Dolphin Address 20
December 12th 2007
One could assert my kitchen hole has been land-wrecked. It’s like this. In the last three editions I told I was looking for gigawaves. That was not much of a success, but last Saturnight these aforementioned waves have found me. Again there was a wind to lean into and because it was springtide as well I had the good sense of parking the bus behind the shop, about 30 metres higher.
Because the ‘funny lane’ was mud-slippery on Sunday morning, I walked with my thermos flask down to the meadow in order to boil water for coffee. As I was immersed in thought while descending the lane I did not see the havoc until I reached the bottom. Everywhere fist- to football-sized rocks lay strewn like ginger nuts. Who can outline my surprise, I’d better do it myself, when I surveyed my kitchen. Two of the three sheets of plywood were seriously snapped and hung across the remnants of the stone wall like gunned-down gangsters. My gas bottle was embedded in fallen rocks and my cooker looked like a total loss. Despair washed over me and humour seemed like a raft out of reach. The rest of the Sunday I got to peace with my emotions, but on Monday I felt my power increasing and, with a washed-up fish box on a rope, I sledged about fifteen half-loads off the meadow. I imagined being like those people of old who towed a ship through the Dutch canals.
Albeit as a bearded, but saving angel Willem appeared on the battlefield. After a brainwave, he knew where to find a washed-up telephone pole. With might and main the two of us hauled it to the bus and drove back to the disaster area, with the pole half hanging out. Then it got dark, and right in time. I had not been this tired for weeks and Willem slept like a log on his sofa.
Today was a new day and this one too was well spent. First I heightened the walls. Next, I laid down the pole, which happened to have exactly the right measure, lengthwise. Next I bent back the worst-damaged sheet and reinforced it with a screwed-on plank. When I had positioned two sheets overlapping, Willem came to help with the last one and the fine-tuning. Here and there are a few generous draft holes, but I’ll stone them down to size as well.
My kitchen hole now is a head higher, which offers more places to sit. All in all, it’s been quite an exertion, but it certainly paid off. Even the oldest Fanorians cannot remember the water ever coming this high. Not only do I feel a natural attraction to water, but now my feelings are also reciprocated.
Jan Ploeg, meadow dry, December 12th 2007
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