A Horse in the Bathroom

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A Horse in the Bathroom Page 9

by Derek J. Taylor


  'I don't think somehow we're going to see Swinbrook competing for rural regeneration Lottery funds,' observes Maggie.

  'True,' I reply, 'but does it have a football team?'

  It's time to meet Nik. He's already waiting in the car park of a little pub half a mile up the road. He gives us a grin and does a 'Wagons Roll' wave, and we drop in behind his four-by-four as he leads us to a large old farmhouse in several acres of neatly tended grounds. The mistress of the house – all jodhpurs and flowing black hair – is striding down the steps from the portico entrance within seconds of us crunching up the drive. Almost before he's out, she's thrown her arms round him and is kissing him. We get the message.

  The house has several oak-framed extensions. One of them looks like a huge barn but actually holds several guest bedrooms. Nik was responsible for building this. Apparently, soon after work started, a stream popped up from nowhere in the middle of the site and proceeded to wash away much of the adjoining hillside, dumping it in the gardens and forming a lake where the new extension was going to be. Surveyors and other experts in such matters, it seems, were left mystified and the owners distraught.

  'Nik fixed it!' The woman claps her hands with glee.

  'All that happened,' explains Nik, 'is that one day we stumbled on the course of the underground stream over there,' he points beyond the bosom of a garden statue of Aphrodite. 'We unblocked it and the water disappeared. Just like pulling out a bath plug.'

  'Oh Nik, Nik, you're too modest,' sings his erstwhile client, kissing him again.

  We're soon back in convoy and away to Nik's next work reference. This is half a dozen miles away on the edge of Wychwood Forest. The house we've come to see here is even grander than the Swinbrook ex farmhouse. It's a Georgian mansion, its giant windows staring at the far horizon and the towering pillars of its porch designed to intimidate anyone who dares to visit. The routine of warm embraces for Nik from the matron of the residence is repeated. The story here is that the family lived for six months in one half while Nik and his team restored the other, then they all swapped over while he did the other half for the next six months. Inside, it looks like the set of Pride and Prejudice. I compliment the mistress of the house on her choice of marble floor, saying that we want stone throughout too, which provokes her into a long explanation of how it was specially shipped in from Montepulciano.

  'And when you design your drawing room,' she enthuses, 'I'll introduce you to this simply marvellous man who's done some splendid work for these friends of mine.' And she names the castle where they live. I think I might have gone there on a coach trip with my mum and dad when I was about ten, but decide to withhold this information.

  'Charming people,' she says, turning to Nik and leaving me uncertain whether she's referring to the aforementioned chatelaines or to us. 'Nik, you'll stay for coffee,' she orders/enquires. By which we gather that our audience is over, so we effuse our thanks and farewells, and drive off.

  In the wrong direction.

  We find ourselves speeding through the village of Leafield. If you wanted to confuse aliens from Galaxy H218, you could show them a poodle and a whippet and explain they're both 'dogs'. Or, you could show them Swinbrook and Leafield and say they're both 'villages'. Shortly after the LEAFIELD border crossing, we're presented with a few unprepossessing houses scattered alongside the road. These gradually get thicker on the ground till they're in tightly packed clusters but never losing that unprepossessingness – bungalows, local authority jobbies, three-bed semis – and this goes on for about two miles till they start to thin out again and eventually give way to cow pastures as we pass the back of the LEAFIELD frontier sign for drivers from the other direction. During the whole crossing of this rural desert we've spotted one boarded-up pub, whizzed by the car park of the 'Pearl Chinese Restaurant and Bar', and caught sight of 'The Village Community Shop.' These last words tell us that the people who live here do indeed regard Leafield as a village. It looks like a suburb that's been sliced off from its parent town and tossed down in the middle of the countryside, with its residents now left miles away from all the shopping centres, cinemas, clubs and bus stations they'd been used to.

  We pull in to ask the way from a middle-aged woman tugging her dog. When, with a bit of pointing, she's explained the right direction back towards Stow, I say to her, 'I wonder if I could ask you something else.' She looks defensive. 'We were just wondering where most people work in Leafield.'

  'Oh,' she replies, 'well, my husband is in the accounts department of a company in Witney. It's about seven miles away. I think you'll find a lot of people in Leafield commute to Witney.'

  'OK, thanks,' and I slip in my favourite bland little query that makes Maggie blench, 'Is it a nice place to live, Leafield?'

  The woman shrugs, 'As good as anywhere, I suppose. I can walk the dog across the fields.' She smiles, nods bye-bye and is gone.

  So, Leafield is exactly what it looks like. That should please Ralph, if nobody else.

  As Maggie and I drive home, we decide to award Nik 'Best in Class' for client testimonials. And it seems likely that any snags we hit along the way, he'll have come across before and will know what to do.

  That evening, I google 'Leafield Football Club,' and find a pinch of gold glittering in the electronic pay dirt that tumbles down the screen:

  Leafield Athletic Ladies Football Club

  23 Feb... Leafield, Athletic, Ladies, Football,

  Football Club, Girls, Womens, Female, Soccer.

  www.leafieldathletic.co.uk/ - Similar

  … which fields six teams every Saturday including four girls' sides, thus implying that behind the village's dreary exterior beats an adventurous and well-organised heart, worthy of further investigation.

  But closer scrutiny reveals that Leafield ALFC is in Solihull, Birmingham. It's nothing to do with our Leafield, which thereby fails the test.

  I wonder if Swinbrook has a polo team.

  CHAPTER 11

  A BOLIVIAN

  CHINESE PUZZLE

  Working out what it's all going to cost turns out to be as simple as modelling a garden gnome from porridge. And there was me thinking it was like baking rock cakes: a bit of delicate finger work with the pastry and a brief spell in the oven, then you could leave the result on the top shelf to get dusty.

  Take the cost of the green oak. 'Green oak' is what Anthea told us the columns and beams are called that are going to be supporting the structure of our new home. When we had first heard the phrase, we'd both nodded away like experts. Later when we were alone together, Maggie had been the one to come clean first, 'So what's "green oak"?' she asked. And a discussion ensued. We weren't daft enough to think it meant we had to apply two coats of 'Emerald Emotion' or 'Peppermint Dream'. We assumed it meant the timber would turn a light mossy colour as it was exposed to the weather. But a week or so later, this idea fell on its face when we made that visit to the first of Nik's clients in Swinbrook. We realised that her oak columns and beams, though the shade of milky coffee on the inside, had turned a mucky grey on the outside. So we then plumped for the idea that 'green' was some kind of reference to its supposed energy saving properties. When I told Nik this, he grinned. 'Not unless you think draughts will cut the gas bill,' he said. 'What happens is, when the wood shrinks, the wind can start to whistle through the cracks.' Could be worrying, but I figure character comes at a price. 'Green,' Nik finally revealed, 'just means no preservative or paint.'

  'What's that got to do with "green"?'

  He shrugged.

  Anyway, it's one of the few things we agree on with Bella. There are going to be 10 metres of glass along the front of the building, in metre-wide panes framed in green oak. But as to the finances: the fact that the wood ends up looking grubby doesn't make it dirt cheap, though the exact cost, as I'm about to find out, is as obscure as its name.

  There are scores of questions like this that can cost village stables converters sleepless nights. So when one day, while leafing
through SelfBuild & Design, one of the magazines aimed at people like us, I give an audible 'Ah-ha,' and point at a half-page glossy ad. I may have found a shortcut to normal slumber. It's a home-builder's trade show at the NEC in Birmingham.

  So that's where I find myself ten days later.

  It takes no more than thirty-five minutes – the time to get from the NEC car-park to the show hall via a straggling line of fellow self-builders – for me to start to wonder whether 'shortcut' is the most bon of mots. I'm now wandering with a million or so other demented souls around what appears to be a triple sized aircraft hangar with 5,000 aisles of little stalls. Young women in super-short skirts and wearing T shirts that say things like, 'Jenkins Sanitary Wastepipes, fit and forget' or 'We'll make the earth move for you, Darryl's Diggers' jump out at me and thrust pamphlets into my hand. I ask one where the oak sellers' stalls are, and she says, 'I think you've come to wrong show,' then leaps on the unsuspecting woman in a knitted Peruvian beanie hat behind me.

  A middle-aged man – whose black bow-tie, evening suit, sideburns and moustache were last seen in a song and dance act at the Liverpool Empire around 1972 – is trying to lure us to watch a theatrical performance of… of grouting. He keeps pointing at a workman in purple overalls, whose floor actions are largely invisible to the audience, and saying, 'You won't believe it, ladies and gentlemen, you won't believe how easy it is to grout your floor with EASYFLOORGROUT®. You won't believe it.' Most of us who've stopped in front of his stage are only pausing to snort uncomprehendingly at the 400-page exhibitor indexed show guide. And we move on hastily when we realise we might be burdened with a free sample tub of the miracle tile-gap filler which more underdressed young women are trying to palm off on the slower movers among us. I'm getting increasingly vulnerable myself. My pace has slackened to that of a glassy-eyed zombie under a growing load of plumbing, roofing and flooring handouts by the time I stumble on a clutch of oak-frame suppliers somewhere around Section 593 of Aisle ZYF.

  Oak-frame companies, I soon discover, operate as a secret society. I spend an hour and a half interviewing a random selection of their sales personnel. You don't want to be bothered with the detail, I'm sure. So here are the headlines.

  Their first rule is: units of measurement shall be encoded to protect the mystery of the cult. Some oak companies set their prices according to the length of pieces you buy, which must surely mean you pay over the odds for thin bits. Another firm deals in weight, which means you need an Excel spreadsheet and a PhD in arboriculture to calculate the cost. With a third, it's cubic metres. Try converting all the beams and braces and columns you think you need into cubic volume. It's like pricing ice cream according to its specific gravity.

  Next task, track down the flooring companies. I'm in luck. They're in a loose flock only eighteen aisles and fourteen sections distant from the oak lot. Floor slab suppliers, it turns out, are all managed by reverse-arithmetic accountants. This is the only obvious explanation for their pricing policies. As I bounce from one exhibition stand to another, I discover that flagstones vary from £20 to £100 per square metre according to how far they've travelled. If the tiles come a long way, say from China or Peru, they're three times cheaper than if they've come from northern Italy. And the priciest come from Snowdonia, an hour and a half from the NEC up the A5.

  A breezy gent with rolled-up sleeves and loosened tie in front of a stand decorated with pictures of native Andean women in shawls and brown bowler hats, has the answer... 'Labour costs,' he says. 'They work for two pence a month in Bolivia. But the quality of the stone's miles better than any fancy-pants Eyetie rubble. Just feel that,' and he thrusts a postage stamp of shiny stone where I've no choice but to give it a little fondle.

  I thank him and move on, regretting that I'd asked, since we'll now have to factor in the ethical dimension. Can we live with ourselves if we've furthered the oppression of Bolivia's indigenous Quechua speakers? Or do they need our business to survive? Or, in these straightened times, should we be supporting the slate quarries of Blaenau Ffestiniog? It'll take hours of trawling through past Panorama reports on iplayer to decide.

  In The Showtime Café over a lunchtime egg sandwich, which has the consistency of an ideal floor tile but at Welsh prices, I report in by phone to Maggie. She wants me to check out underfloor heating suppliers.

  'What do we want to do that for?' I stare at the mobile in disbelief. 'If it goes wrong, you have to take a pneumatic drill to the whole floor.'

  'I'd have thought you were all for it,' she protests. 'Underfloor heating means no radiators everywhere to wreck your vision of rural tradition.'

  'Yeah, maybe.'

  'Radiators are where minimalism meets inglenook. They spoil both.'

  I agree to find out more. But it's the same impenetrable tale of pricing by whim. And these are only the first layers of confusion. Do we want dry electric heating beneath limestone flags alongside pegged oak columns? Or should we go for hot water piped under travertine marble with ten-year timber in the roof? Or any mix of the above? The flames of conflict look stoked for weeks to come.

  So I start the half-hour trudge back from exhibition hall to car park, bent like a bag lady by the weight of brochures in each hand and by the egg-born cramp in my stomach.

  Another task then springs to the top of the 'to do' list. We've got to sell Maggie's house where we live now. It's on a road of mainly 1960s houses on the outskirts of Stow. To save money (and to cock a snook at estate agents), I decide to have a shot at doing it myself. There are now all manner of lures to persuade you this is easy. First, we subscribe to a website for £120 which circulates the details of the house to dozens of other property sites, and you get sent a smart-looking 'For Sale' sign complete with wooden post. I borrow a sledgehammer from the chap next door, and view the result with pride.

  'Why is it at an angle, pointing up the road?' asks Maggie.

  'That shows we're selling it ourselves without a slick and slimy professional in the way,' I reply, picking up the sledgehammer and setting off back to the neighbour's.

  I find a company on the Internet that does house nameplates, and for £12 they produce one for us that says 'Fort's Edge'. Along the top of the back garden of Maggie's house – and that of all our neighbours – runs an earth bank faced with Cotswold stone. It's the boundary of an ancient Iron Age fort. So I compliment myself on the historical accuracy of my choice of house name, and screw the plaque onto the wall of the house where it used to say 'No. 3'. This is brand marketing at its best.

  Next I take a cunning photo of the house with trees in the foreground that makes it look like it sits in acres of private grounds.

  Then I turn out a fancy brochure on my lap-top and print off twenty copies. We also advertise in the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail. Both are quite pricey, but only a fraction of what the estate agent's fee would be.

  Then we sit back and wait.

  And… I bet you've guessed wrong here… we get hundreds of enquiries. No exaggeration. It becomes a full-time job printing off the brochures, and the phone doesn't stop ringing for the next couple of weeks, mainly from retired couples. Some drive for hours especially to come and view the place.

  We're on constant red alert.

  Tuesday 0823 hours. Operations Group convened. Location: the map table, to the edges of which are relegated coffee, muesli, yoghurt and cranberry juice.

  'OK, brief me on today's targets.'

  'Well…'

  'We don't have time for "Wells". We just need to know who's in our sights over the next seventy-two hour period, what are their weaknesses, our resources and optimum mode of attack.'

  'Right. Well, 0900 hours, we've got the Lightfoots, Cedric and Gladys.'

  'Intelligence?'

  'It was difficult to assess their IQs over the phone but…'

  [Snort] 'Intelligence. As in information on their location, vulnerabilities, combat experience, etcetera.'

  'Pensioners. Live in a bungalow in Enfield. Been com
ing to Stow on and off for years.'

  'Right. Darjeeling tea, Jaffa cakes, and the wheelbarrow needs to be moved so they can see the full scope of the front drive.'

  'Give me the run-down on your schedule.'

  'Well…' (Ha!) '… there are the Handsovs (Carl and Marlene) from Burton-on-Trent at 0945 hours, the Longarms (Stell and Wilf) from Milton Keynes at 1015…'

  'Stop there. Problem. I've got the Chummy-Headlocks (Cynthia and Auberon) at 1025. Could be dashed tight…'

  It's not exactly like this. But Maggie and I agree this is what it feels like.

 

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