“Hold the little fecker down, would ye? This is gonna hurt her more than me…”
The three month old female kitten, which we had taken to the rural veterinary practice in County Meath, was looking understandably terrified by the large hypodermic needle being waved in front of her face.
“To be honest with you, this is the first time I’ve used this stuff on a cat. Over here in Ireland, we just spay or neuter pets, why did they need her to have a contraceptive injection?”
“I think they want her to produce kittens in a couple of years time, when a few of their older cats have gone”
“It’s bad enough with all the human population breeding like rabbits over here, never mind feckin’ cats!” he gave an almost imperceptible grunt as he pushed the needle under the kitten’s skin. The unfortunate feline froze for a matter of two seconds whilst the chemical entered her body, then Mike the vet released his grip from the scruff of her neck. She cowered into a corner of the cat carry case and mewed pitifully.
“Y’know I have a gamekeeper brings his Jills in here for the same thing. D’y know what a Jill is?”
“I haven’t a clue”
“Well my friend, a Jill is a female ferret. If ferrets don’t get pregnant, they’re not like other mammals; they don’t menstruate, they get infections and die an unpleasant death”
“Oh…right….I see…”
“So this gamekeeper brings in his ferrets to me for a contraceptive injection. The hormones fool the animal’s body into thinking that it’s pregnant. Hence no infection.”
“Uh…..great stuff..”
“But yer man Pat Donnely can’t afford the forty Euro each time he brings ‘em in, so y’know what he does now?”
“I can’t imagine” I reply, starting to become genuinely inquisitive.
“He fecks the little bastards with an electric toothbrush until they wriggle like buggery, then he knows they’re ‘done’.”
“An electric toothbrush?!…”
“Yeah, obviously he takes the brush bit off, but attaches a cotton bud instead. They love it too, he reckons. It seems to work, cos they’re all still alive, and Pat’s not spent a cent here in two seasons.”
“Great…er…how much do we owe you?”
“Just the forty Euro, my friend, thank you.”
“Great, thanks. I’ll need a receipt, too.”
I hadn’t been expecting a lecture on the recreational sex games of ferrets, but that had been worth forty Euros in itself. We had been asked by our latest clients to take Harriet the kitten in to Mike Navan’s surgery for treatment, to ensure that “none of those damned Irish farm cats” would render her pregnant. One could understand Harriet’s owners’ dilemma. They already have eleven felines wandering around the house and gardens, which is enough; yet the premises are so vast that another hundred assorted pets wouldn’t have made the place feel crowded.
The house is owned by race-horse folk. It is in open countryside, eighty kilometres west of Dublin, an imposing three storey, five bedroomed, six bathroomed Georgian rectory, chock full of antiques, paintings and the like. Set in five acres of lawns and carefully kept gardens, it’s like visiting one of those stately homes with silk ropes separating visitors from the furniture, except we get to live in it. We inhabit the very comfortable servant’s quarters in the basement, complete with woodburner, sky TV and power shower. Two Land Rovers are available for our use. The owners, being our clients, have flown to Africa for the winter, to “sort out the manager of the damned lodge”. Apparently they own a safari hotel in the Namibian bush, and the native employees aren’t bringing in a good return on our clients’ investments. I’m glad I’m not the hotel manager, I fear that Mrs D would have the fellow shot out of hand if she felt that she could get away with it.
So it is that we are sharing the house with twelve delightful cats, all very affectionate and even talkative. There are three donkeys in the stables outside, who just need a daily muck-out, some carrots, a couple of handfuls of hay and a bit of fuss. Danny the gardener and Rose the cleaner visit regularly. It is our job to co-ordinate the efforts of the hired hands whilst keeping the animals happy and well nourished. It’s not an arduous gig. The only problem is that we don’t have any broadband, as its installation has not gone ahead prior to our arrival as promised.
There is a satellite dish about half the size of a NASA tracking station in the garden, but despite daily nagging, the engineers haven’t yet returned to connect it to the house. If you thought that getting a plumber to arrive was difficult, try finding a satellite uplink engineer in rural County Meath. We’re stuck with e-mail communication only via 56k dial up and a Windows 98 PC. Using a Windows computer is an unpleasant enough experience, but trying to use the internet at 56k makes the idea of an early death lose its sting. It seems that there has been a huge cock up somewhere in South America, where the satellite signal initiates, and it could be many weeks yet before the installation is complete. If the Irish say it could be weeks, it’s unlikely to be within our lifetime, and certainly not within the eleven weeks of this house sit.
There’s plenty to do around the place, but until we’re wired, or more accurately wire-less, all T’s web-based projects have ground to a halt. Good job we have so much spare money in the bank.
Previous to our arrival here there have been the usual ups and downs, all part of daily life for itinerant media stars such as ourselves. Actually, there have been more downs than ups recently, which have tested our mettle to the limit; making the prospect of a fixed residence and gainful tax-paying employment seem almost bearable. Arriving here in Ireland is enabling us to repair, but it’s been a rollercoaster ride:
After leaving Kettering and the dozy wolf hound in the first week of October, we have had two more assignments; one near Cannes and the other just outside Solihull. You’d think that the former would be more pleasant than the latter, but we were surprised to find that the countryside between Solihull and Stratford on Avon is something of a horsified millionaire’s paradise, Warwickshire’s best kept secret. We looked after two pleasant little dogs in a canal side converted chapel for a fortnight. Very cosy it was too, with a superb little pub around the corner, but the preceding fortnight was a nightmare.
T had been trucking again, this time for a scumbag driving agency, one of the big national setups. I’ll call them ‘Excreta Personnel’. These organisations are usually staffed by twenty-something jack-the-lads (or lasses) whose obsessions with personal grooming far outweigh their capability to provide a meaningful service to those with whom they are supposed to interact professionally. Their sharp suits and silver tongues cannot hide their shallow incompetence for very long, hence the high staff turnover in such organisations. In short, they are a bunch of un-communicative yuppie tossers who couldn’t sell dope to Rastafarians, let alone run an employment agency. T’s usual agencies, the non-corporate familiar faces, who tend to reach for the kettle before the pocket calculator, had been going through an unusually quiet period, so financial necessity forced T to contact Excreta Personnel.
First of all they sent T up to Northumbria with an eighteen-tonne flatbed truck full of expensive copper pipes. After having been questioned as to the wisdom of driving from Derby to Morpeth via two more deliveries in Leeds and Newcastle on Tyne, they were surprised when T ran out of driving time on the return leg in Sheffield. They were even more delighted when the Geordie plumbers at the Morpeth destination refused delivery of the pipes, claiming to have cancelled the order some days previously. Whatever, T just loves sleeper cabs.
The next few days driving was for a better agency, but they sent T to a notoriously disorganised so called blue-chip national courier organisation. It was undoubtedly T’s worst three days in seventeen years of truck driving. If it wasn’t for the money, which was contextually adequate, T would have told them to insert their delivery notes, and the clipboard, in a humid, dark, hairy place. It’s amazing that such organisations are still in business. They must haemorrhage money, yet the inefficiencies of such unwieldy corporations continue daily. Apparently, the Royal Mail loses several pennies on each letter delivered. These cretins must lose pounds on every pallet, if any customers are lucky enough to have their goods delivered at all. The loads are not ‘routed’ by the traffic office, and to add to the misery, drivers aren’t allowed in the warehouse to supervise the loading of their lorries. Thus, an agency driver unfamiliar with an area, even with the aid of modern maps and a GPS, finds him or herself driving past the same places in a city centre several times in a day. Add to this the fact that many of the recipients do not own fork lift trucks, so despite the truck’s curtain sides, other pallets have to be manually unloaded, then re-loaded again at many delivery points. I struggle to convey the misery which some agency drivers undergo daily, but remember, the next time you see a lorry blocking a high street, spare a thought for the poor sod driving it. He hasn’t parked it there for fun.
Before leaving for Cannes, more problems for the house sitting Gruesome Twosome, this time in the form of medicinal mysteries and medical mishaps. T has been taking an anti-gout medication, Allopurinol, daily for some five years since all the beer, Beaujolais and beefsteak took their toll on his ability to synthesise protein. The resulting gout from that carnivorous lifestyle can be almost indescribably painful, such that it can be impossible to walk more than a few paces having knee, ankle and toe joints which seem to have replaced their cartilage with red hot iron filings. Gout patients can never be cured, so even a vegan teetotal regime can never undo the damage done to the system. Also, the good news is that the medication is completely curative, so once stuck on the pills for life, one can continue to be almost as dissolute as one desires. But over the last three months, odd side effects such as intense thirst, maddening itching of the skin and waves of intense nausea had been plaguing T with increasing regularity. The first thought was diabetes, but tests revealed a normal glucose level, together a BP of 120 over 80, good by anyone’s standards let alone a drunken fat bloke. Cholesterol was back to normal thanks to more pills, but the medics were baffled. Our GP in Burton Upon Trent isn’t known for his sympathetic manner, in fact, informal waiting room chats with other patients reveal that many are so frightened of his brusque, often overtly rude and impatient attitude, that they will wait until they are near dead before daring to visit the surgery. So T went into battle recently with Dr Hardass to seek advice. The following dialogue isn’t exaggerated, he really is this unpleasant:
“Yes, what’s the trouble?”
“I’ve been getting very bad side effects from the Allopurinol”
“I tell you what, let’s play a game. You tell me what’s wrong with you and I’ll pretend to be the doctor.”
“OK, sorry. I’ve been getting raging thirst and itching skin, needing to pee all the time and occasional nausea. I went to another doctor whilst I was away travelling, who recommended tests for diabetes. I had the results and I’m not diabetic. When I stop taking the pills, the symptoms disappear, but then of course I get crippling attacks of gout, so I’m in a difficult position”
“Well you’d best just keep taking the pills and drink plenty of water”
“Yeah, but it’s really unpleasant, I spend half my day looking for public toilets when I’m driving, and I fear that these symptoms are indicating toxicity which might be causing long-term damage”
“You’re a smoker aren’t you?”
“About four hand rolled cigarettes per week, if that, nowadays”
“Well there you are then, you know how I feel about smokers. You all bring illness on yourselves”
“I can’t see the relevance here. (Thinks- Dr Hardass is really obese and obviously drinks a lot of Whisky. His nose is very red and has expanded over a lot of his face; who is he to dictate lifestyle issues to others? But I say nothing) It’s simple, when I don’t take the pills, the symptoms go away”
“So stop taking the pills, then”
“But I’ll suffer from terrible gout. Isn’t there an alternative medication?”
“No.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“What would you like me to suggest?”
(Thinks - your fat decapitated head on a pole in the reception area) “I was hoping you might come up with some ideas as to how to proceed.”
“Why not try decreasing the daily dose of the medication?”
“OK, let’s give that a try”
Two punches on his computer keyboard later, his printer is rattling off a couple of prescription forms. We are interrupted by the next patient walking through the door. Dr Hardass has a clever way of bringing consultations to an abrupt end, by pressing the ‘next patient’ button under his desk without your knowledge. As you draw breath to ask anything else the next patient is upon you, as the receptionist has sent him / her down the corridor. Nice fellow, Dr Hardass.
Since then, a kidney function test later, showing a normal healthy result, an attempt at alternative medication, which did exist but Hardass couldn’t be bothered to even look at a pharmaceutical directory, and T is still no better off. The alternative stuff seems ineffective and is apparently still fairly experimental. Cutting out alcohol almost entirely (!) and eating virtually no red meat has helped a little, but every few days T continues to hobble or put up with the side effects. Watch this space.
On arrival in Cannes we had our further share of misfortune. Firstly, L had been experiencing some discomfort in the neck region, but put it down to a recent virus and resulting swollen glands. But when she encountered difficulty in swallowing, we thought it prudent to make use of our E111 European medical cover and the efficiency of the French medical services. A trip to the local doctor prompted an immediate phone call to the hospital at Mougins. Within five minutes L had an appointment for an ultrasound scan and a Scintographic scan of the thyroid. Both these procedures were carried out within three days. As T’s French is near fluent, and L has not yet had the opportunity to learn, it fell upon T to enter the consulting rooms to translate.
The French have no time for niceties when it comes to official matters, be they governmental, legal or medical. The consultant slapped a great dollop of some sort of conductive gel onto L’s throat and began mapping various parts of her neck and lower jaw. He worked roughly with a handheld machine that looked like a giant battery shaver. It was connected to a cathode-ray monitor next to the bench whereupon L was lying. L couldn’t see the screen, but T was standing behind the doctor. The white coated consultant paused occasionally to inhale swiftly through his teeth, shake his head and mutter: “Ca n’est pas belle, ca. Mmm, peut etre c’est une probleme….”
This made L apprehensive and T pressed the medic for more information. All he would say that a blood test was required as well as further tests. T translated this whilst L started to feel slightly weak at the knees in anticipation of some horrible news.
Two anguished days later, back to the same clinic, where a small syringe of some mildly radioactive isotope solution was injected into L’s neck. As the authorities forbid anyone going close to the patient during this procedure, it’s slightly worrying. If the stuff they’re injecting into someone makes ‘em light up like a resident of Sellafield in Cumbria, or perhaps like the kids going to school on the ‘Reddy-Brek’ advert, it must be fairly potent. Now I understand why L has such a ‘glowing’ personality. A large camera device called a pinhole collimator hung over her throat as if she were an aristocrat going to meet Mme Guillotine. After a half hour of whirring and clicking, the exposure was made and the result printed onto an A3 full colour sheet.
The consultant radiologist summoned T and L into an ante room. He was wearing ‘pince-nez’ glasses of the type that could make Jade Goody seem like an intellectual. His white receding hairline swept back over a high forehead above a thin face. Straightening his bow tie against his neat expensive striped shirt collar, then deftly tucking the tail of his white coat beneath him, the consultant sat down and started talking in his halting but very understandable English. He had an accent exactly like that of the late under watt-ere explor-rer Monsieur Jacques Cousteau. His speech having the same gentle rise and fall cadence of Jacques himself, the consultant talked us through the results of the scan, with a formal introduction. One could almost see bubbles rising from the computer enhanced print before him.
“I am docteur Leboeuf of ze Esperance Clinique. Good moning. We were swimming sroo zee ocean dept’s, when we en-count-er-ed a large bull shark……Now zen, we ‘ave eer ze resultants of zer scan scyroidique. It ees true to notice zat you ‘ave some swelling of zee scyroid eer on zee left lowair lobe. Also, zee radio-actif mateerielle ‘as not picked up well on zis side. Togezer zis points to une probleme which, in my opinion, and zat of my estimated coll-egs, is a syroidism pas trop severe”
“Sorry, is that good or bad?” Demanded L, anxiously.
“Eet is not good, but zen again eet is not so bad eezer”
“Mmmm, well, my Eenglish friends, you see zat it is necessary for some traitement but I sink zat it will not be trow, par-don, too sev-eer”
“Well, what is the problem, Doctor? Is it serious?!”
“I sink you must to go ‘ome and rest. You must to take some Aspirin. And per-aps a glass of good wine”
“That’s it?!?”
“Yes, zat is it. A vi-roos az caus-ed your syroid to swell. You ‘ave some nodules also, but it is only necessaire to ave zem checked every two or sree years…. Furzemore you ‘ave some peteet stones in zee salivaire glands. A mine-or au-pair-rash-on may be required but zees is, as you Eengleesh would say, no big sing. When you are return-ing ‘ome to Ing-land you must zpeek wiz your own doc-tair”
And that appeared to be that. Monsieur Cousteau handed us a sheaf of papers, all the print-offs and a bill for two hundred and fifty Euros. He ushered us away from his office as he headed for the hospital restaurant for his three hour lunch-break.
Utterly relieved, we headed for the door. When one is told, for today at least, that one doesn’t have a terminal condition, the rest of one’s day is just a breeze. T didn’t even lose his temper at the car park ticket machine which wouldn’t accept his English debit card, as he was 20 cents short of the five euros needed to operate the barrier. He even smiled when no less than three security officials and the hospital receptionist brought forth three separate card authorisation machines which were similarly inoperative. T suggested that a member of staff lend him 20 cents, then he could raise the barrier, drive to the cash machine in town, return to the hospital, buy a coffee and a croissant from the pleasant staff bistro, then re-imburse the 20 cents to the generous donor. Of course, this was impossible, and it was absolutely forbidden for anyone to lend coinage to anyone else within hospital premises. Especially on a Thursday. But it was permissible for a staff member to donate coins to whomsoever they wished on a personal basis, so, eventually, one of the hospital porters ended up 20 cents lighter, and we were on our way back to the villa near Valbonne where we were undertaking our assignment.
The next morning we awoke to find that a malicious drunkard had evidently taken a rotivator to the expensively manicured lawns of the villa. Several thousand square feet of once bowling-green flat swathed turf looked as if it had been used for an impromptu stock-car race overnight. If we’d have dug a couple of trenches, the scene could have resembled a re-enactment of the battle of the Somme , our villa being whizz-bang in the middle of no man’s land. Walking down the road apiece, it would seem that the other millionaires in the gated secure community had suffered similar damage. After a while it became evident that a family of wild boar had become hungry, come down from the mountains overnight, and sought their favourite food of worms and underground mushrooms. These delicacies are most easily found under nice flat soft turf, and the villas of the ‘Domaine’ offered easy pickings.
T walked around the villas trying to seek advice. You never saw so many rich people in such a flap. The whole tax-exiled community was up in arms, and out on their patios. Some sat on their deckchairs, some leaned on the bonnets of their S Type Mercedes saloons, one or two people even went as far as to get dressed from their towelling robes; but they were all simultaneously pursuing the same activity. All of them were barking into their mobile phones to summon their respective gardeners and security staff. Some folk had suffered the ultimate ignominy of turf floating in their swimming pools and mud tainting the water.
T even saw the richest guy in the area, a Saudi oil billionaire, walking around with a leaf rake in one hand, and a fat cigar in the other.
By lunchtime, a real community spirit suddenly appeared amongst a bunch of anally retentive over-moneyed normally reclusive expats. Someone had to be blamed. The fences hadn’t been buried deep enough below ground, and the architects hadn’t thought to electrify those fences. The Mayor was to blame for not having all wild boar killed within a five hundred kilometre radius, the French government shouldn’t allow wild boar anywhere in France.
We have since learned that the boar in question had paid the ultimate price; local hunters were employed to seek them out and kill them, their spoils being all the meat they could freeze from the slaughter. Whether or not lawyers were consulted I’m as yet unaware, but our client simply instructed us by phone to authorise any expenditure to repair the damage and prevent the beasts re-entry. Enough money was thrown at half a dozen Provencal landscape gardeners that weekend than would clear the entire third world debt and fund a cure for the common cold. Our guy Laurent took the view that if he just added a nought to his estimate, it should cover things nicely.
So, despite living in all the nice surroundings, things haven’t been as smooth as usual. Our recent medical issues have been problematic, we have been madly overcharged by BT on a direct debit for services we never used, we have exhausted ourselves by driving with three estate car loads of stuff moving to our new static van in the Cotswolds, and there we have found some new people to really make our day. Or not. These are the resident site wardens who are the SS of the caravan world.
To some people the glass is half full, to others, half empty, but this husband and wife team at the static holiday van site are professional pessimists. They will empty the glass down the drain then smash it against your head, whilst sending you a nominal invoice for doing so. And they’re unpleasant with it.
Everything is against the rules, and even if one tries to do the right thing, it should have been done another way. Our shed blew down, which was obviously our fault, and I was sent a terse SMS message asking what arrangements I was making for its removal as it was fit only for scrap. I’d made f*ck all arrangements as I was in the South of France when I caused the gale force winds which moved the damned thing three feet to the left. On my return I mended the damage, but apparently I hadn’t mended it properly, and what’s more it is apparently against site regulations to use decorative gravel around a new flagstone path. L had cleared dozens of bags of leaves and carefully pruned the small tree on the small plot around our van, but this was apparently unnecessary and against regulations. However, when the electricity on site tripped-off and all the surface water pipes froze because a contractor neglected to lag them, the Gloucestershire Gestapo were conspicuous by their absence.
But, things are looking up. Since the Guardian article, we are now almost completely booked for 2008, except for six weeks during June / July. For some reason it seems that all our new clients are smallholders or farmers. Is this representative of a typical left-of-centre broadsheet readership? Organic rural Guardianistas down your way? A tale of ordinary aga-cooking folk? The most dangerous assignment we have accepted so far next year is the care of a Devon cider farm for a few weeks. There are a few sheep, some chickens, a fat cat, an English Springer and two large sheds stacked to the ceiling with cases of velvet-smooth, semi-dry, 6% organic scrumpy. Guaranteed no hangover and no reason to get up early.
More from here in Ireland around Christmas time, if the Guinness doesn’t kill us first. Send more gout pills, or else I am undone.