The Trench

How many different types of rain can there be in one week? After heavy driving rain, swirling windy rain and stair rod showers with the merest glimpse of the sun in the rare intervals, today has seen a mist like haze where the air itself soaks you. It all makes restoration work in this little corner of France very difficult. Even Tom the cat seems to have disappeared, perhaps finding a cosier spot than under my caravan which has turned in just a couple of weeks from a nice bit of shelter against the sun to a chilly damp wind tunnel. After a warm week digging a trench across the courtyard to bring in new services to the base of the old kitchen wall, the ground has gone from dry and hard to sludgy mud, the trench filling with rainwater making progress impossible. Earlier, whilst looking out through the rivulets of water streaming down the large window at the end of the caravan where I eat most of my meals, I was working up the enthusiasm to go and lay a couple of planks across the trench, as continued leaping across was tempting fate, when I was reminded of an incident some years ago concerning a much bigger, more malevolent trench. I had taken on the plastering and flooring contract at a big old pub on the Staffordshire, Derbyshire border. The first job was concreting the whole floor and I had a new recruit, Phil. Phil was a friend who had lost his job in an office restructuring and asked if I could help him for a short while until he found a new job. Although slight, and with no practical experience I took him on, as a friend would. And so it was that we pulled up in the pouring rain in the pub car park at eight in the morning and a concrete lorry and crew waiting for us. I had never apologised to a labourer before but I found myself looking at his thin frame and saying how sorry I was that he had got to work in this weather on the wheelbarrow all day but he shrugged it off saying he was quite looking forward to building his muscles up, working with these tough looking lads who were lined up with their barrows next to the concrete lorry. As I got out and hurried across to the foreman, I noticed the lads sniggering and looked across to see Phil lighting up his pipe. Although my dad used to smoke one, it was quite unusual to see a younger man smoke a pipe and I wondered if perhaps Phil was under estimating the endeavour he was about to begin on. The rain falling heavy now, and with an impatient lorry driver pulling the leaver to start the flow of concrete into the men’s barrows, I noticed the further impediment to a smooth first day for Phil. After having their barrows filled to the brim, they had to move forward in the mud and over a bridge of three planks across a wide and deep trench. Worried I took Phil aside and told him that it did not matter if he didn’t want to do it. That it was asking too much of a chap who had never done anything like this before. But puffing on his pipe with a determination I had never seen before he said he was ready and took his place behind Gary, the big apprentice bricklayer. I watched with half closed eyes as his wheelbarrow was filled and he moved forward to the planks, wobbling as he took the strain. "You sure your man is up to it," said the foreman, but all I could do was give a weak nod. I held my breath as he mounted the planks, but the combination of weight and mud was too much for him and I moved forward shouting to just let go of it Phil. Too my utter disbelief and horror, Phil, sensing the barrows unstoppable lurch to the edge of the plank, thought that he could wrestle it back and held on as it went over, whipping him down with it as it went. For a split second I felt the shocked gaze of four or five of the men shoot towards me as though I had sent a new recruit on a lone suicide mission to the front, but running to the edge and peering over I felt first a huge sense of relief which then turned to laughter followed by the others who slid to a halt beside me. Phil climbed to his feet, covered in mud and concrete, the whites of his eyes glaring up out of the gloom but with his pipe still held firmly between his teeth. He gained the men’s respect that day. Brushing off my offer to drive him home, he went to wash his hands and face and then returned to take his place with his barrow, the concrete man showing a rare touch of pity and not filling it up right to the top as before.

The weather report gives a better week or so ahead, but perhaps I shall wait until the mud has dried up a little before I get my wheelbarrow out again.

Martyn Walker is the author of Stopcock.

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          Working here on my my own has its disadvantages. Aside from the obvious ones such as doing all the labouring, mixing mortar, wheelbarrowing it through to me etc, its putting up scaffolds on your own and passing things up to me when i'm  pointing old stone walls up. For instance, on friday I had knocked out an old stone doorway that had been blocked up for whatever reason a few years ago with concrete blocks and it took me a while to fill up the trailer ready for the tip. Needing a baguette for lunch which I could get from the village boulangerie where the tip was, I pushed on as they close at twelve. It is only about five miles to the village, but I had to take it easy as the trailer was heavy and I was driving the car as the old van didn't possess a toe bar. The Council tips in France are good, and the one here is no exception. Swinging in the gate, I gave a few extra revs and pull up the slope that leaves you above the skip so that you can just drop your rubbish into it. Finishing level with the one that is specially designed for rubble, I got out and after handballing a few bits of the heavier lumps, decided to un hitch the trailer and just tip it in. Just then an old chap wearing a beret pulled alongside me and after a smiling bonjour, began emptying a pruned laural bush into the gardening waste skip opposite. After hitching back up, I got back in and to my dismay, and without any warning, I turned the key and all I got was a click. The battery was dead. Hearing the old chap say something, I got out and shrugged my shoulders in a galic manner which speaks for many things here and he replied with one of his own. My french, although still on the amateur level, was good enough to understand his solution. I was to get in whilst he pushed me the couple of metres to the edge of the slope to jump start it as it went down. I had two qualms. The first was that if it didn't start, the steering and brakes were as good as useless and a turn was required at the bottom of the slope to avoid going through the hedge and into someones garden at the bottom. The other was that being a big car, the old chap would not be able to push it, judging from how he was struggling with the branches of the bush.  But he was insistent, and putting his shoulder against the back, bade me to get inside. Turning the key and putting it into second gear, I must admit I felt a little anxious looking at the hedge down below, that looked closer the more I looked at it. But incredibly, I felt a shove with what sounded like a war cry and we were off. The engine burst into life halfway down the slope and I swerved round to the left as I heard a great hollering sound and looking in the mirror, saw the old chap come running down the slope waving his arms. Leaping at my open window and throwing his arm in, he suddenly stopped, and stared in relieved disbelief that I was sitting behind the steering wheel. After pushing me over the edge, he had looked up to see me sitting to him, inconprehensibly in the right seat headed towards the hedge. Roaring with laughter, I couldn't understand, but could tell from his gestures that he thought he had sent this Englishman to his fate in the hedge. Of course, he was not to know that I had changed the numberplate to a french one but was still right hand drive. We parted still laughing, my smile leaving me when nearly home whn I realised that I would have to buy a new battery the next day.

Seaside

I am not terribly keen on thunder and lightening. I suppose thinking about it, I have never met anyone that is, but its effect seems heightened when sitting in a compact caravan alone, feeling it slightly shudder as the subsequent rain hammers seemingly on all sides. The day has been warm though, the leaves beginning to fall from the poplar trees, the first tell tale sign that Autumn has begun. It was so nice this afternoon in fact that I decided to go on a little drive. A man can only take so much working on his own, that, tiring of lime mortar, yes it is possible, I went to the hilly compagne to the east of here as Jean Pierre told me it was particularly impressive. And so it was. Well wooded with oaks and chestnuts, I drove up winding lanes briefly emerging into the sunlight before plunging down valleys under the canopy of trees, my old Peugeot van chugging as I climbed up again as though complaining at having to go further than the local building merchants. The roads seemed like a labyrinth, and I was almost enjoying being in the position where I was not exactly lost, but not all together sure where I was, when I crested the brow of a hill and was confronted by a lovely view of a lake, framed perfectly by woods and the odd sunlit field populated with a few cream coloured cows. The vista seemed timeless and I pulled over to savour nature at its best, when, listening to the crowing of rooks high in the treetops, I began to realise I had seen a similar view before. The water may not have looked so azure blue and the trees so profuse towards the water’s edge, but in its own way it was as beautiful. It was perhaps thirty years before when my Dad unlocked his mini bus and urged the youngest of us to get inside whilst he talked with the couple of older men out side. Grinning, they climbed into the front three seats, my dad taking the wheel, and after starting the engine he turned to address the men in a manner which he believed evoked the spirit of Henry the fifth before Agincourt. After giving a brief outline of the job we were going to, which I knew was to be at a power station, I was then surprised when he turned to Dave, who was the young apprentice and told him that he was in for a treat as we were working at the seaside. As I began to open my mouth to say that I knew the power station to be only about forty minutes away and that as we lived in the midlands at possibly the furthest point in the British isles from the sea this was impossible, I saw my Dad staring at me with his keep quite look. He then went on to say that as it was a long drive and we needed to get cracking when we arrived, that it would be a good idea if Dave had a little sleep on the way. From being quite sluggish after a night out with his mates though, Dave sat up, grinning like a kid on a school trip. Drives to work in the mini bus usually follow a similar pattern. Different to the drive home when there would be excited voices talking of football, girls and the night ahead, to work it would be crumbles about the weather and the traffic and any number of misfortunes to complain about and this day was no exception. After about half an hour, tired of listening to the conversation of the older men talking of cars I settled back in my seat and looked out of the window at the weak sun lighting up an autumn scene of trees halve shorn of their leaves and realised we were near the reservoir where many times as kids my parents used to take us for walks around the water’s edge and in and out of the woods. About to tell my Dad that I remembered those days, I was surprised when slowing down the hill that presented such a panoramic view of the reservoir, he braked before turning into the small car park that often used to have an ice cream van parked there, much to our delight. "Here we are then young Dave, the seaside." Dave, who had in fact been dozing, suddenly stood up with an incredulous look on his face. I found it almost unbelievable that in this day and age that a young guy like that had never seen the sea before. But as he got out with one of the biggest grins I had ever seen on somebody’s face and rush to the water’s edge with a look of wonder, I realised that there are still people who have perhaps never left the confines of their own towns and cities. Feeling a little sorry for him and thinking it was possibly a little cruel, I got out of the mini bus and started to walk after him. "Leave him," said my Dad. "I will tell him soon enough, let him enjoy being somewhere different." He never seemed to notice the grins and sniggering of the others as he climbed back in, or even that we were driving across a bridge to the other side of the ‘sea’. But later on when I saw my Dad take him aside and tell him that in fact it had not been the sea but a reservoir, I asked him if he didn’t mind.
"No" he said, "I ain’t seen one of them neither."

Fish, Beef and Rabbit

I have a confession to make. Yesterday I bought a couple of tins of cat food. This may not appear to be a particularly revealing confession, or even one that can have the merest modicum of interest to anyone. But to anyone who by chance may be reading this who knows me, it will come as a surprise. After many years of skilful evasion by which I managed to rebuff any request for a pet by my children with a sometimes sympathetic wife, I ventured into my local Leclerc supermarket and purchased the two above mentioned tins. I bought two because, astonished by the array of flavours and musing if cats actually had a preference for one or the other, decided to play it safe and go for a tin of both fish and beef. The reason for all this of course is Tom. Since rescuing him, I have felt like one of those chaps in a film who saves a strangers life and as a consequence the stranger stays close to him forming a bond, a little like Morgan Freeman in Robin hoods prince of thieves from a few years back. He’s fussy though. In the last few weeks he slowly approaches the food I leave for him near the caravan door, nervously sniffs it before taking increasingly smaller bites before hardly touching it now. Cathy might not be surprised, knowing the limitations of my cooking, but feeling sort of responsible for him now, and to be honest, enjoying his albeit limited company, I found my way into the pet aisle of the supermarket with its array of all things pet friendly and a faint whiff of Zoo. I decided to go with the fish, and crikey, did it make the caravan smell like a North Sea trawler. As usual, I put the bowl out before it gets dark, which now is disarmingly around half past eight, and sat down in my spot near the window to see if he likes what I imagine must be his first taste of tinned food. My Grandmother often used to say that you have made ‘a rod for your own back’ when you have done something that will cost you time or money, and I could almost hear her say it as Tom tucked the food away, licking his lips as he finished the bowl for the first time. Oh well, I am not exactly snowed under with friends at the moment, so I will pop off to the supermarket tomorrow and try the rabbit.

High

Usually I'm fine working on scaffolds. But today, I have decided to finish and climb back down the ladder and put the kettle on. I don't know if it's because Cathy and the kids have been unable to come, but high up on the scaffold, repairing the broken roof tiles that are on the over hang that shoots rain water away from the wall, it felt kind of lonely. Maybe being so high, without the sight or sound of anybody except the gentle breeze that swirled around my head as it came over the roof from the west, it made me feel removed from the normal flow of things. I suppose the fact that the scaffold had to be erected over a metre away from the wall because of the over hang made it worse. Although I had tied it off around the bars of the renaissance window half way up, it was rather wobbly and added to my sense of unease. Coming down the ladder though, I had to smile to myself. Triggered by the wobbling and the sound of Jean Pierre's cockerel crowing, as he does sporadicaly day and night, I thought of a similar scene years before when with Danny I was rendering a chimney on a cottage down a little country lane. It had been raining on and off all morning, but after lunch it brightened up, so scaling back up the ladder and taking the bucket of lime plaster off the pully that Danny had sent up, I started to second coat the chimney. At first it was very subtle, an almost imperceptable move away from the wall. But just as I was thinking it was more of a stretch for me to reach the top corner than I'd remembered from yesterday, I instinctively  dropped my trowel into the bucket, and with a good chunk of my heart in my mouth, grabbed the corner of the chimney stack and wrapped my legs around the safety barrier of the scaffold. Danny, thinking I had gone mad as it looked like I had joined a hug a chimney society, started to yell up some admittedly funny obsceneties that are a feature of chaps in his line of work. But soon after deciphering help from my straining grunts, he realised that the back legs of the scaffold were sinking in the newly dampened earth. With an admirable quickness of mind he shouted up that if I could hold on for a couple of minutes, he had noticed that the woman of the house had an old wooden ladder in the chicken run and he could use it as a wedge to stop any further movement whilst I climbed down. Relieved he'd got a plan I hung on for dear life until I heard the noise of chickens almost barking their anger followed by a familiar stream of Danny's invectives. Sensing that the slipping scaffold had stopped, I strained my head to see Danny, the crotch of his jeans snagged on the wire fence as he tried to straddle it, swinging at an irrate cockerel with a long cumberson old Ladder. The more he swung, the more snagged he became and the cockerel, easily evading his clumsy defence, moved in to attack the leg remaining in his territory with claws and beak. Dropping the Ladder it broke, its years sitting unused in the run, contributing to its rotting demise. It seemed an eternity scaling down the poles nearest the gable end of the cottage, expecting to have to jump at any time, but I made it, the scars of the day belonging to Danny, both on his leg and being bettered by a bird. Sipping my tea and listening to Jean Pierre's cockerel, I went and pulled at the scaffold pole in the same way I have done ever since that day, and gave a little stamp on the sun baked earth.

Rats

Not many people's favourite animal are rats, and so it seems to Tom. After slinking away unseen the other night, I have just found a small dead rat near to the step of the caravan. I presume it was he who left it and although it appears to have no marks on it I don't think it had a cardiac arrest as it was passing the caravan. I like to think that he brought it to me as  a gift for helping him out, and although not a particularly nice one for humans, I suppose his gift range is a little limited. I expect it was more likely though that he dropped it as he caught sight of me as he was making good his escape. He will probably return for it when it gets dark.  Rats hold a singular place in my affections. When I was but a young chap with only the acquisition of girlfriends, money and a decent left foot on the pitch to stretch my mind, I was working on the construction of a new brewery maltings. Like most young  men, I probably had an over inflated opinion of my own abilities and one day after saying that I could work quite easily on my own, I found myself in a labyrinth of concrete lined dark tunnels with flickering lights every ten meters or so which felt like I was on one of those scary video games. Near every light there was a steel joist that held up the concrete slabbed roof.

"Just wrap the stainless steel mesh around each one, tie angle beads on the edges and render them with three coats," said my dad with a smile that knew my ego would not let me utter any grievance about being given this god forsaken job. He knew as well as I, that it meant carrying trestles and planks, as well as barrowing the sand and cement and wire etc, underground along long, cold corridors, with my footsteps the only sound to accompany me. After a couple of days with no daylight, I was beginning to feel like Jack Nicholson stalking those corridors in The Shining, when pushing the wheelbarrow along to where my trestles were set up, I heard a funny kind of rustling, scratching noise that seemed to be getting closer. Picking up my speed a little that had lapsed into a plod, I gripped the handles tighter and broke into a trot, which isn't easy when your barrow is full to the hilt. With the noise getting closer and more sinister I stopped and turned and shouted out that whoever was there to stop mucking about, or words to that effect. But in the dimness I still couldn't see anything until in the glow of the last light behind me I saw a mass of rats running my way with god knows what aim in mind. Leaving the barrow where it was, I took off, reaching my top speed in a time that I had rarely achieved on the football pitch, but even so was surprised when I approached the trestles and leapt onto the planks before the rats reached me. Feeling like a builder's version of Indiana Jones, and I do believe he was a carpenter once, I looked back to see fat rats, bloated on Barley, run under the trestles and off into the darkness with barely a squeak in my direction. Where they were going and in such a hurry  I never found out. In the three months it took me to do what seemed like endless beams, the rats came again on three more occasions, but by then I was almost used to it.  It's getting dark now and I am beginning to wish I had moved the rat further away, but if it is there in the morning I suppose it means that it was meant for me.

Martyn Walker is the author of Stopcock, available on Amazon

Tom

Still on my own, and with the villages and towns full of smiling tourists, it all feels a little hollow to me. Maybe that's why I started this blog, but does anybody actually read them anyway? I have been thinking about not bothering to write anymore when I met Tom. When I say met, I mean I heard a faint gurgling meow kind of noise in the old lime tree that grows over the roof of the caravan. To be honest I am not even sure he's male, but when I looked in the dense foliage about an hour ago, I finally spotted what looked like the Cheshire cat grinning down at me. He seemed to be just happily sitting there, his ginger and white fur  a good camouflage amongst the shadowy leaves, but after a couple of minutes and me opening a carton of milk and pouring him some out into a bowl, I felt something was wrong. Fetching my ladder, thinking he had bitten off more than he could chew, I leaned it on the branch he was on and tried to coax him down. Still he did not move. So slowly climbing the rungs, I decided to attempt a rescue. Halfway up, I noticed some grubby floral fabric near his head which on closer inspection I found was a long makeshift collar that he had entangled in the branch until it held his neck tight to it. His Cheshire cat grin was of slow suffocation. He didn't move, I expect through exhaustion at the struggle to free himself, as I tried to release him, but the fabric was strong so I went back down to fetch my Stanley knife. Gently sawing at the fabric and with soothing words I cut through it and was surprised when he still sat there. Backing down the ladder, I pulled up my plastic chair and watched as he opened his mouth a few times and moved down the branch a little. Nudging the bowl of milk a little closer to the base of the tree, I was glad for the first time since being here that I was on my own, as the sight of me crouched down talking in a high pitched voice, tool belt dragging on the floor must have looked a picture. Eventually he made his way down on to the roof of the caravan before tentatively dropping down and under the caravan. He is still there now, still shy of venturing out, but it has given time to think abut what idiot what make a collar for a cat with a piece of fabric over a meter long and knotted round his neck. Surely not Jean Pierre? He seems so common sense like, but there is no one else here for over half a mile! Oh well, we will see what happens, and hopefully he will still be about when the kids get here as they have always wanted a dog or cat. That's if I can coax him out from under the caravan.

Martyn Walker is the author or Stopcock, available on Amazon