Bella

One of the big wrenches about our Life Part 2 is that we won't be able to take Bella with us on our nomadic travels.

Bella came into our life in 2014 by accident of course. One of Indy's friend's cats had had a litter and he was taking one (Chessie) and there was one left, the youngest and smallest called Misery. Between him and our other son Alistair/Dee Dee, they somehow managed to wangle it so that Misery moved in. We were at Marine Villa at the time and about to go away for a decent amount of time so that Misery would be left solely with Dee Dee.

One of the first things Dee Dee did was rename her Bella to reflect the Italian greeting where a man meets a beautiful lady … "Ciao Bella". Bella was a beautiful little bundle that spent the bulk of her time under the bed in the spare room to start with gradually moving out into the wider house over time. Viv and I never saw much of this being away but by the time we had returned Bella was grown and two of our leather chairs would never be the same. Somehow the scratching posts that we bought were of far less interest to her than the chair and sofa!

For some reason Bella doesn't care to chow down on her food, preferring to graze. This worked when she was alone with us for we'd set her food out and whenever she felt like it, in she'd come and have a nibble or two. As I spotted last week, her sister Chessie isn't like this at all. When she sees food, she goes at it until it is all gone. And I do mean all. That includes Bella's so if Bella doesn't immediately tie on the nose bag, she's lost her chance and has to rely on Chessie's relative disinterest in dry food for sustenance.

Bella has tucked in first...

… but has walked off...

… leaving the field clear for Chessie to clean up...

… first Bella's food and then her own...

… to the victor, the spoils!

In the past, Bella and Chessie would squabble but familiarity has dampened that down to the point where they aren't exactly buddies hanging out together all the time, they sort of ignore one another so that one does one thing whilst the other does something else. The only real consistent time they come together is food time.

Bella follows Viv around to the point where its almost stalking. Viv had never been a cat person but Bella found a way to her heart.

Fortunately Bella is joining her sister with Indy and Cat and will have a lovely home. We will see her of course and hope that somehow she remembers and doesn't blame us.

Moving

It has been a long journey in Bermuda for the family. I arrived on the midnight flight from the UK (remember those?) on 19th September 1985, 7 weeks before Viv and our then 7-month old Indy arrived on 23rd November 1985, an afternoon arrival of all things.

Its odd what you remember from so long ago when you didn't really have a camera (and no digital smartphones to take thousands of the same photos) and it cost an arm and a leg to have the photo shop develop them. Memories for me at least are in small things that for some reason stand out. That afternoon when Viv arrived, it was the hostess that carried Indy down the stairs and put him into his stroller. Now why would I remember that when Viv does not? 

The point of what I am saying is that its been a long time and we have collected an awful lot of memories along the way but also an awful lot of stuff, much of which we haven't looked at for years and when we did in the past 3-4 months of getting ready for our 'Life Part 2 -- Nomadic Existence' which started 2 days ago, which we couldn't feel able to part with. In the end though much went to the dump but only after a lot of angst which over time gave way to resignation and then finally irritation or exasperation as we couldn't fit whatever into the suitcase or bag.

Trouble is that generations view things differently to their forebears. We discovered this along the way when we were having to deal with some of my Mum and Dad's treasures, lovingly collected antique china bought in England often from auction houses in the 1950's up to the 1970's. I remember them being bought so have a connection with them (albeit tenuous) but our children have none beyond a "That's Grandma's china tea cup? Nice."And really in the 20 or so years since we brought these things to Bermuda, we have done nothing with them other than put them out on a chest especially bought at great cost and shipped in to display them. In other words, they have been dust collectors. And if Viv and I haven't used them much, certainly the children won't at all. So what do you do with them?

I started out by contacting an antique expert/auctioneer who came over, spent less than 10 minutes and said "Very nice. Sadly I know nothing about English china or paintings but do know they are worthless in Bermuda." After my surprise I asked what was popular in Bermuda and she said "Bermuda cedar artifacts and furniture, some local artist paintings and rugs." This helped not at all as we had none of the first, only one of the second which we would be keeping and three of the last. The lady did suggest I contact a UK auction house and see what they could do which was what I did.

Four Royal something fine china tea cups… nice but no thanks!

I chose an auction house in Canterbury which I thought would be a good start as my mother in law, Anna, lives there. Also it is a decent size old city jam packed full of old stuff and outside of London. All positives. The house asked me to photograph the items in detail and send them over so they could assess whether it was worth crating them up for auction or not. I took hundreds and hundreds of photos of tiny cups, oil paintings, and wall plates from every angle trying to highlight what would be important which I took to be china markings, artist signatures and those scribbles that artists do on the back of their work before they are framed and whirled them off. The china was of Meissen, Dresden, royal this or that, Limoges, all decent names according to Google. Same answer. Nice but worthless. So I looked on EBay and in retrospect wonder why I didn't do that at the outset as that website has everything and I do mean everything on it for sale or auction. The self same Limoges wall plate that I had on the wall and thought lovely was offered at 5 pounds with shipping and handing another 10 pounds on top! Same for everything! All those visions I had of that TV programme Antique Roadshow disappeared in a flash. 

Same for the paintings which I thought really nice and had researched. There was a 100-year old oil painting from Old Leigh of one of my favorite pubs, The Crooked Billet, by a local Southend artist who Google told me had seen paintings sell at auction for 100 pounds plus. There were three water colors by an English artist called AEG Holt who Google again told me had seen paintings sell at auction for 700 pounds plus. There were others too that I had paid to be restored and reframed in Bermuda at hideous cost… same thing. Zip.

So what do you do with lovely things like that which are essentially valueless to the current generation? The answer is find an older person and sell it to them. Sadly I couldn't find any but at the same time I did find out what people did buy and boy, was that a surprise. Those things that you thought would be in great demand weren't, and those that you thought were pretty much undesirable in fact were. Totally counter intuitive but it has reinforced the notion for Viv and I that possessions of this kind are nothing but anchors holding you back and that you are much better off shedding as much of that kind of thing as you can. That is why we are only shipping 55 cases of stuff!  What are we doing!?!? How on earth did we still get 55 cases from what we had left?? There is one for goodness sake that says on the Bill Of Lading 'Wooden Ornaments'. What on earth are they? I didn't think we had any but maybe it was something that just couldn't be discarded from years ago that I've forgotten about.

Sadly these lovely Chinese cloisonné bells that we bought in Beijing ended up on the dump

Do what I say, not what I do. OK?

We did manage to meet a lot of people in the process as we had 6 house sales as well as posted up to 120 items individually on E-Moo and three different Facebook sites dedicated to selling stuff on the internet and in this we also ran into another issue that we hadn't expected… at some point we became too successful in selling stuff.

It didn't feel that way at all as I'd started posting stuff in July, around the time of Indy and Cat's wedding as I suspected that it would take longer to sell stuff than we expected. After a few weeks of what we felt was lack of success, we contacted a couple of people who run businesses that are dedicated to selling households in one lump. The first came around looked at our big, costly furniture that we'd shipped in a few years ago and probably mentally discounted them to 10% of original cost and then added up all the other stuff that we had. One comment stood out: "dining tables like that don't sell." Rubbish we thought it was lovely. Classic wood, solid as anything. Seats 8 in its current configuration but with the extra leaf extends to 12. Cost a fortune. She was right though, darn it. 

This first lady told us that her minimum target sales proceeds was $7,000 and that her commission rate was 20%. The second lady and gentleman team had a $10,000 target but same commission rate. The first didn't like the fact that our big items were that big and costly while the second didn't like the fact that we were all over E-Moo and Facebook doing it ourselves. The first stopped returning our calls whilst the second simply fired us.

We did meet an interesting cross section of people though. Most were really nice but the ones that you remember the most are those that for some reason or other just have to explain why they cannot buy that particular $2 item because it is too small/large, wrong color, wrong shape, etc.  We were simply looking to sell our stuff and if it didn't work, that was OK. We understood. But please don't tell us why you aren't buying any of our stuff!

The negotiators came in all types. The regular house sale goers were interesting. One lady told me she'd come from the US for the week and still liked going to house sales for bargains. Having told me all about how Gorhams charged $45+ for a trash bin (I didn't think it was that much), she couldn't see how odd it was when I refused to sell ours to her for $10 when I said we were asking $15. In the end I think we gave it away to someone who bought a lot of stuff and was really nice. 

The nicest lady award I think goes to Juliette who came along twice. The first time she spent over an hour poring over the various things on sale and had bought a vast cross section of stuff that I could barely help her get into her car. Plant pots, bedding, pillows, pots and plates… you name it, Juliette bought it. I obligingly helped her keep total as we went along and she told me she had to stop at $200 otherwise she'd have to go to the ATM just up the road at Lindos. When it was all over, I gave her a bunch more hangers than she'd originally wanted and I think the trash bin as I mentioned earlier. Viv asked whether there was anyone at home to help her unpack and move things indoors, she said she didn't dare tell her son who was at home. A few days later, Juliette came back for more! 

And that was pretty much how it was. Other memories included the lady who came to our house at 6 am to buy our dining table and chairs and took our coffee table too; the lady who bought all our garden furniture and then came back and took all our tools, coolers and citronella candles; the lady who bought our barbecue and struggled to load up whilst her daughter sat under a tree and played video games on her phone and complained about the time it was all taking; the guy who turned up for some coins I'd bought and was trying to sell only to find that I'd packed the darned things by mistake somewhere; and probably at the top of the lot the moving and packing guys who demonstrated how amazingly skillful they were at the job.

When they moved our huge table in, the original movers brought a crane and an army of men to move it. Leaving these two blokes simply ambled up and picked it up and loaded it into the van whose cab has actually been lowered onto the street for easy access. The view is of Cobbs Hill Road with Inverness the peachy pink cottage to the right.

I really don't ever want to do that again though! Nomadic life for us now!!

Paget

In the time we've lived in Bermuda, Viv and I always lived in Warwick. It wasn't planned in any way, that's just the way it happened.

Map of Bermuda showing the 9 parishes. Warwick is the green number 3. We started out bottom left and progressed to end up top right of the parish

I'd found our first house called Anchor Down, a typical Bermuda cottage next to Warwick Camp on South Shore Road overlooking the beaches purely by luck. I hadn't had any real plan, this place turned up and I was first to reply to the advert. It was pretty much on the border with Southampton Parish and for the next 32 years we moved progressively nearer to Hamilton… again not through any specific decision taken by us. 

The top picture shows the bottom left part of Warwick with the Camp on the left and beaches at the bottom. To the right of the collection of houses is a green field and single building. That is the old Military Hospital where soldiers would be moved if they caught diseases (which they did a lot) for the soothing sea breezes. To the left of that building is Anchor Down where it all began for us. The lower picture blows this up better.

Next was Paddock Drive for a decent spell in between Middle Road and Harbour Road, just off Burnt House Hill opposite St. Anthony's Catholic Church where we have been irregular frequenters over the years. After that a short stay in Ord Road, in the Forest Hills area for a couple of years before moving to Marine Villa right on Harbour Road on the border with Paget which was Cobbs Hill Road, a road that ran over the hills to South Shore at the other end. It was probably a Tribe Road back in the day.

Then finally two years ago we moved across the garden and parking area to Inverness right smack bang on Cobbs Hill Road -- Marine Villa was all of 50 yards away to we were still getting nearer even though this time it wasn't by much.

Cobbs Hill Road and Harbour Road junction. The Inverurie Hotel and Wharf Condos are the harbor side buildings with Inverness the first house up the hill on the right. It is peachy pink with green shutters. Marine Villa is the house just below Inverness right on Harbour Road.

Inverness was a lovely, old Bermuda cottage which had been reimagined over the many years since it had been in existence, mostly courtesy of our friend James who had lived there a couple of tenants before us. Hard to believe but the cottage had simply rested on top of the hill so it was infested with bugs of all sorts and was very damp, the damp that only a Bermuda stone cottage can have. James had done his best and really did work wonders so we were very happy there. So when we'd finished all our downsizing, selling, chucking, gifting and other means of getting rid of our stuff, we had a few days before we left on our adventures which coincided with our eldest son Indy and his new wife Cat being away on honeymoon. So we got to house sit and cat sit for a few days. 

The house is called Pennywise and is in Paget.

Bermuda's lovely beaches are bottom left of Warwick Parish where we started out. 32 years later we had moved in small jumps from bottom left to top right on Harbour Road. The boundary line with Paget to the right is Cobbs Hill Road where Inverness, our last home, was number 2. Mind you the condos on the other side of the road were also number 2 which caused much confusion when the time came to give directions.

Even before this but only by a couple of days, we'd been sleeping in Pennywise as we'd sold our bed but returned to Inverness to continue our moving work but this time it would be for real as we also took our cat, Bella, with us to join her sister, Chessie, and in fact rejoin her as family for once we moved on our travels, Bella would stay with Indy and Cat.

Viv liked Paget. She said that it was only a few minutes away not like before… where we were 10 minutes away. For my side, I didn't care for Paget that much. The weather wasn't as good for a start and the main feeder road, Middle Road, was nasty and quite busy where we were. 

Moreover, Warwick was named after the Earl of Warwick, not the king maker from even older times but an Earl who considered Bermuda to be a great investment when he and a bunch of others set up the Somers Isles (Bermuda) Company soon after the accidental discovery and colonization in 1609 by Admiral Sir George Somers. He turned out to be wrong. It wasn't that great an investment. The other new colony of the time, Virginia, was much more fertile... and bigger. Here's the Wikipedia link so you can read more of the history of Bermuda which I find fascinating. So much came down to chance in the old days. I don't really believe that an island of its size can really be otherwise. Even the island's motto "Quo Fata Ferunt" (wherever the winds blow us) reflect this.

Anyway when our taxi picked us up from Pennywise to take us to the airport, whilst I was sad about leaving Bermuda with all its familial history for us, leaving Paget was a snip. We'd only lived there for 4 days after all. Now Warwick Parish, that was something else.

Full aerial map of Warwick in the foreground with Paget beyond stretching out to the east end

Living in the Real World

This is something I wrote about a month or so ago but never got around to publishing. Not sure why. Sometimes I feel that the 'System' is stacked against normal people. Given the way that that is, it also makes me wonder who the 'System' actually works for.

***

Sometimes you have these days when you are exposed to some of the real realities of life, not those that you see on TV or that you have to 'endure' at work. Today was one of them for me. It really makes you realise how cosseted you are from the realities that are all around... and of course how lucky you are.

I was in the Bermuda Government office of Social Insurance waiting for some information and overheard a conversation between an elderly lady and a lady member of staff. This department is the one responsible for paying out the Government pension and for some people this amount is substantially the largest part of their income so is really important. The elderly lady told her story which went like this.

She lives in a home for seniors in the west end of the island and has become aware of another lady who lives in the same facility who routinely intercepts the postman delivering the pension cheques and demanding most aggressively the cheque of this elderly lady (and who knows who else's). The elderly lady said that this other lady 'hates' her and has gone to the extent of acquiring a copy of the elderly lady's birth certificate to 'evidence' that she is the intended recipient of the pension cheque. This lady was understandably upset by this but in the lovely way that so many people her in Bermuda have put it in such a way as that she felt that she was imposing on the government employee's time but really needed the help.

The government employee was as helpful as she could be but there are times when 'the system' gets in the way and this was one of them. She said that the postman could not have given the cheque to the wrong person as that is against the rules (what if that postman did not adhere to the rules?) and said that she would talk to the facility manager to see what could be done to make sure it didn't happen again and could this elderly lady come in again next week to talk it through again.

The elderly lady said of course but could they make sure that it was all resolved by the next payment date which was the 15th? Of course not, said the government employee, all the presets have been set up with 'the system' for the payment to be automatically generated. It was far too late for any change to take place this close (we are the 10th) to payment date.

So this poor lady will remain in limbo as to whether this carnivorous other lady takes her pension money for another month or not.

To me this should be a criminal matter but then again the second instance makes me wonder about that too for a day earlier I just happened to be in the central police station in Hamilton waiting again for another reason. Another lady with two young children, her grandchildren, were also waiting. She was getting progressively more agitated and went over to the counter on a number of occasions to see if she could be attended to. Apparently not as there wasn't anybody there who could see her and then the conversation began that make me take note:

"I have to get to work by 3.30 today so can't wait any longer. Are you sure there's nobody I can talk to?"

"That person isn't here at the moment, sorry. Could you come in another time?"

"What other time?"

"Well we are open 24-7 so you can come by any time."

"Will that person be here then?"

"Well he may be off shift of course."

"So is there anyone else I can talk to then?"

"No, he's the one in charge of the investigation."

"But all I want to do is give my witness statement."

"Well there's nobody here to give it to."

"Can't you do it?"

"No, we're station duty personnel. We don't get involved in investigations. There's only one man assigned to this."

"So will he be here at some other time tomorrow?"

"Oh yes, tomorrow for sure."

"What time tomorrow?"

"When he's here."

"What time would that be."

"Tomorrow when he's on shift."

"When is that?"

"I can't tell you that, Ma'am. That's police business."

The lady left and so far as I can tell, the investigation continues without any witness statement.

Comes back to one of those lines in tunes that you can't get out of your head: "Has the world gone mad or is it me?"

Help!