Tales from Elsewhere: No comments please, we’re British

I work for the National Health Service as research administrator at a Bristol hospital – no Florence Nightingale me.  I’m a number-crunching, spreadsheeting, mail-merging, envelope-stuffing, letter-writing, one-end-of-the-site-to-the-other-walking, glorified filing clerk, with four years behind me in the job, and probably 6 years to go till retirement.  The NHS is on the whole a kind employer keen on equal treatment for all, though perhaps a little anal on paperwork and bureaucracy generally (and don’t get me started on the parking problems).

What I’d like to tell you about today is a typical NHS situation and the equally typical British attitude towards it.

Last week I had to attend the latest monthly meeting to do with the new hospital which is soaring up relentlessly around us, and which will be finished in the spring of 2014. How and where we will all fit is a giant logistical jigsaw puzzle, and this meeting was to discuss with the architects where the various research departments will be located.  I attend representing my department, and report back to our professor what was said.  This time however I was in a mental fog as I left the meeting – I couldn’t possibly relate what the ‘salient points’ were.

Christmas interrupted the monthly routine, so it had been a couple of months since the last meeting when Gretchen, a laboratory technician, had turned up with her month old baby, a sweet little boy who slept angelically in his carry-cot throughout the whole meeting.  We had already started the meeting when she arrived 20 minutes late, so we stopped to ooh and aah at the baby and she told us how she had had a natural childbirth (ouch).  She was still on maternity leave, but had insisted on attending to represent her department and spent the next 20 minutes whispering about babies with her neighbour as she constantly tossed her waist-length brown wavy hair, while we tried to resume the meeting. 

This time we had been located in a meeting room which could comfortably seat 6 people, however by 09:30, the start time, 12 had appeared (to the surprise of the organiser) and we had all gradually shifted round the table, squeezing together to make room for newcomers.  Three architects (one short, one tall and thin, one tall and corpulent) were present on this occasion, and they shuffled their huge plans around as steaming coffee mugs were hastily withdrawn and put on the floor.  

Twenty minutes later we were discussing the placement of offices, desks, windows and doors when in came Gretchen, a rucksack on her back which was full to bursting, and the (now three-month old) baby on her arm.   Everything came to a halt once again as everybody cooed, and the architects shifted uncomfortably.  Thirteen adults and one baby competed for the available air – one fart and we would have had to dive out the window.

Mama then proceeded to relieve the rucksack of its contents as someone else held junior, and then she peeled off all the warm layers till she got down to a waist-length woolly poncho.  Five minutes later the large architect looked over the rims of his spectacles to check that he could start again, and the meeting resumed, while Gretchen had a further five minutes of whispered chat with her neighbour.  We were very cramped, with shoulders firmly touching, and I had a corner of the table wedged in my chest – one good shove from behind and it would have been death by misadventure.

Presently junior whimpered slightly, and mama fumbled underneath her poncho (no, I thought, surely not) and baby’s head disappeared underneath it.  Mr big architect’s face was a picture.  He faltered mid-sentence, got distracted, fumbled with the plans, stopped.  All three looked profoundly embarrassed.  Other people stepped in with questions, he recovered, resumed.  Gretchen asked questions too, tossing her (now thigh-length) hair.  I did my best to slam my jaw shut.   In the odd silences as we scrutinised the plans, sucking sounds were heard.

Then baby was whipped out from under mama’s poncho, his mouth was wiped and he was transferred to her knee, where she bounced him vigorously up and down for the twin purpose of burping (double check) and his entertainment (unimpressed).  About five minutes later the child whimpered again, and the whole procedure was repeated.

The meeting concluded at 11:00, and the sheet of paper in front of me was still as white as the driven snow.  If I was drooling it would have had nothing to do with the baby, but because I was slack-jawed for almost the entire time.  Aside from the initial minute when Gretchen appeared at 09:50, nobody said anything; no comment was made about what we had all witnessed. 

Oh to have been a fly on the roof of the architects’ car as they drove back to their office.

I asked one other administrator what she thought the following day when I ran into her and she confined herself to remarking ‘yes, it was a little distracting, I must admit’.

I consider myself to be liberal, laissez-faire, fine with natural behaviour such as breast-feeding in public and so on, but it struck me forcibly that there are times when it isn’t appropriate and when it is unfair on everybody else.  Gretchen wasn’t to know the room would be too small, but it clearly did not cross her mind to wonder whether we would find it distracting if she did not retire to the background.  I’ve noticed that mothers often sit in a back row to breastfeed, or go briefly into another room, express their milk into a baby’s bottle instead ... or leave the child with someone for a few hours.  What will it be next time – will she expect to change the baby’s nappy too?

The NHS adheres strictly to non-discriminatory behaviour for both patients and staff, which is admirable, but sometimes the non-discrimination can be mutually exclusive.  You can’t champion a mother’s rights to breastfeed if it also means you are neglecting your staff’s rights to hold an effective meeting, at which approximately half the time was spent being distracted from the work in hand for one reason or another.  The trouble is that mothers’ rights are such a Sacred Cow that no one would dare challenge them.  Earth Mothers and work don’t always mix.

The general response I received from colleagues was definitely non-committal, and from friends outside work to whom I made comments it was ‘aah, how sweet, why shouldn’t she breastfeed’ (hello?  Have you been listening to what I said?).  I admit I’m not brave enough to take on the NHS about this – unless Gretchen changes junior’s nappy at the next meeting. 

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Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

(John's way of reminding me that it's my turn

to do the gardening...)

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La Honoria - Part Two (of two)

Clearly I had been gone from Argentina too long, for there were other horrors to face, and my reactions were just as limp.
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As I walked down the dimly lit polished tile corridor one evening I saw a black blurr right in front of me.  I leapt back in alarm, which is just as well, because it was a large black tarantula with hairy legs which had obviously lost its way.  Unnerved by the large screaming human it scuttled hither and thither, making this human scream even louder.  But at least on that occasion I had somewhere to run to. 
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh..................

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Shortly afterwards I was having a shower in the Beatrix Potter bathroom and minding my own business when I happened to glance up at the showerhead as I rinsed my hair (as you do) and there on the wall behind was the tarantula’s younger brother or sister, just two feet above the suds on my head.  If the water had suddenly run cold I wouldn’t have noticed, frozen as I was with horror and by the knowledge that the creature and I were going to have to get along for the extra few minutes it would take to finish washing and turn off the taps.  To run screaming for the towel at that point was not an option.  I don’t know how I did it, but my eyeballs never moved away from it as I went through the motions; in fact I’m sure I didn’t blink.

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I slept in an attractive room where I could keep both door and windows open at night to keep cool with the through-breeze.  I had the inner verandah on one side, enclosed by mosquito screens, and the outer verandah on the other side, where the windows similarly protected me from mosquitoes.  One night I noticed that the dogs weren’t making their usual snuffly whiny sounds as they settled down on the outer verandah to sleep, and someone commented that they had been out earlier in the day with the riders herding cattle, and on their way back had been left behind sniffing about for skunks.
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I fell asleep immediately in the quiet of the night with the singing crickets for company, but was awoken some time later coughing and choking – to the most appalling stench I have ever experienced.  It was as if something had grabbed me by the throat, and I gasped for air.  And then I heard the snuffly, whiny sounds, and knew straight away what had happened. 
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One or more skunks had fought back with spirit in their usual way, by backing up against the perceived enemy and raising their hind quarters to emit a jet of the most evil, stinking, concentrated substance on the planet.  The dogs would have run away howling, fleeing not the little animals but the consequence of their aggression, which was now fixed to their coats for a very long time.  Falling exhaustedly on the verandah just outside my bedroom window, they were now trying to get to sleep.
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I burrowed under the sheet, preferring to perspire than have nothing but polluted air between me and the dogs.  I wondered whether even the mosquitoes were staggering about.
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There were of course, many compensations for the aggressive fauna.  The bird population on the farm was prolific.  Bird photography is not my strong point, and I wish I’d had longer to practice. Among others, there were magpies, pygmy owls, parrots, ibis, whistling ducks, small kestrels, spoonbill ducks, grey blue tanagers, caracaras, falcons, lapwings, plovers, warblers, woodpeckers and the ubiquitous little ovenbird.
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Woodpecker

Parrots

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The sticky black topsoil on the farm is the type that gardeners in England swoon over, so rich in nutrients that due to the warm climate and the rainfall it took only four months to harvest time with vegetable crops.  Michèle had a small patch in part of one of the fields where she grew marrows, melons, water melons, pumpkin, squash, globe courgettes and other large vegetables. 

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While I was staying there the women and children all went to work on this soil one day, and I went along just for the ride, and to take pictures while the children played.  The black mud was so sticky that the going would get harder and harder as it oozed between their toes and caked their feet until they looked like beings with ten league boots.
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...the mothers planted out the squash seedlings...

...while the children played in the mud

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The downside of all this was that there were no paved roads within the property, or beyond the gate and to the village 5 kilometres away.  When it rained it was very difficult to drive into the village and it would have taken an hour to walk; when it poured the children cheered, because it was either a question of going to school on horseback or not at all.  Sometimes their father would take them all in the carricoche, a contraption he had made consisting of a large pony and trap with tyres and a cabin perched on the top, so that all seven could ride together.

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The village is so small that the children at the little primary school all knew each other’s families, and it was quite common for Michèle’s children to go and play at someone else’s house after school.  There were no mobile phones then so their mother would drive into the village some time later and cruise around until someone called after her to tell her they had seen the children at so-and-so’s house, and she would head in that direction to collect them and take them home for dinner.
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From one day to the next the idyll became a nightmare. 

There was only herself and her mother in the house on the winter afternoon of 24th June 2002, and she had lit the fire in the sitting-room to warm the rest of the house.  When the time came to drive to the village to collect the children from school, she noticed that her mother was looking groggy, and concerned in case she had taken a double dose of her tablets by mistake, decided at the last minute to take her along with her, and they travelled the few kilometres to the school together in the car. 

On the way back with the children they stopped at the silos, where her husband had an office.  As she was looking at some paperwork she glanced out of the window across the fields and was puzzled by a curl of smoke in the distance.  She wondered who was burning stubble in their fields, and as they drove back she saw one of the farm workers approaching them on the tractor.  Old José had no teeth whatsoever and it usually took a while to make out what he was saying, but this time there was no mistaking his words.  He pointed urgently towards the house and said simply “Your house is burning.”

Her mind racing, she tried to shut out the hubbub that erupted in the car as she concentrated on driving safely towards the house.  When they got there they all spilled out of the car and gazed in horror at the conflagration around them.  The fire had caught hold and was already out of control.  The nearest fire station was several villages away. 

Michèle ran round the house trying to gain entry where the fire had not yet caught hold to see if she could rescue anything – the priceless O’Dwyer documents dating back 800 years... her own family photographs… mementoes of her beloved father who had passed away 8 years previously… some clothes… Honor’s letters in the old biscuit tins… but it was too hot and she realised it was out of the question; she would be putting herself in danger if she tried anything brave.

She picked up a hose and cast it down again – what use was a hose in such a furnace?  She was vaguely aware of her eldest son grabbing it from her to use it in keeping down the surface temperature of a dangerously hot gas canister, and of his shouted commands telling everybody to move out of the way because the box where the ammunition for hunting guns was stored was inevitably going to overheat and set the bullets off.

As the other members of the family were summoned and kept in touch by the various people meandering about anxiously, Michèle did the only thing of which she felt capable – she sat down on the ground with her back against the trunk of a tree, lit a cigarette and watched her husband’s family home for generations and hers for the dozen years of turning it into her own, ascend in orange sparks and flying ash soaring upwards into the twilight sky. 

“Will I lose my job?” cried the housekeeper.  At that point Michèle could not bring herself to think about it or reply.  All she could think was “I’ve lost my home and all my belongings”, and kept silent.

Her husband Mick had been in Buenos Aires on business for two months when he was told.  Ever the pragmatist, he was shocked but practical.  He offered to come home, but she told him not to on her account.  She saw no reason to upset him further, and she could manage with the others to help her.

The fire brigade arrived at last two hours later, but there was little for them to do.  She somehow managed to stay serene in the presence of her worried children and distressed mother as she rounded them up briskly and put them back in the car for the drive over to their eldest son’s home for the night. 

The following day she returned and was struck afresh with grief to see twisted metal bedsteads and pieces of furniture that had somehow survived, pathetically strewn over the ground in a still gently smouldering, evil smelling, amorphous mass.  Strangely, the fireplace still had the logs nestled in it by her the afternoon before.

From then on life became a bewildering whirl of activity, and she discovered for the first time what it was really like to have absolutely no clothes except for what they had been wearing on the day of the fire.  Her eldest son was recently married and lived in his own house adjoining their property, and they lived with him and his wife until they could move to another temporary accommodation, since there was not enough room for them all.

It was painful to keep returning to hunt for things, particularly on one occasion when she came across one of the local policemen from the village and went to offer help when she realised he had a bag with him and was sifting through the ashes looking for salvageable objects he could keep for himself or sell.

The family knew that the fire must have originated from the fireplace in the sitting room despite the fact that it had been protected by a fireguard, but learned some time later that it could have been the chimney which had ignited and the fire had spread rapidly because of inadequacies in the false ceiling which had been installed some years before. 

As the garden had not been affected by the fire, Michèle drove a trailer to it one morning and with some help started to dig up every plant she had ever loved and nurtured, and over the next six months transported them with care to their interim home, the land around the silo offices from where she had first seen the smoke.  They were replanted carefully in a field, and today continue to be the same riot of colour they had been before.  Cuttings have supplied the gardens of her children’s homes since that time.

They found another job for their housekeeper.  It was decided in the end that the house would not be re-built in the same location because it had always been a time-consuming exercise to drive into the village.  There are tentative plans to build a house on the edge of the property nearest the village, but in the meantime they decided to leave their son to manage the land and they moved south to a property they owned 700 kilometres away where there was a house. 

Everything else was started from scratch.   She is a positive person, romantic yet practical at the same time.  Although this terrible event was a landmark in her life, if you ask her, Michèle – my Pollyanna friend - will tell you that no human or animal was hurt, and everything else is replaceable.  She'll just start again.

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Photo Finish
- from Lonicera's non-digital archive

More pictures of La Honoria

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La Honoria - Part One (of two)

(A brief apology - I've been unwell for a while and haven't been able to blog, much as I wanted to.  I had a Christmas post to upload, but never finished it and now the time has past, so it will have to wait till next year.  In it I wanted to thank all of you who read this blog, whether or not you comment.  Thank you, and may 2013 be good to you).

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I’ve often written about my closest friend Michèle on this blog. We were at school together from the age of thirteen, and I am godmother to her eldest daughter. This is another aspect of her life I’ve long wanted to write about, and she has helped me with some of the background details.

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Michèle married into a farming family which had settled in Argentina many generations before. The O’Dwyers had originally been gentleman farmers in Ireland before moving to England to pursue politics and the corridors of power. One branch of the family migrated to South America in the mid 19th century.

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The O’Dwyers have always had a strong connection with the land on whichever side of the ocean they have found themselves, and somehow despite the economic problems in Argentina those who chose to settle there have always managed to make it pay sufficiently to lead fulfilling lives and have enough with which to educate their children.

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Drought, fire and flood were easier to cope with than the recently introduced export restrictions, which have left them not always able to sell their harvests. Despite it all they have a genuine respect for the soil that feeds them and a love for the land they hope to pass down to the next generation. Michèle’s husband Mick has instilled in his sons the importance of combining good farming practices with keeping apace of new agricultural technology and ideas, and the willingness to try new sources of income from the land. There is no room for sentimentality in the business, and no prospects for the gentlemen farmers of yesteryear – today it is hard work from sunup to sundown.

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Mick’s grandfather Gil and his English wife Honor purchased a tract of land in the province of Entre Ríos, 400 km north of Buenos Aires in 1906, and Gil named the farm La Honoria, after his wife; it was the family seat during their lifetime. Unfortunately his was destined to be short however, because he died in his late forties following complications after an operation, leaving his widow with 5 children to bring up – four boys and a girl. They returned to the United Kingdom for some years, but after they had finished their schooling, two of her sons and her daughter returned with Honor to Argentina to take up their farming inheritance. One of her sons, Carew, remained unmarried, and stayed on the farm for the rest of his life, helping with the day to day tasks and administration.

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Mick and his family shared the house for a while with Don Carew, as he was known by all (“Don” being the ancient title of respect accorded to people of stature in Spain, and later in its colonies). Don Carew was a man whose personality stood out as being different from other members of his family, but to any British person was easily recognised as being the epitome of the true-blue Brit from before the war who spoke with heavily accented Spanish and had a hint of the proverbial stiff upper lip proper of Englishmen ‘out in the colonies’.

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He was a young man living in England during World War I and later was enlisted as a Special Constable during the General Strike of 1926. Except for these few short years, La Honoria had been his home and his life’s work for the ninety years he had been on this earth, and he loved every inch of it.

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By the beginning of this current century when the generation of Mick’s father and his uncle Carew had passed on and a new ones had taken their place, the land has progressively been divided down into smaller portions, as the laws of inheritance in Argentina dictate that all assets are inherited equally. The land itself has not been split, however; the arrangement was that a designated member of the family should administer it for those who preferred to live in the capital, and by the time Mick had established himself as manager of the farm the others agreed to sell their shares to him.

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He gradually added to the acreage when adjoining fields came up for sale, and lived in the house with his wife Michèle and their five children.

The rambling farmhouse had been built by the previous owners, another family of British descent. They did what was logical for the northern hemisphere, where houses were designed to face the sunny south. Consequently, the handsome colonial style house had some serious drawbacks simply because it had been positioned the wrong way round. The bedrooms faced the broiling summer sun and the front of the house tended towards chilly gloom. The rooms were arranged around a square patio which had once had an old wrought iron well in the centre.

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Michèle slowly started to modernise the house and turn it from a traditional and plain estancia building into a warm and inviting home. Her first action was to rearrange the use of the various rooms in the house so as to turn it effectively from back to front, and to install a false ceiling under the roof over the whole building creating loft space which helped to keep the sweltering summer heat from the rooms below.

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By the time I saw the house in the spring of 1994, it was gleaming with polished wooden or tiled floors and copper ornaments. With the help of a gifted local artist who specialised in painting on wood she turned the old bathroom used by the children into a cosy Beatrix Potter themed one. The house had never really finished settling since its construction, so the doors would not always cooperate when you tried to close them. I discovered this as I was contemplating Peter Rabbit and his friends one day, and found myself the centre of a crowd of small children looking at me curiously…

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Curtains in muted warm colours brightened the walls. The kitchen was remodelled to double its original size with a wood-burning stove to keep it warm in the winter and the welcome addition of a powerful ceiling fan to keep it cool and airy during the long hot summers. This had the additional advantage of helping to keep the flies out and encourage the family to congregate within. The old wooden ice chest which had functioned for many generations by being fed with large blocks of ice brought from the village wrapped in straw was finally given an honourable retirement and replaced with a large modern one.

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The patio was traversed by high beams which one day would hold pretty creepers and climbers...

...and the same treatment was given to the sunny side of the house, to afford some shade and provide an anchor for sun and heat-loving plants. When I visited them in 1994 Michèle had launched herself into clearing out unused rooms, where there were also mice amid the dust and cobwebs. I have tried without success to find the picture I took of her standing on a chair looking down at the floor in horror where a mouse had just scuttled past her.

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She found two large, rusting biscuit tins, of the type used by grocers in the 60s, with glass windows so that you could see the type of biscuit being stored within...

... densely packed with letters written by Honor over the decades she had lived at La Honoria. We started to read the unique and fascinating record of her life in the thirties, but we didn’t get very far before we were obliged by other events to put them away for another day. We still hadn’t been able to open the tins again before I left, and I promised I’d be back to continue to delve into Honor’s account of the pre-war era. I learned later that they also told of a long term, long distance love affair between the lonely widow and someone 300 km away who visited occasionally.

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The inside of a ramshackle shed which had remained untouched for several generations at last saw the light of day...

... and amid the thick network of cobwebs was evidence of a colonial past – British machinery and Royal baking powder...

Don Carew was still alive during that time, and I had several long and enjoyable chats with him under the tipa trees (Tipuana tipu) ...

(Google image)

...as we sought a cooler place to sit in the 100 degree heat of the spring siesta hour. We usually spoke about the British Royal Family, which he revered, and what life was like in the Britain of today. He kept the youthful portrait of the Queen by Pietro Annigoni in a prominent position in the house – 

I got the strong impression that had he visited ‘the old country’ he would have felt totally out of his depth – he had been too long in his rural idyll.

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Michèle has always felt a strong bond with the soil, and particularly enjoys the prospect of transforming a large and wild garden, the more unkempt the better – whether it is her own or anyone else who has given her a free rein in their garden. (I have found her to be a very useful gardener when she has visited me in Bristol...).

Entrance to the vegetable garden

At La Honoria she planted a large vegetable patch, on raised beds on top of straw to discourage leaf-cutter ants and snails, and encouraged climbers to conceal the wire fence around the property.

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Sometimes it was by the use of branches from local trees...

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The bane of the gardener’s life in the subtropical part of Argentina is the leaf-cutter ant, which with its cohorts can strip a plant completely overnight. The other chore is the endless watering required in spring and summer. From November to March tender plants must be watered at least twice a day if they are to survive, and hoses like giant snakes could always be seen in the vicinity. There were always elaborate arrangements to be made when Michèle was absent for more than a few hours for the thirsty plants to be watered. There would be fifteen or so hoses all going at once, despite it being an area of high rainfall. The searing heat of the sun was such that large cracks would appear in the baked soil in summertime, large enough to conceal a hose.

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On the opposite side of the house there was a patch of grass which in time grew into a very pretty flowering meadow. I was dismayed one morning to find it had been razed to ground level, but Michèle reminded me that the area was a good habitat for snakes, particularly the venomous yarará, or pit viper. She had small children at the time, and did not want to risk them getting bitten. I looked down nervously at my open-toed sandals and retreated nonchalantly back to the verandah trying not to give in to the temptation of walking bent double, the better to scrutinise the ground.

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I was told that on one occasion a bowl of fried potatoes was placed on the hearth in the sitting room as a treat for everyone to help themselves, and it wasn’t until one of the children screamed that it was discovered that a pit viper had managed to insert itself underneath and was enjoying the warmth. Another time the same species went unnoticed for a long while as he cuddled up to the bellows by the fireplace.

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A capybara was once spotted running away from the barking dogs and taking refuge in one of the bedrooms, where it established itself under a night table and had to be dragged out and returned to the wild out of the reach of the family pets.

(Google image)

Next time:  tragedy at La Honoria

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Photo Finish

- from Lonicera's non-digital archive

Province of Salta, Argentina

Province of Tucumán, Argentina

Ditto above

Antique Market, San Telmo, Buenos Aires

... with old Victrola for sale

Old but immaculate

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