15th January 2012
Well, I didn’t get to assemble the digester last week end after all. All the frantic sorting out and uploading of auditions I had done before Christmas remained unseen and ignored while everybody was “Home” in Europe, until about the 6th of January, when a general panic set in to arrange call-backs “ASAP” – my least favourite Americanism. Our Cape Town colleague had resigned to take on another production, leaving us without a studio and three days to find one when Cape Town was not quite back at work. Our best option was out of bounds for industry political reasons just too tiresome to detail here and our next best option was still clambering over rocks somewhere in the bundu, leaving us in the uncharted territory of Commercial casting studios. Perhaps because commercial performers are seldom required to speak, the sound in such studios is gosh-awful. Christa performed sleuthing miracles and found a studio undergoing renovations during what was still supposed to be “down time”. They were prepared to open the studio and silence the power tools on a Saturday, but had no cameraman. Frankly, we were pleased, because I could go in to make sure everything was done as we wanted it, without putting noses out of joint. As it turned out, the studio is run by an ex film sound editor, so the audio was the best we’ve had out of Cape Town.
On the way back to Tesselaarsdal on Sunday morning I stopped off at the enormous “Somerset Mall” complex and eventually found out how to get inside the “Builder’s Warehouse” I could see from the N2 highway. I had an unused gift-certificate from my birthday last year, and was hoping to use it towards buying a wheelbarrow. I’d priced them earlier in Caledon, but they cost more than I paid for my first motor-car. (No, really! OK, so I’m that old…) As it turned out, the store was having a “special” on wheelbarrows – but not the one I needed, of course. I had no idea of the value on the gift card, so had to check at the teller first. The good news is that Eloise and “Kiwi’s” gift was very generous and would entirely pay for the wheelbarrow. The bad news is that sometime during that process – or earlier in a computer store, I lost my debit card. Fortunately I bought very little else and could use my credit card – which I hate doing other than for airline tickets because I have to.
On the way through Caledon I re-fuelled on the credit card and headed home to begin the encode & upload. I also got onto the internet bank and pumped up my credit card to cover likely expenses while I sorted out the lost debit card.
I was bracing myself for a tough time at the Bank on Monday morning, but the experience reminded me of why I’ve chosen to move to a small town – eventually. It is understandable that banks in large cities are impersonal and “difficult” – they simply cannot know all their clients and probably need to be defensive. At this small branch, Mevrou Botes was engaging, efficient and had a sense of humour. At her request I was drawing a statement at the Auto-teller to verify the card within about five minutes of walking into the bank.
Pernickety Vague Precision
Then Heritage Western Cape phoned… or rather they phoned the architect, and he phoned me… Fighting fit after the holiday, Heritage apparently had issues with “the proportions of the windows and doors or something,” and wanted to see one or both of us in Cape Town.
When I phoned Heritage on Tuesday morning, the conversation with Mr. Zwelibanzi Shicela, Senior Heritage Officer (Built Environment) was difficult. To call him “taciturn” would be polite. He offered no information other that that Heritage had “many many problems” with the plans and re-iterated that we needed to come and see him. I explained that coming to see him meant a 300Km round trip, so it would make more sense to address his concerns before wasting a journey. Eventually, question by question, I extracted from him the fact that I was only allowed one window to each room and that I was not allowed to have a double-door onto the stoep from the stoepkamer. He was not at all interested in the fact that the house was of no particular historical significance and was even less interested in my right to have some concessions toward a house I would want to live in in a different age to when it was built. The fact that the draughtsman had labelled the stoepkamer as “Study” didn’t help. When I explained that it was in fact the dining room adjoining the stoep, I was asked rather arrogantly “But there is already a living and dining area in the main part of the house – what for do you need another dining room?”
After snapping back “Because it is my house and I will be living in it!” I managed to contain my temper and point out that he was being very vague to justify an expensive and time consuming trip to Cape Town. With more information, I would be in a better position to try to comply with their directives. I also asked how much room I had as the home builder to negotiate a compromise. “No, we don’t tell you what to do,” he replied, “We make recommendations,” then rather gave away his attitude by adding, “But if you don’t accept our recommendations we simply don’t approve your Plans!” When he implied that there were also many other “problems”, but refused to even indicate what they might be, I pointed out that since I was required to make a very detailed written application it was not unreasonable of me to request the courtesy of a written reply from Heritage. I could then make the necessary changes to the plans before re-submitting the application. I was assured of an email by the end of the day.
Luckily I didn’t hold my breath.
My Own Imprecision…
Certain people will no doubt really enjoy the following: When I got home of course I had to initialise the new card on my Internet banking… I messed that up so badly that it locked me out and instructed me to “report to my Branch”! I wondered whether I should take a toothbrush, spare undies and something long to read while in my cell!
As it happened, I had also been to the Home Affairs office to collect application forms for a new Passport and ID book, so an otherwise silly trip to Town on Wednesday to crawl abjectly into the Bank was now at least justified by a haircut, colour photos and queuing at Home Affairs.
Mevrou Smit was now on counter duty at the bank, but I received a cheery wave from Mevrou Botes through the glass. Again, friendly, efficient and chatty service. I was let through a steel security lock into the bank so that I could use a secure Bank computer to log onto my Internet banking – just to be sure the scatty Oomie didn’t mess it up again! During this process I discovered part of the reason I’d entered the wrong numbers. Has anyone else noticed that the number pads on ATMs and card machines differ from the numeric keypads on computers? Keypads on card machines are the same as keypads on cell-phones; “1” is at the top left, while computer keypads have “1” at bottom left. I use a pattern to help me remember the number, and since one doesn’t normally need to enter an ATM PIN on a computer, it isn’t an issue. To re-activate the new card number on the internet though, I did need to enter the ATM number. Using the “pattern” mnemonic without inverting it of course resulted in being locked out.
Before...
On Stephen’s recommendation, I went across Town ( one block!) to “URstyle Hairdresser”, run by a Goth-haired young lady called Ursula. (Clever, huh?) As I replied to the standard hairdressers question “Ummm.. reasonably short,” I got the funny feeling that I would soon be grateful that hair is a renewable resource… I was right – I emerged with very little hair gelled into an impressionistic representation of a lone thorn tree on the plains of Serengeti. Luckily the hair gel later washed out with shampoo – it felt as though I would have to soak my head in a bucket of turpentine!
The only scarier hairdressing experience I’ve had was in a side-street of the hill-top town of Sienna, Italy. When the ancient Italian barbieri leaned over me armed with scissors, cut-throat razor and a peppermint-green plastic comb I noticed that he was A) severely squint, and B) had a huge cataract over the eye that was looking vacantly in my general direction.
...and After!
Ah well, at least the young woman who took my passport photographs in a corner of the butcher-shop next to Home Affairs thought that I looked “sexy”. Well, I think she did. I’m a little confused by the exact meaning of “Oom lyk sexy”.
Home Affairs was painless. Although both forms are relatively simple and efficiently designed, they have to be “captured on the system” before being physically sent off to Pretoria, I guess. The pleasant and engaging staff has to do a lot of keyboard-tapping and, sometimes, apparently, just waiting for a response from a sluggish system. On that day though, I received a tracking number via text message while I was still at the counter. I should have my Passport in three to four weeks, but my ID book may well arrive after I’ve left towards the end of February.
I plodded on with the Digester, starting to assemble the various bits in the drum. At this stage, each step is a problem for which a solution has to be discovered. I also have to consider which parts should be very firmly glued in place and which need to be reasonably accessible for maintenance. I have to be very careful traps such as the need to cement “Part A” to “Part C” before attaching the pair to “Part B”. Getting the assembly order wrong could result in the need to break and re-make a part. I spent a lot of time just staring, trying out solutions – and sweating, with the temperature in the cabin hovering around 37 degrees C.
A Little Less Vagueness
When the email from Heritage arrived on Wednesday, of course I dropped everything to deal with it. Seven points, only two of which I had not extracted like an apprentice dentist over the phone. Points 6&7 were technicalities about dotted lines and the colours to be used for them on the plans. No mention at all of “Proportions”, so I can only conclude – and fervently hope – that the dotted lines constituted the full extent of the “many many other problems….”
While waiting for this email, I had spoken to Christa about our options. If Heritage was going to make our lives difficult and expensive, our best option might be to find another site on the property and build the home we wanted from scratch. Of course we would prefer to build something in a suitable simple Cape style, but ironically, the most affordable option would be an assembly of wooden Wendy-houses, properly lined and insulated. A picturesque piece of Backwoods America plonked into Tesselaarsdal. This solution would not be entirely bureaucracy free, since the cabins would have to be built on a concrete slab to obtain a “Habitation Permit”. We could simply rebuild the fallen gable of the hovel, replace existing windows and doors and use it as a farm shed / workshop / store. We could observe local custom and add a lean-to plank hut to the back wall to house a bathroom and toilet so that we could offer it as basic overnight accommodation. Technically of course, like many of the houses in the village, the ceilings are too low “for human habitation” under modern regulations, but that’s the silliness of the ever-increasing web of ivory-tower legislation. Choose which Law you have to break to get on with your life. Not a recipe for a Great Country.
With the issue of the double-door niggling away at me, I paid a brief visit across town to Steve to discuss developments. I told him about both the architect and heritage insisting that “they didn’t have double doors in those days”. I reminisced about spending holidays at Ouma’s house in Heidelberg, a little further up the N2, recalling that the stoepkamer I stayed in had a narrow double-door onto the stoep. Her house still had reed ceilings in the kitchen and had apparently remained unchanged since “between the Wars”. Stephen then took me to their bedroom and showed me their half-glazed wardrobe doors – clearly re-cycled and ancient. They had been the double-doors leading onto the stoep of their house before they started renovations! (Let me hasten to add that they renovated long before Heritage or even TWK municipality began to flex their muscles in the area.) He replaced them with another set of half-glazed double doors about 20 cm wider – recycled from a junk-shop in the Hermanus.
Back home, I walked around the property, thinking, and looking for potential sites, hopefully more secluded and with a better view. A site further into the woods behind my cabin has been “calling me” ever since I first explored the land here. I found vestiges of the foundations of a small structure, which Jeffrey agreed had probably been just a pig-sty. In front of it, the woods were sparse, as if there had been a clearing there for many years. With more of the alien Blue Gum cleared, we might even have a good view of the distant mountains over our own remaining trees.
The problem is that to make the property viable we would probably need to have guest accommodation in at least two of the three dwellings permitted on a property of this size. Given the complications of “implicit sub-division” and the 25 meter building-line, the existing hovel would have to be one of the potentially income-generating sites.
Apart from writing letters on issues which got my name on a few “Lists” during the Seventies and Eighties, I’ve pretty much managed to keep “Government” at a distance since then. I suppose discovering the extent – and inconsistent way – in which a supposedly more democratic, but essentially failing system will claw at it’s citizenry was a bit of a shock. Not helped, I might add, by the fact that the man pontificating from behind a desk in Cape Town had absolutely no idea where Tesselaarsdal was, let alone what kind of place it is. It was also patently clear that he was not interested in finding out enough to place my application in context.
Strategic Withdrawal
After venting my residual anger on a few Aussie saplings, I retired to the cabin to think more calmly. With age comes the realisation that, with few exceptions, an individual stand on principle seldom achieves anything but damage to the protagonist, unless one has the resources to carry it all the way to a bloody end. One needs reserves of finance, knowledge and legal expertise. One also requires levels of conviction, stamina, time, and yes, anger, generally available to Youth. I’ve spent too much of my life being angry. Angry at injustice, stupidity, dishonesty – and angry at my impotence to change it.
I decided, therefore, that this was about surrendering the battle to win the war.
Fewer windows would give us a more thermally efficient house. Dark as Styxx probably, but at least thermally efficient. I would also save several thousand Rand on windows I won’t need to buy, so I sat down and calmly wrote an e-mail to the architect based on the one received from Heritage, as a guide to changing the plans to be “Compliant”. Basically I conceded all the points except the double-door. By now Steve had emailed me a picture of their derelict house before restoration which clearly showed the double door onto the stoep, so I attached that to the email.
After a telephone chat to the architect the next day, I called Heritage and talked to The Man. Suddenly my double-door wasn’t a problem! He now spoke as if it had never been! I was confused and fed-up at the inconsistency, but kept my cool. I explained that I would need to be in Cape Town for two days work late the next week, and could bring the revised plans in for approval on Friday morning. I was hoping that he would offer to stamp them there and then, considering the distance I had to travel, but he said that they would be approved by the following Thursday. I took the precaution of following up with an e-mail detailing our conversation, and included the picture of the doors we had discussed. I resisted the temptation to ask for three stainless-steel-framed, pink-tinted plexiglass skylight to make up for the lost windows! I also copied it to the architect, who has waived any further fee, but I now await the revised plans from the draughtsman – with his account.
jeffrey begins to clear the site, just in case we get around to building
Of course all this bureaucratic argy-bargy has kept me out of the workshop. I had to step back and tell myself to stop beating myself up about not getting other chores done. After all, bureaucracy is an inevitable part of the project, so it does count. Each battle does take us closer to starting to build a house, which takes us closer to figuring out a way to make it possible to live here, at least slightly removed from the troubles that I’m afraid I increasingly feel lie ahead, particularly in the major centres of South Africa.
Jeffrey appeared on Thursday, so I had him start levelling the site around the house. He will have to remove almost a metre of sand from where the bathroom and laundry/scullery will be built. We’re using the sand and the huge piles of cleared saplings to fill in the eroded road through the property. I’m hoping that the saplings laid in the sand will help to stop it washing away during the winter rains. Rocks and stones would be better, but we have very few of those in this sandy soil.
I hope that the saplings buried beneath the sand will help resist erosion from the winter rains
Levelling the site will of course soon present me with my next bureaucratic conundrum; moving the Eskom cable. At present it cuts across where the new bedroom and bathroom will be, as does the smaller cable joined to it which supplies electricity to my cabin. Although I was left to dig and fill the trench myself when it was installed, and could very easily and safely move it myself, there are probably a Baker’s Dozen reasons why I’m not allowed to. If I can get the cable moved, then it would be worth tracking down a midget front-end-loader I have seen in the area to do the levelling. Jeffrey is very willing, but he is elderly, and in this heat I would rather give him lighter work, such as clearing and harvesting the saplings from the woods. My plan is to dig the necessary new trenches, then approach Eskom about moving the cable. I just hope that I don’t get entangled in yet another Vampire’s nest of bureaucracy.