The bad news is that a lot of these jobs depend on other things having been done first. I try to draw a chart, with little blocks representing each job with dates when they could be finished. This shows us moving into The Old Stables in about two years' time. The not-quite such bad news is that there are some things which could be finished off while we're living here. Like painting the walls for instance, or putting in fitted wardrobes. I'm going to need Nik's help to get any kind of accurate picture.
When I catch him on-site next morning, he walks round the rooms and has a quick tot-up of what's outstanding.
'I could get the carpenters, plumber, decorator and electricians all working at the same time,' he suggests. 'So long as we don't get some unforeseen nasty coming out of nowhere, I reckon you'll be in by mid May.'
'Crumbs!' I exclaim. 'About four weeks' time.'
Nik nods. 'That's so long as Maggie doesn't mind Colin the carpenter and Michael the decorator sharing your bedroom for a few months.'
And there's me thinking he's joking.
'What yer goin' to do with them fences?' It's a thin, elderly chap, waving one of his two sticks at what for the last nine months we've been calling – with no sense of irony – 'the front gates'. ''Cos if yer goin' to chuck 'em, I'll 'ave 'em.' Jason has just started to unscrew the hinges on which the two temporary panels swing open during the day. This is where the new roadside wall's going to go.
'No, I don't think we'll want them,' I say.
'Expect you've heard of me,' he shouts from under his flat cap, maybe not having registered my reply. 'I run The Stow Cat and Hedgehog Sanctuary.' He delivers each word separately, then pauses for the import of the announcement to sink in. 'See, if you don't want 'em…' He waves both sticks this time, and for a moment I think he might topple over. '… I can use 'em. For the cats.' But he's solid as a row of beans again. 'If your man here,' Jason's on the end of a stick now, 'could bring 'em over…' I raise a quizzical eyebrow at Jason, who nods. '… you'd be doing a service for the needy little animals of the community.'
'No problem,' I say.
'Shouldn't take him more than an hour to put 'em up,' he adds over his shoulder as he makes his way back down the road.
One of the several jobs we're getting on with while waiting for the screed to dry out, is building the perimeter wall. Here's a brainteaser. How much does a 1 metre length of drystone wall, 1.8 metres high, cost? In other words, a section about the size of a decent garden gate. Answer: (not counting the foundations, which would be extra, but which we dug out ready when the apprentice archaeologist came to call) 500 quid.
Why? Because the Cotswold stone is anything up to £90 a square metre (that's laid edgeways in a wall, not on the ground as crazy paving) and a drystone wall has a front and a back. Add to that, the labour of an expert stone-wall builder at around a further £50 a square metre. So that's £140 times two (for both sides) multiplied by 1.8. To save you reaching for a calculator, that's exactly £504. This is a shocker when Nik points it out to me, because we'll need something like a 35-metre run. That's £17,500. Just for a garden wall!
'Why fifty quid a metre for the labour?' I squeak.
'It's a skilled job,' Nik replies. 'And the other thing is, it's heavy work. The stones are a helluva weight. You're forever heaving them up, seeing whether each one fits, taking it down, trying another one. You need a strong, fit bloke to do it.' I get the point. 'One thing we could do though, is see if Bella…' – my shoulders droop at the sound of the planning officer's name – '… see if Bella would let us do block-work on the inside which you could have rendered in a light colour. That would save you some cost. It'd also give the courtyard inside a bit of a Mediterranean look.' And he adds, 'Maggie'd like that.'
Perceptive. She does. And remarkably, so does Bella. So that's the plan.
By the time I arrive on-site the following Monday, Simon has finished laying the block wall along the front, by the road. And there's another of these old geezers there, waiting to scrounge whatever's going begging. This one's small, no more than 5-feet tall in his dusty boots, with glasses and a grubby woollen cap of indeterminate hue. I'm determined this time that, although I'm happy to donate any unused blocks to the local badger reservation or sparrow clinic, we can't afford to keep stumping up for labour costs to erect the stuff as well.
'Good morning,' I say, businesslike.
''Ow do,' he replies.
'We might have a few breeze blocks left over,' I say, taking the initiative, 'which you could use to build your own…' – I stress the words – '… badger playpen or avian operating theatre.'
'Pardon?'
'This is Bill,' Simon interrupts. 'He's the waller.'
'The "whaler",' I repeat, half wondering if Simon in his Gloucestershire accent is telling me this man helps rescue large marine mammals.
'The drystone waller,' Simon amplifies.
'The drystone waller,' I'm repeating it to give my brain time to match what my eyes are showing me of the little chap in front of me, with the information it already holds on this subject.
''Ow do,' says Bill again, and pulls off a gigantic dusty glove to shake my hand.
'So you're the drystone waller.' I'm looking down onto the top of his head, as I take his bony grip in my hand.
He nods three times. 'So it's down 'ere and round the corner you want done,' he asks.
'Yes, it's quite a lot,' I say. 'Are you sure you've built a wall this size before?'
Bill puts his cap back on and prepares for a major announcement. 'The biggest job I ever did,' he declares, 'was down near Stroud. Round the outside of a big 'ouse. Do you know 'ow big that wall was?'
'No. How big?'
'One and a 'alf miles from end to end.' He pauses for effect, with justification.
'Strewth! How long did that take?'
'Just over nine years.'
'Crikey! Didn't it get a bit boring?'
'Ooh, no,' he comes back quickly. 'You see, every 500 yards or so…' – he pauses again – '… there was a right-angle bend.'
And he breaks into a cackle.
He wants to go to a nearby quarry to look at the quality of their stone before we place an order. So we arrange to go together that afternoon when Maggie can join us.
'Best take your car,' he says. 'You wouldn't want to go in my old trap.' He points across the road at what looks like the remains of a crash on the Kalahari Desert Rally. 'You can't get stone dust out, once it's got into the upholstery. So she's just for work. Then at home I've got my best car, as I keep for going out.' He does a little mock tap-dance to indicate his social life. 'Just hang on a minute,' he says, and he comes back a moment later with some cloudy grey plastic sheeting which must have started life transparent. He spreads it over our rear seat, climbs in and away we go.
'So, how old do you think I am?' he starts off.
Now, we've all been through this lots of times, so Maggie says, 'Ooooh. I don't know. Fifty?'
'I'm nearly seventy. Divorced. I've got twin sons. How old do you think they are?'
It's my turn. 'Ooooh. I don't know. Thirty-five?'
He can see I'm looking at him in the mirror. He winks.
'Fourteen.' He cackles, and I glance back in time to see a cloud of stone dust tumble from his hair. 'And they live with me, not their mother. My last job,' he goes on, 'was round some luxury flats, near where Princess Anne lives. Do you know how much they're asking for them flats?' This time he doesn't wait for our guess. 'Three-quarters of a million quid. Three-quarters of a million! I ask you. For a flat half the size of my cottage. But I tell you, if there'd been as much stone-laying work around when I were starting out years ago, as what there is now, I'd be buying a couple of them flats for my lads.' His cackle turns into a cough. It's the stone dust again.
At the quarry, he ferrets through bag after bag of rough hewn blocks before he pronounces them OK. We then spend ten minutes talking into a hole slightly larger than a letterbox in the side of a shed. The customer servic
es manager, or whatever they're called at quarries, is on the inside. When we're speaking, we see one ear and an eye. When he's speaking, his nose and mouth come into view. Maybe they've discovered a way to gain a psychological advantage during price negotiations. It can't be entirely satisfactory for the quarry, because we come away with a deal which is a big improvement on Nik's first lot of figures.
'It depends on 'ow old the stone is,' Bill explains. 'If it's maggoty old cack from some rackety barn, it'll cost twice as much as the brand new stuff.' And he coughs and cackles till we can hardly see him for the stony plume of dust. The first load will be delivered that afternoon.
The next morning, I arrive around ten to find Bill explaining the obscurer techniques of drystone walling to two American tourists.
'Anyway,' I hear him tell them, 'I've got to get on. It's time for my coffee. I 'spect you want to take my photo.' He's not actually laid any stone yet, so they make do with one of him smiling in front of Simon's newly placed breeze blocks.
CHAPTER 30
KING PENGUINS AND
MINIATURE VAMPIRES
'How's the village thesis coming along?' asks Maggie, carving her T-bone steak with enthusiasm. We've decided to treat ourselves to a meal out at The Talbot in Stow's Market Square. It's to celebrate not too many things going wrong this week.
'Confusingly,' I reply.
'How's that? I thought that ever since the deep depression of Hogsthorpe, you'd been to villages that are all perky and lovely.'
'Not really. Some of them are like Hogsthorpe, but posher.'
'You mean too many pensioners, and no football team.'
'That's right. But it's not as simple as that. Some manage to have a balance for instance between upmarket and cheaper houses and still look chocolate boxy.'
'Let me guess. Like Bledington.'
'Right. But it's not got a shop. And nowhere for locals to work.'
'I thought you'd decided that it's a mistake to think of villages as places where people work.'
'Partly true. But then the bigger ones like Stow or my own childhood home in Newthorpe do have businesses with jobs for locals.'
'So are they anachronisms? Villages. Or have they found a new role?'
'Well, that's the mammoth puzzle. One thing's sure. Whatever people believe who move home from cities to villages, there wasn't some golden age of rural life back in village history waiting now to be recaptured. The past of villages is a tale of struggle against starvation, death in childbirth, bubonic plague and similar man-made and natural atrocities. Life in villages has never been as comfortable as it is in the twenty-first century.'
'So there's no such thing as regenerating a village?'
'I don't know. Some need some sort of life putting into them. I can think of some that you'd call 'villages' for no other reason than that they're small.'
'Leafield, you mean.'
'Yes. If you could have a suburb without the 'urb', Leafield would be it.'
Maggie picks up the last double-fried chip from the communal bowl between us and pokes its end into the little pile of salt on her otherwise empty plate. 'I know a village that must be the last word in self regeneration,' she declares, raising her eyebrows and waving the chip in front of me like a mini-flag at a royal wedding.
'Where's that then?' I ask, making a vain attempt to snaffle the triumphant chip for myself.
'Packingham.'
'Packingham. You mean Packingham in Norfolk?'
'No. Packingham-in-Stayle south of Bath.'
'Oh sure, a long way south I think.'
'So have you ever been there on a sunny Sunday afternoon?'
'No. Can't say I have.'
'We should go and take a look,' says Maggie. 'How about tomorrow?'
'It sounds an all-day trip to me, and I'd planned to go to the gym tomorrow.'
'The forecast is for temps in the twenties. You could maybe put off the weight-loss campaign for a day?'
'OK,' I nod and pick up the menu. 'Do you want to share a sticky toffee pudding?'
'There's one,' snaps Maggie, pointing at a camper van backing out 50 yards ahead to reveal its prized parking spot. We're on our third circuit of a car park which, if it were empty, would allow you to appreciate the curvature of the earth's surface. Eight coaches sit brooding side by side, their droop-eared wing mirrors ever alert.
'Have you got any pound coins?' I call over to Maggie. 'If you want to stay long enough for more than a cup of tea, it's £5.50.' Once she's scrabbled about in her bag, we join the river of humanity which is sliding past the green THIS WAY TO VILLAGE sign. We put our heads down and drive forward.
The first thing I notice is that the lower-body uniforms of our fellow visitors are either below-the knee shorts with flip-flops, or brown support hose with orthopaedic shoes. Maggie and I feel intruders without a buggy or a walking stick between us. We move in a herd, by the same instinct that the management of Disney World exploits to keep its customers on the move, for a quarter of a mile down an alleyway between high stone walls before being disgorged into the teaming heart of Packingham-in Stayle.
Packingham is one of 847 places on this earth which are referred to as 'The Venice of…' According to a colourful picture map we linger in front of, we're in THE VENICE OF THE SOUTH WEST. Through the crowds sauntering back and forth in front of us we can just make out the reason for this epithet. As far as I'm aware, Packingham does not have many frescoes by Tiepolo, nor a basilica overlooking a vast piazza where if you stay long enough you will meet everyone in the world, nor even gondoliers singing Santa Lucia on a network of canals. Maggie and I dodge through the surge of toddlers, dogs, grannies, mums and dads to take a look at what this Venice has: a very nice stream about 20-feet wide running right through the middle of the village with some pretty little bridges.
On each bank there are swathes of grass. I can tell it's grass because I can just make out some patches of green in between the picnic blankets and stretched-out support hose and white legs. In the water itself, which is only a couple of inches deep, hordes of kids, ranging from roughly two to eight years, are variously fishing with pink nets on canes, towing each other along on transparent mini-dinghies, kicking the water with their orange Crocs, or just paddling. If you screw up your eyes and fire up your imagination, you can see that the bridges, the stream and its banks, on a quiet day, would make a charming scene.
Maggie must have spotted some upward turning of my nose because she says, 'Oh come on. It's a wonderful place for families on a sunny day like this. I'd have loved it when I was a kid. Look what fun they're having. It's like going to the seaside.'
'Sure,' I say, convincing nobody.
It takes us about ten minutes to cross the nearest narrow footbridge. On the other side, we get swept sideways for a few paces by the dawdling masses, our ears filled by cries of 'Angelina/Brad/Claudia, watch where you're going!'
I look up at the signs on the old buildings beyond the ranks of packed cafe tables. LILLY'S RESTAURANT AND TEA ROOM, GIFTERAMA, THE RIVER RESTAURANT AND ICECREAM PARLOUR, THE I. OF MAN FLEA MARKET… 'The Isle of Man Flea Market!' I take a second look. Subtext: IN AID OF THE I.OF MAN DONKEY SANCTUARY.
We decide to take a look at one of the principal man-made lures of Packingham. This is about 500 yards away along the river. Our journey gets a little less slow as the people-density begins to drop to approximately two per square metre. There's also enough green appearing alongside for a dad to tap a red beach ball back and forth to his giggling toddler, and two small girls are able to skim pebbles across the stream without braining half a dozen other kids, and instead merely scatter a couple of dozy mallards.
ANIMAL WORLD. We've arrived and join the queue to pay. The accents around us are Welsh, Japanese, Brum and German. A sign informs us, RESERVÉ AUX ENFANTS SOUS SURVEILLANCE ADULTE PERMANENTE. The management of Animal World clearly knows which nation can't be trusted with the surveillance of children and, what's more, which nation's adults themselves might stop being
adults at any moment and start demanding an ice cream or lapse into uncontrollable tantrums because they're tired. Bearing in mind this frightening prospect, we pay £14.50 for two and enter.
An ear-splitting screech makes us look up and see a macaque monkey swinging from a pole. We walk on. We read on a board that Animal World has fifty-three species of small wild animals and forty species of birds on display. The first we come across is a lapwing from Thailand. It's got a dull brown back, and is trying to attract attention by balancing on one leg, but nobody stops to look at it. The next exhibits might make you pause for a moment to see whether they're as exotic as their name suggests. Phodopus sungorus. There seem to be about twenty of the little creatures running about their enclosure and up and down ladders. They look like hamsters to me, which it turns out is what they are, all the way from Siberia. But the path in front of their little cage is empty too. The snowy owls have better luck at pulling in an audience. 'Come and see this one,' shouts a dad. 'It's Hedwig from Harry Potter!'
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