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August 19, 2007
Life in the Balkans
So, life went on. The children arrived every morning, the students and staff set about the activities with more energy than was advisable at 45°C, umpty-hundred litres of water were consumed by the hour,
spuds were peeled,
Hajredini, the caretaker, dozed peacefully in the garden,
Max got his hair straightened, the way you do.
And all the while, not so deep underground, things were not as they should be. Stuff that ought to be on its way to pastures new, wasn’t, instead it was getting caught up, and hanging around, and generally backing up and lurking in old cracked pipes until stuff [that should be on its way to the aforementioned pastures] started to reappear and behave in generally unpleasant ways all over the tiled floor.
So certain activities were suspended and the experts were called in. I was first made aware of their arrival by a student pointing out two dishevelled dark men about to light cigarettes in the midst of a mass of bright and colourful children. They were both clearly strangers to the invention of Mr King C Gillette, of Massachusetts, their skin was the colour and texture of worn leather and their clothes were used to hard work and long hours in high temperatures. In fact they wouldn’t have looked out of place on the back-lot of a film-set shooting the baddies scene in a Spaghetti Western. I immediately understood their calling and showed them to the problem where they set about the task with unenviable enthusiasm.
After half an hour I was faced with a daunting sight. To my right 30 children, in shorts, tee-shirts and bare feet, were skipping lightly about with coloured silks and beaming smiles. While to my left two men wrestled a long springy steel drain rod, riving tens years of unused difficulty from the drains. They too were smiling, though for reasons which were not immediately apparent. I endeavoured to keep the two activities apart with buckets of boiling water and bleach.
Posted by john at August 19, 2007 07:48 PM