THE BREADBIN

THE BREADBIN

Fortunately there was the most beautiful full moon when I picked my guys (Petrus, Luke, Bernard and Hartso), up in Masiphumele at 4.40AM on the morning of Wednesday the 2nd May, 2018. We drove straight back to the house at 19 Grand Bahama where we had packed the 3 meter long trailer with my entire collection of power and other tools ………… plus a couple of hundred liters of paint and 24 meters of shade cloth that I had acquired in Cape Town in readinesss for this project. The Trailer was parked in the garage but still needed topping up with some of the luggage and bedding that I had told the team to bring along …………. and top it up we did.

When we pulled out  at a few minutes past five AM after giving Pat a final hug and kiss I did so with very mixed feelings - she had been up and about since the alarm went off and was standing by with a great cup of coffee and some double thick yoghurt mixed with Bathurst’s finest Granadilla Curd that we had bought at the Sunday Market during our previous trip ………I was missing her already and we hadn’t even driven off yet. 

And so we took off ........ and not without quite a bit of trepidation. The Breadbin was really feeling the weight, and with 1000kms ahead of us I had serious doubts about her making it all the way. The first thing I became aware of as we jumped onto the N2 freeway off Baden-Powell was that the moment I went just one click over 75kms per hour the trailer began to sway, and like a bulky, life-threatening pendulum increased its momentum from side to side to a point where I knew full well that if I did not brake and slow down it would flip the Breadbin with no effort whatsoever. Question: were the tyres hard enough? I had pumped them to 450 in Fish Hoek on the way out, and feared that if I went any higher they would simply explode and blow me right off my feet. We would have to live with it and stick to 75kms per hour. This was an extremely trying exercise as the Breadbin really wanted to go a good deal faster every chance it got, and I had to be mindful of the limit to the point of distraction every minute of the sixteen hours we were on the road, as once the wobble started it was extremely difficult to get back under control - the trailer quite often exhibiting symptoms resembling a destructive form of Artificial Intelligence as it pulled both itself and the Breadbin out towerds the centre of the road in the path of both passing - and oncoming - Pantechnicons. Whatever you may think, there are far better ways to check out of from the restrictions of this mortal coil I am sure.

Sixteen hours! As each one approached Bathurst became less and less appealing, but soldier on we did…………..finally pulling in to a totally sodden garden that had received the full brunt of the electric storm that we had been witnessing in the distance for three or so hours. It was a little after 9.15pm. We found the keys where Jacqui had promised she would leave them - tightly wrapped in in a plastic shopping bag - and were wholly relieved to see that all the lights worked as we wandered about the joist deficient floors ………. bouncing it seemed, from room to room, with a sense of ever increasing surprise that we weren’t in fact falling through into the black and frightening void below.

Without wasting any time we all dug in and unloaded the trailer in record time, spreading the load about all the rooms so as to avoid overloading any one spot and causing a collapse. Once finished we carefully swept out the studio room and brushed down the walls before shaking out and folding the tarpaulins that we had used to cover the load on the trip. These formed the base - over the two sheets of 16mm commercial ply that we had brought with us - of the mens' bed for the night.

Once they were settled I took my leave and and at close to eleven PM arrived at the cottage on Glenn and Ann McCreath’s Nguni farm below the Toposcope which they had kindly agreed to rent to us for the two months prior to the Grahamstown Festival. Once again ……..  thank goodness for the Full Moon. Despite the rain and overcast conditions it provided huge assistance as I carted all my luggage and bedding into the warm and homely heart of this 1873 stone cottage. If you are ever looking for a really warm and comfortable Self-Catering spot to spend a real farm experience with views across the fields and down to the sea…..then this is it. And I assure you that you will not find nicer hosts anywhere on the planet.

Needless to say, I didn’t want to get up on Thursday morning, but a million things called. It was a day of absolute and utter chaos …………. and in Bob Dylan’s immortal words, “A Hard Rain’s a gonna fall”………. I assure you it did - in huge buckets-full. I did the Co-op, and had the most obliging help from Esme, Dominque and Steve ……… quickly finding the urgent bits and pieces that we needed to get started while Petrus and I headed off to the Spar in Port Alfred to do all of their necessary shopping after dropping off the trailer …………. a really convenient “one-way” hire.

Then we went in search of beds! Port Alfred has plenty of 2nd hand shops, which, when it comes to beds, seem to think that as sale items they constitute retirement funding. Finally we ended up at the Bathurst  2nd Hand Shop on the way out of town, and there, with the assistance of the owner (Mr. Elliott), were finally met with a sense of reasonableness and a will to negotiate realistic prices agreeable to both parties. The deal was done - the mattresses loaded - and back to 6 York Road we went.

I had left the driveway gate open upon leaving, and returned home to find four wandering cows and a young bullock happily esconced in the garden ……… chewing their cuds and curious in the extreme as to why I might want them to leave - but leave they did after a little gentle persuasion, whereupon I closed the gate and they wandered on down towards the Pig ’n Whistle.

Luke, Bernard and Hartso had worked miracles. All of the tools had been sorted and packed into the cupboard in the one bedroom, and the entire house had been washed down …….. walls, floors and ceilings, with a mild to medium mix of bleach ………..it looked clean and it smelt clean - smile, smile, smile! I have always been a firm believer that a clean site engineers quality work, and for the most part this has proved to be true ………. being my own house this will of course be an even more essential ingredient.

We then hoisted the long  ladder up through the trap door into the ceiling ……….. what a revelation! On a few previous occasions working in old houses I had noted that whilst the roof structures seemed to defy every structural principle in their sparsity of timber, the timber that was there was always beautifully preserved. This was no different here, and while I resolved that one of the first acts would be to triangulate the existing trusses to a degree that I would be comfortable with from a structural point of view ……. and to double up on the joists which carried the Oregon ceilings ………. there was no reason why I could not demolish the wall between the lounge and the kitchen as it served no structural purpose whatsoever, and would provide the perfect fill for the underfloor cavity that would become the Dining/Kitchem floor, with very little extra fill having to be imported.

I came away feeling good. Friday would provide new insights as regards floor supports and what methods of jacking the beams up are going to be required …………. but Day 1 proved to be good………………..finished off very nicely back at the cottage with a couple of glasses of ‘not too bad’ Shiraz in the company of Glenn and Ann, plus Harvey, Lola and Bella (the two full - and one partially bred Border Collies), and the two pugs whose names I have yet to learn ....... after which I cooked up a couple of pieces of chicken before sitting down to prepare this script, load the pics - and fall into bed.

The Guys with the Breadbin and the trailer while filling up at Sedgefield

Well washed cupboards stacked with tools and rarin' to go

Sorted extras waiting to be used

Typical floor that needs "jacking up" and new joists

Visitors in the garden

Visitors leaving