New Dawns and False Dawns

Six weeks. It’s been quite a long time in between updates, hasn’t it? Given the silence, there must be quite a lot to catch up on, mustn’t there?

Well, yes. And no. I’ll explain. Driving back across Europe in our new(ish) Renault Espace was something of an ordeal for us. It wasn’t just that we had to cover a couple of thousand kilometres in the space of three days to catch the ferry from Bari (thus avoiding an overpriced Croatian carnet ticket). It also wasn’t just that we were already tired and therefore didn’t much appreciate the two overpriced fleapits in Heidelberg and Verona that were supposed to refresh us overnight. It also wasn’t just that we were worrying about getting badly pinged by Montenegrin customs for carrying a load of IKEA purchased furniture in the back of the bus (unbelievably, IKEA wares are half the price and twice the quality of what you tend to find out here – and that’s before you take into account the one benefit of the diving Sterling; shopping in the UK has become very cheap). It was mostly because we knew that with some sort of sick inevitability, we were going to be dismayed at whatever lay in wait for us back at Lake Skadar.

Around mid-November, our builders had assured us their work would be done around 15th December. In mid-December – not even close to hitting their own deadline – they told us they’d be done by 15th January. Upon leaving Monte the builders had been hopeful that with just 12 days of good weather they’d get the roof on. This, as any budding house-builder will tell you, is the most important stage. Until the roof is on you’re a hostage to the weather. Once you’ve topped out, it can rain all day and you can still work on inside regardless.

How had they got on in our absence?

The policeman at the border at Bar port turned out to be our neighbour in Virpazar (“Hallo, dear neighbours!”), which was a nice way to be welcomed back into the country. It was also a relief to rescue Tuzi from the cat hotel (although cat prison would have been more accurate), even if his first few steps back at liberty were spent covered in shit as he’d had a watery “whoopsie” in his cat box on the serpentine bends of the road back to Lake Skadar. We arrived back in Virpazar in the freezing rain to find that the old bat who owned our flat had locked us out, the village was suffering a power cut and once we finally got into the flat (via a neighbour’s spare key) we found out the water pipes had frozen. Welcome back!

Matters did not improve much the next morning when we went to see the house.

See that grey bit? That’s a bricked in window. See that arrow? That’s where the window should have been.

In addition to this inexplicable mistake (they had been left detailed plans and instructions – in Serbian) the old roof was still on our house because it had been pouring with rain for more or less the entire time we had been away. As if that wasn’t sufficient to dampen (ahem) our enthusiasm, it then continued to pour with rain for another three weeks whilst we were “between” roofs. The result was that we had now lost a whopping seven weeks on a 90 day build to rain. You don’t see percentages like that very often, not even in English county cricket. This meant that at best we would already be six weeks into the summer season before the finish, and would therefore forgo any connected income. Not good.

Still, things couldn’t get worse could they? Silly Ben. Of course they could…

The subsequent three weeks – including one for which Emma was away in Vis overseeing some renovations there – became every bit as much of an unfolding car crash as anything you’ve seen on TV. In a nutshell, it boiled down to this: in addition the window on the wrong wall, our builder Bolimir had measured up the materials he had used thus far and presented me with an interim bill of works that was double his written estimate.

It’s hard to describe exactly what this sort of a revelation does to your insides. I was going to compare it to being dumped out of the blue by a boy/girlfriend, but actually it’s far worse than that. You feel some similar emotions – anger, shock, disbelief, fear, panic – but it’s not as though you can just go get drunk and buy another house in a bar or something. We were now faced with an impossible financial situation. The question was, how were we going to get ourselves out of it? I caught the bus up to Vis to join Emma for a much needed time-out.

On our return to Monte there then followed a series of unpleasant conversations with Bolimir that can be summed-up thus:

HIM: You owe me X.
US: That’s twice your original signed estimate. Why?
HIM: I made some mistakes on the original signed estimate.
US: And it never occurred to you to point this out before you started the jobs?
HIM: You didn’t notice either.
US: It’s not our job to turn in an accurate estimate. It’s yours! How can you wait until you’ve finished to tell us the cost? That’s misleading. That’s not honest.
HIM: ARE YOU CALLING ME DISHONEST?
US: You’re trying to charge us triple for the terrace without having told us in advance that the costs had gone up so much, and NOW you tell us your estimate for the extension wall is only a third what it should have been?? We agreed to hire you based on your this estimate and asked you to inform us in advance if any of the jobs were to greatly increase in value. If we had known the terrace was going to cost this much we’d have decided on a cheaper design! And if you quoted the wrong price for the walls, that’s your mistake. Why should we pay for it?
HIM: MISTAKE? THE ONLY MISTAKE I MADE WAS STARTING THIS JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE! THOSE PRICES I GAVE YOU MEANT NOTHING!
US: Nothing? Well if that’s the way you secure custom that’s what we’ll pay you.
HIM: I HAVE NEVER BEEN TREATED LIKE THIS IN ALL MY LIFE, YOU WILL PAY ME EVERY CENT I’VE WORKED FOR…YOU ARE A XXXX and a YYYY (etc). I’LL SEE YOU IN COURT!
US: The total we’ve paid you already adds up to more than your original estimate for the completed works in question. You’ve handed us a signed estimate riddled with errors that’s not even added up right and you still haven’t provided us with a contract to sign. You want to go to court? You go right ahead.
HIM: YOU OWE ME 2X! THAT’S IT! SCREW YOU! AH’M GOIN’ HAIM!

Bolimir the Builder

It was horrible. On several occasions we wondered whether or not to sack Bolimir but the difficulty we’d face in commissioning in a second builder to finish his work gave us crucial pause. What if they couldn’t start for weeks? What if their quote was twice the price? What if they turned out to be no different? In a final attempt to achieve some kind of clarity I insisted that we speak again one week hence with an interpreter – but the reality was that as things stood there was no way for us to afford this bill and finish the house on time. With the Global Credit Crunch now sealing the coffers of almost every bank in Europe, the chance of securing the necessary extra finance was minimal.

We roped in our friend Sara to act as translator. In fact, her job was more that of a firefighter, dousing the flames of Bolimir's self-righteous anger and trying to help us salvage matters so that we could at least agree on how to proceed from here on. Thanks almost entirely to her efforts – and our refusal to cave in – a figure for works completed was reached that both parties could reluctantly agree to and a schedule of agreed payments confirmed for future co-operation that would stop the same problems from happening again. Ludicrously, the same man who had become abusive and threatened us with legal action was now calm and co-operative. He didn’t apologise for torpedoing our project, but absurdly even went so far in the other direction as to offer us a line of personal credit (politely refused)…

Work on the house re-started, although as I speak we’ve still not quite got the roof on yet.


The one thing that hadn’t changed though, was the steady march of winter. We were already unlikely to be ready for a full season in 2009 but thanks to Bolimir's extra costs (even though we’d got him down to 40% over his estimate) one more “surprise” might very well finish us off. All it would take was a below average tourist season – and guess what was being widely predicted for Europe in 2009?

It’s one thing going out on a limb. It’s another to see the chap with the saw arrive and choose not to climb down first. There are very few people who saw the global financial meltdown coming – and still fewer who got away with it all without feeling the pinch somewhere. We’d switched all of our Sterling into Euros before it went seriously south. We’d sold our London house right before prices crashed (we reckoned that if we had hung on to it we’d by now have lost a massive £90,000, so that put things sharply into perspective). Having managed all that, would it be worth risking everything we had and some more that we didn’t just to eke out an existence in 2009? Or was it instead a smarter move to get back into the working jet-stream, save up the necessary moolah and try again once we were on surer ground? In the meantime, we’d have a beautiful house 25% away from completion in an area of stupendous natural beauty and another on an idyllic Mediterranean island that was already bringing in a tidy summer sum. As Kenny Rogers might have it, you’ve got to know when to hold, and know when to fold. And I can’t even play poker.

Kenny Rogers - wise man

Just as the Global Credit Crunch took most of us by surprise, I don’t imagine that, when initially “elected” in the autumn of 2000, George W. Bush could have foreseen just what a mess he’d make of the American presidency. Granted, most of the rest of us saw it coming from some way off, but the war-mongering man-chimp never was one to appraise a situation with a knowledgeable or discerning eye. Fortunately for all of us, January 09 was when his “reign of terror” finally came to an end and Barrack Obama was sworn in in Washington to the palpable relief of pretty much the entire world. We watched the action on Vis with our friends the Roki family. Perhaps the hype has got to me, but when Obama speaks, his clear sincerity and studied tone give what feels like genuine hope for the future, and I’m not just talking about on a personal level. Oliver Roki certainly had no fears for the year to come. With the Vis Cricket Club inundated with offers from visiting clubs and the MCC due to visit in May, they had everything to look forward to. Oliver’s latest idea was to try and break the world record for the longest continuous cricket match, a record that stands somewhere around the 60 hour mark. And why not? Why settle for the ordinary? If you’re going to aim at all, aim high. A friend once said to me long ago, “don’t be a “what-if”. Be a “what-happened-was”.” I think it was her way of saying that it was better to have given things a damn good go than to have been to afraid to have tried in the first place, a sort of “if-you-don’t-shoot-you-don’t-score” philosophy. Whether we somehow manage to pull this off after all or if we’re forced to return to the UK ahead of schedule (and to the inevitable chorus of “I-told-you-sos”), I’m pleased that at least we did just that – gave it a damn good go.

So there you have it. By mid-March we’ll know for sure. If work on the house speeds up in a fashion that would baffle Einstein and Doc Emmett Brown, or we suddenly regain the extra funds Bolimir has cost us, we’ll still be here. If neither of these things happens, we’ll be back job-hunting this spring, and postponing the Great Escape for a year. Or two.

Do you think there’s a book in all this somewhere?