It wasn’t the worst early morning start I’ve
ever had, we were warm and dry and were not getting shot at, so pretty good all
round. I suppose I just felt a little disorientated. We completely emptied the cars, as, thanks to
the day light, we could now see what we were doing. Tony was dispatched to find some hot tea and coffee
for us. If he managed to find some bacon
rolls I assured him that he would go up in my estimation for ever. I gave the
house and outbuildings the once over to familiarise myself with my surroundings. I liked what I saw. A solid, three bedroomed, farm house, with seven
acres of land, almost in a perfect square around the house and outbuildings,
with an infinite amount of uses.
Tony excelled himself and brought back tea, coffee,
hot chocolate, bacon rolls and sausage rolls, and all hot too. There’s nothing like a huge dose of comfort
food to cheer you up. Tony then took
Tim and his friend off to the airport, so that they could fly back to
England. Mary and the cat and myself
waited at the house for the removal men to arrive, which they did, as expected,
thirty five minutes after the boat docked.
This was long before the days of mobile telephones so Tony had been instructed
to use the public telephones at the airport to try and arrange for the electricity
to be switched on. He made it back to
the farmhouse as the removal men had almost finished unpacking their van. I had been joking around with the three removal
guys and getting stuck in shifting boxes.
The removal men had met the three of us in
Shotley, and now seeing us all again on the Isle of Man wondered out loud at
the relationship between the three of us.
They thought that I was the man of the house, Mary my wife and Tony;
well they didn’t know what to make of Tony.
It was as Tony was giving them each a little gratuity for their hard
work that they asked about me. Tony
explained that I was a writer friend who stayed with them. None of us then expected to see three grown
men each holding out a piece of paper asking for my autograph, which, to my embarrassment,
they reluctantly got, they also got Tony’s signature for the job they had
completed. The electricity, we were informed,
would not be switched on until the following day so we forced ourselves to find
the nearest pub and settled in for some nosh and beer. I knew that I had been to the Isle of Man
many times as a youngster but had no real memory of the place. I liked what I saw, lots of green open space
and huge mature trees.
It took a day or two before we were able to
function as a proper household and settle in to a routine. I was getting up at seven o clock in the morning,
coming downstairs and, sitting at the dining room table, would write my daily
quota of words. I would normally have
produced my seven hundred and fifty words when I would hear Mary and Tony stir
upstairs. They knew I was working so
Mary would come down and prepare a cooked breakfast, while I would edit my
work. With breakfast ready I would put
my work away and we would all tuck in to a hearty meal, after which I would
step outside and find something to do. I
don’t think the house had been unoccupied for too long but certain areas like
the fruit garden were overgrown and needed some hacking and light deforestation
to clear it up.
There were stone walls to patch up, the sewage
system needed an overhaul, the roof on the barn needed attention, there was an
awful lot of rubbish and old timber lying about, there were trees to be cut
back, so there was a range of jobs that
needed seeing to. Nothing life
threatening, but enough to keep me outside and busy. I loved it.
The kitchen sink was blocked so I remember setting about finding where
the soak away was. It was closer to the house
than we anticipated, so we cleared the cover and opened it, to find it well and
truly clogged. Using a bucket and a length
of rope I began to empty it and began to wonder along with Tony if we should build
a new one, as the existing one didn’t look that healthy. Tony decided that we should build a new one
and went off to order the equipment we would need. Mary went along so that she could collect
some provisions.
I’ll never forget that by the time they returned
I had emptied the soak away. I don’t
know why, but the sludge that I had been clearing out was pink. It was quite clear that the pipe from the
house was well and truly bunged up so I was wondering how I should go about unclogging
it, when they pulled into the farm yard.
I’m not sure if the vibration of the car, plus the fact that I had
emptied the soak away, contributed to what happened next, but it may have. The blockage in the pipe decided to clear itself
and it came out like a huge tube of toothpaste being squeezed. I remember staring at it in amazement until
the most horrendous smell I had ever encountered attacked my olfactory senses,
like a butcher with a boning knife.
As Mary and Tony smiled and waved at me from
the car I could do nothing else but learn forward and violently vomit into the
soak away. Mary of course now wants to
call an ambulance, while Tony and I are assuring her that nothing is wrong,
and; the sink was unblocked, despite my involuntary contribution. At least we had another two enjoyable days
out in the open, digging a six foot pit, that we lined with bricks, joined an
extension pipe to the old one and stood and admired our new soak away, that we
both, expertly, agreed would last for one hundred years, at least. The nice thing, or should I say one of the
nice things, about being with Tony was that money was no problem. If we needed axes, or shovels, or even wellington
boots he would drive off to the store and buy them. I know, spoiled or what, it was a step or two
away from the world of bodge tape and parachute cord but, just as enjoyable.
In one of the outhouses I found an old ornate, wooden,
rostrum, the sort you would see in a church, for resting the bible on. We hadn’t a clue where it had come from but I
was determined to place it so that I could read my work out loud to the cows in
the field next door. Now stop it, I
never did, but I have to admit I was tempted. I’m sure they would have been mooved.
Sorry about that, I couldn’t
resist. I did notice that there seemed to
be quite a large population of rats on the farm so would often have Tony’s air
rifle with me when outside. Any movement
that caught my eye would normally result in a dead rat, or at least a rat with
a very bad limp. It was one morning when
I was on the garage roof, as you do, I noticed Mary come out and scatter the breakfast
remnants all over the garden. I asked
her if she was aware that they had an abundance of rats, to which she replied that
yes, she knew she had rats, why do you think she was feeding them?
And rats were one of the things that niggled me
about the Isle of Man. We had tried one
or two local pubs, looking for one where we felt comfortable, and of course meeting
the locals. I didn’t like the way that
the locals would always remind Tony and Mary that they were not locals; they
were ‘Blowovers.’ Perhaps after ten or
so years they may be considered to be almost local, it was as if you had to
have been born on the island to be considered local. For a small island people, who insisted that they
were friendly in the extreme, I found this very unfriendly to say the least. It was unacceptable to me that new arrivals
should be constantly reminded that they were ‘outsiders.’ Another practise they had, which I found unacceptable,
was that homosexuality was illegal on the Isle of Man, in fact they considered
it to be a criminal act. I found the
idea that to love another person would label you as a criminal, laughable, as
did most of the educated and progressive world.
But the one that got me was their attitude to rats. In the old days, and I mean when the world really
still was in black and white, and the main industry on the Isle of Man was the
fishing industry, sailors, as they still are in many places, were very superstitious. Certain words, or behaviours, whilst on board
ship were forbidden. Words, for example,
like rabbit, or whistling, were considered taboo as was the word ‘rat.’ Of course a rat on a ship is a very real problem
so rather than go through a version of charades every time you wanted to report
a rat infestation to the captain, they, the sailors, came up with another name
for the rat which was the ‘Long-tailed fellow.’
Local land based people now refused to say the word ‘rat’ and insisted that
the term ‘Long tail,’ was used, which annoyed me for this was not a real superstition,
more an affectation and there wasn’t a bloody sailing ship to be seen never
mind a sailor. Should anyone mention the
word ‘rat,’ the locals would all spit on the floor, and some would stamp their
feet, to negate the bad luck the speaker would have visited on them.
Needless to say these little niggles began to
eat away at me, so that after a good mornings writing, and a decent days work
on the farm, we would wash and scrub ourselves into a presentable state, then fire
ourselves off to a local pub, The Sulby Glen Hotel, for a bit of a feed and
half a dozen well-earned beers. There was
always a handful of locals dotted around the bar and all would welcome you and
engage into conversation, although there was always that air of, ‘We are locals
and you are not,’ about the place. It didn’t
worry Tony and Mary, but it sure as Hell annoyed the crap out of me. We came in one evening and as all there
welcomed us, one local asked, “And what have you been up to today?” “Well,” I said, exhaling heavily and putting
on my best effeminate impression, with my right hand on my right hip and my
left hand up to my left ear I said. “Do
you know how many fingernails I broke this morning when I was out in the garden
shooting rats?” As all there began
spitting and stamping I knew I had made my point and after ordering a round of
drinks, from the bemused barman, I suggested that he might need a mop and a bucket
as the convulsing locals seemed to be making a bit of a mess on his floor.
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