Plans vs Reality

2nd August 2010

Well, an eventful few weeks – relatively speaking.

I had several marathon consultations with Vic the Builder. After three trips to Boggy mansion, he came up with a price of R120,000 to add a room, bathroom, toilet and re-roof & repair the existing structure. In all honesty, a very good price, considering the cost of building materials alone.

Time for me to do some pondering…. The present economic climate and the uncertain state of the Film business makes it very unwise to incur debt. I decided that there is no point in spoiling the Boggy Pond experience / experiment by adding even more stress to our lives.

Of course, when I told Vic that I had decided to start with a Wendy house and repair Boggy Mansion as resources permitted, he looked as if an Umpire had just replied “No Ball” to his appeal for LBW….

Wessel & team lay out the brick base for the cabin

I ordered a 3m x 4.8m Wendy House from Somerset West by phone on Monday 26th July and they arrived to erect it on Thursday 29th! While waiting, I hired Willie de Klerk, an out-of-work builder, to help me clear and level a spot in the blue gum wood about eighty meters from Boggy Mansion. In fact, I left Willie to clear and level while I dug a latrine in a thicket nearby. Although I have ordered a proper loo and cistern to install in a partition in the hut, that will take a few days to build – after Wimpie’s hardware store delivers the goods…Fortunately, the ground here is very sandy, so in no time at all I had dug down to the depth of the spade handle..

My new home fitted on a trailer

Unfortunately “Wessel” only phoned me from Caledon, rather than as he left Somerset West, so I had very little time to fling 60 foundation bricks from Steve’s stockpile into my long suffering Opel and dash across to pick up Willie in the RDP village on my way to Boggy Pond. The wind came up quite strongly while I was tossing the bricks out of the car, blowing a shower of brick dust into my eye, with the result that I had a very blurry vision of my new abode arriving on a trailer attached to a Land Cruiser. Wessel and his team of four kept up a lively banter while they flung the house together. Wessel’s call from Caledon – twenty five minutes away at his daredevil speed – came at two minutes to ten and by 12h14 they were all packed up and trundling down my new driveway.

By 11h25 half the wall panels were in place

The rest of Thursday was spent digging an 80 meter trench from the water supply to the existing house. Although the straight line distance is less, Willie meandered around trees and thickets so much that I feared the 100m roll would only just reach, necessitating the purchase of another hundred meter roll at R600 to complete a few meters of plumbing in the hut. The 17 meters I have left will have to do – although the musical fountain will have to wait….

By 12h18 Willie & his wife were inspecting the finished cabin

Friday 30th was spent largely “in Town”, which is the six-street metropolis of Caledon. (Aside from the sprawling suburbs and the township, of course.) After another meeting with Johan Eskom, I ordered a terrifying amount of timber and hardware for the shower and loo partition, then recovered over brunch at ”Café-Letta’s” in the Spar centre. Letta uses old 12” Vinyl LPs as place mats – as one who grew up being told “Careful! Handle it only by the edges!” it was almost painful to deal with my plate skidding around the grooves!

Through all of this I have been dealing with Eskom… I found my Cash Power meter in my blue gum wood, so I took it to the local office as a conversation-starter. Johan Schreiber – known to all as Johan Eskom – is only a few months older than I am, but he is the archetypal “Oomie”. After cautiously depositing the meter-box, shedding water, leaves and goggas in a corner, he was very chatty and amenable, apart from a few gentle cusswords at the Eskom computer system, which seemed to have mislaid a carrier pigeon or two that day. To avoid the complication of an electrical compliance certificate, Eskom will install a 20 Amp “lifeline board” in the Wendy house, which is enough to run the laptop, a light and an appliance or two. When? Well, that depends on “Barry” rounding up enough “casuals” and spades to dig the trench. Viva Porridge Power, Viva! Local lore suggests that I learn to cook on an open fire in the meantime….

The pine floor of the Wendy house is rather rough, so Saturday and Sunday morning was spent applying two coats of polyurethane varnish to tame the splinters. As Steve says – often – “Hey, it’s a Wendy house, not a piano!”

With Joe in front of what I am told is a Garingboom, next to the house

Some escape was afforded on Sunday when friends Joe & Vianne popped in from Cape Town, then took me off to the “nice” part of Hermanus for a late lunch – very late, since Joe’s hire car had miniature wheels, not really suited to blasting along the untarred mountain road. We also had to take it easy, with frequent stops to give a very pregnant Vianne some break from the searing heat and constant jolting.

With Vianne and Baby-to-be, due in less than two months

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I’ve agreed to buy a slightly used solar geyser from Steve at a reduced price, so I need to build a tower on which to mount the unit next to the hut. Time for me to play “Lumberjack-Lumberjack”…. I found several straight blue gum trees crowded by others and set about cutting them down.

Hmm…

My ordinary crosscut saw jams in the wet, pulpy wood….

Steve’s coarse-toothed bush saw jams in the wet, pulpy wood…

My newly acquired panga appeared to work quite well… until I’ve cut through the bark and reached the real wood.

My first attempts at lumberjacking - with a panga - before de-barking

The lack of weight in the thin panga blade makes the going tough and stings the hand. In spite of these difficulties, so easily glossed over in cowboy movies, I managed to cut down a 10m tree in the morning and drag it 30m to the hut. I relaxed for a while by collecting and trimming a pile of smaller poles from the previous owner’s attempts to make clearings in the wood, then had lunch, sitting on the step of the hut, enjoying the sunshine and birdsong, but not really appreciating the sudden strangled Vuvuzela from the RDP development across the field next door!

I went in search of my next tree, and apparently the locals had hunted down the Vuvuzela-ist, because there was a last defiant semi-quaver, much shouting, and peace was restored to the valley while I hacked down a 12m tree and dragged it 75m to the hut.

Note To Self: Invest in a good felling axe when finance allows…..

Well, that’s up to date… I await the call from Wimpie’s DIY as they leave Caledon with my load of timber and my loo….

Har-de-har-de-har! Eventually phoned Wimpie’s – the brusque young man at the till had omitted to tell me that they had to order in some of the stuff…. “Maybe Wednesday…” says the manageress…. I’m learning, I’m learning…

Perhaps my next Letter from Boggy Pond will actually be typed while surveying the vast wooded expanse of our Estate through my own window?

All together now…. “Har-de-har-de-har!”

Digby