CHRONICLES??????

The way this Blog is headed I suspect that it may at some stage become necessary to change its name from Spirit of Place to something like “The Bathurst Chronicles”, but I suspect that it is still a little early for that…………….it may well serve to infuriate rather than engender, and the last thing I want to do is infuriate anyone in this quite magical little village.

On Sunday morning I arrived at the Farmers’ Market just as it was beginning to pour with rain - enough time though to grab a bottle of honey from Rory and Carol and a couple of pancakes for breakfast from Sandy before nipping into her studio to get out of the rain and a chance to find out a little more about the absolutely awful happenings of the night before from Brian - less than a hundred metres from their house. There was a break-in apparently at around 3am ………. things happened and the owner of the house was stabbed in the chest sustaining a punctured lung, while his wife was fatally hit on the head with a rock. I shan’t mention names at this stage, but they were well known in the village, and Pat had been introduced to her just the evening before at the Ploughman’s Pub where she handled the Friday Night draw.  Shocking in the extreme ………….. wasteful and tragic in every sense, we can only hope that the perpetrators are apprehended quickly and receive their just deserts.

On the house front we have been tackling a whole host of bits and pieces  - working around the chaos that is furniture and boxes piled virtually to the ceilings in every room as best we can and getting as close to ready for the installation of the doors and windows …….. promised for Tuesday. Can this be true - let’s sincerely hope so, as the two week delivery date has already expanded to four weeks and is holding up progress in more ways than I want to mention here……………everything else though is pretty much on track, including the tidying up of the garden…………. with just one small and unfortunate hitch: On Wednesday last week Pat began feeling pretty grotty. Initially we thought is might be a hangover from the flu jab that she had just before leaving Cape Town ………… but then it began presenting in ways that she had experienced before, and by this morning she was convinced that it was Tick Bite Fever. We made the necessary enquiries regarding a doctor via the ever helpful Rosemary and Charmaigne (the sisters nee Rainier, and friends it seems almost forever), and by midday Pat was with the doctor. Yup! The dreaded Tick Bite Fever. Thinking we would go for a little bite, and joined by Rosemary, Pat began feeling increasingly awful, to the point where we decided to forego a bite of any description and get her home ASAP, only to have her get violently ill just as we entered Bathurst. Here’s hoping that the prescription works at lightning speed - it really isn’t any fun seeing her in this condition.

Jesse continues to think that she has been born again and landed in Doggie-heaven. Aside from the fact that she has all day to run around the garden at the new house, each morning and evening immediately after her meal I take her out onto the farm and let her off the lead. Head high she surveys the never-ending landscape and takes off at full tilt in one or other direction, running until she realises that somewhere back there I have been left behind - only to come charging back ……. before heading off again towards another horizon. She has been introduced to the cattle and the donkeys - still needs to understand though that they are much bigger than her and have a predilection to kick small, cheeky animals …………. particularly the donkeys, who don’t much appreciate her trying to take the carrots that I feed them out of their mouths. The Bathurst chickens …….. the ones that roam the streets …….. she has yet to realise are not for chasing. She hasn’t managed to catch one yet, but that too, I am afraid, may just be a matter of time.

No longer having DSTV, keeping up with sports is becoming increasingly more difficult, carrying with it the risk of being identified as a barfly ………. the pubs being the purveyors of the necessary screenings that one needs to keep track of to stay up to speed. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the Bok’s loss to Wales in Washington was too late to warrant a screening anywhere in Bathurst, and the cold and wet Sunday afternoon made staying in preferable to going out in search of a Bok/Fiji 7’s final …………… another one which we sadly lost. I did however manage to sneak into the Pig ’n Whistle pub for the last three laps of the Moto GP and watch the “Old Man” - the “Doctor” -  grab another magnificent podium. Isn’t he quite amazing? For the French Open I am going to have to rely on News 24, but feel entirely sure that one way or another I will catch all of the England tests - happily running the risk of being anointed ‘Barfly’ …………… Go Rassie!