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.
As Danny passed me a quarry tile and I pressed it into place, the man's head appeared round the corner again.
"You lads sure you won't 'ave a cuppa tea?"
I looked at Danny and gave a little sigh. When you work in prisons you are not supposed to take anything from inmates, but the old chap seemed so eager to make one and it was about the fifth time he had asked that day that I shrugged and said okay. As he shuffled off down the corridor to his cell, I stood up and stretched to see Danny looking at me with a little grimace.
"I know," I said, but it couldn't do any harm and I was ready for one anyway.
Standing in the doorway of his cell, I was surprised at how big it was, with an armchair and a television which had horse racing on, but as he was elderly I supposed they gave him a little slack.
"I love my racing," he said, then as the tea was mashing began to tell me about his illnesses and how little he saw of his family before pouring the tea and handing it to us.
The tea was hot, so I held the mug a while whilst he sat in his chair continuing with his life story and that he had been inside for fifteen years. Taking this as a cue and thinking he had taken us into his confidence I asked what his offence had been. Danny, tiring of the conversation began to sip his tea when he said casually,
"I poisoned three people."
Convulsing backwards, Danny spit his tea up the wall and shot out into the corridor. Bumbling some excuse, I followed him and we both poured our tea ceremoniously down the sink in the toilet. Surprisingly, we were not asked for tea again.
This tea tastes great though. Even though it is very hot sitting in the shade of the caravan in the old deckchair, nothing else hits the spot for me. A couple of digestives compliments it nicely, and as I look up at the window I have put in today which basically finishes off the kid's bedroom, I feel a little relaxed thinking they have somewhere to sleep when they get here on Monday.
The hammock is perfect. Slung between the old elder trees that I very nearly cut back a few weeks ago when everything was growing like mad in the rain, it's perfect for musing on life and cradling the laptop. I start the day early now, getting up at six and working until about one when it's too hot to work. The floor's finished, so it's onto some plastering tomorrow and maybe when Cathy gets here next week it will look like I have made some progress. With a room plastered out, it looks like it's nearly finished. The early start was difficult today though. Last night in the local town there was a fete. I had seen it advertised on a poster outside the boulangerie last week, and bored with the sound of my own hammering and tinned food in the caravan, decided to see what the poster meant by a mousse party. Standing on the edge of the square, brightly lit stalls linked with garlands of light bulbs, I was intrigued by a big contraption that was set up on the stage next to the DJ's podium. As the sunset faded away and I started to tuck into my sausage in a baguette that the latex gloved man on the food stall handed to me like a prized possession, I watched as groups of friends, mostly young people but with more than a smattering of children and their parents, move towards the stage at the urging of the DJ. As the music level increased, so the mystery machine cranked into life spewing huge amounts of mousse, or to my eyes at least, a type of foam that looked like everyone was indulging in a giant communal bubble bath. Soon most of the teenagers had disappeared as they had surged to the front, but they were quickly followed by the children, darting in and out, throwing foam at their smiling parents. To see people of all ages in a community having such innocent fun made me smile, but I did see one young chap emerge from the foam mountain grimacing as he limped away rubbing his knee. The way his face sagged and his sodden shorts clung to his thighs reminded me of Jack. I was working at a courthouse repairing tiles with my Dad. It was in the Edwardian toilets just off the main entrance and all was progressing well when we had a call asking us to re-grout the joints in the long urinal with epoxy grout. Well you can imagine what we thought of that. Still, my Dad said he'd had worse jobs and we were just to get on with it. He boiled some water to clean what in fairness was a clean area, but before we could start we needed the flushing water switched off. Finding the valve rusted solid I phoned the main contractor for a plumber and was told he would be there as soon as possible. Twenty minutes later in walked Jack. Jack was a nice chap, but he was a joiner. In his eagerness to please his boss whose plumbers were overworked he had volunteered to help us as he said he was au fait with all things plumbing. Soon coming to the same conclusion as us that the valve was stuck he went to ask a court usher if he could turn the mains off. They were reluctant, so not wanting to be a nuisance he said he'd manage.
"You must be joking," said my Dad as Jack outlined his proposal. He said that he would cut the pipe in a discreet area and slip on a new valve excepting that he would get a little damp but that as all the walls and floor were tiled the spilled water would soon mop up. His smiling face of confidence was met with our scorn but if we wanted to get the job done he said, it was the only way. Stripped off to the waist, he stood on his saw bench and asked me to pass him the relevant tools as he required them. With his hacksaw he made quick progress as I watched, my Dad in a cubicle, determined to play no part in Jack's scheme. As the water came screaming out of the severed pipe, Jack could not have known that it's source was a huge tank on the roof of the police headquarters seven stories high next door, but as the water gushed onto the opposite wall before splashing in all directions he could have done better than to collapse down with a look of horror on his face. Seizing the valve off him I jumped up and attempted to push the new valve on. A difficult task was made impossible when I found he had got the wrong size valve and I urged him in quite forthright terms to pass me another. Staggering like a shell shocked soldier, he told me that he hadn't got one, whereupon I coaxed him with some not too soothing words to fetch one. Holding my thumb over the pipe in an attempt to stem the flood like a soggy little Dutch boy, I watched him leave the room and saw that my Dad had taken the broom to the door and was brushing the tide away back towards the urinal.
"Grab this quick," he called and was gone as I swept like one of those brush hands in the Curling event. Just when I thought that my efforts were about to be overwhelmed, the water suddenly slowed then stopped. My Dad then appeared smiling, explaining that with a little bit of charm he had persuaded the usher that he would only need the water turning off for a minute or two.
There was just room for the both of us to stand on the saw bench and look through the window to see Jack's van come screaming round the corner on his way back from the builder's merchants. Pulling up on the space reserved for emergency vehicles, he came dashing in with the precious valve. My Dad back on the brush and me with my thumb over the end of the pipe, I growled,
"Get up here quickly."
Jack jumped up like a man possessed and I told him in dramatic fashion that when I counted to three I would let go and he was to force the valve on. Reaching three I released my thumb, and as a tiny trickle emerged form the pipe, his face registered first shock and then relief as he stepped back off the saw bench and then sat on the floor.
After he had finished, I watched him walk back to his van rubbing his knee like the lad at the mousse fete, and was impressed for the first time with him that day when the usher approached him and asked if there had been a problem.
"No," he soggily replied. "You get a bit wet sometimes in this game."
