The grass over my head II

New electrical regulations meant it was now possible for me to consider doing much of the electrical wiring work myself. Originally I’d thought I could do all the wiring myself, but when I sought some guidance from the Power Board concerning my confusion about wiring the fuse box, they politely ‘clarified’ the new regulations for me - which, when relieved of its electrifying incoherence, basically meant I could now do some of the basic work myself, but still only ‘under the direct supervision of a registered electrician’.

So, far from being rendered obsolete by the new regulations (and the new system of colour-coded components), an electrician’s input was still an essential requirement of the wiring process before you could receive any output. Which was fine by me. Because having come so far mostly alone, I somehow felt almost obliged to do the wiring by myself as well, despite the fact the fuse-box wiring diagram was a frighteningly incomprehensible tangle, and I’m rather wary of electricity anyway.

The thought of those millions of hostile, dangerous volts stampeding along complex paths of my creation, their deadly power harnessed by my hands and only my hands, filled me with unease. After all, I couldn’t even contain a lamb’s awesome strength, nor halt the destructive force of a marauding possum! So I was quite relieved to have someone else, someone professional, someone legally-liable, taking responsibility for all the tricky, and potentially dangerous, bits.

          The first step in wiring a house is to decide where to locate all the lights and sockets, plus the range and hot water cylinder. Most houses simply mount each light in the centre of the ceiling of each room, with all the wiring hidden in the roof-space. But I didn’t have any real rooms (apart from the bathroom), I definitely didn’t have any roof-space, and I also didn’t want any wiring visible. The only place I could mount any light was on the single wall enclosing my house.

The fact I had so few options meant perfect placement was essential. It was really a question of imagining where the most light was required and where light was most required, and placing each light to maximise coverage. Of course, to ensure adequate lighting in every corner of the house would have required a wall-mounted light every few metres, making my house look more like a circus tent than a cosy retreat.

Fortunately I’ve always liked the concept of a two-tiered lighting hierarchy - a curtain of ambient lighting for normal circumstances, and a network of lamps and spotlights to suit specific situations as required. So there only needed to be enough permanently mounted lights to alleviate the darkness rather than dispelling shadows from every corner.

One light in each ‘living’ area, two each in the kitchen and bathroom, and one on each porch. The height of the switches was determined by practising turning on the imagined switches under normal circumstances and marking wherever my hand touched the wall. Making them all, as with the rest of the house, custom-designed for my  convenience. And the location of the switches was largely determined by the absence of interior walls.

          As for the sockets, the electrician recommended installing too many rather than too few, since adding wiring to a system afterwards is always a major undertaking. So I walked around the house imagining myself living a ‘normal’ life, and marking any place where an electrical appliance might be involved. I also had to make allowances for potential futures as well, deciding what appliances/electrical devices I might need, as well as allowing for the eventual installation of a central ceiling fan.         

           Once the sites had been selected, the next stage was to drill a network of holes through the framing or beneath the floor to allow the wiring to be threaded back to the fuse box, and another holey path directly from the fuse box to the point where the main supply cable entered the house. The array of lights and sockets are attached by copper umbilical cords to the main circulatory system.

Most wiring is straightforward now that most components are colour-coded. It’s simply a matter of inserting the red wires into the red holes, and so on. The only complications were in wiring the two-way switch I’d decided to install for the connecting platform light, making it possible to turn it off/on both from downstairs and upstairs. I struggled with it for three days, but each wiring variation I tried simply created an alternative, but still wrong, on/off switch combination.

Marion, who was visiting at the time, made the commonly fatal error of suggesting I give up and leave it to the electrician. Of course, that thought had entered my mind as well, but at that moment I just didn’t want to hear it. I needed solace and encouragement, not an implication that I was incompetent. After all, I knew it a ‘simple’ question of finding the right combination from a limited range of possibilities. It was just a matter of time...

Eventually trial and error, accompanied by lots of swearing and yelling, did prevail.

          Once the wiring was laid, I had to wait for the electrician to be available at the same time as the electrical inspector was available to inspect our work at the same time as the power board was available to turn off the power in the morning so the electrician could complete the final connections, then turn it back on in the afternoon so I wasn’t left powerless overnight. Since such a configuration of eventualities was less common than a vegetarian farmer, I decided to begin lining the interior walls. Because all wiring had to be left exposed for the inspector, I could only complete small patches in the meantime, so I had to proceed with some caution to ensure once the patches finally met, both ends wouldn’t have their tongues protruding.

          Miraculously, despite the fact it often felt like I was trying to organise a G7 Summit, all the necessary players in my little power game were soon available, and at the same time, too. The Power Board arrived promptly in the morning and disconnected the supply cable. The electrician arrived promptly to connect the fuse box and the main supply cable. The inspector arrived promptly to chat with the electrician and seal the meters on the meterbox. The inspector then left. The electrician checked his work, took some readings, then left. The Power Board returned promptly to re-connect the power, then they also left. And I still had power!

          Theoretically, it wasn’t possible. Theoretically, the power was supposed to remain disconnected until all the wiring was covered. But, theories be damned, everyone had left and my power remained on!

How astonishing, how exhilarating it is when your life evolves to a new, advanced level of comfort and simplicity. This must be what it was like for the first swamp creature that crawled onto dry land when it suddenly realised the importance of the moment and yelled “DRY LAND!!” Suddenly I could switch on a light, turn on the range, have the CD player and TV plugged in at their proper place instead of clumped insolently together around a single socket, simply plug in any appliance, anywhere, and have it come miraculously alive in my hands. What a joyful, triumphant moment. For those few moments (sometimes stretching to days), conscience is transcended by simple awe. For those few moments electricity reigns supreme and progress smiles benevolently upon us all.

          With limitless power at the tip of my outstretched arm, finishing the house again seemed within reach, with nothing but time standing in the way of completion. I’d already cut a forest of trees. I’d already hammered a mountain of nails, and each stage had become easier as my knowledge and strength and confidence had increased. The interior lining would surely present no further problems.

          The specifications required the lining to be attached in three different directions in order to provide the structure with additional strength. The end walls were horizontal, the lengthways walls were vertical, and the interior walls were diagonal. Horizontal was the easiest, because both ends were straight, while vertical upstairs and downstairs always involved rafters or windows, and the diagonals required angles.

This time I did secret-nail the T&G to the frame, mainly because, unlike the floor, a nail-dotted wall wouldn’t become less apparent with the passing of time.

          Once I’d finished lining most of the main house area, I realised I’d slightly underestimated the amount of waste, because there was no longer enough T&G remaining to complete one interior wall, or the entire bathroom. When I received quotes for the 250 metres I needed to complete the job with larch (or any comparable T&G), I discovered it would cost as much as it had cost me to line the rest of the house.

Apparently, I’d been rather fortuitous when I’d made my original order. At the time there had been sufficient logs available to meet the country’s ever-growing demand for timber. But soon after, the great log export began, with the owners of the country’s largest forests opting to send entire forests at wholesale prices to fuel the ‘Asian miracle’. Of course, the only real miracle was that any local sawmills survived such economic treachery.

          So I could no longer consider finishing the house as I’d planned. I needed cheaper options. I decided to line the internal walls with untreated 9mm plywood, while I disastrously ordered a veneered press-board sheeting, sight unseen, on the basis it was not only on special, but the salesman claimed it looked exactly like T&G. When it arrived, it looked as much like T&G as plastic Christmas trees look like the real thing, but I was stuck with it (since ‘special’ also means ‘non-returnable’).

Although it was an uncompromising, splitting, shattering, cracking, and overall ugly solution, I managed to complete the bathroom walls. Later, in desperation, I painted over the sheer artificiality of the stuff, and though the paint barely adheres to its glossy horridness and large strips peel off at the merest caress, it was an adequate-though-temporary-and-earmarked-for-replacement-at-the-first-opportunity solution.

          The house was now ready for some plumbing.

The grass over my head I

A house, like a person, is held together by its belief in itself. As the gales rip through from the south, rolling over trees and uprooting sheep on its way to pound against my door, I can feel my house tremble. As the first shivers crawl along its spine, I begin to count the nails embedded shallowly in the timber. It would be so easy to prise each nail out, to yank first one way, then the next, and send the boards clattering into the stream. But the mysteries of building, the belief in ourselves, sends the ignorant wind bounding furiously away where it vents its anger on a hay-shed down the road, flinging the roof across the field like a crumpled lolly wrapper at a rugby game.

Building your own home is a scary business. Animal liberationists claim you’ll never eat meat again once you’ve visited an abattoir. Factory workers often claim you’ll never eat their factory’s products again once you’ve witnessed the manufacturing process. That’s why I never visit abattoirs or factories - I just don’t want to know what happens there. Ignorance may not be bliss, but at least it doesn’t put you off your dinner.

But my house was different. I had seen inside. I knew how few nails were holding it together. I’d seen the inherent weaknesses in the techniques. I’d experienced how easily timber splits and concrete cracks. Yet I was now expected to dwell inside the structure I’d constructed, this tentative tower of trembling timber.

It wasn’t that I was consciously expecting disaster, or that I had any reason to doubt my home’s capacity to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes. If anything, I should have been the most confident home-owner in Millers Flat, because I had exceeded the requirements - using extra nails, extra nail-plates, extra z-nails, extra bolts, extra everything - at every stage.

I had no problem living in other people’s houses, no matter how feeble they seemed in comparison to my sturdy castle. Marion’s bach wasn’t the world’s most solid house, with sunken piles, woodwormed weatherboards, a few rotting studs, and only rust keeping the iron roof attached, but the wind didn’t keep me awake at night with its boastful threats at her place.

But as soon as the towels began flapping on the clothesline on my verandah, my mind was tormented by visions resembling scenes from those cheap ’70’s disaster films. And that wasn’t opportunity knocking on my roof either.

For the first time in my life, I considered insurance. Until now, I had never had anything worth stealing, or anything which couldn’t be replaced for less than the cost of any insurance policy. All those exceptions, exemptions, excesses and smallprint always made me nervous.

What, after all, is an “Act of God”? If you believe in God, then He/She is everywhere - all-seeing and all-knowing - so everything is necessarily an Act of God, good and bad. Which, in theory, would mean we’d be insured against positive Acts of God as well, like winning the Lotto or having a meteor fall on our father’s girlfriend. But nobody wants to be insured against good events, and it’s hard to comprehend why God would want to rip the roof off anyone’s house. If anything, surely it should be called an “Act of Devil”? But aren’t such insurance escape clauses as “Act of God” discriminatory towards those of us who don’t believe in God? How can a non-entity wipe out your house? Do insurance companies also have an escape clause for Santa’s reindeer destroying my chimney, or the Tooth Fairy stealing more than teeth? Something called “Myth-adventure”? I’m not even going to mention “excesses” which seem to work on the winning principle that the more you need insurance, the less they’re willing to give you and the more it’s going to cost.

Although I weakened and considered insurance, I soon learnt that insurance wouldn’t consider me ... at least not until my house was wired and plumbed. (Which seems a rather odd condition to impose, considering most house damage is actually caused by either wiring or plumbing faults.) I suppose I didn’t have to tell the entire truth, after all, it was unlikely any assessor would trouble to come all the way to Millers Flat just to verify my claims.

But there’s something about insurance salespeople which makes me nervous. Maybe it’s because they always seem like professional cardsharps in the poker game of life.

You know they’re bluffing. Surely if Halley’s Comet does strike the Earth, it won’t necessarily hit my house.

You know the odds are on your side. If Halley’s Comet does strike the Earth, and it does hit my house, what are the chances of it happening in my lifetime ... and while I’m not on the toilet?

You also know you’re never going to win. After all, the policy stipulates quite clearly - under magnification - that any damage caused by a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with Halley’s Comet will be assessed at 1656 values, minus depreciation, of course.

But once you’re in the game, with the grim spectre of disaster leering over your shoulder, you can never fold, and you’ll stay until the end, signing those I.O.U.’s for the rest of your life.

Insurance salespeople also tend to make me feel insecure. Their job, after all, is putting values on people’s lives. Maybe I’m afraid they’ll tell me I’m not worth as much as I thought I was. Maybe they’ll laugh when I confess my materialistic impotence. Is that all your house is worth? Is that all you own? No car? No antiques? Nothing? What have you been doing with your life? Insecurity leads to exaggeration. And by the time I leave their office, I’ve usually got a tailor-made insurance policy ... one tailor-made for Howard Hughes!

So, feeling nervous and insecure, I couldn’t lie. And, unable to lie, I was rejected. Of course, if it hadn’t been so personal, or had simply been a matter of ‘accidentally’ filling out an empty box on a form wrongly, it would have been an entirely different matter. After all, I’ve blithely written ‘Lumberjack’ as my stated occupation in every census and immigration form I’ve filled out in the last ten years. But what would have been the point of lying anyway? Dishonesty would invalidate any policy. It’s no use claiming the thief also stole your door or the storm dissolved your windows when the assessor comes to call.

So no insurance security blanket for me. Not yet, anyway.

But I’d been infected. Suddenly, after an uninsured lifetime, I craved the comfort of a comprehensive policy. Even though I still didn’t own much of value. Even though Millers Flat is a relatively crime-free area. Even though my house had already withstood the worst the weather was likely to throw at it. Having a house somehow changed everything. There was too much time invested, too much money, too many tears for me to risk losing it in one single, unexpected, freak event. It wasn’t so much damage that I feared, as destruction. Total loss.

I’d seen a solid, sturdy relationship collapse without any warning, its foundations undermined by years of neglect and bland assumption. Although no insurance policy could have compensated for my loss, perhaps, if I’d broadened my investments, invested more of myself in strengthening other relationships, friendships outside of marriage, invested more in my life, perhaps I could have salvaged something, and perhaps I wouldn’t have been left emotionally bereft and spiritually impoverished.

I didn’t want the same to happen to my house. Not my house. Because if the truth was faced, I had, to my ignorant shame, committed more of myself to building my house than strengthening my marriage. Committed myself to actions rather than emotions, foolishly believing they spoke the same language. Now that I’d finally realised the value of what I had, of who I was, of what I’d lost, only now did I feel the need to insure against its loss.

Land Escaping VI

There’s more than just a low, scrub-spotted hill separating Waitati from Dunedin. It often feels like there should be a border-post on top of the ridge, at the point where the city’s energetic thrusting finally loses its momentum, restrained by the weight of its own demands, and ahead lies only fields pouring into the sea. Yet it’s not just the city itself which you are leaving behind. It's alos the urban frame-of-mind.

It’s not the smell of the country which encourages you forward, but the scent of community. Because although Waitati could be a suburb, drawn into the commuter-belt by the ever-tightening girdle of highway, it retains its semi-rural aloofness, a personality moulded by the sunshine dripping into the bay and the silky mists rolling in from the sea. Although it could be a country village, turning its rigid back on a stranger’s world, it retains its cosmopolitan vigour, inviting life inside for conversation and a cup of tea. It’s inhabitants living independent inter-dependent lives, individuals existing apart yet also as part of a community.

           It was the first place I felt at home. The first place where it was the people, not the location which inspired me. (Or maybe it was just that the hitching was so good.) But it was me who had to make the initial effort. It’s a basic fact of life that most people just don’t like leaving their homes, preferring visitors to visiting. This, combined with the fact I was a newcomer, meant it was particularly unlikely anyone would visit me.

A few people I’d met earlier at a local dance had invited me to ‘pop in sometime’, so I decided to take them up on their offer. Yet although I hadn’t pulled random names out of the phonebook, those first unexpected, uninvited visits were emotionally harrowing affairs. Does ‘pop in’ imply a quick hello at the front door, a cup of tea and a biscuit, an hour or an evening? Can it be spontaneous, or are bookings required?

When is ‘sometime’? And was it all sincere or a polite social formality?  So I not only had to overcome my initial fear of interrupting, but the fear of intruding, of rejection, of not being considered interesting enough, of not being liked, not to mention my fear of being bored, of being trapped in a complex social web, of setting off a tiresome chain reaction of unwanted visitations. Though my visits were greeted with unanimous enthusiasm, my social antennae were always alert to the merest flicker of discomfort. After all, it’s so easy to cross that line of dropping in too much or staying too long.

          I was comfortable living there, in Marion’s little house, by myself. I had a job which was both challenging and fulfilling - though the frustrations continued mounting and the fact it remained a 60 hour per week unpaid position began to take its toll.

I had an extensive social network which was both supportive and inspiring. I have, traditionally, been someone who cultivates many acquaintances yet harvests few friends, simply because so many relationships fail to fully mature or ripen, and so many wilt on the vine or shrivel beneath the harsh sun of truth. But Waitati is fertile social soil, and the bountiful harvest I reaped there will sustain me through many long winters.

But soon, too soon, I also had to leave.

          Marion returned from another tumultuous season. For a while, we tried to live together again, but though we often basked in the familiar warmth of our companionship, too often it flared into a fiery inferno of unresolved pain and guilt. So I moved out. First into a spare room in the Environment Centre, then into another flat - both unsatisfactory, both unsuccessful. The city was no substitute for friends.

So when a house became available in Waitati, I gratefully moved back out there. Back to the place which had, in the meantime, become my second home. If only I could move my house, my property, my creek, somewhere into the valley there, perhaps I would finally discover the perfect balance between people and place. Perhaps I could finally settle one of my life’s greatest conflicts.    

          But the Minzion again began calling my name. No longer a siren’s song enticing me onto the rocks, it was now the lilting refrain of freedom. There was where I wanted to be. There was where I could finally build the kind of life I wanted. The isolation was no longer frightening, because I was no longer cast adrift, alone. Now I had a life-line, a social umbilical cord nurturing me, sustaining me, no matter how far I drifted. Being by myself was no longer painful, no longer a punishment. I was not my jailer, but a friend. Though I may live alone, I’d never again be lonely because my self was now the best company I could keep.

          I suddenly realised I was happy. Happy, again, with my life. Happy, finally, with myself.

          Now was the time to continue the journey.

          Now was the time to finish building my house and begin building a life. A self-sufficient life. My life.

          Now was the time to return to Millers Flat.

          Now was the time to go home.

          And perhaps I could one day entice Waitati to join me at my place.

Land Escaping V

Before I started designing my house, I’d never really paid much attention to windows. Our family home in Banyo had been a simple, many-windowed box on stilts, looking like a martian invader from War of the Worlds, or an incongruous stick-insect.

Of course, that was before the entire ‘basement’ was closed-in to create the euphemistic ‘poolroom’, with its mini pool table dodging the elephant-leg piles like a green-felted mouse, and the collection of truncated cues to compensate for the intrusive walls.

The house, squarely aligned with the road, had consisted of rooms down each side of a long hallway (bedrooms on the left, conveniences on the right), and the windows, placed at the centre of every external wall in each room, served no other purpose than to let things in - light, rare summer breezes and flies. Otherwise, they were more things to look through than at. So I never really considered any of their other functions, or contemplated their construction.

          Now that I had to design my windows myself, I was completely in the dark. The specifications had indicated awning-hung windows (opening from the bottom) but these seemed somehow inappropriate to the character of my home, so I returned to the stone cottage. The windows there were in three parts - a panel of coloured glass above two sashes, each divided into three panes, opening outwards in the centre. That seemed not only more suitable (particularly if I substituted the coloured glass panel for a stained-glass window), but within the realm of my capabilities.

          Light wasn’t an issue when considering the window design, because the front of the house contained five large and four small windows, and faced north-ish, while the east and west sides contained two large windows apiece (plus an extra east window in the bathroom), and the south only one.

In summer, this arrangement combined with the protective verandah overhang would allow ample light inside while keeping out any direct sunlight, while in winter, the sun would drop below the line of the eaves and verandah roof to pour its warmth into the house. A bigger consideration was keeping the warmth in during the winter by making the glass surface as small as possible. The three-panel design seemed to fit every criteria, as well as being aesthetically pleasing and matching the style of the house.

           But a window is not only expected to look good, it’s also supposed to be rain-and-wind-proof. Many people would also add clean to this list.

          For me, draughts aren’t such an issue, because I don’t want to live in a vacuum, and I’m not German. Germans have a culturally-ingrained fear of draughts. What we call a gentle, cooling breeze, they call the breath of death. What we call letting in some air, they call inviting in disease. No matter how hot the day, nor how cramped the bus/tram/train/car, air movement inside a confined space is to be vehemently discouraged.

So, while they’ll heroically battle blizzards outside, once they step inside and that door is closed, they’ll pale at the mere flutter of a teatowel. One draught they particularly fear is the one which creeps up and tickles the back of any foolishly exposed neck. Such draughts are not only harbingers of colds, flus, bronchitis, asthma, emphysema, smallpox, AIDS and mad-cow disease, but are largely responsible for the plight of the Third World. A draught-free environment is the key to economic success - just compare those healthy, prosperous Asians living in their hermetically sealed high-rises to all those poor, starving Africans living in draughty mud huts. If we really want to help, we shouldn’t be sending food or money, we should be sending windows!

German tourists aren’t so much holiday-makers as cultural missionaries bringing wondrous tales of ‘good’ coffee, ‘proper’ beer and ‘real’ bread to impoverished backwaters such as New Zealand. And they’re very forthright when it comes to exporting such modern, post-industrial, health practices as draught-prevention to under-privileged lands, boldly depriving the local citizens of ventilation on stuffy public transport in the name of progress.

          It was fortunate I wasn’t obsessed by draughts really, because creating draught-proof windows was not only beyond my capabilities, but also beyond the material’s range. Wood is a joyously flexible material capable of accomplishing many wondrous things, but keeping out draughts just isn’t one of them. No matter how precise the workpersonship, there’s always going to be a hairline gap wherever two pieces of timber come together. And the wind, like men, are highly attuned to hairlines, and capable of exploiting them to devastating effect.

Of course there are modern, hi-tech draught solutions no matter whether the window is wood or aluminium, but it’s usually necessary to plan ahead if you want to use them because they require space, and such spaces have to be incorporated into the window design itself.

          Naturally enough, I didn’t know all this before I built my windows, so I didn’t plan for such solutions. Nor did I realise that where the wind can go, the rain can follow. Instead, I simply cut the pieces for each sash and nailed them together (they would be painted anyway, so any gaps could easily be filled and hidden beneath layers of paint) to form a stack of roughly-equal rectangular frames.

A dating agency in Bosnia would have less trouble finding compatible couples than I had attempting to match sashes to frames. All those ‘slight’ variations in size and vague differences in the relative ‘rightness’ of angles suddenly escalated into a major conflict requiring a great deal of adjustive intervention, mediation, swapping and trimming before complete matching sets were finally found which could peacefully cohabit.

          Of course, such an enforced peace only remained as long as a horizontal aspect was maintained ... which also sounds very much like dating. Once I’d manoeuvred the frames into their final, permanent, vertical positions, the sashes seemed suddenly reticent, and further coercion, adjusting and trimming was necessary before my windows willingly performed their chosen function - ie they opened and closed. 

I’m still unsure whether this friction was due to the few millimetre thickness of paint I’d since added. (I opted to paint the sashes and frames before I attached them.) Or a mix-up in my matchings. (I admit this is possible because I’d painted over my scribbled references and I can’t be entirely sure they were kept in the correct order.) Or the natural variations between hung and un-hung windows. (Plus the distinctions between badly-hung and well-hung examples.) Or even some strange swelling caused by the glazing putty. (I could have used beads, but with my uneven cutting, I was concerned about rattling glass.) Whichever it was, I eventually had all my windows installed and functioning, though it remained to be seen whether they fulfilled that other somewhat important function of keeping out the rain ...

          I ended up faking the stained-glass because finding appropriate-sized panes was unlikely, and I have no abilities whatsoever in the stained-glass arena - or any other artistic endeavour, actually. So Marion designed a simple pattern, and using ‘leadless lead’ - basically coloured glue - and glass paints, duplicated the effect.

          As for the issue of weather-proofing, most of the large windows were sheltered beneath the verandah, and the smaller ones tucked under the roof overhang. Though weather-shields were installed, on the two windows exposed to those southerly storms when it often seems to be raining more up than down, they proved entirely inadequate to prevent water entry.

No amount of water-proofing seemed to have any effect (though the degree of success only became obvious during each subsequent storm), and my frustration continued to mount until I finally realised that it wasn’t absolutely essential that these windows actually opened. After that, their Fate, along with their sashes, was sealed - the worst culprit being entirely, permanently closed with silicon, while the less recalcitrant of them had only its wayward half sealed.

So now I had at least two windows (well, one-and-a-half) which were not only water-proof, but draught-proof as well. Suddenly my house was sealed from the worst of the weather and unwanted intruders. Though most intruders would have little trouble breaking in. Living in such an isolated location means you only lock your doors for the insurance company’s benefit, because any thief isn’t going to be deterred by a locked door when nobody can hear a window smashing.

Well, perhaps that’s not entirely correct, because a locked door might have discouraged the inexperienced thief who did violate my house. I assume he - and statistics support the assumption it was a he - was inexperienced, not to mention stupid, because he’d come at night without bringing any light.

Maybe he’d assumed he could just flick on a switch, but of course I not only had no locks, but no electricity. At some point he’d found a candle, and the wax trails he’d left behind revealed his grubby intrusion into every corner, every cupboard and every box, until he’d eventually found my torch. Fortunately he didn’t value many of my possessions, and his musical preferences had probably never evolved beyond the heavy metal swamp, so my CD collection also remained.

Unfortunately, some compensation was obviously necessary to reward him for his courageous ignorance, so he rewarded himself with a bag of chips and half a packet of cookies before taking my camera and leaving, his way now brightly lit by his newly acquired torch. I often wonder whether his vile arrogance would have faltered at the first locked door, or would it have simply unleashed his destructive zeal?

          In the meantime, after months of fundraising and disappointment, the Environment Centre had opened. It was a registered non-profit Charitable Trust, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t expected to be profitable. No government money was available unless the operation was deemed to be financially viable. This meant the Centre’s focus was forced to shift from environmental awareness to environmental retailing.

Retailing requires a viable location, and viable retail locations are expensive. So, instead of a cheap, low-key, central city space, we ended up in an expensive, high-profile, central city space in one of the few historic buildings remaining in Dunedin. Instead of slowly establishing a resource and drop-in centre, we suddenly found ourselves, out of sheer necessity, operating a struggling shop.

          Soon most of my time was devoted not so much to development or projects as merely keeping the place afloat. Retailing was a vast treadmill powered by ‘turnover’, and our efforts to generate sales and enthusiasm in our under-stocked, under-funded, unprofessional, unadvertised, unwanted shop failed to even maintain our financial footing, let alone power us forward. Crisis meeting followed crisis meeting with no positive resolutions, no solutions. Funding sources were non-existent.

A peculiar aspect of fundraising is the funders’ bewildering addiction to ‘projects’ and aversion to ‘running costs’, as though one is not entirely reliant on the other. Potential benefactors had fled to their Pacific Island tax havens and weren’t accepting our calls. I should have known we were in trouble after the opening ceremony, when all the invited dignitaries, their chins plastered with croissant crumbs (looking like escapees from a pastry world where they shaved with baguettes and used croissants for toilet paper), detoured around the large, prominently-displayed donation bucket like weight-watchers around scales.

If squeezing a few dollars from the city’s wealthy was such a task (even after an entire clan of virgin pastries had been sacrificed on the fundraising altar), our days were surely numbered. No amount of ‘good lucks’ was going to pay the bills. No amount of negotiating was going to relieve our crippling rental burden. It wasn’t until we abandoned retailing and fled our street-front location for the relative calm and prosperity of an upper-floor ghetto that the financial stranglehold loosened enough for us to breathe a single sigh of relief.

          By now I had also abandoned my flat for the social oasis of Waitati. Marion had again returned to Ettrick for yet another apple-picking season, and I had taken up residence in her house. It was an arrangement which suited us all - Marion, me, and most importantly, Momo and Dudley. Perhaps it’s a result of their isolated, rural, sparsely-humaned ‘kittenhood’. Perhaps it’s an instinctual response to humanity itself or the complexities of urban life. Or perhaps it’s simply a basic personality quirk.

            Whichever of these it may or may not be, the simple fact is that Momo and Dudley were two anti-social (if not completely paranoid) cats. The only people they liked were Marion and I. The only people they trusted were Marion and I (and even then Dudley’s trust levels were never entirely constant). So, taking them to live in the picker’s accommodation surrounded by strangers, psychotics and sadists was simply out of the question, as was moving them in with friends or moving friends in with them. My flat had not only proven unsuitable for them, but was also slowly becoming inconvenient for me. House-sitting was the perfect temporary solution.