Bye Bye Bolimir?

Motoring interlude apart, it’s been a while since my last update. This is usually an indication that either something has gone spectacularly, catastrophically wrong and that we’ve been spending the last two weeks desperately trying to fix it or that we’ve had some progress and have been too busy to send in a report.

Typically, this time, it’s been a bit of both.

13th April marked something of watershed moment for us; 6 months and 3 days after beginning work, two notable things happened. First of all, we finally got our exterior doors and windows in, which meant that our Plan B of returning to the UK leaving the house incomplete but watertight has at least been managed. This manoeuvre was not without its complications, of course; Dragan Doors discovered on his arrival that Bolimir’s merry band of bodgers had bollocksed up both the extension bathroom door cavities (too narrow) as well as those infamous konoba doors, which turned out to be very, very far from vertically straight, Bolimir’s myopic workers having followed the old walls of the house rather than using a spirit level. Still, these things can be tricky on the eye. Dragan Doors’ mate Beli swung too far in the other direction and over-relied on his plumb line to the point that the windows he was fitting looked wonky even if they actually weren’t. In an old house with very few right angles, sometimes you have to compromise and use what looks right. Dragan returned a few days later to fit our shutters – and for once we can say hand on heart that our chosen tradesman did an excellent job.

The second major landmark was that once Bolimir’s latest crew had cut the circular hole in our floor for our future spiral stairs, we could finally get shot of the guy. That’s not to say that his work was done – far from it, as there was still a lengthy list of unfinished or poorly finished items and even though we’d cancelled a third of his original workload he had somehow turned a 60 day build time into six months and counting. It was time to get Alan Sugar on his arse, so in anticipation of an unpleasant final conversation with him we decided, as succinctly as possible, to catalogue all our complaints over his work, organisation and arithmetic in written form – and get it translated so he could understand why we would not be paying him as much as he might be expecting. It ran to 12 pages.

Emma gave my document the once over with her old press-officer’s hat on.
“It used to be my job to summarise things, edit them and simplify them without losing meaning,” she explained. “We need it to be simple for him to understand and a little cheaper for us to pay to have translated. We have to make it shorter.”
“Can’t be done,” I replied adamantly.
Emma told me not to underestimate her abilities, read through the list and then admitted in dismay that not only was it already about as concise as it could be, but that there were several things I had actually missed. The doc got a 13th page.

13 pages.

A week or so still in advance of B-Day (no toilet jokes please), we have a fair idea of Bolimir’s potential reaction on reading the bad financial news. He turned up unannounced two days ago, where after surveying our stoney-faced response to his appearance he guessed, correctly, that there was going to be some adjustment to his fee. We refused to comment further until he had received our translated document and sent him away until we had an interpreter with us (it’s not a fair fight when one party gets increasingly impatient that the other cannot speak his language fluently yet is somehow also convinced that they are lying about their linguistic abilities). Forewarned he might be, but possible reactions will still include shouty, very shouty and thermonuclear meltdown. He already knows how angry we are with him, but just in case, I’ve prepared a couple of choice S/HR/MJ/CG phrases in advance and which I plan to drop into the conversation at an appropriate point (which will no doubt further confuse the issue of my fluency or lack of it). I confess that I am just dying to give him a variation of that Alec Baldwin speech from Glengarry Glen Ross, mixed in with some American Beauty-era Kevin Spacey, but that’s one hurdle that the language barrier will eventually deny me. How do you translate “F*** you – that’s my name”?

By the way - if I may appear to derive some black humour out of our dealings with Bolimir, please believe me when I say that this is only when I sit down and type. When these meetings happen, they are about as funny as Sgt Major Dickerson from Good Morning Vietnam. When I think of those 13 pages instead of writing about them, I don’t crack a wry smile or offer witty or slightly pointless cinematic references as observations. Black clouds roll in. Thunder claps inside my inner demon. It might be funny later (ok, it might even be funny now), but it actually makes me furious that the (in)actions of this one man have scuppered our plans, plans that seem even more convincing to us than ever now that the sun has returned and we can kayak across the lake or drink a cold beer enjoying the awesome view from our terrace.

It’s just amazing here in Spring. As I write this, we have a garden full of cherry blossom, our tortoises have reawakened and we even spotted our first eagle swooping down over our valley as the lake waters recede. We finally got the chance to use our new inflatable kayak, paddling over current-free, glass-like waters to Grmožur, Lake Skadar’s Alcatraz. I finally got to wear shorts again, and noticed with horror that I’m even whiter than I thought I was. 13th April, you see, is not just the full swing of spring. It’s not just the date we finally got our doors in or finally saw the last of Bolimir’s workers. It was also due to be the date we moved into our newly restored house…

So, you’ve been turfed out of your rented flat and your house has no water connection, furniture, bathrooms, walls or proper electricity yet. What to do? Rent a local room? Head over to Vis for some TLC?

Nah.

We’re British. If we’ve planned a barbecue and it rains, we barbecue in the rain. And if we’ve planned to move into a house and it ain’t finished…well, why the hell not? After all, thousands of Montenegrins move into their houses before they’ve got half as far as we have.

So we’re camping. And it’s quite good fun. Sort of. I don’t think I’ll ever fully adjust to the idea of the semi-permanent long-drop, but making do with what we’ve got is quite interesting considering our rather more comfortable existence back in London. We’ve got an ancient electric stove that still has two working rings despite having been rained on for two months, we have one working lightbulb, we’ve got our spring at the bottom of the garden, we’ve got our electricity-free fridge*. We’re going to enjoy the stay of execution we’ve given ourselves because we have to wait to select our new builder, sign a contract with them and then co-ordinate the first week or so of work. We’ve already spoken to two excellent people, either of whom we wish we’d have been able to hire in the first place. The contrast with Bolimir could not be greater. Maybe it’s true what they say about experience – you have to get it wrong several times before you learn to get it right…

*yes, you read right. It’s dead clever.

"It's all about evaporation..."

And finally…we received some great news regarding our house on Vis – we are now legally registered to rent, and have even been granted a three-star licence! Now, if we can just get our water connected before we leave Montenegro…