Halfway Over the Hill #4 (Fire & Water)
Fire and Water
(Reading time - 4 book pages of text ~ 1800 words)(N.B. Names have been slightly altered in this narrative.
+ I will now refer to my neighbour, the Wild One from previous posts, as Dahlia, this is the Google Voice suggestion for his actual name)
1st July 2021
Since I planted my saplings mid-May (zucchini and lettuce now ready to harvest) it's only rained once.
A few days ago, a whiff of smoke transperced the thick heat. Towards the east, over the line of trees, a haze of smoke veiled the sky.
I thought nothing of it, people often have bonfires.
Many people had noticed the oddity of a roadside fire and even texted their friends.
It was only after twenty minutes, when it had started raging through the woods, did someone think to call the fire brigade. It took three days to put out and it destroyed 70 hectares of pines and olive trees. People gathered to watch, marvelled, and texted their friends.
The land is still smouldering today.
Yesterday evening when I looked up from my spot, I saw a plume of smoke on the foot of a hill opposite, making its way up the entire slope of a neighbouring hill.
I called my young Italian friend and helper Fab, who said there was no need to alert the emergency services; someone else would have done it.
I called, nevertheless. It was my first 999 call ( in fact, 115 for fire) and I was ready to relay my information with calm urgency.
After a long pause, a man answered sleepily. I told him the location of the fire.
'Oh, really?' he mused, 'And where are you calling from?'
'Ilboli' I said. ( Think 'hillybilly' pronounced in a theatrical mock-Italian accent)
'Hmm' he considered and there then followed another long pause.
He then said that they were already informed and, yawning, he thanked me for my call and wished me a pleasant evening.
A few days ago, a whiff of smoke transperced the thick heat. Towards the east, over the line of trees, a haze of smoke veiled the sky.
I thought nothing of it, people often have bonfires.
Many people had noticed the oddity of a roadside fire and even texted their friends.
It was only after twenty minutes, when it had started raging through the woods, did someone think to call the fire brigade. It took three days to put out and it destroyed 70 hectares of pines and olive trees. People gathered to watch, marvelled, and texted their friends.
The land is still smouldering today.
Yesterday evening when I looked up from my spot, I saw a plume of smoke on the foot of a hill opposite, making its way up the entire slope of a neighbouring hill.
I called my young Italian friend and helper Fab, who said there was no need to alert the emergency services; someone else would have done it.
I called, nevertheless. It was my first 999 call ( in fact, 115 for fire) and I was ready to relay my information with calm urgency.
After a long pause, a man answered sleepily. I told him the location of the fire.
'Oh, really?' he mused, 'And where are you calling from?'
'Ilboli' I said. ( Think 'hillybilly' pronounced in a theatrical mock-Italian accent)
'Hmm' he considered and there then followed another long pause.
He then said that they were already informed and, yawning, he thanked me for my call and wished me a pleasant evening.
And I had one, watching the smoke billowing here and there over my favourite view.
I could not see any fire engines with my opera glasses but an hour later a helicopter was hovering over the scene. Under control.
I could not see any fire engines with my opera glasses but an hour later a helicopter was hovering over the scene. Under control.
The following morning my view seemed unscarred.
For the earlier rampant fire in the east, I did wonder if the local reservoirs would get depleted but I heard that in the final stages, the water was brought from the sea.
We are clearly in a drought; trees and plants are wilting and dying.
Last summer was not nearly so bad but the town hall reduced the water supply in July and that dire situation lasted until late September.
I moved here permanently the previous September and the water supply was normal.
Initially, we had a few hours in the morning, and if I remember correctly, an hour in the evening. There were many changes (some not announced) and by August I had approximately an hour in the morning. There was a day where I had none.
Due to maybe air in the pipes and not enough water in the hot tanks, and also very poor pressure, I made do with cold water issuing from the taps when the water was officially 'on' - soon it became clear that it was risky to heat a tank that wasn't full so I stopped switching them on. (Eventually, I bought an electric kettle, but the story of my two hot water tanks and their lukewarm output is a long, complex, unbelievable one to be told another time but the semi-permanent water outage made them unusable.)
This one hour of water seemed unfair as people up in the town still had several hours, morning and evening. I was told by the vice-mayor that the need for water was more urgent there, but he didn't elaborate. I assume it is because there are families with children. Round about me there are only single, old men. Not single exactly, they all have wives in the coastal town that they rarely see.
The vice-mayor sent WhatsApp messages (my old WA account is now deleted so I can't refer to them for details) to urge people not to waste water and that it was destined 'for only domestic use' (meaning, I suppose, don't water agricultural land, which everyone has)
I thought of my Italian friend Ang in the town, who just to wash her hands would turn the tap on full blast, and, leave it running, staring at it spiralling down the drainhole for minutes, before she thought it fit to get her hands wet.
As for washing dishes, she reminded me of the Versailles fountains on festive days.
By her own profession, her daily power showers are 40 minutes long.
She also mops the floor with copious water three times a day, being manically houseproud.
A joke I shared with a former local Italian friend Beata (another pristine housewife but with less fervour) goes as follows:
Ang cleans the house at least 3 times a day.
Me too, I clean the house at least 3 times as well....a year (on a decrescendo note).
Beata laughed, but was secretly and viscerally appalled and that's why she's now a former friend.
So, how with all these urgent needs, do the good people of Ilboli cope with water shortages?
One answer is the numerous natural springs dotted all around the hill at varying heights, set in stone walls in hill banks formed by roads, with a spout spewing water into stone founts.
Local hamlets are named after the nearest fount. Disused, overgrown donkey trails that lead from the town to the founts are still town property.
The corner of my own house was illegally and incompetently built over one of these public paths ( but I'm told that I needn't fear a municipal bulldozer tearing down that angle of my house) and my fount is only 25 m away, downhill.
It doesn't have a great flow - it takes several minutes to fill an old 5 litre plastic wine bottle. (Someone kindly left me 5 of them - they have sharp-edged plastic carry handles that cut into your hands.)
People prefer other more abundant founts and mounted on dinky tiny pick-ups loaded with a 1000litre giant white cube, they will make several trips until their land is well-watered.
They use pumps to transfer water from the full fount.
I still haven't invested in that yoke with two pails, I promised myself last year.
The other answer for water outage is emergency tanks. The idea is that when the water is on, they will fill up and when it's off, you flip a switch, and your home plumbing will take its water from there. If there is more than a day or two without mains water, you're scuppered.
Some people have these huge white cubes plumbed in either inside or outside.
Or they will have blue oblong containers that look like blue elephants crouched on the roof.
He then gave me Mario's story to conclude his pitch: Mario had a former wife who died in mysterious circumstances. Previously, people did not use undertakers (I learnt this later), and Mario's sick wife died during the night and he enclosed her in a coffin he had ready and waiting downstairs. In the morning when the coffin was opened (by others, I presume), the body had turned over!
Clearly, according to Dahlia, I could not trust a man like that. A man who had effectively interred a live wife.
Yet I was to trust Dahlia, a man who had appropriated his live wife's inheritance - the large neighbouring house and extensive land - and impelled her to live in a tiny flat in the coastal town 363 days in the year. Still, it was not a macabre, assisted death.
Needless to say, after barely any reflection, I did not accept the services of the official or the unofficial plumber.
I believe the joys of no water will become a reality soon this year. Must get that yoke....
For the earlier rampant fire in the east, I did wonder if the local reservoirs would get depleted but I heard that in the final stages, the water was brought from the sea.
We are clearly in a drought; trees and plants are wilting and dying.
Last summer was not nearly so bad but the town hall reduced the water supply in July and that dire situation lasted until late September.
I moved here permanently the previous September and the water supply was normal.
Initially, we had a few hours in the morning, and if I remember correctly, an hour in the evening. There were many changes (some not announced) and by August I had approximately an hour in the morning. There was a day where I had none.
Due to maybe air in the pipes and not enough water in the hot tanks, and also very poor pressure, I made do with cold water issuing from the taps when the water was officially 'on' - soon it became clear that it was risky to heat a tank that wasn't full so I stopped switching them on. (Eventually, I bought an electric kettle, but the story of my two hot water tanks and their lukewarm output is a long, complex, unbelievable one to be told another time but the semi-permanent water outage made them unusable.)
This one hour of water seemed unfair as people up in the town still had several hours, morning and evening. I was told by the vice-mayor that the need for water was more urgent there, but he didn't elaborate. I assume it is because there are families with children. Round about me there are only single, old men. Not single exactly, they all have wives in the coastal town that they rarely see.
The vice-mayor sent WhatsApp messages (my old WA account is now deleted so I can't refer to them for details) to urge people not to waste water and that it was destined 'for only domestic use' (meaning, I suppose, don't water agricultural land, which everyone has)
I thought of my Italian friend Ang in the town, who just to wash her hands would turn the tap on full blast, and, leave it running, staring at it spiralling down the drainhole for minutes, before she thought it fit to get her hands wet.
As for washing dishes, she reminded me of the Versailles fountains on festive days.
By her own profession, her daily power showers are 40 minutes long.
She also mops the floor with copious water three times a day, being manically houseproud.
A joke I shared with a former local Italian friend Beata (another pristine housewife but with less fervour) goes as follows:
Ang cleans the house at least 3 times a day.
Me too, I clean the house at least 3 times as well....a year (on a decrescendo note).
Beata laughed, but was secretly and viscerally appalled and that's why she's now a former friend.
So, how with all these urgent needs, do the good people of Ilboli cope with water shortages?
One answer is the numerous natural springs dotted all around the hill at varying heights, set in stone walls in hill banks formed by roads, with a spout spewing water into stone founts.
Local hamlets are named after the nearest fount. Disused, overgrown donkey trails that lead from the town to the founts are still town property.
The corner of my own house was illegally and incompetently built over one of these public paths ( but I'm told that I needn't fear a municipal bulldozer tearing down that angle of my house) and my fount is only 25 m away, downhill.
It doesn't have a great flow - it takes several minutes to fill an old 5 litre plastic wine bottle. (Someone kindly left me 5 of them - they have sharp-edged plastic carry handles that cut into your hands.)
People prefer other more abundant founts and mounted on dinky tiny pick-ups loaded with a 1000litre giant white cube, they will make several trips until their land is well-watered.
They use pumps to transfer water from the full fount.
I still haven't invested in that yoke with two pails, I promised myself last year.
The other answer for water outage is emergency tanks. The idea is that when the water is on, they will fill up and when it's off, you flip a switch, and your home plumbing will take its water from there. If there is more than a day or two without mains water, you're scuppered.
Some people have these huge white cubes plumbed in either inside or outside.
Or they will have blue oblong containers that look like blue elephants crouched on the roof.
Re: the old male neighbours. They had more water than me. It turns out that two were supplied by a reservoir connected to my fount. Another had an emergency tank. One had those little pick-up trucks. Dahlia, the wildman, claimed his came exclusively from a mountain source🙄. An another old married guy only comes to feed the chickens and for a solitary tv dinner. So I'd drawn the bad lot.
I'd had enough and decided to find a plumber - no easy task - to install an emergency tank. The only person who may have been available was a man who you had to call out at dawn because from 8:30 onwards he started drinking heavily. I have dodged his swerving car a few times.
Finally, my good neighbour Arm - not Dahlia - suggested a plumber from the coastal town who had done some work for him and he said he would call the plumber himself to arrange a viewing. He seemed terribly enthusiastic so I suspected that there might be commission for him in it.
A van, with Art Plumbing stamped on the side and a logo of a corseted fifties beauty sitting astride a large-scale gun, arrived in the early evening.
Two very large people struggled out of it - a man and a woman. Husband and wife, it turned out. They were all smiles.
I asked if they could take a quick look at the inverted pipework for the hot water tanks as I was sure the solution must be simple but, as usual here, they were not interested in maintenance but installation, and they cheerfully dismissed it for another time.
I'd had enough and decided to find a plumber - no easy task - to install an emergency tank. The only person who may have been available was a man who you had to call out at dawn because from 8:30 onwards he started drinking heavily. I have dodged his swerving car a few times.
Finally, my good neighbour Arm - not Dahlia - suggested a plumber from the coastal town who had done some work for him and he said he would call the plumber himself to arrange a viewing. He seemed terribly enthusiastic so I suspected that there might be commission for him in it.
A van, with Art Plumbing stamped on the side and a logo of a corseted fifties beauty sitting astride a large-scale gun, arrived in the early evening.
Two very large people struggled out of it - a man and a woman. Husband and wife, it turned out. They were all smiles.
I asked if they could take a quick look at the inverted pipework for the hot water tanks as I was sure the solution must be simple but, as usual here, they were not interested in maintenance but installation, and they cheerfully dismissed it for another time.
(In fact, I later quickly resolved the not-hot, hot water issue myself with a pair of pliers and bolts and a pair of strong hands ( Fab's))
I wanted a modest 100 litre tank and they said it was not possible, 300 was the minimum, but then they said 200 was possible.
They were very jolly and friendly throughout the duration of the short visit and suggested other expensive improvements I could make because they didn't just do plumbing; they did everything.
At the end of the discussion, they seemed to think they had procured a deal from a willing dupe and went off chuckling, to squash themselves into their little van. (They were equally, laughingly unforthcoming, with an English friend who just happened to turn up to offload on me about the difficulties he was having installing a hard water crystal filter for his pipes and he left no wiser than when he came.)
Anyway, the quote was texted to me the next morning. It was nearly 2000 euros, I recall, without VAT, and half was to be given upfront for materials that didn’t cost more than 400.
I wanted a modest 100 litre tank and they said it was not possible, 300 was the minimum, but then they said 200 was possible.
They were very jolly and friendly throughout the duration of the short visit and suggested other expensive improvements I could make because they didn't just do plumbing; they did everything.
At the end of the discussion, they seemed to think they had procured a deal from a willing dupe and went off chuckling, to squash themselves into their little van. (They were equally, laughingly unforthcoming, with an English friend who just happened to turn up to offload on me about the difficulties he was having installing a hard water crystal filter for his pipes and he left no wiser than when he came.)
Anyway, the quote was texted to me the next morning. It was nearly 2000 euros, I recall, without VAT, and half was to be given upfront for materials that didn’t cost more than 400.
Dahlia had caught wind of activity at my house and came to be blatantly nosy after the van had departed.
He asked if the plumber had curly mustachios.
He was wearing a mask, unlike his wife, so I hadn't noticed but it was possible, it suited his gregarious personality.
He asked if the plumber had curly mustachios.
He was wearing a mask, unlike his wife, so I hadn't noticed but it was possible, it suited his gregarious personality.
He then questioned me discreetly about his size, 'Was he a big fatty?' But in these parts that wouldn't narrow him down.
And then finally, 'Is he called Mario?'
And then finally, 'Is he called Mario?'
'Yes', I said.
Dahlia was convinced he had the right man.
'You don't want to trust him', he remonstrated, and there I was wondering who I could trust in this place.
'You don't want to trust him', he remonstrated, and there I was wondering who I could trust in this place.
Dahlia suggested a good friend of his who knew a thing or two about plumbing and wasn't too dodgy and didn't drink too much.
He then gave me Mario's story to conclude his pitch: Mario had a former wife who died in mysterious circumstances. Previously, people did not use undertakers (I learnt this later), and Mario's sick wife died during the night and he enclosed her in a coffin he had ready and waiting downstairs. In the morning when the coffin was opened (by others, I presume), the body had turned over!
Clearly, according to Dahlia, I could not trust a man like that. A man who had effectively interred a live wife.
Yet I was to trust Dahlia, a man who had appropriated his live wife's inheritance - the large neighbouring house and extensive land - and impelled her to live in a tiny flat in the coastal town 363 days in the year. Still, it was not a macabre, assisted death.
Needless to say, after barely any reflection, I did not accept the services of the official or the unofficial plumber.
I believe the joys of no water will become a reality soon this year. Must get that yoke....
S
 |
| Trickling spout to the right, under eroded carving of cornucopia |
Try: Turning on the tap for only a set hour of the day. See how you like it.
Very funny - Ilboli pronunciation in particular. Good luck with the water!
ReplyDeleteVery well written !! Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez couldn't have done better. Thank you !! I am still asking myself why you are there !! Maybe to write about this "realismo mágico".
ReplyDelete