A
Long but Poignant History of Winsome Ridge
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Episode 5 - the one with all the pictures!
Life on the yacht was everything we expected and more, and in some ways less. It was smaller than we had remembered, but then we were desperate for somewhere to live on our first visit to the craft. One could spit into the kitchen sink from the bed. Of course that notion is purely hypothetical and not once did we test it. Our tiny bed did not allow any hank panky even if we had felt like it, which we didn’t. Even Tony declined a polite offer from his spouse about claiming his conjugal rights, and usually he is quite lustful. Dolphins kept knocking on the hull, and although we know deep inside that they are our friends and that we love them, they soon became a bloody nuisance, and we would while away the evenings heaving things at these beautiful creatures shouting things like, ‘Go away you beautiful creatures’, and ‘fuck off’.
Long midnight treks to the distant
toilet ashore interfered dreadfully with our sleep. Especially
Tony, who has to wee on the hour every hour, and soon got
completely fed up with the long walk. One night with great
daring, and completely ignoring the South Australian Maritime
Regulations of 1896, he crept out onto the deck for some fast
relief. It was a beautiful night, and as he stood there on the
poop deck pointing at what he hoped were those bloody dolphins,
he looked around him. Much to his surprise he was not the only
one peeing into the sea, there were thirteen men all standing on
various poop decks or maybe they should be called pee decks, all
relieving themselves and murmuring sounds of pleasure and
contentment. One of them whose name was Bruce waved and gestured
merrily.
Just when we thought it could not get any worse it did. One
night the skies opened up and down it came, as only it can it the
driest state in the driest continent in the world. We hung on to
the mast most of the night and suffered severe seasickness,
although we never left the marina. It was an experience we
won’t soon forget, no matter how hard we try. After a week
of life on the ocean waves, we moved with glee to Carol’s
house.
At first, Carol’s house seemed like heaven. Then we discovered all the little idiosyncrasies of the house which gave it a character all its own and drove us just a little bit mad. Like the fact that there are no rubbish bins, wastepaper baskets or any other kind of garbage receptacle in the house. And the kitchen sink backs up once a week. And you can’t turn on the bedroom light without stumbling all the way across the room to find the remote control switch. And the kitchen, which is new and very attractive, is so small, if you have two dirty cups and a plate hanging around, there’s no room to put anything else. And it’s freezing! Then there’s the dog ‘Doodikins’. Tony hated her at first, but eventually became so fond of her; he wanted to dognap her. She’s a real charmer. She insisted on going to bed with us, and she only ran away twice, but both times the neighbours dragged her home. One of the conditions of the house sitting was the cleaning up daily of the doodles of Doodikins. That was a chore that neither of us want to do again. Oh, did we mention the dog next door that barked all day and ran round in circles. He was great fun.
Our cats were boarding all this time at the vet’s surgery. We went to visit them from time to time, to make sure they didn’t forget us. They both got very fat and lazy, but then, they were spending all day in a cage, cuddling up together like they’ve never done before, and never have done since. They were let out of the cage every night when the surgery closed, and they could wander all over the building and cock a snook at all the sick animals stuck in their cages. Anyway, we rescued them after 10 weeks at Carol’s and took them to ‘The Ridge’ with us, where the four of us prepared to spend 5 or 6 (or 7 or 8 or 9) weeks living in the garage, waiting impatiently for the house to be finished.
We
decided to live in the garage because we had no more house
sitting to do and we couldn’t afford to spend any money on
accommodation, and anyway we’d rather be on our own property
than on anyone else’s. You may remember that all our worldly
goods were stored in the garage, which meant there wasn’t a
lot of room left over. But Tony rearranged everything in there,
(bless his heart, yuk yuk) and managed to create a combination
bedroom/kitchen/lounge room amongst all the stuff. We even had
pictures on the walls and a carpet on the floor. (And of course,
a chemical toilet, which the council didn’t approve of, so
we didn’t tell them we’d arrived). Tony was concerned
that the council would catch us crapping in our own toilet, so he
put a great lock and chain on the gate to keep them out. It is
strange that in a country area where there are thousands of
animals doodling all over the paddocks, two human animals should
have to doodle differently. We think it’s human
discrimination. One night a helicopter came over the shed very
low
with a searchlight lighting up the black country sky in a very
ominous manner. Tony thought it was the council’s airborne
‘toilet enforcement unit’ looking for illegal toilets.
But thank goodness if was only the Star Force of the South
Australian Police looking for three convicted murders that had
escaped from the State Prison after coshing three prison guards.
That was a close call I can tell you. We heaved a sigh of relief
that it wasn’t the council and that we were not threatened
with eviction for illegal dumping.
We got electricity just a few days before moving into the garage, after complaining regularly - without that, we’d have frozen. Yes, even in Australia it gets bloody cold on those long winter nights. In fact one night it snowed on our bed, through the slits in the shed roof and we had to make a tent over the bed propped up on sticks, from a plastic tarp. It was all quite romantic and we didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Trevor the grumpy electrician showed up from time to time, to work on wiring the house. Sometimes he only stayed five minutes, because he had forgotten something. He says wiring a ‘normal’ house takes him two hours, whereas our house took him several days over a period of many weeks. He didn’t bring his apprentice with him, because he said it would take him just as long to show the apprentice how to do it as it would to do it himself. Unfortunately, Trevor put one of the kitchen power points in the wrong place, and became even grumpier when we insisted that he move it. Tony forgave him and after many hours of counselling, discovered that Trevor's wife had done a bunk with his apprentice and left Trevor with three kids. They do say it’s impossible to get good hired help these days.
We’re not friends with the plumber. We needed a quote for installing a bore pump and rainwater pump and connecting everything to the house, and thinking it would be a good idea for the builder’s plumber to do this work, we asked him to quote. He did - eight thousand dollars. We said no thank you, and arranged for someone else to do if for four thousand. He was furious when we declined the opportunity to pay double what was normal. He’s Russian, we think, anyway his name is Mike Grobovitch, just in case we disappear in mysterious circumstances. If the septic tank blows up or we have a mortal accident on the toilet, it’s not constipation, but the work of Grobovitch. We will always remember Mike - he used to growl a lot and glow with rage from we know not what.
Nick the bricklayer was from Croatia and was an okay
kind of guy who knew how to build a solid brick house, unlike
most bricklayers. He wore a woolen hat, and talked a lot, which
was very disconcerting to Tony, as it is a rare phenomenon indeed
for Tony to be out-talked. Unfortunately, Nick did build the
house walls a bit out of skew, which meant our roof would have
leaned a bit towards the south, but he spotted the trouble before
the roof went on, and fixed it with a sledge hammer and a bit of
cement, we think. Also some of the windows didn’t quite fit
- there was a gap at the top, but a quick bang with the hammer
soon fixed that. Nick’s a clever guy with a hammer. He did
have an assistant, his son, but they didn’t talk to each
other, and had their breaks in different vehicles. Tony offered
counselling, which was declined on the grounds that he spoke
Serb-Croatian rather badly.
Then Bill the reluctant carpenter showed up. His job was to put up the roof supports and build the verandah and the pergola. But it was very difficult for him, because the day before he arrived, his son ran away from home with some of his tools and Bill was very depressed. We thought he should be ecstatic, since his son was 28 years old and a big eater. The problem, however, was not so much the loss of a son, but the loss of a carpenter’s helper. Bill wanted to live in our shed for the duration of his contact with our roof. We pointed out that we already lived in there and there was no room. He said that he didn’t mind being a bit cramped. We declined, but did offer him some counselling. Bill had to do everything on his own, so it took him twice as long as it should have, and in his miserable state, he built the pergola too high. We had to insist that he knock it down and start again, which didn’t improve his mood at all. Then he took to building fires under it, perhaps with the vague notion of throwing himself in the flames, or maybe he was practicing for some serious sabotage at a later date. In any case, he managed, somehow to finish the job (even the verandah, which had to be delayed while he had a bit of counselling – we were concerned that he might throw himself off it in a fit of gloom).
We thought for awhile that the house would never have a roof. After Bill built the roof supports, we had to wait for the builder to measure the structure and get quotes on manufacturing the roof, which he said would be ‘all one piece’ of galvanized iron, so they had to have exact measurements, rather than working from the drawings. Also we found out he was waiting for a good deal on galvanized iron from the local hardware store. So we waited. And waited. Then when the builder was finally ready to put the roof on, it started to rain and blow like crazy, and we had to wait another week. Of course, nothing else could be done until the roof went up, so there was a deafening buzz of inactivity while we all waited for the weather to change. Eventually it did, and up went the roof, in about 40 pieces, all bolted together. We have yet to discover what this ‘all one piece’ business was about. Then there’s the verandah roof, the plans for which Roger the building supervisor misinterpreted and made a big booboo. Tony had no luck convincing him it was wrong, so he had to bring in the big guns - Linda. She gave Roger what for, and at first he gave it right back to her. But when we said we'd take it up with his boss, his attitude miraculously changed, and he saw our point of view immediately, and promised to fix it, which of course, took several weeks.
Anyway,
as soon as the roof was up, the floor went in, and it was a
thrill to be able to walk around in the house without falling
through the joists (which Tony had earlier discovered is a very
painful experience). Then Trevor returned and started working in
earnest on the wiring, (we later found out that his wife had
returned, contrite but pregnant, and Trevor was awaiting the DNA
test with keen interest) and the air conditioning guys filled up
the roof space with modern technology, and Anton the second fix
carpenter started putting doors and windowsills in. Then
everything stopped for several days while the plasterers who were
Italian tradesmen went to the foreman’s daughters wedding.
It was a lavish affair as only Greek and Italian weddings can be.
They brought the photos for us to have a look at, and a piece of
wedding cake, which was rather jolly of them we thought, although
we would rather have the plastering done.
Life in the shed wasn’t too bad, although it was rather cold. Thank goodness we had the good sense to buy an electric blanket just before we moved in. We went to bed at about 6:30 every night, wearing pyjamas and sweatshirts and socks and woolly hats, each with a cat on our lap for extra warmth. And one of our friends (who lived in a shed for 10 years while she was building her house) loaned us a kerosene heater, which helped. Aside from the chill, we had all mod cons, including TV, fridge, microwave, lights, clothes dryer and computer. The only real nuisance was having no running water, and having to boil the kettle and use a bucket every time something needed washing. At least we could have showers at work, so we didn’t get too smelly. Our rainwater tank was about half full, but we couldn’t use that water, because there was no tap – just a pump attached to it and no power there yet, so we had to forage for water at petrol stations and steal from people’s gardens late at night, and wherever else we could get it.
While we are speaking of water one day Tony decided to throw a dirty old tennis ball, which one of the builder’s dogs had been playing with, into the rainwater tank. The theory was that when you opened the top of the tank, you could easily see how much water there was, by spotting the floating ball. He failed to consider the possibility of the ball contaminating the water, rotting, sinking and getting stuck in the outlet. So guess who spent a fun-filled half hour fishing it out with a bowl tied to a long string?
Of course nothing lasts
forever, not even living in a shed. The day eventually arrived
when all the insoluble problems were solved and all the gaping
holes in the ground were filled and all the rubbish was cleaned
up and we were allowed to inhabit the house that we had already
paid for. Tony rushed to the toilet to try it out and was a
little disappointed at the lack of freedom in only being able to
point in one place, although he was thrilled with the flush at
the touch of a button. Linda immediately started decorating the
bedrooms and rearranging the furniture and quick as flash started
her dried flower arrangements and bought a spinning wheel. Reggie
and Angus ran straight to the bed and leapt on for a quick kip.
So, at last we were really
and truly Winsome Ridgers, with so much pain and anxiety behind
us, that we had no idea how much trouble was still lurking in
various corners, waiting to pounce (as Tony's grandmother used to
say, 'Don't trust anybody over five'). But that's another story,
which we’re not going to tell you, ever.
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