Working Holiday 1985 Part 3
By day five in Mallorca, we’d settled into a loose work routine with slight variations. After an early breakfast, we’d drive or walk the lanes to Cana Cavea. Occasionally we’d stop and attempt a conversation, in broken Spanish, with Michaela when we got to her house or with any other unfortunate we came across on our way. We would work on the house until early afternoon, and when it became too hot, we’d go swimming. In those days Mallorcan tourism hadn’t reached its peak. In 1986 Palma airport handled seven million passengers a year, by 2019 it had reached almost thirty million. In 1985, most tourists came on inexpensive package holidays, car hire was not so common, and the more remote beaches, such as Mondrago, were not so crowded. We must have looked strange to the Ambre Solaired birds of passage in their new swimwear and shades, lazing on sunbeds as we wandered onto the beach in our work cloths to wash off the morning’s dust. We didn’t know then how fast things would change, but why would we, we had our own little Shangri-La hidden away in pastoral Mallorca. After a swim, we’d return to Cana Cavea to work until sunset, then go to Can Floquet for an evening meal, generally a barbecue. Before going to bed, between midnight and two in the morning, we’d climb to the roof terrace and lay on reclining beds in the warm night air.
Under a jet-black sky scattered with thousands of pinpricks of light, we’d stargaze. Awesome is an overused word. However, look with binoculars into the thin band of misty cloud stretched across the night sky, and see just some of the 400 billion stars that it’s made of, and awesome is the only way to describe our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Add the unexpected streak of a shooting star from the mid-August Perseid meteor storms. A satellite wandering its lonely orbit. The occasional scent from a Cestrum nocturnum, night-blooming jessamine after it’s released its heady perfume into the night, and the soft jangling of distant sheep bells from the darkness, then you can understand part of our seduction by Mallorca.
With the builders off-site for the summer shutdown, we got on with jobs inside the house. The most pressing was to remove the roof that was sagging on rotting beams. This was important, the roof was too low at the front, and the walls had to be made higher all round so we could stand upright at the top of the stairs. We also had to treat the new pina del Norte (northern pine) beams against wood-eating larva so that on their return the builders could get the new roof on before the autumn rains. However, before we started this job, I had to get my cheque book from the bank. Banco Banesto in Carrer la Costa was just down from the police station, which at that time was next to the Ajuntamenr de Felanitx (Town Hall). Once I had the cheques, I paid Rafael the 290,000 Pesetas we owed him.
I phoned the car hire, who told me the Fiesta’s roof rack had been delivered to the bar in Es Carritxo. Once fitted, Ronnie and Carolyn could have a comfortable ride back to the airport when we left for home, instead of being crammed in with the luggage.
John asked Ronnie and me to help him fell a diseased pine on some land called ‘Hillside One’. We went to the site leaving the ladies to follow on later with a picnic lunch.
On the land, between Es Carritxo and Cala d’Or, I volunteered to climb the tree and attach a rope so we could bring it down where we wanted it to fall. While coming down the tree, there was an unfortunate incident. At over six feet above the ground, Ronnie was supporting my foot, John, being the taller, was suppose to support my bottom. Things went wrong during the descent, and John missed my butt and grabbed my crouch. Fortunately, he let go of my testicles before I jumped clear of the tree. We cut a V in the base of the pine, then by timing our pull and release on the rope, we got the tree to swing back and forth at its natural resonant frequency. The motion became so violent that suddenly, with a loud CRACK, the tree broke at its base. We scattered as the great pine, in a cloud of dust, and a shower of needles and debris, came crashing to the ground. After trimming the branches with axe and chain saw, we cut the tree into logs. While this was going on the ladies arrived. They set out a picnic of bread, jamón serrano, salami, cheese, olives, enormous sliced beefsteak tomatoes and chilled bottles of Rosa Blanca beer and white wine. There we sat, high on a hill under a deep blue sky with a sparkling, torques Mediterranean in the distance, and not a tourist in sight. Another subtle moment in our seduction by Mallorca. After loading the cars with logs and taking them back to Can Floquet, we drove to Cala Mondrago for a swim.
The following day we were back to work at Cana Cavea. Sandy and Carolyn worked outside treating the new beams with xylamon fondo a clear wood preservative. Ronnie and I began removing the roof that consisted of a single layer of tejas (arched and tapered terracotta roof tiles) supported on battens on the old roof beams. With the top floor now covered with a reinforced concrete slab, we could work without fear of falling through the ceiling into the rooms below. It was a problem getting the tejas down, we had to slide them vertically through the gaps between the battens and put them on the floor without breaking them. We became covered with the pigeon droppings that had accumulated in the lower supporting tiles over the years. The gloom of the upstairs was soon pierced by shafts of sunlight cutting through swirling dust. As we moved towards the house’s higher centre wall, we had to use a tall step ladder with Ronnie at the top passing the tiles down to me on the lower rungs. At this point, Sandy and Carolyn came up to help. Taking the tiles from me, they stacked them against the walls. Now, all four of us were covered in dried bird shit. Once we’d removed the tiles, the girls went back to treating the beams outside. Ronnie and I knocked off the battens and took out the nails to avoid accidents with spikes going through the soles of shoes. After that, we began removing the old beams, this created more dust and droppings from the top of the walls. The beams were riddled with woodworm, and we let them stay where they fell, they probably wouldn’t have lasted another year. Some snapped in half as we struggled to pull them out from the walls. By the time we’d finished the place was a disaster area, Against the walls, we had neatly stacked rows of ancient roof tiles, but the rest of the area was covered in with bits of tiles that didn’t make it and randomly scattered beams. It was as if the beams had been dropped for a giant game of ‘pick-up-sticks’. Never-the-less we’d done it, the roof was gone, and we stood on a battlefield open to the sky.
Now that the roof was off, we could climb over the top of the one metre thick stone wall and get to the roof of the hayloft next-door to the house. This was a more straightforward job because we could remove the tiles from above without the pigeon droppings falling over our hair and faces. The problem was, once we’d removed the first metre or so of the rows of tejas, the only way to get the rest off was to sit on the exposed beams and shuffle over to them. Ronnie decided to take on this part of the work. Having seen the state of the beams we’d just removed, I didn’t think this was such a good idea. I had a vision of a beam snapping, Ronnie falling through the roof and crashing through the floor of the hayloft into the donkey stable below. However, Ronnie thought the beams were in better condition than those of the house roof so out he slid and began passing the tejas over to me. Within an hour, to my relief that Ronnie was still with us, we’d removed the roof of the hayloft.
So ended the first week of our working holiday in Mallorca. We’d finished one of our primary tasks and were ready to move onto the next. After a swim in the warm Mediterranean!