Letter from Espargal: 7 of 2010

JONES DAWN

The poltergeist that has been playing intermittent silly buggers with our electrical appliances has been flushed out, much to our relief. This malicious spirit struck first on Christmas Day, as we were preparing dinner for guests, throwing the house into confusion. The microwave refused to work, the hob played silly buggers, the lights went on and off, the computer beeped and the TV threw a fit. As you can imagine, this scenario was quite alarming.

The next day I asked an electrician to call around but he was busy when we were free and vice versa, so nothing came of it. Besides, the problem seemed to have gone away. All was fine until Sunday night when the poltergeist struck again, with equally scary results. I tried flipping the switches in the fuse box one at a time to isolate the fault – without success.

In the midst of this confusion Marie phoned to ask if we were suffering the same low voltage phenomena as she was. Bingo! We’ve known for years that the voltage in country areas is erratic but it simply hadn’t occurred to us that this was the cause of our woes. Marie said she had reported the problem to the electricity board; to emphasise the point we followed suit. Minutes later, as if by magic, the lights suddenly brightened and everything worked again. It was a lesson about the extent to which our lives run on electricity.

Something else I learned was how the film “Invictus” – about Nelson Mandela’s relationship with the Springbok rugby captain, Francois Pienaar - got its name. We went to see the movie - with reservations about Hollywood attempts to reflect developments in South Africa. But we thought it quite good. Morgan Freeman, who had obviously studied Mandela’s manner at length, was perfectly credible. Matt Damon spoke good South African and did a passable job as the Bok captain.

In the course of the story, Freeman gives Damon a poem, which includes the line – “I am the master of my fate”. This I later googled. I remembered enough Latin to understand the symbolism of the word “Invictus”. But I had no idea that it was also the title of the poem from which the line was taken. The poem was written by William Earnest Henley (1840-1903), whose own trials of life were severe. I confess I’d never heard of him.

According to one reviewer, what Mandela gave Pienaar in real life was an extract from Teddy Roosevelt’s speech ‘The Man in the Arena.’ Jones commented at the time that the most glaring inaccuracy in the film was casting Madiba’s personal assistant, Zelda le Grange, as a black woman. This, however, according to one sharp-eyed reviewer (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1057500/goofs) was only one of dozens of goofs. No doubt Clintwood would argue that he was making a movie, not a documentary.

HER BEDROOM SECRETS

What we have made is a reservation to visit Cathy and Rolf in Berlin next month. I should say that I spent hours on the internet hunting for suitable and suitably priced flights. Typically, tickets were around 400 to 500 euros each once all the extras had been added in, which I thought painfully expensive. Eventually, I found a really good deal with KLM. I chose to pay for this by bank transfer as the least expensive option. That was on Tuesday 2 Feb. (The money left my account immediately and, as I later confirmed with the bank, the transfer was made as requested.)

ALMOND BLOSSSOM

When the e-tickets had failed to arrive two days later (as they should have), I started phoning KLM. Five international phone calls and 11 days later, they still haven’t arrived. KLM have now asked me to fax them a bank statement showing proof of payment, something I hope to obtain from the bank on Monday. The problem lies, I suspect, with the Lisbon agent into whose account the original payment was made. I shall not hasten to fly with KLM again.

For what it’s worth, this is the list of extra costs (in euros) associated with our flights. Booking fee 5, fuel surcharge 60, passenger service charge 14.83, security charge 14.50, passenger service charge 12.52, passenger service charge 7.97, airport security charge 4.65, security tax 4.03 and the Netherlands noise isolation charge 4 – everything except a Haiti earthquake relief fee.

The total cost for a 56 euro ticket is 183.50. That’s to say that the airline gets less than a third of the total – well, unless one counts in the sneaky 60 euro fuel surcharge. (Why not just price the ticket at 116 euros?)

HIS BEDROOM SECRETS

This week I dreamed that Jones and I were walking down a road, overlooking a hillside stacked with cable-rolls. I might have been tossing the odd stone down the hillside. Anyhow, the cable-rolls came loose and whizzed down the slope towards a car park, with predictably disastrous results. I was overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. Shortly afterwards I found myself required to fill in a five-page yellow form about the incident - whether as a witness or accused I wasn’t sure. In any case, I refused point blank to do so.

BIANCA, HORSE & VIGOR

We have to report a failed attempt to reconcile our dogs with a delightful newcomer, Vigor, a friendly Alsatiany sort who belongs to our new Dutch neighbours, Dries and Bianca. Twice our lot have encountered Vigor during our walks and chased him over the horizon, greatly to my vexation. To resolve the situation, we invited Dries and Bianca to come around with Vigor, with a view to going for a walk on neutral territory.

What a snarly disaster! Fortunately our new neighbours were understanding and nothing was shattered other than the peace of the neighbourhood. (Barbara, who is reading a book entitled “Animals in Translation” – thank you, Ann – keeps on finding relevant passages.)

Friday morning: Cold, just 5 degrees, with the rain slanting in on the wind. Surely, if ever there were a case for a real sleep-in, this would be it. But the dogs would have none of it. So, we piled them into the car for a pee and poo run in the valley. The narrow road there is tarred and the traffic scarce.

JONES DUSK

Once there, Prickles refused to get out of the car. (He is a fair-weather walker.) When I hauled him out through the passenger door, he shot back in the driver door. We left him behind. But we didn’t get much further ourselves. The rain was icy. Our trousers dripped. Jones’s fingers froze inside her gloves. We retreated to the Coral instead for coffee and toast and to thaw out. I thought I could hear Prickles chuckling but it’s hard to be sure.