Indispensable Tool

My builder has been busy removing the dryrot in the floorboards and plaster – I am glad to say that it does not seem to have spread too far. He arrived with a huge toolbox on wheels and various electric drills and saws, but nearly all the tasks were achieved using just one tool – a handaxe. This axe was used to lever up the floor, to break through nails in the floor, to carve sections of the floorboards which were catching, to hack the plaster off the wall and of course to chop things. I was very impressed by this hugely useful Czech tool, and told my husband all about it. I was wondering whether and where to get one - this axe, lever, wedge and chisel all in one.

The next day my builder referred to it as his indispensable tool as he was using it to break some glass. I commented by how impressed I was with it. He grinned and said wasn't it primeval – the caveman's handaxe. “I got it at Lidl's” he said, “It was cheap and the last in the shop.

Finding the House 4 - The Old Man

After we left the barn we stood on the terrace and looked at the house. Through the orchard's high grass came an old man in a train guard's cap carrying a large crate of plums, which had been harvested from the hugely prolific trees. He was introduced to us as the father of the family. He enthusiastically greeted us. We asked if he had worked on the railways for long, "Oh no," we were told, "He just likes the hat!"

We were then invited up to his little cottage in the woods. I took one of the family - the daughter's husband - to go fishing on the lake at Lipno and then drove back along the main road and turned right up a barely tarmacked road and across the railway line. The old man's cottage was small and new - built, he said proudly, by his son. The son looked none too pleased by this, the old man appeared to be angling for me to employ the son to work on the house restoration and the son knew all too well just how big those repairs would be, although throughout the viewing he had assured me that there was very little to do and I believed him because I wanted to.

We sat outside next to the smoking oven and the slivovice began to flow. I was fortunate that I was driving and so had the perfect excuse for refusing the highly alcoholic home-made brew. The man in our party was not so lucky, the old man plied him with glass upon glass, and it rapidly became a matter of British masculine pride to accept and despite his partner's protestations he became happily mellow. The slivovice was accompanied by home-made Czech chocolate and courgette cakes, which sound weird but if you think about it are no weirder than carrot cake, and were very tasty.

The old man was missing a finger on one of his hands and emboldened by the alcohol our friend asked about its loss. The old man explained that he lost it in an accident when chopping firewood. We asked if he could have saved it - warming to his audience the old man explained that the finger had lain twitching on the floor and before he could grab it the cat had dashed out and disappeared off with it in his mouth. His daughter raised her eyes, clearly she had heard the story many times before and probably in a number of versions, and we all laughed.

An hour or so later we piled into the car and drove back to Cesky Krumlov. I had agreed to buy a Czech property, which was totally at variance with my wants list. The sun was shining, we were smiling after the family's hospitality, all seemed well with the world.

Looking back.

It is interesting this retrospective blogging, that I have been doing over these last few posts. It allows me to look again at my feelings and motivation for buying my Czech home, why this house, why then. So much has happened in the two and half years since I first stood in the farm's courtyard and looked up at the barn. It has distorted my view of things - the work, the times of despair and doubt, the discovery of one problem after another, and now the pleasure of the house transformed - all have in some way pulled a veil over those first emotions. I thought I knew them, but now through these blogs I find I did not.

In particular I had forgotten that it was not the house that really made my heart pace at that first encounter but the barn. It therefore strikes me as strange that whilst I have restored the house, pouring in far more money than I had calculated, the barn remains as it was then, with the exception of a new roof, which was forced on me by the heavy snow of the first winter. I am still in awe of its potential (so much more than that of the house) and it is that potential that perhaps stayed my hand. One could argue quite reasonably that I have not done work on the barn because of simple finances or lack thereof, but I am not entirely convinced by such a rational argument. I suspect, as is the case in my entire Czech property adventure, that the subconscious was playing its part too.

The truth is I still don't quite know what I am doing here. I feel like some hero in a Czech fairy story - I have followed the path into the dark forest and after some adventure have arrived in a large bright clearing. Here I rest and recover, but now I begin to make out another trail leading away and into a darker section of the forest. There things move in the shadows and I know that at some time I must leave the warm grass and go on. But now I wait for a sign - a deer or dove perhaps. In investing in the house I invested in a home, the barn however is for another purpose and I have no doubt that it is connected with my future work whatever that may be.