NAPIER - Scotsman and Gent
I've just spent the last half an hour calf deep in olive wood logs. Standing in the back of a lorry unloading half a metric tonne of olive logs is a strangely sensuous experience. There were three of us there actually: Gill, Marinos who had delivered the logs, and me. The scent and texture of olive logs is so revenant of winter that it quite takes ones breath away.
Marinos didn't turn up until it was dark and we were, just before he arrived, running around like headless chickens upstairs turning on lights in the house and opening shutters in order to try and illuminate our soon to be work area. As I had suspected he arrived in a tipper lorry ( avery nice late 70s Japanese jobby as you ask) and was expecting simply to dump the load onto the appropriate spot but it doesn't work like that here in Felia - the logs are stacked upstairs behind the wall and there is only lorry access to the cellar level!
We have always helped our log men with unloading simply because we realise that ours is a non-standard delivery, and we quite enjoy it: standing calf deep in logs in the back of a lorry hefting logs over the front wall two or three at a time whilst knowing that tomorrow we will be moving and stacking them all over again. The satisfaction of having a goodly supply of logs in is a wonderful feeling and somehow makes winter a less fearsome prospect. It's as if you can say "Well, come on, do your worst. We're ready!"
By the end my back was aching and my right leg was numb (the osteo-arthritis) but we were all warmed up with the exercise and we slipped down to the cellar for a swift raki before Marinos had to beetle off again. Occasions like this can be sociable little events if only you know how. Oddly enough, the raki we served was some we had bought from Marinos a couple of winters back and it was top notch stuff with the aroma and taste of raisins on it still. He enjoyed the raki and regaled us with the tale of how he has just finished renovating his still room in time for this years crop. We even got an invitation to drop by one evening and make up a small party there! Now there's an offer I'm unlikely to pass up!
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Now I appreciate that not everything in this arc-light bright post-modern world we're all expected to live in is as obvious as perhaps it should be to old geezers like me(and I am not referring to the hot water kind, though I've been in that often enough), but what on earth does tonight's blog have to do with Napier?
ReplyDeleteWhich begs the question: "Which Napier, did you have in mind?" Sir Robert, the friend with whom I played cards and shared a fine bottle of malt, and who gave Napier Castle (together with an endowment) to the local authority to set up a technology college with, or perhaps one of his forebears?
Whatever, or perhaps that should be whomsoever, the obscurity of your title is lost on me (and I suspect most of your other readers).
Is this a test of some kind?
Have I passed?
Is the bottle half full, or half empty?
;-)