Notes from the other side
A little visit to town to see Lord of the Dance (after a crazy fortnight in the country)
Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance at Grandwest Arena was sensational. Each dancer is a treat to watch and the combination an absolute marvel. Michael Flatley is a genius and, even if he is not actually dancing in the show anymore, it bears all the hallmarks of the great showman who is credited with reinventing Irish dance. He also holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest tap speed, achieving 35 taps per second in 1998 … if you can imagine such a thing.
Apart from that, the flute and the fiddle really call to my Irish soul. Here is a little video that I made of snippets from the show.
And the drive home to our new home in the countryside was pretty sensational too …
And some notes from that new home in the countryside …
Our move to Serendipity (as we call our little farm) has not always felt so serendipitous … but the place has already proved itself deserving of the name.
The exit from our house in Devil’s Peak, in Cape Town, was a huge, expensive mission and our first two weeks here have been over-the-top chaos. On our third weekend we got to unpack our clothes after having bedroom cupboards fitted. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
Kitchen fitting starts next, after which we expect to feel like different people. Imagine! Kitchen unpacked!
We spent so much money and energy fixing everything up in Cape Town, and getting all the compliance certificates sorted. The house in CT was left ship-shape for the new owners; the house in the country … hmmm [scratches head] … less so.
The compliance certificates nightmare that one must endure when selling a property in Cape Town is nothing less than fleecing people at their most vulnerable … well … for us, it was. Our experience involved gangs of men arriving at various times to bully us into making outlandish payments to have so-called ‘repairs’ done.
Compliance certificates (gas, electric, plumbing and beetle) are necessary for transfer of a property. A stressed-out lady-person precariously situated domino-like in a chain of property transfers makes an ideal victim. And I am not easily scared. (Anyone who knows me will know that I will be the person who asks the doctor declaring my time of death if she/he is absolutely sure.)
Let me give you an example of the sort of skullduggery that these compliance ‘experts’ tried to pull: a plumber wanted to charge R3600 for installing a stopcock inside the property and the compliance certificate. Two guys spent half an hour there extending a pipe on the exterior of the house by a few metres and installing a stop cock. I contacted my own plumber (a reliable, honourable guy who unfortunately doesn’t do compliance certificates) who said the work would have cost R750 all-in if he had done it. When I complained to the Compliance Certificate Gang Leader, he said: “Don’t worry, you will get a discount.” Whaaat? I don’t want a discount fergodssake; I just don’t want to be robbed.
No one was more disappointed than the guy who came to do the ‘Beetle’ compliance certificate. He was not able to find any issues at all, or make something up quick enough. “It has been a terrible day,” he said, delivering the good news that my house was not being devoured by bugs and beetles.
I had engaged the services of the Compliance Gang Leader weeks in advance hoping to avoid a last-minute crunch. I called him a number of times and asked him to please start sending the teams, who eventually arrived en masse a week before transfer, a small posse of big, stern, gruff-voiced boiler-suited blokes, to bully us into various ‘repairs’ just when the chain of property transfers had started to feel just a little precarious.
Forgive me for thinking this is all engineered for maximum pressure on sellers who have few choices come the last week. All rather unpleasant. Still, one of the worst things about the whole compliance stitch-up was that we were not the beneficiaries of anything similar on the property we moved to. Serendipity is a portion of a farm; we bought a third of the company that owns it, rather than having a title deed of our own. This means no transfer fees on (a huge saving) and no compliance certificates.
I can say without fear of correction that this place would have fallen at every compliance hurdle. Country life is different, we have already discovered, problems are solved, issues are fixed at, let’s say, “at a community level”.
We have been busy doing what we think are basic, necessary repairs: adding gutters, fixing water piping, emptying and potentially rebuilding/extending the septic tank (!!!), adding another geyser.
The news that the septic tank is full came along with an avalanche (though I probably should not be using that word in this context) of other waste water-related bad news. There are a number of collapsed plastic septic tanks buried around the farm. Eek. Amazing what you don’t have to think about in the city.
The water table is too high on the property for a “soak-away” (I am sure you can figure out what that means), which seems like the better option and more eco-friendly than litres and litres of ‘waste’ trapped in plastic tanks underground.
We have called the council who “may or may not come in a few days’ time” (we are told by others) to empty the tank. We are talking to various people about different solutions, also about clearing the old collapsed tanks from the land.
In our two weeks here, we have already encountered a wide variety of experts in everything. An electrician who knows everything about septic tanks? Sure. I know just the guy. A plumber who can build you a tennis court and DJ at your house-warming? No sweat, I will WhatsApp you the number.
We have employed someone who has a small building maintenance outfit to do a lot of what we consider emergency repairs. His father-in-law has fitted bedroom cupboards and will start in the kitchen next week. We like it that an assortment of mini-carbon-copies of these guys serve as their labour force. I am already used to hearing: Dankie Tannie!
This gang were introduced to us by one of our fellow shareholders, Gary Down-The-Road. Gary has made tapping into local knowledge (Rule #1 of moving to the country, everyone tells us) easy. He is a warm and friendly guy who seems to know everything about everything (or does a very good impression of someone who does). He can talk to you about maps, roadbuilding, Cape leopard sightings, where to buy bricks, MC Hammer, Venter trailers, rebuilding a Muscle Car, steam train trips … you get the picture, I am sure.
Gary seems to have every tool known to modern man and cannot do enough for the new neighbours. He has even donated an old geyser that he pulled out. Our plumber-carpenter-electrician-concert pianist contractor, Gavin, is fitting it since we are desperate to get a city-style flow of hot water, something we have failed to achieve so far with the gas geyser.
Gary has been a highlight in a couple of weeks of chaos, trauma even (mid-winter cold showers and did I mention needing root canal treatment on one tooth and having another extracted because I was going through the roof in pain…).
Still, upsides outstrip downsides by a decent margin. The journey to my wonderful new dentist in Melkbos is beautiful. Those 30 mins of rolling hills, canola fields and tree-lined avenues bring to mind that incredible feeling of breathing out I know from every time I left town for a day, a night or a weekend in the countryside, now my home.
Tooth hell, septic tanks and all I am beyond happy to have started this new life.