Working Holiday 1985 Part 4
Mornings of the last week of our holiday started the same. I rose first, and in this quiet time, I sat on Can Floquet’s terrace to record the previous day’s events in my journal. Typically, a fan of golden rays from behind San Salvador preceded the rising sun. Cockerels crowed, and a distant tractor came to life announcing the start of some farmer’s new day.
It’s incredible the amount of work and other things we did in those last seven days. Too much to present chronologically here.
-In the future, we planned to make a doorway in the back of the donkey stable and turn it into a kitchen. Building a bedroom, sitting room and bathroom beyond this doorway, and converting the hayloft into another bedroom, would add an apartment to provide a small income from paying guests.
However, we had to remove the stable’s ceiling as it was far too low. First, a thick layer of years of pigeon droppings had to be cleared from the hayloft floor. With the ceiling gone, we cemented in the beam holes to stabilise the walls. This project could then wait until we could afford it.
– When the current extension was completed, Cana Cavea’s old kitchen, which was about two by three and a half metres, would be redundant. This kitchen had a full-width fireplace at one end that you could walk into and look straight up the chimney. Being the single source of heat in the house, the room doubled as a snug in the winter. The chimney’s top was fitted with a fine wire mesh to stop pigeons and other undesirables invading the house. Set into the right corner of the fireplace was a large conical terracotta pot for heating water. Next to this was a hole in the wall that acted as a small oven. Along with a tripod for an iron pot, this represented the house’s cooking facilities. The wall at the other end of the kitchen was recessed with an arch. The arch’s right side was taken by a lattice door pantry, the left side held two shelves. There was a short built-in stone bench next to the arch, above which was a stone shelf that ran the wall’s length back to the fireplace. After chipping off years of layers of this antibacterial calcium whitewash, washing them down, and repainting them with clear wood preservative the kitchen’s ceiling beams came up beautifully.
– Miguel, the old man whose fuse I’d repaired because he’d lost his specs, offered to let us connect to his electric supply that came from a small meter-house on the other side of the lane from us. Miguel lived in Felanitx and only came to his house to feed his animals and tend his garden. His house had one light bulb and a small refrigerator. We’d pay his bill until we got a contract with GESA the electric company, which could take some time. It was a good deal and meant I could wire up sections of the house and make it more habitable. One Sunday, while the others were at the market, John and I ran a cable from the GESA meter-house to the Telefonica phone company’s pole on the other side of the lane. From there, we hung it in our eucalyptus tree and on to a spike in Cana Cavea’s front wall, then through the small kitchen window to a box in the living-room. All secured, I connected the cable to Miguel’s meter. The next day, modernity, we had light from temporary bulbs and switches hanging from cables around the house.
– The last few days of our holiday were devoted to clearing up our building site. The place was scattered with root stumps and the dead trees we’d cut down, plus a bonfire of branches that had to be moved to the top field. We needed to scrape out a depression to be filled with building rubble that would then be covered by the displaced topsoil for a landscaped garden. The great pile of rock from the poso-negro hole was to be moved to a corner of the land and mixed with the prickly-pear roots from our new car park to create a cactus rockery. The other thickets of prickly-pear scattered around the ground would also be moved onto the rockery. This time it would be done with the tractor. To achieve all this, I drew up a movement plan. In full management mode, I made Jaime, the tractor driver, religiously follow the plan. Within a day, for 51,150Pesetas (₤250) we’d transformed the site and were able to mark out the position for the back terrace. We also had a good idea of where to put the swimming pool once we could afford one.
– We had about eight almond trees on our land, all a bit passed their use-by date. Non-the-less, in our spare time we knocked down the crop with a long pole, collected them up and took them to Can Floquet to dehusk and crack open with hammers in the evenings on the terrace. Despite the ones we ate while cracking them open and the ones we gave to John and Daphne, we were still left with a large bag to take back to the UK.
-On the evening of 19 August, while returning to Can Floquet, we couldn’t pass through Michaela back yard because John’s car was parked there. We walked around the side of the house and found John, Daphne, Michaela and three nuns in a field roasting large red peppers in the ashes of a wood fire. One of the nuns was Michaela’s daughter, another was the Mother Superior. We stayed to help them remove the skins from the peppers. Impromptu pepper skinning with three nuns in a field at sunset is a more spiritual experience than any of the hotel entertainment we’d had during previous package holidays on the island. And we were given peppers for our work. At Can Floquet we had a delicious, simple, rustic meal of peppers and bread drizzled with olive oil. After our meal, out of the dark, appeared Michaela with a tub of almond ice cream that she presented to me. When I asked her ‘por que’, she said it was a present as the following day was ‘San Bernardo’, my saint’s day. Two days later, Sandy and I bought two straw sun hats in Felanitx and gave them to Michaela and Antonio. We’d noticed the ones they had were getting a bit frayed. When Michaela asked ‘por que’, we said it was because she had been so very kind to us, which was the truth.
– And so that magical time came to an end. At a quarter to one on the morning of 23 August, Ronnie and I strapped our cases to the Fiesta’s roof rack and put our bags into the boot. Having left bedding, crockery, cutlery, working shoes, and clothes in Cana Cave, I thought we’d be travelling home light. However, it seemed to me we were returning with more than we came with. At a little after one, we bade an emotional farewell to John and Daphne, who said our stay had been a real joy for them. They said we’d made them feel young again, which was incongruous, as compared to their energy I’d felt quite old. We left in a flood of tears from the ladies and made our way along the track in darkness. As usual, the sky was inlaid with shining stars, and the night was filled with the smell of night-scented jessamine and the soft clanking of sheep bells. As we passed through Michaela’s back yard, as if he’d been waiting to say goodbye, Antonio stepped out of the darkness. We shook his hand and said “hasta pronto”, and he replied the same. Then we drove off, and after a final visit to Cana Cavea, we made our way onto the main road.
We arrived at Son Sant Joan airport at two-thirty, but instead of flying out on time, we were delayed. The day before a British Airtours, Boeing 737-236 named “River Orrin” had caught fire during takeoff from Manchester airport. From the 137 passengers and crew aboard there had been 55 fatalities. Knowing the reason for the delay, there were no complaints, at least not from us. We eventually flew out on a Boeing 737, but by then we were so exhausted that anxiety was overcome by the relief of going home.
In possession of 7 Kilos of shelled almonds, a carrier bag of black grapes, tins of sardines and olives, one large bent Mallorcan cucumber, twelve heads of garlic, two carrier bags of dried flowers, and one 14 inch diameter watermelon; when asked by UK Customs if we had anything to declare, we replied ‘No’.