full of potential. With the right tool, you can do anything. The trouble is to find not only the right tool, but a good tool. I certainly felt I needed good tools. Not necessarily the best tools available, but something reliable, something that did the job. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about tools, except for the basics. I knew the difference between a hammer and a spanner, for example, but not the different types of spanners or hammers available. For that, I relied on the advice of hardware salesmen.
Although I like hardware stores, I rarely like hardware salesmen. I’m not a toolguy - I know that and they know that. It’s not the tool that gets me excited, but what the tool allows me to do. Hardware salesmen are toolguys, and it’s the tool that turns them on ... which is always vaguely disconcerting. I don’t think they ever do anything with the tools, except maybe hold them or polish them or read the manuals over a cold lemonade, but they certainly know everything they could do with them. Problem is, they don’t like us non-toolguys. They don’t want us to get the tool which is best for the job we’re doing, they just want to sell us any old crap.
But I’m learning. At first I tried to act like I was a toolguy (or at least an aspiring toolguy), but they quickly saw through me. I just didn’t look like a toolguy - no matter how many fancy pens I crammed into my shirt pocket, no matter how many keys I had dangling from my belt, no matter how loudly my pockets jangled with metallic potential, no matter how fast I nodded. And pretending to be a toolguy is a risky ploy, because there’s so much pressure to buy things. Things you don’t need. Things you don’t even recognise. But it’s easier to buy than to confess your ignorance.
I know it’s a ‘guy thing’, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m still not immune to such social pressures. Tools are, though, my only guy weakness. I long ago developed an effective defence against engine guys - I just shrug and confess I don’t even drive. Hushed silence follows. Then casual enquiries about my manly peculiarity - so you lost your licence ...? No, I never had one. Never? Before you can say overhead cam V8 manifold sparkplugs, I’m ejected from the pits and back in the grandstand ...
Actually, I must confess I’m still a bit of a closet sports guy, though. How many men in our beer-and-rugby culture aren’t? I was even a sports reporter for a while there, so sports talk still triggers a response, and I haven’t yet developed an effective way to tackle it. It’s getting better, though. I’m only drawn into discussions concerning internationals or finals now. The rest of the year I manage to avoid sports talk by simply confessing that I’m Australian ...
Little wonder, then, that in my single outing as Mister Toolguy, I came home with a little more than I really needed. There was a circular saw (a strange name for something that can only cut straight, so it’s probably better to refer to it as a ‘powersaw’), a jigsaw (in case there were any wavy bits on the plan which I might have overlooked), a drill (holes are an integral part of house-building), a router (OK, say I got carried away ...), a hi-tech workbench (including a complete instruction manual on video, though we didn’t have a video player), a handsaw, a hammer, a level, a square and a measuring tape.
It’s a shame all tools don’t have self-explanatory names like level and square instead of ratchet and Phillip’s head and monkey wrench ... English is a strange language, or should that be colourful? Take the pineapple, for example. In most other European languages, it’s called by some derivative of the Latin - ananas ... which isn’t to be confused with ananas horribilus which is a peculiarly astringent fruit eaten mostly by Royals ... But in English it’s a pine apple. According to my dictionary, the name originates from the perception that it looked like a pine cone. But why not call it pine-cone fruit? And why does everything seem to return to the subject of apples anyway?
I should have gotten one of those angle thingees and that chalk whatsit, but I was too embarrassed to ask. Together with some cycle repair tools we already had, that would do for a start. Everything else we could probably borrow - if we could just find out what they were called.
Over the years I’ve tried various approaches to tool-buying, with varying success. I’ve snubbed hardware salesmen totally - wordlessly gathering together what I think I need, and taking it to the register. No questions asked, no advice given. But if your basket’s bulging with everything you thought you needed to repair that little leak in the roof and the salesman asks if you’d like to see his model aeroplane collection, it’s time to consider another approach.
Next I adopted the ‘all-tools-are-the-same-anyway’ strategy. As soon as I was through the door I homed in on the bargain bins. That $2.95 angle-grinder was just as good as those other $295 models. And the boxed set of 1001 tools for an incredible $19.99, were a definite must buy. And look at all the money I saved! But I quickly discovered that all tools weren’t created equal. Cheap tools aren’t really cheap, because they’re not really tools. They’re imitation tools. Tool substitutes. A cheap hammer doesn’t hammer in nails, it only bruises them. A cheap saw doesn’t cut wood, it only watches you trying to cut wood. A cheap spanner is never the right size... for anything. They simply don’t work, and 999 of those gizmos in a boxed set don’t have any use whatsoever, except rattling around your toolbox or cluttering up your workshop.
So that strategy quickly gave way to the ‘only-the-best’ approach, which is the strategy I continue to use. Not that ‘the best’ necessarily means the most expensive. There’s a distinct gap between budget tools - ie fake tools - and real tools, and generally everything above that gap is good, while those below should only be bought for children or fathers-in-law. But the easiest way to tell a good tool, is by the packaging. Manufacturers of good tools seem to believe their customers are already well-equipped, so if you need to use at least three implements to open the packaging, you know you’re on a winner.
So we now had a power supply. And we even had some power tools. All we needed now was some materials ...
An image of your house suddenly flickers in the warm sunshine. Your house. It’s so clear, so disconcertingly clear, that you momentarily feel like Rip van Winkle, woken after a hundred years (or maybe just two) to find your dreams made solid. Your dreams. The air wrinkles with the sound of laughing chickens and clucking children. The grass whispers its respectful welcome, inviting you forward.
You take a single step ... and cold panic grips your ankles as it suddenly dawns on you that you’re standing in the middle of a minefield. Ahead, between you and the flickering, melting image, are a thousand rules and regulations (both written and unwritten), building codes and standards, all primed to blow up in your face when you least expect it.
Not to mention the booby traps you’ve set yourself - all those murky motivations, unrealistic expectations and unresolved emotional issues. How foolish you were to believe you could simply waltz through it all. How naive to believe the worst was behind you, that you were almost there. You want to turn and run, but you’ve burnt too many bridges to make escape simple. You want to stand there, still, forever, just waiting for something to happen, waiting for nothing to happen ...
But you also want your home. You want to go forward. You’ve already come so far by simply taking one step at a time, defusing each mine one by one. And here you are still in one piece with your dreams still intact. Surely (you reassure yourself) the worst is over. You’ve been travelling through hostile, unchartered territory (and been virtually blind the whole way), yet you’ve survived. Now you have a map. A plan detailing the reasonably straightforward, well-worn course ahead. It’s got to get easier. All you have to do is stay on track ...
But staying on track is no guarantee that your building project still won’t explode in your face. Because there’s one huge mine lying somewhere on the path ahead which is often difficult to detect and impossible to avoid. It’s not even on the map. Any map. Although it has nothing to do with the building itself, it is often triggered by the building process. It’s called “Divorce”, and it’s effects on the building project can be just as devastating as any earthquake.
Building your own home is an emotional experience. It’s a serious commitment, and as a result often forces you to consider other commitments - a process as likely to result in emotional clarity as confusion. Statistically, couples building their own home have a better-than-even chance of unbuilding their relationship in the process, leaving the home little more than a house at the end of it all.
Marion and I had often worked together. Whether it was counting cars or cutting onions, we always tried to make the most of it, to enjoy it, regardless of the work, the workmates, the boss, the boss’s wife ... We were an efficient, competent, honest, hard-working team - so we seldom fit in. The chef might have appreciated us not slobbering into the potato salad, but the kitchenhand just thought we were being snobs. The boss might have appreciated us not sucking expensive schnapps from the bottle, but his wife just forbade us drinking orange juice. Efficiency was rewarded with more work, competence with disdain, and honesty provoked hostility. We were skilled workers doing unskilled work, and as such, focus of much suspicion.
It didn’t bother us. We had each other, and we could always leave.
We thought building our home together would be like that. More enjoyable, even, because this time there were no bosses telling us what to do, no colleagues begrudging our efforts, no politics or personalities. This time there was only us. This time we were working for ourselves ...
So once we had our permit firmly in our hands, we were anxious to start. But there were still a few minor details to sort out - like a power supply and power tools and, well, something to build with.
We wanted an independent power supply. The thought of windmills and solar panels, of independence, of no power bills, no blackouts (though I have fond memories of the giggling scramble for candles and squinting games of scrabble in the half-gloom of the annual blackouts when ‘strike’ was still a familiar word in the Queensland power-station workers’ vocabulary), no meter-readers (with their friendly anoraks and jolly indifference... Actually I have a lot of sympathy for meter-readers. The mail-delivery-person may be greeted with semi-reverent anticipation almost in the same league as Santa Claus - because at least there might be something good in that bag of mixed blessings. But the meter-reader is always a prophet of gloom and a harbinger of dark tidings. Nobody’s ever glad to see a meter-reader ...), and no guilt, imbued us with a warm glow.
We soon discovered that maintaining that glow was going to cost us $22,000! Of course for that price we’d get a comprehensive system which not only generated enough power to run everything, but converted it into a regular 240v supply, with potentially enough left over to feed back into the national grid. Impressive, but it was exactly $22,000 more than we had, which meant some serious reconsidering.
We had to be rational about it ... but that didn’t mean we had to be fair. The independent supply already carried an enormous financial handicap, so it was only right that the normal supply had to jump all the hurdles. We calculated our likely power needs using different formulas (under normal conditions we’d obviously have everything running all the time, while with an independent supply we’d surely only need one light and a radio for half an hour each day in winter). We investigated cost-efficient alternatives to electric ranges and power tools. We discussed back-up generators and micro-hydro systems. We analysed our friends’ power bills. We compared costs, depreciation, savings and interest using only helpful figures. We assigned monetary values to every drawback of the normal supply (including imaginary ones), while the independent supply remained above reproach (factors such as extended set-up time, the vagaries of the weather and our complete lack of technical expertise, judged too trivial to consider). But no matter how we looked at it, one fact remained unchanged - an independent power supply just wasn’t economically feasible.
Of course, getting normal power wasn’t going to be cheap either. When choosing our building site we’d given due consideration to the direction of the sun, the prevailing winds, the degree of privacy and the view. We hadn’t considered the fact that the power board might charge $20 per metre for their cable.
We also hadn’t considered the ancient kiwi tradition of choosing a site solely on the basis of its spatial position in relation to the road. According to this tradition, building a house 60 metres from the front gate is bad. Building a house facing away from the road is very bad. A house built close to the road allows good vehicular access - meaning you don’t have to walk vast distances between car and house; you don’t have to carry anything far, especially after a tiring workout at the gym; and you’re not exposed to undue fresh air. A house built facing the road not only looks right, it’s good security - meaning rather than constantly getting up to find out whose car has pulled into the driveway, you just have to look up from your sausages and casually glance through the window above the television. Our house had failed on both counts - access was down a narrow grassy path, and it was impossible to even see the front gate. Despite the urgings of incredulous neighbours, we had no intentions of ever building a driveway to our front door, or installing a closed-circuit camera to allow surrogate surveillance of our intra-accessual security zone.
The power board gave us their quote, but we couldn’t think of anything polite to quote back to them. We were speechless! Sixty metres of mains cable at $20 per metre, plus another 60 metres of sub-mains cable back to the shed at $3.50 per metre, plus labour, plus the temporary fuse box, plus the wiring of the shed, plus a digger ... giving a grand total of almost $2000. Once we gave the go-ahead, they could have power on in less than a week, but we hesitated - $2000 was a lot of energy-efficient light bulbs!
We mulled it over for a few days, not because we thought there was any other solution, but simply to get used to the idea. If only our house had been another 50 metres from the power lines, maybe the solar/wind system would have been feasible ... I decided to at least try to save some of the cost by digging the trench myself. After less than five metres, I had to admit that digging a 60 centimetre deep by 60 metre long trench with a shovel wasn’t fun in anyone’s language ...
So we got our power supply.
But we still needed tools.
I like hardware stores. For me, they’re not simply shops full of tools, they’re stores full of potential. With the right tool, you can do anything. The trouble is to find not only the right tool, but a good tool. I certainly felt I needed good tools. Not necessarily the best tools available, but something reliable, something that did the job. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about tools, except for the basics. I knew the difference between a hammer and a spanner, for example, but not the different types of spanners or hammers available. For that, I relied on the advice of hardware salesmen.
Although I like hardware stores, I rarely like hardware salesmen. I’m not a toolguy - I know that and they know that. It’s not the tool that gets me excited, but what the tool allows me to do. Hardware salesmen are toolguys, and it’s the tool that turns them on ... which is always vaguely disconcerting. I don’t think they ever do anything with the tools, except maybe hold them or polish them or read the manuals over a cold lemonade, but they certainly know everything they could do with them. Problem is, they don’t like us non-toolguys. They don’t want us to get the tool which is best for the job we’re doing, they just want to sell us any old crap.
But I’m learning. At first I tried to act like I was a toolguy (or at least an aspiring toolguy), but they quickly saw through me. I just didn’t look like a toolguy - no matter how many fancy pens I crammed into my shirt pocket, no matter how many keys I had dangling from my belt, no matter how loudly my pockets jangled with metallic potential, no matter how fast I nodded. And pretending to be a toolguy is a risky ploy, because there’s so much pressure to buy things. Things you don’t need. Things you don’t even recognise. But it’s easier to buy than to confess your ignorance.
I know it’s a ‘guy thing’, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m still not immune to such social pressures. Tools are, though, my only guy weakness. I long ago developed an effective defence against engine guys - I just shrug and confess I don’t even drive. Hushed silence follows. Then casual enquiries about my manly peculiarity - so you lost your licence ...? No, I never had one. Never? Before you can say overhead cam V8 manifold sparkplugs, I’m ejected from the pits and back in the grandstand ...
Actually, I must confess I’m still a bit of a closet sports guy, though. How many men in our beer-and-rugby culture aren’t? I was even a sports reporter for a while there, so sports talk still triggers a response, and I haven’t yet developed an effective way to tackle it. It’s getting better, though. I’m only drawn into discussions concerning internationals or finals now. The rest of the year I manage to avoid sports talk by simply confessing that I’m Australian ...
Little wonder, then, that in my single outing as Mister Toolguy, I came home with a little more than I really needed. There was a circular saw (a strange name for something that can only cut straight, so it’s probably better to refer to it as a ‘powersaw’), a jigsaw (in case there were any wavy bits on the plan which I might have overlooked), a drill (holes are an integral part of house-building), a router (OK, say I got carried away ...), a hi-tech workbench (including a complete instruction manual on video, though we didn’t have a video player), a handsaw, a hammer, a level, a square and a measuring tape.
It’s a shame all tools don’t have self-explanatory names like level and square instead of ratchet and Phillip’s head and monkey wrench ... English is a strange language, or should that be colourful? Take the pineapple, for example. In most other European languages, it’s called by some derivative of the Latin - ananas ... which isn’t to be confused with ananas horribilus which is a peculiarly astringent fruit eaten mostly by Royals ... But in English it’s a pine apple. According to my dictionary, the name originates from the perception that it looked like a pine cone. But why not call it pine-cone fruit? And why does everything seem to return to the subject of apples anyway?
I should have gotten one of those angle thingees and that chalk whatsit, but I was too embarrassed to ask. Together with some cycle repair tools we already had, that would do for a start. Everything else we could probably borrow - if we could just find out what they were called.
Over the years I’ve tried various approaches to tool-buying, with varying success. I’ve snubbed hardware salesmen totally - wordlessly gathering together what I think I need, and taking it to the register. No questions asked, no advice given. But if your basket’s bulging with everything you thought you needed to repair that little leak in the roof and the salesman asks if you’d like to see his model aeroplane collection, it’s time to consider another approach.
Next I adopted the ‘all-tools-are-the-same-anyway’ strategy. As soon as I was through the door I homed in on the bargain bins. That $2.95 angle-grinder was just as good as those other $295 models. And the boxed set of 1001 tools for an incredible $19.99, were a definite must buy. And look at all the money I saved! But I quickly discovered that all tools weren’t created equal. Cheap tools aren’t really cheap, because they’re not really tools. They’re imitation tools. Tool substitutes. A cheap hammer doesn’t hammer in nails, it only bruises them. A cheap saw doesn’t cut wood, it only watches you trying to cut wood. A cheap spanner is never the right size... for anything. They simply don’t work, and 999 of those gizmos in a boxed set don’t have any use whatsoever, except rattling around your toolbox or cluttering up your workshop.
So that strategy quickly gave way to the ‘only-the-best’ approach, which is the strategy I continue to use. Not that ‘the best’ necessarily means the most expensive. There’s a distinct gap between budget tools - ie fake tools - and real tools, and generally everything above that gap is good, while those below should only be bought for children or fathers-in-law. But the easiest way to tell a good tool, is by the packaging. Manufacturers of good tools seem to believe their customers are already well-equipped, so if you need to use at least three implements to open the packaging, you know you’re on a winner.
So we now had a power supply. And we even had some power tools. All we needed now was some materials ...
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Lifestyle Blockages III
It’s a long way from concept to final plans, especially when the concept is 14,000 kilometres away. Further still from plans to building permit, when there’s a building inspector standing in the way.
We arrived back in New Zealand and began our life together on our property. We moved all our worldly possessions into the shed - now our living quarters and kitchen. We moved Fugly - now our bedroom - to its final resting place next door. We got two kittens - a ginger Tom we named Spindle, and his jet black sister we called Momo. We soon even had a motherless lamb we called Caruso. (Though he didn’t last long. We did everything we could to make his life comfortable - buying a large sack of powdered lamb formula and sacrificing a rubber glove finger in an attempt to replicate his mother’s nipple - but he refused our offerings. I admit neither of us were very convincing surrogates, nor did we have a farmer’s knack of persuasion, but we’d thought he’d be grateful, or at least hungry enough to drink anything we offered. We also tried everything to get him used to human contact - bringing him into the shed out of the rain, drying him off whenever he did get wet - but he never appreciated our efforts. He should have been ecstatic about becoming our pet, because our pets aren’t so much pets as cherished family members. Eventually he managed to not only escape the temporary pen we’d built, but also the property... or so we believed until we discovered him a week later, dead, with his head shoved down a rabbit hole.)
It was a simple life, and once we’d invested in a few modern conveniences (a kerosene lamp, gas cooker, watertanks to catch the water from the roof), a relatively comfortable one. But even simple lives have their complications. Ours centred mostly on water - either too little, or too much. We were forever conscious of our meagre rainwater supply, so it was reserved for drinking only, with water for anything else having to be hauled up from the Minzion.
Not that the Minzion water isn’t fit to drink. Unlike most streams in the valley - the household water supply to hundreds - it doesn’t flow through areas of intensive use or across flat cow-filled fields. But it does have a peaty, earthy taste which is refreshing from the hand but vaguely disconcerting from a glass.
And vast rivers of rain flowed freely beneath the door or seeped casually past our best water-proofing efforts. The shed’s builder had obviously built it to last, with heavy hardwood framing and beams, but had just as obviously never expected anyone to live in it. The entire construction rested on concrete foundations which protruded beyond the bottom of the galvanised iron walls - creating a perfect channel to lead each drop of rain inside. At first we smoothed concrete along the join between wall and floor - but the water slipped beneath and the trapped moisture slowly rotted the timber. Then we poured concrete between iron and framing to create a ramp leading the water away - but that only worked where the iron bulged, and not where it indented. Then we smoothed concrete along the outside of the iron - but it simply led more water inside through the newly-created concrete crevasse.
Finally we siliconed along the crevasse - but that didn’t stop the water seeping through the porous concrete itself. Our concerted waterproofing campaign took months - since we had to wait for the next serious shower before each new ‘brainstorm’ could be put to the test - but was, ultimately, unsuccessful. By then we’d re-deployed our furniture to less vulnerable locations, creating somewhat eccentric living arrangements, but at least everything stayed, in the main, dry.)
While we were leading our simple but somehow time-filling life, Wallace (the architect, in case you’d forgotten) was busy turning our rough sketches into complete working drawings and specifications. A week later, the initial plans were finished. It was the first time we’d seen our house looking so solid - our dreams transformed into detail. Apart from an adjustment of window sizes (there was still too much glass for Marion’s liking), it was exactly how we’d imagined it. The height of the mezzanine ceilings had been slightly increased due to the vagaries of the Building Code, but our central open space, meant all other ceilings could be dropped even further, which suited us.
Wallace had also solved the walkway (connecting the mezzanine floors) problem by dropping it down to an intermediate level, with access to each mezzanine from either end. This not only created an extra level, but a wealth of storage space beneath the walkway (which he’d utilised to the maximum by creating a woodstore beside the woodburner, with an access hatch allowing wood to be transferred inside without being lugged through the house).
A month later the final plans were complete - five pages of drawings (1 : 100 floor plan; site and foundation plans, exterior views from four sides; detailed cross-section; plus a window schedule), a framing diagram, and five pages of specifications. (In architecture, words are the scaffolding supporting every diagram, without which the entire edifice would crumble.) Neither of us understood much of what was written, but the drawings spoke straight to our hearts. There would be time enough later to learn the alien tongue of construction.
This was possibly an over-optimistic sentiment, in light of past experiences. We’d cycled through more than ten countries over five years, but I’d never mastered the cyclists’ lingo. I could dismantle a drum brake in driving rain in the middle of a cold Irish night. I could re-spoke a crippled front wheel in the gloom of a Welsh afternoon. I could replace or repair every moving part, but I never knew the real name for anything. Which was fine, until I needed a part from a bike shop! Why hasn’t Berlitz ever published an English-Prospeak phrase book? Because it’s no use using normal words to explain what you need. Unless you know the correct technical term, you can explain a thousand times what a tyre does, but if you don’t say ‘tyre’, chances are they’ll try to sell you a helmet!
We submitted our plans. Wallace is a well-respected architect so we were confident that getting the final permit was little more than a formality. The estimated value of the house was $45,000, so we had to pay $455.65 in permit fees.
A week later we had our first visit from the building inspector.
There was a problem. Although the plans were fine (and had been given little more than a cursory glance, in fact), according to him, we hadn’t yet met all the conditions specified in the planning consent. Especially the one concerning an adequate water supply.
We were incredulous. What water supply problem?
There was the Minzion - a guaranteed permanent supply.
No, we couldn’t use water from the stream. It was unhealthy.
But we knew lots of people who pumped their supply from similar streams, or worse.
They’re existing houses. They can do what they want.
So we’ll pump from the Clutha ...
No, it’s unhealthy too.
But half the valley pumps from the Clutha! Our neighbour does!
They’re existing houses.
So we’ll collect it from the roof ...
No, once water touches soil, it’s unhealthy.
So we’ll put it through filters ...
No, if you sold the house, the next person might not want to put it through filters.
What next person? We’re not going to sell!
You never know. And they’ll want a guaranteed healthy supply.
Not only did we need to establish a pure virginal water supply unsullied by contact with any foreign matter (such as soil or air), but it had to be a system which some mythical next person would sanction. No filters, no mechanical devices, no technology allowed. This was not only ludicrous, but patently unfair. Existing houses could suck up gutter scum, but we couldn’t use any of the sources available to us? If modern health standards demanded pure water, surely we could utilise modern technology to achieve the required standards. It was in our own interests that our water supply was potable and relatively consistent, and none of our sources were any less tenable than those of most local residents, many of whom relied on the fire brigade to fill their tanks (with water from the Clutha) during dry summers. Besides, surely it was our problem where we got our water from. And if we ever did sell the place, surely the next person could decide whether or not it suited them?
But the building inspector wasn’t budging.
In reality it wasn’t the water supply which phased him, it was the grass roof. Throughout our conversations he made constant references to how much more straightforward everything would be without the grass roof. We could collect the rainwater. We could have a nice, normal house. We could have no further problems. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want a grass roof. It was unsightly. It was unnecessary. It was impractical. It was expensive. It was something alien - frightening.
Our arguments concerning insulation values and the maintenance of internal humidity had no impact.
Our attempts to explain the doctrine of minimal impact had, of course, minimal impact.
Our summary of aesthetic principles were entirely foreign to his Bessa-block mind.
Our rigorous defence of personal choice left him bewildered and uneasy in our presence.
He remained adamant - no satisfactory water supply (as defined by the highest authority in the land - him), no permit.
For the next month we followed up every rumour of water within pump-able distance from our house. Local farmers hinted at springs and mysterious waterways, but all we ever found was a patch of boggy ground rapidly drying in the sun. We sank a few experimental wells but always came up dry. And we consulted the local drilling company, who advised us the water table stopped a mile up the road, so it wasn’t even worth trying.
Then it hit us. The only acceptable supply was, in the building inspector’s mind anyway, rainwater. So that was what we’d have. We would build a ‘water catchment’.
We were confident, but our confidence was muted by the knowledge that the building inspector still wouldn’t like our roof. And as long as he didn’t want us to have a grass roof, he could continue to place obstacles in our way. Perhaps the water supply was just his first salvo in a war he was determined to win. Perhaps there would be further objections, minor technicalities and impediments which would cause so much delay and frustration that we’d simply lose our will to combat his small-mindedness.
But the next round would have to wait. He was on holidays and wouldn’t be back for another two weeks.
What seemed like yet another irritating delay eventually turned out to be an unforseen Godsend. Because the building inspector’s holiday route had been fortuitous. He had driven up the West Coast. Had continued further north, to the end of the road, to Karamea. And he had stayed at The Last Resort ... a holiday resort ... a grass-roofed holiday resort ... Here was a proper house, built by proper builders. A successful business run by a successful businessman.
He returned, suddenly contrite. The idea was, after all, feasible.
But there was still the question of a water supply.
We explained our plan - if he calculated the catchment area we required to satisfy him that we had a guaranteed adequate supply, then we would build it. Nothing flash. It would be a simple galvanised iron roof, but instead of providing shelter, it would provide water. It would be a metre off the ground, and we’d build it somewhere on the hillside above the house.
His calculations were based on an expected average rainfall of 30 centimetres per year (he’d obviously assumed serious droughts would be the future standard), with the two of us plus one extra person (we were obviously going to be extremely popular), using 75 litres of water per day per person (we were obviously very clean, too), allowing for one month without any rain (we were obviously stupid enough to continue using 75 litres per day each, as well as having another water-guzzler staying over, regardless of how much it rained). In the end this required 100 square metres of water catchment plus a 2000 gallon storage tank.
Fine! If that’s what we need, then that’s what we’ll do.
Surely we didn’t want to waste so much land ...
No problems, we’ve got five acres.
The possums will love sleeping on it and shitting on it ...
No problems, we’ll build a fence.
The dust from the road will just cover it...
No problems, we’ll plant a border of trees.
The leaves will clog up the drains ...
No problems, we’ll plant evergreens.
For every ‘problem’ he envisaged, we created a solution. Until finally, even he had to admit we were serious ... and there was nothing he could do about it.
On the 29th of November, almost two months after submitting our plans, we not only had a building permit, but had earned a permanent entry in the annals of permithology. Our permit, for a “new dwelling and water catchment structure”, is surely unique. Finally, we could start building ...
We arrived back in New Zealand and began our life together on our property. We moved all our worldly possessions into the shed - now our living quarters and kitchen. We moved Fugly - now our bedroom - to its final resting place next door. We got two kittens - a ginger Tom we named Spindle, and his jet black sister we called Momo. We soon even had a motherless lamb we called Caruso. (Though he didn’t last long. We did everything we could to make his life comfortable - buying a large sack of powdered lamb formula and sacrificing a rubber glove finger in an attempt to replicate his mother’s nipple - but he refused our offerings. I admit neither of us were very convincing surrogates, nor did we have a farmer’s knack of persuasion, but we’d thought he’d be grateful, or at least hungry enough to drink anything we offered. We also tried everything to get him used to human contact - bringing him into the shed out of the rain, drying him off whenever he did get wet - but he never appreciated our efforts. He should have been ecstatic about becoming our pet, because our pets aren’t so much pets as cherished family members. Eventually he managed to not only escape the temporary pen we’d built, but also the property... or so we believed until we discovered him a week later, dead, with his head shoved down a rabbit hole.)
It was a simple life, and once we’d invested in a few modern conveniences (a kerosene lamp, gas cooker, watertanks to catch the water from the roof), a relatively comfortable one. But even simple lives have their complications. Ours centred mostly on water - either too little, or too much. We were forever conscious of our meagre rainwater supply, so it was reserved for drinking only, with water for anything else having to be hauled up from the Minzion.
Not that the Minzion water isn’t fit to drink. Unlike most streams in the valley - the household water supply to hundreds - it doesn’t flow through areas of intensive use or across flat cow-filled fields. But it does have a peaty, earthy taste which is refreshing from the hand but vaguely disconcerting from a glass.
And vast rivers of rain flowed freely beneath the door or seeped casually past our best water-proofing efforts. The shed’s builder had obviously built it to last, with heavy hardwood framing and beams, but had just as obviously never expected anyone to live in it. The entire construction rested on concrete foundations which protruded beyond the bottom of the galvanised iron walls - creating a perfect channel to lead each drop of rain inside. At first we smoothed concrete along the join between wall and floor - but the water slipped beneath and the trapped moisture slowly rotted the timber. Then we poured concrete between iron and framing to create a ramp leading the water away - but that only worked where the iron bulged, and not where it indented. Then we smoothed concrete along the outside of the iron - but it simply led more water inside through the newly-created concrete crevasse.
Finally we siliconed along the crevasse - but that didn’t stop the water seeping through the porous concrete itself. Our concerted waterproofing campaign took months - since we had to wait for the next serious shower before each new ‘brainstorm’ could be put to the test - but was, ultimately, unsuccessful. By then we’d re-deployed our furniture to less vulnerable locations, creating somewhat eccentric living arrangements, but at least everything stayed, in the main, dry.)
While we were leading our simple but somehow time-filling life, Wallace (the architect, in case you’d forgotten) was busy turning our rough sketches into complete working drawings and specifications. A week later, the initial plans were finished. It was the first time we’d seen our house looking so solid - our dreams transformed into detail. Apart from an adjustment of window sizes (there was still too much glass for Marion’s liking), it was exactly how we’d imagined it. The height of the mezzanine ceilings had been slightly increased due to the vagaries of the Building Code, but our central open space, meant all other ceilings could be dropped even further, which suited us.
Wallace had also solved the walkway (connecting the mezzanine floors) problem by dropping it down to an intermediate level, with access to each mezzanine from either end. This not only created an extra level, but a wealth of storage space beneath the walkway (which he’d utilised to the maximum by creating a woodstore beside the woodburner, with an access hatch allowing wood to be transferred inside without being lugged through the house).
A month later the final plans were complete - five pages of drawings (1 : 100 floor plan; site and foundation plans, exterior views from four sides; detailed cross-section; plus a window schedule), a framing diagram, and five pages of specifications. (In architecture, words are the scaffolding supporting every diagram, without which the entire edifice would crumble.) Neither of us understood much of what was written, but the drawings spoke straight to our hearts. There would be time enough later to learn the alien tongue of construction.
This was possibly an over-optimistic sentiment, in light of past experiences. We’d cycled through more than ten countries over five years, but I’d never mastered the cyclists’ lingo. I could dismantle a drum brake in driving rain in the middle of a cold Irish night. I could re-spoke a crippled front wheel in the gloom of a Welsh afternoon. I could replace or repair every moving part, but I never knew the real name for anything. Which was fine, until I needed a part from a bike shop! Why hasn’t Berlitz ever published an English-Prospeak phrase book? Because it’s no use using normal words to explain what you need. Unless you know the correct technical term, you can explain a thousand times what a tyre does, but if you don’t say ‘tyre’, chances are they’ll try to sell you a helmet!
We submitted our plans. Wallace is a well-respected architect so we were confident that getting the final permit was little more than a formality. The estimated value of the house was $45,000, so we had to pay $455.65 in permit fees.
A week later we had our first visit from the building inspector.
There was a problem. Although the plans were fine (and had been given little more than a cursory glance, in fact), according to him, we hadn’t yet met all the conditions specified in the planning consent. Especially the one concerning an adequate water supply.
We were incredulous. What water supply problem?
There was the Minzion - a guaranteed permanent supply.
No, we couldn’t use water from the stream. It was unhealthy.
But we knew lots of people who pumped their supply from similar streams, or worse.
They’re existing houses. They can do what they want.
So we’ll pump from the Clutha ...
No, it’s unhealthy too.
But half the valley pumps from the Clutha! Our neighbour does!
They’re existing houses.
So we’ll collect it from the roof ...
No, once water touches soil, it’s unhealthy.
So we’ll put it through filters ...
No, if you sold the house, the next person might not want to put it through filters.
What next person? We’re not going to sell!
You never know. And they’ll want a guaranteed healthy supply.
Not only did we need to establish a pure virginal water supply unsullied by contact with any foreign matter (such as soil or air), but it had to be a system which some mythical next person would sanction. No filters, no mechanical devices, no technology allowed. This was not only ludicrous, but patently unfair. Existing houses could suck up gutter scum, but we couldn’t use any of the sources available to us? If modern health standards demanded pure water, surely we could utilise modern technology to achieve the required standards. It was in our own interests that our water supply was potable and relatively consistent, and none of our sources were any less tenable than those of most local residents, many of whom relied on the fire brigade to fill their tanks (with water from the Clutha) during dry summers. Besides, surely it was our problem where we got our water from. And if we ever did sell the place, surely the next person could decide whether or not it suited them?
But the building inspector wasn’t budging.
In reality it wasn’t the water supply which phased him, it was the grass roof. Throughout our conversations he made constant references to how much more straightforward everything would be without the grass roof. We could collect the rainwater. We could have a nice, normal house. We could have no further problems. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want a grass roof. It was unsightly. It was unnecessary. It was impractical. It was expensive. It was something alien - frightening.
Our arguments concerning insulation values and the maintenance of internal humidity had no impact.
Our attempts to explain the doctrine of minimal impact had, of course, minimal impact.
Our summary of aesthetic principles were entirely foreign to his Bessa-block mind.
Our rigorous defence of personal choice left him bewildered and uneasy in our presence.
He remained adamant - no satisfactory water supply (as defined by the highest authority in the land - him), no permit.
For the next month we followed up every rumour of water within pump-able distance from our house. Local farmers hinted at springs and mysterious waterways, but all we ever found was a patch of boggy ground rapidly drying in the sun. We sank a few experimental wells but always came up dry. And we consulted the local drilling company, who advised us the water table stopped a mile up the road, so it wasn’t even worth trying.
Then it hit us. The only acceptable supply was, in the building inspector’s mind anyway, rainwater. So that was what we’d have. We would build a ‘water catchment’.
We were confident, but our confidence was muted by the knowledge that the building inspector still wouldn’t like our roof. And as long as he didn’t want us to have a grass roof, he could continue to place obstacles in our way. Perhaps the water supply was just his first salvo in a war he was determined to win. Perhaps there would be further objections, minor technicalities and impediments which would cause so much delay and frustration that we’d simply lose our will to combat his small-mindedness.
But the next round would have to wait. He was on holidays and wouldn’t be back for another two weeks.
What seemed like yet another irritating delay eventually turned out to be an unforseen Godsend. Because the building inspector’s holiday route had been fortuitous. He had driven up the West Coast. Had continued further north, to the end of the road, to Karamea. And he had stayed at The Last Resort ... a holiday resort ... a grass-roofed holiday resort ... Here was a proper house, built by proper builders. A successful business run by a successful businessman.
He returned, suddenly contrite. The idea was, after all, feasible.
But there was still the question of a water supply.
We explained our plan - if he calculated the catchment area we required to satisfy him that we had a guaranteed adequate supply, then we would build it. Nothing flash. It would be a simple galvanised iron roof, but instead of providing shelter, it would provide water. It would be a metre off the ground, and we’d build it somewhere on the hillside above the house.
His calculations were based on an expected average rainfall of 30 centimetres per year (he’d obviously assumed serious droughts would be the future standard), with the two of us plus one extra person (we were obviously going to be extremely popular), using 75 litres of water per day per person (we were obviously very clean, too), allowing for one month without any rain (we were obviously stupid enough to continue using 75 litres per day each, as well as having another water-guzzler staying over, regardless of how much it rained). In the end this required 100 square metres of water catchment plus a 2000 gallon storage tank.
Fine! If that’s what we need, then that’s what we’ll do.
Surely we didn’t want to waste so much land ...
No problems, we’ve got five acres.
The possums will love sleeping on it and shitting on it ...
No problems, we’ll build a fence.
The dust from the road will just cover it...
No problems, we’ll plant a border of trees.
The leaves will clog up the drains ...
No problems, we’ll plant evergreens.
For every ‘problem’ he envisaged, we created a solution. Until finally, even he had to admit we were serious ... and there was nothing he could do about it.
On the 29th of November, almost two months after submitting our plans, we not only had a building permit, but had earned a permanent entry in the annals of permithology. Our permit, for a “new dwelling and water catchment structure”, is surely unique. Finally, we could start building ...
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Lifestyle Blockages II
Another season was upon us. It was going to be our second season, but our first as experienced pickers. And in contract apple-picking, experience counts for a lot. So we were looking forward to a profitable few months.
The apple-picking basics are simple - any moron can do it ... and they frequently do. The general idea is, of course, to move apples from the trees into wooden bins as quickly as you can. Simple enough. It’s the quickly bit that causes all the problems. Basically there’s a distinct conflict of interest between the apple’s handling requirements (apples aren’t made of wood, but the bins are), and the pickers’ requirement to make money, exacerbated by the orchardists’ selective harvesting requirements. In the end, it’s not so much technique which matters, as knowing where the line of acceptable bruising (that is, tolerated bruising, because in orchardspeak no bruise is good bruise) lies.
And the season did start well. Our improved abilities and improved fitness meant we were literally twice as fast as the year previously. We steamed through the first week, gained further momentum in the second, picked up the pace another notch in the third. We were rolling confidently towards a record-breaking season ... and then the emotional wheels began falling off.
We’d found our dream section. We were planning our dream house. But Marion started to wonder if it all wasn’t really the beginning of some eternal nightmare. What had once seemed so straightforward, so uncomplicated, so perfect, began to darken with sinister undertones. We weren’t building a home, but a prison! And it wasn’t freedom we were weaving, but a heavy chain of commitment shackling us to a miserable piece of dirt. Only now, now that it was serious, did she begin to honestly consider the ramifications of our decision. Only now did it all become real. She began seriously questioning our plans, our future, herself ... and us.
What were we going to do here?
What were we doing here?
They were familiar questions. The exact same questions, in fact, that I had asked less than a year before. So I repeated the answers she had once given me.
We were going to build a home. A base. A place for our accumulated stuff. We were going to develop the land, to slowly progress towards basic self-sufficiency. We were going to create a life of simple pleasures. We were going to eat and sleep and swim and read and study and grow. We were going to pursue our interests. We were going to travel, to live in other towns, to discover new places, but always coming home. We were going to live together, enjoy each other’s company, start a family. We were going to live.
We were here, because land was cheap. Because there was always work (not work we wanted, but work when we needed it). Because it was only 150 kilometres to the city. Because it was quiet and peaceful and clean and simple and beautiful. Because we could do anything here. Because we could be ourselves here.
I was committed, but Marion was suddenly allergic to commitment.
I wanted to stay, but she wanted not so much to leave, as to flee. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was away. It didn’t matter who, as long as it wasn’t me.
Life suddenly seemed to lose its point. It was pointless picking apples. Pointless thinking about building a home. Pointless to think about anything except sorting our life out, rediscovering each other, redefining our dreams. So we headed to Germany. A few months staying with Marion’s family, travelling again, seeing new things, forgetting about the past or the future ... that’s what we needed.
But staying with Marion’s family proved quickly untenable, mainly due to the insidious effects of locked-in syndrome (commonly called the Wendy complex, or reverse Peter Pan psychosis). Defined as “a chronic psychological state in which offspring are eternally perceived as children”, this insidious affliction affects up to 90% of all parents with post-pubescent children, and yet remains virtually ignored by the medical establishment.
First symptoms usually appear as the patient’s offspring reach adolescence. These may include irrational behaviour (hiding car-keys, counting the change in pockets, marking whisky bottles), emotional delusions/misconceptions (offspring’s behaviour - growing long hair, mis-kicking penalties, failing maths - is designed purely to embarrass/annoy them), and increasingly illogical thought processes (disagreement is falsely labelled being disagreeable, development of personal taste is interpreted as rejection of parental taste, disliking pumpkin equals disliking provider of pumpkin).
Nobody quite knows how or why (some researchers have suggested a kind of empathic puberty may be responsible), but at some point during this normal, healthy (though often tumultuous) emotional sparring, a mental trigger is activated, thus setting in motion an unstoppable chain of mental ‘gate closures’. Our memories are very much like sheep, and LIS the deranged shepherd in charge of the pure parental flock, ensuring all diseased, disagreeable or simply wrong memories are shunted safely away. There is no known cure.
It seems there’s an unwritten international human law that the more interesting children become, the less interested the parents. Surely the primary role of parents should be to raise complex individuals capable of independent thought - children better than themselves? But better has become a word laden with mistrust. We may no longer be better, only different. But surely better is preferable to bland lies? Shouldn’t we hope our children are better than ourselves? Not more, not less, not bigger, faster or cleverer - just better. Rather than being proud of their children’s independence, proud of their evolution, most parents seem to rue the loss of dependence, begrudge their children’s hard-won talents ... or worse, ignore them totally.
Marion was a 28-year-old married woman who had gathered a wealth of experience travelling and working in numerous jobs in numerous countries under vastly differing conditions and cultures before ‘settling’ on the other end of the world, but by the time we’d risen three floors to her mother’s apartment in a concrete termite mound in the middle of a concrete termite village, she had been miraculously transformed into an innocent (read ‘stupid’) 14-year-old girl ... at least in her mother’s eyes. All her experiences, her thoughts, opinions, ideals and knowledge, meant nothing. We tried to fit in. We tried not to cause undue difficulties. We tried to be reasonable. We tried to be ready for lunch at precisely 12 o’clock. But nothing worked. So we decided to go travelling.
But we quickly realised we didn’t feel like travelling either. Wandering around gawping at strange buildings and strangers’ lives had somehow lost its allure in the intervening years. Tourist attractions no longer held any attraction. Poverty was simply depressing. Cultural difference was simply a hassle.
We had to go somewhere, so we headed eastward into the new German states. There was nothing new. It was all the same, except greyer, dirtier, less friendly. Campground attendants weren’t yet accustomed to strangers wanting to camp. Restaurant prices hadn’t yet been inflated to pay for a waiter’s smile. It was cheap - train prices even reduced hitching to a quirky extravagance - and once cheap had been reason enough. Now cheap was simply depressing, so we headed back to Offenbach to consider our options.
The grey city and greyer skies soon had us casting our eyes southwards. We needed sun. Turkey beckoned. Years before, my sister Raene and I had started our travels together in Greece. After a ruinous (ie full of ruins) few days in sleet-stained Athens, we’d spent an idyllic week on Rhodos (and another week in Rhodos harbour waiting for the ferry to finally leave). Apart from being a beautiful island, it was also a major entryway between Greece and Turkey, so we met lots of travellers returning from Ataturk’s (attaboy’s uncle?) republic, and everyone, without exception, had simply raved about Turkey. But our plans lay elsewhere, and although Raene later joined the ranks of ravers, I somehow never got around to it.
Now was my chance. Friendly people, wonderful beaches, clean seas and cheap living - it all sounded too good to be true. And it was.
The people were friendly - we were all friends, invited for chai, invited to stay - as long as they wanted to sell you something or simply to boost their egos. Both of us quickly tired of the grinning lies and the hypocrisy (laughing with German customers one moment, spitting their hatred as soon as they were alone with us ‘Australians’), the leering, arrogant men and everything dirtied by the same dark greed.
The cigarette-butted beaches were no longer wonderful, the suntanned seas no longer clean, and it was no longer even cheap.
Of course there were exacerbating factors. An uncertain morning spent jostling with surly crowds (and even surlier officials) outside the Bulgarian embassy for the dubious ‘honour’ of securing an expensive transit visa had already pricked our sense of outrage.
Two days in a crowded bus had done little to boost our already-flagging morale, especially when rest-room attendants in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria demanded payment in foreign currency... but not coins! Neither of us were going to pay 10 Deutschmark to use a bathroom. The constant delays at random checkpoints manned by heavily-armed guards whose sole enjoyment in life seemed to be to ensure everybody was fully awake, certainly didn’t improve our reserves of goodwill.
(The Yugoslavian war had reached a temporary, and shaky, impasse, opening the borders between the newly-formed independent states for the first time in months. Our bus was one of the first to pass through, and the borders closed soon afterwards, providentially opening for a few days to allow our return trip before closing again, this time permanently.)
Being the rope in a desperate tug-of-war between rival restaurant owners certainly didn’t help relieve our stress. Neither did it help relieve the restaurants’ financial crises, because we’d rather eat nowhere than allow ourselves to be hijacked. It wasn’t our fault the Yugoslavian war had strangled the flow of tourists.
The bus conductors who constantly allowed three half-empty buses or more to depart to our destination before allowing us on board, didn’t enhance our opinion of the local people. And it didn’t matter that the brand new Turkish-built car (less than 30 kilometres on the clock) we finally rented to overcome the heat, the unreliable public transport service, and the 30 kilograms of carpets we’d already bought (we had a house - we needed carpets!) was constantly breaking down (despite the fact it had been outrageously expensive) or that it required regular servicing (and we had to drive vast distances out of our way in order to find an approved repairer).
What really annoyed us was the dealer who later tried to charge us double because we were bringing the car back two weeks early! According to his ‘logic’, we swapped the car halfway through the trip - after the first car broke down - so we had in fact had two cars. Our original deal was a special - one full month for x lire - but because we hadn’t rented the car for the entire month, we now had to be charged standard rates - the first car for six days at the daily rate, and the second car at the slightly discounted weekly rate. Altogether it meant we owed them for the days we didn’t use. So we asked for the keys back and said we would, under the circumstances, prefer to continue our rental for the duration. We’d park the car outside and send the keys back at the end of our rental period... from Germany! He realised we were serious, and with a final, muttered insult, turned away.
We hadn’t even started full of joy in the first place!
It was proving impossible to escape the past or the future. So our minds turned again to our house. Our home.
We visited a friend in Frankfurt. She took us to the Chinese gardens, and there, among the concrete lions and crooked bridges, we discovered our home’s ideal size. Eleven metres by five metres.
We wandered through the Offenbach Rathaus, and there, among the display boards of the alternative insulation expo, we discovered our home’s ideal roof. A living, growing, grass roof.
Together with the ideas we’d collected over the past six months, over an entire lifetime, the whole concept began to take shape.
I drew diagrams and began working through the details.
Marion built a cardboard model (and a little cardboard couple).
We would have a single, open-plan living/kitchen area downstairs with two mezzanine bedrooms, reached by ladder and connected by a narrow walkway (quickly widened once cardboard me had banged his head twenty times while trying to walk between bedrooms). Low ceilings, no interior walls, an open fireplace, lots of rafters, semi-circle stained-glass windows in the peak of each end. A toilet/bathroom out the back. A front verandah running the length of the house. And a grass roof.
For the first time we saw our home. It was wonderful ...
The apple-picking basics are simple - any moron can do it ... and they frequently do. The general idea is, of course, to move apples from the trees into wooden bins as quickly as you can. Simple enough. It’s the quickly bit that causes all the problems. Basically there’s a distinct conflict of interest between the apple’s handling requirements (apples aren’t made of wood, but the bins are), and the pickers’ requirement to make money, exacerbated by the orchardists’ selective harvesting requirements. In the end, it’s not so much technique which matters, as knowing where the line of acceptable bruising (that is, tolerated bruising, because in orchardspeak no bruise is good bruise) lies.
And the season did start well. Our improved abilities and improved fitness meant we were literally twice as fast as the year previously. We steamed through the first week, gained further momentum in the second, picked up the pace another notch in the third. We were rolling confidently towards a record-breaking season ... and then the emotional wheels began falling off.
We’d found our dream section. We were planning our dream house. But Marion started to wonder if it all wasn’t really the beginning of some eternal nightmare. What had once seemed so straightforward, so uncomplicated, so perfect, began to darken with sinister undertones. We weren’t building a home, but a prison! And it wasn’t freedom we were weaving, but a heavy chain of commitment shackling us to a miserable piece of dirt. Only now, now that it was serious, did she begin to honestly consider the ramifications of our decision. Only now did it all become real. She began seriously questioning our plans, our future, herself ... and us.
What were we going to do here?
What were we doing here?
They were familiar questions. The exact same questions, in fact, that I had asked less than a year before. So I repeated the answers she had once given me.
We were going to build a home. A base. A place for our accumulated stuff. We were going to develop the land, to slowly progress towards basic self-sufficiency. We were going to create a life of simple pleasures. We were going to eat and sleep and swim and read and study and grow. We were going to pursue our interests. We were going to travel, to live in other towns, to discover new places, but always coming home. We were going to live together, enjoy each other’s company, start a family. We were going to live.
We were here, because land was cheap. Because there was always work (not work we wanted, but work when we needed it). Because it was only 150 kilometres to the city. Because it was quiet and peaceful and clean and simple and beautiful. Because we could do anything here. Because we could be ourselves here.
I was committed, but Marion was suddenly allergic to commitment.
I wanted to stay, but she wanted not so much to leave, as to flee. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was away. It didn’t matter who, as long as it wasn’t me.
Life suddenly seemed to lose its point. It was pointless picking apples. Pointless thinking about building a home. Pointless to think about anything except sorting our life out, rediscovering each other, redefining our dreams. So we headed to Germany. A few months staying with Marion’s family, travelling again, seeing new things, forgetting about the past or the future ... that’s what we needed.
But staying with Marion’s family proved quickly untenable, mainly due to the insidious effects of locked-in syndrome (commonly called the Wendy complex, or reverse Peter Pan psychosis). Defined as “a chronic psychological state in which offspring are eternally perceived as children”, this insidious affliction affects up to 90% of all parents with post-pubescent children, and yet remains virtually ignored by the medical establishment.
First symptoms usually appear as the patient’s offspring reach adolescence. These may include irrational behaviour (hiding car-keys, counting the change in pockets, marking whisky bottles), emotional delusions/misconceptions (offspring’s behaviour - growing long hair, mis-kicking penalties, failing maths - is designed purely to embarrass/annoy them), and increasingly illogical thought processes (disagreement is falsely labelled being disagreeable, development of personal taste is interpreted as rejection of parental taste, disliking pumpkin equals disliking provider of pumpkin).
Nobody quite knows how or why (some researchers have suggested a kind of empathic puberty may be responsible), but at some point during this normal, healthy (though often tumultuous) emotional sparring, a mental trigger is activated, thus setting in motion an unstoppable chain of mental ‘gate closures’. Our memories are very much like sheep, and LIS the deranged shepherd in charge of the pure parental flock, ensuring all diseased, disagreeable or simply wrong memories are shunted safely away. There is no known cure.
It seems there’s an unwritten international human law that the more interesting children become, the less interested the parents. Surely the primary role of parents should be to raise complex individuals capable of independent thought - children better than themselves? But better has become a word laden with mistrust. We may no longer be better, only different. But surely better is preferable to bland lies? Shouldn’t we hope our children are better than ourselves? Not more, not less, not bigger, faster or cleverer - just better. Rather than being proud of their children’s independence, proud of their evolution, most parents seem to rue the loss of dependence, begrudge their children’s hard-won talents ... or worse, ignore them totally.
Marion was a 28-year-old married woman who had gathered a wealth of experience travelling and working in numerous jobs in numerous countries under vastly differing conditions and cultures before ‘settling’ on the other end of the world, but by the time we’d risen three floors to her mother’s apartment in a concrete termite mound in the middle of a concrete termite village, she had been miraculously transformed into an innocent (read ‘stupid’) 14-year-old girl ... at least in her mother’s eyes. All her experiences, her thoughts, opinions, ideals and knowledge, meant nothing. We tried to fit in. We tried not to cause undue difficulties. We tried to be reasonable. We tried to be ready for lunch at precisely 12 o’clock. But nothing worked. So we decided to go travelling.
But we quickly realised we didn’t feel like travelling either. Wandering around gawping at strange buildings and strangers’ lives had somehow lost its allure in the intervening years. Tourist attractions no longer held any attraction. Poverty was simply depressing. Cultural difference was simply a hassle.
We had to go somewhere, so we headed eastward into the new German states. There was nothing new. It was all the same, except greyer, dirtier, less friendly. Campground attendants weren’t yet accustomed to strangers wanting to camp. Restaurant prices hadn’t yet been inflated to pay for a waiter’s smile. It was cheap - train prices even reduced hitching to a quirky extravagance - and once cheap had been reason enough. Now cheap was simply depressing, so we headed back to Offenbach to consider our options.
The grey city and greyer skies soon had us casting our eyes southwards. We needed sun. Turkey beckoned. Years before, my sister Raene and I had started our travels together in Greece. After a ruinous (ie full of ruins) few days in sleet-stained Athens, we’d spent an idyllic week on Rhodos (and another week in Rhodos harbour waiting for the ferry to finally leave). Apart from being a beautiful island, it was also a major entryway between Greece and Turkey, so we met lots of travellers returning from Ataturk’s (attaboy’s uncle?) republic, and everyone, without exception, had simply raved about Turkey. But our plans lay elsewhere, and although Raene later joined the ranks of ravers, I somehow never got around to it.
Now was my chance. Friendly people, wonderful beaches, clean seas and cheap living - it all sounded too good to be true. And it was.
The people were friendly - we were all friends, invited for chai, invited to stay - as long as they wanted to sell you something or simply to boost their egos. Both of us quickly tired of the grinning lies and the hypocrisy (laughing with German customers one moment, spitting their hatred as soon as they were alone with us ‘Australians’), the leering, arrogant men and everything dirtied by the same dark greed.
The cigarette-butted beaches were no longer wonderful, the suntanned seas no longer clean, and it was no longer even cheap.
Of course there were exacerbating factors. An uncertain morning spent jostling with surly crowds (and even surlier officials) outside the Bulgarian embassy for the dubious ‘honour’ of securing an expensive transit visa had already pricked our sense of outrage.
Two days in a crowded bus had done little to boost our already-flagging morale, especially when rest-room attendants in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria demanded payment in foreign currency... but not coins! Neither of us were going to pay 10 Deutschmark to use a bathroom. The constant delays at random checkpoints manned by heavily-armed guards whose sole enjoyment in life seemed to be to ensure everybody was fully awake, certainly didn’t improve our reserves of goodwill.
(The Yugoslavian war had reached a temporary, and shaky, impasse, opening the borders between the newly-formed independent states for the first time in months. Our bus was one of the first to pass through, and the borders closed soon afterwards, providentially opening for a few days to allow our return trip before closing again, this time permanently.)
Being the rope in a desperate tug-of-war between rival restaurant owners certainly didn’t help relieve our stress. Neither did it help relieve the restaurants’ financial crises, because we’d rather eat nowhere than allow ourselves to be hijacked. It wasn’t our fault the Yugoslavian war had strangled the flow of tourists.
The bus conductors who constantly allowed three half-empty buses or more to depart to our destination before allowing us on board, didn’t enhance our opinion of the local people. And it didn’t matter that the brand new Turkish-built car (less than 30 kilometres on the clock) we finally rented to overcome the heat, the unreliable public transport service, and the 30 kilograms of carpets we’d already bought (we had a house - we needed carpets!) was constantly breaking down (despite the fact it had been outrageously expensive) or that it required regular servicing (and we had to drive vast distances out of our way in order to find an approved repairer).
What really annoyed us was the dealer who later tried to charge us double because we were bringing the car back two weeks early! According to his ‘logic’, we swapped the car halfway through the trip - after the first car broke down - so we had in fact had two cars. Our original deal was a special - one full month for x lire - but because we hadn’t rented the car for the entire month, we now had to be charged standard rates - the first car for six days at the daily rate, and the second car at the slightly discounted weekly rate. Altogether it meant we owed them for the days we didn’t use. So we asked for the keys back and said we would, under the circumstances, prefer to continue our rental for the duration. We’d park the car outside and send the keys back at the end of our rental period... from Germany! He realised we were serious, and with a final, muttered insult, turned away.
We hadn’t even started full of joy in the first place!
It was proving impossible to escape the past or the future. So our minds turned again to our house. Our home.
We visited a friend in Frankfurt. She took us to the Chinese gardens, and there, among the concrete lions and crooked bridges, we discovered our home’s ideal size. Eleven metres by five metres.
We wandered through the Offenbach Rathaus, and there, among the display boards of the alternative insulation expo, we discovered our home’s ideal roof. A living, growing, grass roof.
Together with the ideas we’d collected over the past six months, over an entire lifetime, the whole concept began to take shape.
I drew diagrams and began working through the details.
Marion built a cardboard model (and a little cardboard couple).
We would have a single, open-plan living/kitchen area downstairs with two mezzanine bedrooms, reached by ladder and connected by a narrow walkway (quickly widened once cardboard me had banged his head twenty times while trying to walk between bedrooms). Low ceilings, no interior walls, an open fireplace, lots of rafters, semi-circle stained-glass windows in the peak of each end. A toilet/bathroom out the back. A front verandah running the length of the house. And a grass roof.
For the first time we saw our home. It was wonderful ...
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Chapter Three - Lifestyle Blockages
Dealing with local councils is often very much like dealing with 1950’s American sit-com parents. It often feels like you’re trapped in a private episode of Council Knows Best condemned to endless repeats. They’re usually well-meaning, upstanding bodies made up of well-meaning, upstanding men (plus a token well-meaning woman who normally prefers to remain seated), who generally believe they’re strict but fair. They mean well, but unfortunately most of their attitudes would also feel more comfortable in a 1950’s sit-com. So if you want to bring some rock’n’roll into their cosy crooner world, you’ll have to overcome their intrinsic mistrust of all things different and convince them it’s not necessarily the end of the world.
Building inspectors, on the other hand, are more like the world-weary, crotchety uncle (not to be confused with the crochety uncle, who is the uncle that crochets a lot). They normally don’t mean well ... they’re just plain mean, and hardly even normal. For them, the council are naive do-gooders, prone to make emotional decisions whenever someone plays their heart-strings. But building inspectors belong in the wood-wind section - having no hearts, and only their decisions coming with strings attached. The sturdy building inspector is the last line of defence between civilisation and anarchy. Because the council is so easily deceived by wily developers and building subversives, it remains the building inspector’s God-given duty to redress such bureaucratic imbalances, so that the integrity of the entire world is maintained. Or at least that’s what they seem to think ...
So although we had planning consent, the only thing we’d really proven was that our intentions were honourable. We’d convinced the council that this wasn’t some marriage of convenience, and they’d given us their blessings. But a lengthy courtship lay ahead, and the building inspector was a less-than-willing chaperone. Until he was satisfied, it would always remain very much a de facto relationship. And even living in sin was out of the question - he knew where we lived.
Surely this was only a minor inconvenience? After all, we had every intention of heeding not only every legal requirement, but also the spirit in which they were meant. We wanted a house which blended in. And we wanted to blend in as well. Whichever kind of house we finally decided to build, whichever kind of life we decided to construct for ourselves, one thing was certain - it would definitely make a positive contribution to the local community.
Our heads quickly became filled with ideas and plans. As yet, nothing was too fanciful, so no idea was rejected out-of-hand. There would be time later for practicalities. For the moment, we were content to let our imagination run wild.
The old stone cottage still figured prominently in our designs, and Marion has always had a fascination for anything ramshackle, so we began contemplating moving an old ruin onto our section stone by stone. Any ruin. Every rundown cottage, barn, church or railway carriage was seen through avaricious eyes. Borer could be evicted. Dry-rot could be gouged out and puttied over. And there was nothing a lick of paint couldn’t disguise.
We pored over old photos and souvenirs from our European tour looking for inspiration, and found it in guides to Skansen and Seurasaari open-air museums (in Sweden and Finland, respectively). Inside was a bewildering array of log cabins and sod-covered cottages. Rough-sawn floors and huge, soot-stained open fireplaces. Stained-glass windows and low ceilings with ladders disappearing into shadowy lofts.
They didn’t make houses like that anymore, we thought wistfully.
No, they didn’t. But we could ...
So the life-altering decision to actually build our own home was born. There was no fanfare. We weren’t talking about the Second Coming, after all. People have been building their own homes since time immemorial without so much as an architect. Neanderthals could do it. Builders could do it. How hard could it possibly be? Ignorance is, of course, bliss. So it was little wonder we were deliriously happy with our decision. Not that we were totally unaware of the potential difficulties involved. For me, it was simply no big deal. I had confidence that we would, somehow, manage.
Of course, not everyone shared my confidence. In fact, the only people who really thought we could build our home by ourselves was me ... and I’m not people. Marion remained sceptical, persuaded more by practicalities and my constructive zeal, than by any sense of destiny. (Building a house wasn’t something she felt compelled to do, it was simply the last resort. So it seemed overwhelming, daunting. It was too big. It was going to take too long. But there was, unfortunately, no other way.) Everyone else just thought we were mad. Madder than Noah building an ark in the middle of a desert. He at least had a good construction foreman... a God one, in fact. All I had, was a voice inside my head. Maybe I was mad after all...
Not that I was overly confident in my physical abilities - I’ve certainly never been a 7-stone weakling, but my strength has always been in my legs, and I just couldn’t visualise hammering with my toes (and Marion’s ‘hammer-toes’ had, short-sightedly as it turned out, been fixed when she was younger). Nor did I have undue belief in my technical abilities - unless every piece of timber was numbered and each step detailed in a procedural schematic, it was certainly conceivable (likely even) that the entire house would be built upside-down.
Although physical or technical abilities are a bonus in any endeavour, I’ve always believed they shouldn’t stand in the way of getting things done. A lack of strength or proficiency might add a few days (or months) onto the project, but they were only minor handicaps. Trivial obstacles which could be readily overcome. A far greater obstacle was simply a lack of faith.
Losing the sense of being able to accomplish anything by ourselves seems to be a common malaise, now that the world is run by the Animal Farm pigs who do for truisms what rap ‘singers’ do for classic songs. If you need something done, get a professional, we all bray obediently, while ...and can’t do it yourself... is quietly culled in the adjoining paddock. Like sheep with amnesia, we quickly forget that a third of the flock is missing. Such falsisms are the essential oils greasing the cogs of the consumer society. Enlightened self-interest, is now just self-interest, pure and simple. Why should I build my own furniture, fix my own car or grow my own carrots when I can earn ten times as much in a single hour than unskilled workers can earn in an entire day? We once calculated - during smoko on a particularly dismal day - that a doctor earned over a tonne of apples an hour! Don’t ask me what the significance of that is, I just thought I’d throw it in ...
Don’t get me wrong. I was never 100% sure that I could build a house all by myself. How could I be when I knew absolutely nothing about house-building? What I was 100% confident about, however, was that I would know when I was in over my head. I had complete faith in my ability to recognise if, or when, I actually needed professional help.
As long as I remained objective, there was simply no chance of failure, because ‘failure’ wouldn’t be in admitting any stage was beyond my abilities, it would be in not admitting it. It would be far easier to withstand all the I-told-you-so’s than continuing stubbornly towards inevitable disaster.
My first step when embarking on any undertaking has always been to determine the realistic worst-case scenario - the operative word being realistic. I never waste time contemplating horror scenarios, but I also take care not to paint an unduly rosy picture. If I can look the worst outcome in the eye without quivering in my boots, then I know I can proceed with confidence. If I can’t, then I have to look for alternatives.
All we needed now, was a plan. Well, not just a plan, but the plan. The ultimate plan for our dream house. Which meant we had to start condensing our bubbling pot of quirky ideas into a solid, concrete, realistic design. A process which required some serious compromises - not only ideal versus achievable, but Marion versus Kyle. What seemed, in theory, to be a vast ocean of agreement quickly evaporated into little more than a shallow puddle.
We both wanted wood - interior and exterior.
We both wanted a loft, and lots of heavy roughsawn beams.
Neither of us wanted a galvanised iron roof.
Neither of us wanted aluminium windows or sliding glass doors.
After that, our private images began to exhibit distinct differences, especially once I’d finished reading a book lent to us by Wallace (the local architect) entitled “Low-cost, energy-efficient houses you can build yourself”. So while Marion’s ‘dreamhouse’ remained firmly embedded in the 19th century, mine began veering more and more towards the modern passive-solar variety.
Marion agreed with many of the design principles ... in principle (though neither of us could develop any real fondness for the ubiquitous toilet-shower combo), and some of the interiors photographed were certainly in the direction we both wanted to go, but she absolutely hated the designs themselves. The two major issues were the house shapes and the windows - coincidentally the two key design elements which literally define a passive solar house! Marion likes her houses in proportion, and she hates windows.
Not that she hates windows per se. She’s not the least fenestraphobic - though in Australia she did become sick of louvres - and is, in fact, a passionate window-shopper. She likes her windows small and few, not, as most people assume, because she dislikes cleaning them, but because of the effect they have on the aesthetic balance, and the atmosphere inside. In a climate such as Millers Flat’s, smaller windows certainly can make sense. In summer the obnoxious sun is a less-than-welcome guest inside. And the greedy winter needs little encouragement to entice the warmth outside. So getting the right balance all depends on your priorities, and your lifestyle.
Marion’s ideal house is basically a box with one window to the left of the door and two windows to the right, and a steeply-pitched roof with a chimney. Straightforward. Simple. No gimmicks. It’s not so much pioneer style as Plunket style, requiring less the talents of an architect than those of a talented six-year-old.
In reality, our ideas weren’t so different. Most of the discussion centred on details, but details which would ultimately determine the degree to which we’d both feel ‘at home’. So we decided to take our time. After all, we hadn’t even decided on a building site yet, and where we built would also play a significant role in determining the final design. We’d succeeded in narrowing our choice down from an entire planet to a single five-acre block, but that’s where it began to get complicated. There are a lot of potential building sites on five acres, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Marion immediately opted for a site beside the walnut trees at the bottom of the section, mainly because they were the only mature trees on the property (apart from the row of poplars lining the Minzion’s banks), and her ideal demanded a large tree right beside the house (just ask any six-year-old).
For me it seemed too close to the road - the dusty (it’s not tar-sealed), noisy (when you’ve decided to live in the middle of nowhere, any traffic is too much traffic) road - too far from everything else (looking up towards the top of our section would be enough to deter Tensing), and the Minzion down there was slow and gloomy. On the other hand, there were mature trees, it was sheltered from the cold southerlies, and it was relatively flat.
Somehow it didn’t feel right. I wanted somewhere hidden from view and far away from the road. Plus, I argued, what was the point of having such a beautiful creek at the foot of the property if we didn’t make the most of it? So I wandered around the section another thousand times and finally settled on a vague flattening tucked in behind a rocky knoll with a view across the hills and down the stream. From this relatively-central, north-facing vantage point, we could survey our entire section in all its glory. This was where I would feel at home. So we spent some time camped at both sites (not literally, of course, though it would have been a good idea) discussing the virtues of each location and watching the sun slowly traverse our empire. Finally, Marion had to admit ‘her’ site did have a slightly gloomy feel, while the view we’d have from our verandah at ‘my’ site was truly inspirational. If we’d managed to find an old ruin or had decided to build in stone, things might have been different. But as things stood, ‘my’ site was certainly more ideal for the wooden home we were going to build. Which didn’t get us any closer to finalising a design, but at least we were making progress. There was still plenty of time to sort out details, and there were still lots of apples to be picked ...
Building inspectors, on the other hand, are more like the world-weary, crotchety uncle (not to be confused with the crochety uncle, who is the uncle that crochets a lot). They normally don’t mean well ... they’re just plain mean, and hardly even normal. For them, the council are naive do-gooders, prone to make emotional decisions whenever someone plays their heart-strings. But building inspectors belong in the wood-wind section - having no hearts, and only their decisions coming with strings attached. The sturdy building inspector is the last line of defence between civilisation and anarchy. Because the council is so easily deceived by wily developers and building subversives, it remains the building inspector’s God-given duty to redress such bureaucratic imbalances, so that the integrity of the entire world is maintained. Or at least that’s what they seem to think ...
So although we had planning consent, the only thing we’d really proven was that our intentions were honourable. We’d convinced the council that this wasn’t some marriage of convenience, and they’d given us their blessings. But a lengthy courtship lay ahead, and the building inspector was a less-than-willing chaperone. Until he was satisfied, it would always remain very much a de facto relationship. And even living in sin was out of the question - he knew where we lived.
Surely this was only a minor inconvenience? After all, we had every intention of heeding not only every legal requirement, but also the spirit in which they were meant. We wanted a house which blended in. And we wanted to blend in as well. Whichever kind of house we finally decided to build, whichever kind of life we decided to construct for ourselves, one thing was certain - it would definitely make a positive contribution to the local community.
Our heads quickly became filled with ideas and plans. As yet, nothing was too fanciful, so no idea was rejected out-of-hand. There would be time later for practicalities. For the moment, we were content to let our imagination run wild.
The old stone cottage still figured prominently in our designs, and Marion has always had a fascination for anything ramshackle, so we began contemplating moving an old ruin onto our section stone by stone. Any ruin. Every rundown cottage, barn, church or railway carriage was seen through avaricious eyes. Borer could be evicted. Dry-rot could be gouged out and puttied over. And there was nothing a lick of paint couldn’t disguise.
We pored over old photos and souvenirs from our European tour looking for inspiration, and found it in guides to Skansen and Seurasaari open-air museums (in Sweden and Finland, respectively). Inside was a bewildering array of log cabins and sod-covered cottages. Rough-sawn floors and huge, soot-stained open fireplaces. Stained-glass windows and low ceilings with ladders disappearing into shadowy lofts.
They didn’t make houses like that anymore, we thought wistfully.
No, they didn’t. But we could ...
So the life-altering decision to actually build our own home was born. There was no fanfare. We weren’t talking about the Second Coming, after all. People have been building their own homes since time immemorial without so much as an architect. Neanderthals could do it. Builders could do it. How hard could it possibly be? Ignorance is, of course, bliss. So it was little wonder we were deliriously happy with our decision. Not that we were totally unaware of the potential difficulties involved. For me, it was simply no big deal. I had confidence that we would, somehow, manage.
Of course, not everyone shared my confidence. In fact, the only people who really thought we could build our home by ourselves was me ... and I’m not people. Marion remained sceptical, persuaded more by practicalities and my constructive zeal, than by any sense of destiny. (Building a house wasn’t something she felt compelled to do, it was simply the last resort. So it seemed overwhelming, daunting. It was too big. It was going to take too long. But there was, unfortunately, no other way.) Everyone else just thought we were mad. Madder than Noah building an ark in the middle of a desert. He at least had a good construction foreman... a God one, in fact. All I had, was a voice inside my head. Maybe I was mad after all...
Not that I was overly confident in my physical abilities - I’ve certainly never been a 7-stone weakling, but my strength has always been in my legs, and I just couldn’t visualise hammering with my toes (and Marion’s ‘hammer-toes’ had, short-sightedly as it turned out, been fixed when she was younger). Nor did I have undue belief in my technical abilities - unless every piece of timber was numbered and each step detailed in a procedural schematic, it was certainly conceivable (likely even) that the entire house would be built upside-down.
Although physical or technical abilities are a bonus in any endeavour, I’ve always believed they shouldn’t stand in the way of getting things done. A lack of strength or proficiency might add a few days (or months) onto the project, but they were only minor handicaps. Trivial obstacles which could be readily overcome. A far greater obstacle was simply a lack of faith.
Losing the sense of being able to accomplish anything by ourselves seems to be a common malaise, now that the world is run by the Animal Farm pigs who do for truisms what rap ‘singers’ do for classic songs. If you need something done, get a professional, we all bray obediently, while ...and can’t do it yourself... is quietly culled in the adjoining paddock. Like sheep with amnesia, we quickly forget that a third of the flock is missing. Such falsisms are the essential oils greasing the cogs of the consumer society. Enlightened self-interest, is now just self-interest, pure and simple. Why should I build my own furniture, fix my own car or grow my own carrots when I can earn ten times as much in a single hour than unskilled workers can earn in an entire day? We once calculated - during smoko on a particularly dismal day - that a doctor earned over a tonne of apples an hour! Don’t ask me what the significance of that is, I just thought I’d throw it in ...
Don’t get me wrong. I was never 100% sure that I could build a house all by myself. How could I be when I knew absolutely nothing about house-building? What I was 100% confident about, however, was that I would know when I was in over my head. I had complete faith in my ability to recognise if, or when, I actually needed professional help.
As long as I remained objective, there was simply no chance of failure, because ‘failure’ wouldn’t be in admitting any stage was beyond my abilities, it would be in not admitting it. It would be far easier to withstand all the I-told-you-so’s than continuing stubbornly towards inevitable disaster.
My first step when embarking on any undertaking has always been to determine the realistic worst-case scenario - the operative word being realistic. I never waste time contemplating horror scenarios, but I also take care not to paint an unduly rosy picture. If I can look the worst outcome in the eye without quivering in my boots, then I know I can proceed with confidence. If I can’t, then I have to look for alternatives.
All we needed now, was a plan. Well, not just a plan, but the plan. The ultimate plan for our dream house. Which meant we had to start condensing our bubbling pot of quirky ideas into a solid, concrete, realistic design. A process which required some serious compromises - not only ideal versus achievable, but Marion versus Kyle. What seemed, in theory, to be a vast ocean of agreement quickly evaporated into little more than a shallow puddle.
We both wanted wood - interior and exterior.
We both wanted a loft, and lots of heavy roughsawn beams.
Neither of us wanted a galvanised iron roof.
Neither of us wanted aluminium windows or sliding glass doors.
After that, our private images began to exhibit distinct differences, especially once I’d finished reading a book lent to us by Wallace (the local architect) entitled “Low-cost, energy-efficient houses you can build yourself”. So while Marion’s ‘dreamhouse’ remained firmly embedded in the 19th century, mine began veering more and more towards the modern passive-solar variety.
Marion agreed with many of the design principles ... in principle (though neither of us could develop any real fondness for the ubiquitous toilet-shower combo), and some of the interiors photographed were certainly in the direction we both wanted to go, but she absolutely hated the designs themselves. The two major issues were the house shapes and the windows - coincidentally the two key design elements which literally define a passive solar house! Marion likes her houses in proportion, and she hates windows.
Not that she hates windows per se. She’s not the least fenestraphobic - though in Australia she did become sick of louvres - and is, in fact, a passionate window-shopper. She likes her windows small and few, not, as most people assume, because she dislikes cleaning them, but because of the effect they have on the aesthetic balance, and the atmosphere inside. In a climate such as Millers Flat’s, smaller windows certainly can make sense. In summer the obnoxious sun is a less-than-welcome guest inside. And the greedy winter needs little encouragement to entice the warmth outside. So getting the right balance all depends on your priorities, and your lifestyle.
Marion’s ideal house is basically a box with one window to the left of the door and two windows to the right, and a steeply-pitched roof with a chimney. Straightforward. Simple. No gimmicks. It’s not so much pioneer style as Plunket style, requiring less the talents of an architect than those of a talented six-year-old.
In reality, our ideas weren’t so different. Most of the discussion centred on details, but details which would ultimately determine the degree to which we’d both feel ‘at home’. So we decided to take our time. After all, we hadn’t even decided on a building site yet, and where we built would also play a significant role in determining the final design. We’d succeeded in narrowing our choice down from an entire planet to a single five-acre block, but that’s where it began to get complicated. There are a lot of potential building sites on five acres, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Marion immediately opted for a site beside the walnut trees at the bottom of the section, mainly because they were the only mature trees on the property (apart from the row of poplars lining the Minzion’s banks), and her ideal demanded a large tree right beside the house (just ask any six-year-old).
For me it seemed too close to the road - the dusty (it’s not tar-sealed), noisy (when you’ve decided to live in the middle of nowhere, any traffic is too much traffic) road - too far from everything else (looking up towards the top of our section would be enough to deter Tensing), and the Minzion down there was slow and gloomy. On the other hand, there were mature trees, it was sheltered from the cold southerlies, and it was relatively flat.
Somehow it didn’t feel right. I wanted somewhere hidden from view and far away from the road. Plus, I argued, what was the point of having such a beautiful creek at the foot of the property if we didn’t make the most of it? So I wandered around the section another thousand times and finally settled on a vague flattening tucked in behind a rocky knoll with a view across the hills and down the stream. From this relatively-central, north-facing vantage point, we could survey our entire section in all its glory. This was where I would feel at home. So we spent some time camped at both sites (not literally, of course, though it would have been a good idea) discussing the virtues of each location and watching the sun slowly traverse our empire. Finally, Marion had to admit ‘her’ site did have a slightly gloomy feel, while the view we’d have from our verandah at ‘my’ site was truly inspirational. If we’d managed to find an old ruin or had decided to build in stone, things might have been different. But as things stood, ‘my’ site was certainly more ideal for the wooden home we were going to build. Which didn’t get us any closer to finalising a design, but at least we were making progress. There was still plenty of time to sort out details, and there were still lots of apples to be picked ...
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Interlude
While posting that last bit, it suddenly struck me all this happened 20 years ago. Of course I was conscious of that little fact beforehand. I'm not entirely senile yet. But seeing the date in black and white, seeing it posted on a blog, no less, is something else altogether. We didn't even have blogs back then.
Twenty years gone, seemingly in an eyeblink. Yet it's not so much the passing of time that strikes such a chord, as the 'otherness' of it all. The Millers Flat (indeed, the New Zealand) of yesterday seems, in many ways, like a foreign land now. For better and worse. Just as the younger me seems like a stranger. Also for better and worse.
It also strikes me that I initially wrote the preceding pages some 13 years ago. It was my third attempt at writing a publishable book. To 'become' a writer. Obviously, it wasn't published, though I did get a nice phone call from Canterbury University Press to let me down gently. My fingers have typed a lot of words since then, wearing out four computers, three printers, five keyboards and seven mouses in the process, as well as filling several boxes with drafts and manuscripts. (Sorry trees!) It's nice to realise I don't miss the writer I was all those years ago. I've definitely gotten better. Long may it continue.
In a way, it's rather ironic I've 'become' a writer. My father's single, defining rule in life has always been - 'Don't stand out'. (Which is possibly why he felt so at home in the Police Force.) It took me over 30 years to drag myself out of it's stifling shadow and realise that just being yourself means you're inevitably going to stand out. Being a writer (or any artist, for that matter) means standing out in CAPITAL LETTERS.
So the journey continues. It's not the road less travelled. It's just one of many possible roads. My road. Every road is unique, untrammeled by anyone's feet but our own. I don't know about you, but personally, I just happen to prefer the scenic route ... and to leave as many footprints as I can along the way.
Twenty years gone, seemingly in an eyeblink. Yet it's not so much the passing of time that strikes such a chord, as the 'otherness' of it all. The Millers Flat (indeed, the New Zealand) of yesterday seems, in many ways, like a foreign land now. For better and worse. Just as the younger me seems like a stranger. Also for better and worse.
It also strikes me that I initially wrote the preceding pages some 13 years ago. It was my third attempt at writing a publishable book. To 'become' a writer. Obviously, it wasn't published, though I did get a nice phone call from Canterbury University Press to let me down gently. My fingers have typed a lot of words since then, wearing out four computers, three printers, five keyboards and seven mouses in the process, as well as filling several boxes with drafts and manuscripts. (Sorry trees!) It's nice to realise I don't miss the writer I was all those years ago. I've definitely gotten better. Long may it continue.
In a way, it's rather ironic I've 'become' a writer. My father's single, defining rule in life has always been - 'Don't stand out'. (Which is possibly why he felt so at home in the Police Force.) It took me over 30 years to drag myself out of it's stifling shadow and realise that just being yourself means you're inevitably going to stand out. Being a writer (or any artist, for that matter) means standing out in CAPITAL LETTERS.
So the journey continues. It's not the road less travelled. It's just one of many possible roads. My road. Every road is unique, untrammeled by anyone's feet but our own. I don't know about you, but personally, I just happen to prefer the scenic route ... and to leave as many footprints as I can along the way.
Monday, January 3, 2011
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 ...
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 ...
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