Do the Monty Moonwalk

I know what you’re thinking. Moonwalking? Eh? What exactly does a move made famous by the late Wacko Jacko have to do with our ongoing build? Well, how about if I were to use it as a rather loose metaphor for something that appears to be moving forwards but is actually moving in the opposite direction?

After a welter of texts prior to our arrival in Monty, we were, as usual, expecting signs of great progress. This is in itself progress - after all, when Bolimir was in charge of things we knew each visit to the site after a short absence would lead only to shredded vocals cords and a near-death experience of one sort or another - attempted murder, a near-fatal coronary or Boli falling through his own shoddily constructed floor (which actually did happen – Emma nearly gave herself a hernia trying to conceal her laughter). Since Zlatko and his men have taken over the project, however, we have been able to take a rather more positive approach from afar, looking forward to the latest instalment of sensitive restoration and top-notch workmanship.

Nikola, master stonemason

This means that, rather like England at the World Cup, expectation can build to levels that can only, eventually, lead to a disappointment - and this visit was ours.

Chris was bitterly disappointed with Bolimir's plastering

Don't get me wrong - there had been some terrific work preparing the terraces and outside walls and the car port had been more or less finished, but in most other respects we were left - for the first time – underwhelmed.

Nothing at all had been done inside the house since our last visit and the spiral stair design was very different to the look we had commissioned. We were going to have to have words. Now I was not looking forward to having to have words. If there are two things that builders really don't like being told it's a) that they've made a mistake and b) to hurry up. Usually all this achieves is a demand for more money to put things right - Bolimir had to be bollocked on both these points on a regular basis, and his reactions ranged from the belligerent to the beserk. We therefore approached Zlatko and his redoubtable team with some trepidation as we explained that we had expected more to have been done, that we didn’t like the stairs and that we expected tiling inside to be finished, pronto.

Zlatko's response?

"Ok."

And like that, his workers got straight onto the jobs still left undone (outside rendering, more stone work, tiling, bathroom sizing, hidrofor protective hut, guttering, outside lights, etc). Phew.

I give instructions for the car-port and hidrofor shed

From some angles the house even looked finished!

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair...

Why our presence was required for this sudden increase in activity I don't know, but if it takes us turning up once every month or two to crack the whip, well, then journey justified. We left with the promise that all Zlatko's outstanding tasks would be complete in the next month so that our "finisher", American Dragan, could get to work sanding floors, plastering the walls, painting and sorting our light fittings once we’ve bought them (Montenegrin light fittings are like Montenegrin furniture - cheap, nasty and twice the price of UK IKEA). We've hired American Dragan to do our finishing because a) he does good work, speaks English and we can trust him and b) because we know that this job is taking up more of Zlatko's time than was previously thought and although some of that time might have been spent more productively, we're aware that he has pulled his men off far more lucrative jobs in order to help us. He deserves his early release - if by the time we're next out his sheet has every item ticked off.

Of course, there’s one item that might have to wait a little while longer - the wall, or at least the part of it that has been the subject of a formal complaint as detailed in my last blog entry. We've already beaten back one knock-down order for this ten metre headache so apart from giving up the only step left for the objectors might be to let a tribunal decide who is in the right. They reckon that as the road is shown as running along the border of the house on the kadaster map (below), we’ve built the wall on the road itself.

The kadaster map does indeed show that the road borders our property, but that shaded box you can see above is referred to in the paperwork as a house and courtyard, and as it is the courtyard that forms the actual border of our property (blue line), not the walls of the house (dotted line), we’re not sure they have a case. Is it worth fighting and incurring more strife, or should we just knock the offending section down and rebuild it where they say the border is (green line)? Either way, we need a legal ruling on the actual border of our property, so we just have to wait. It’s a real shame the situation can’t be resolved more amicably.

On a more uplifting note, we had a decent beering session with previous owner and friend Slaviša (the Robert de Niro lookalike), and he told us that the objectors numbered only four – not the whole village of Zabes as we were previously told. He also cleared up for us the ongoing mystery as to why we were yet to receive any charges for the electricity we and our builders had been using. Apparently he had forgotten to inform the local provider of the change of ownership and as a result his granny – the on-paper previous owner - was now being chased for a couple of hundred euro’s worth of unpaid electricity bills, bills she was unlikely to be able to cover on account of being seven years deceased (!). We were happy to help him sort it out. Rather more amusing for all those still in the realm of the living, however, was his second exclusive.

“Listen,” he said to us, leaning forward in the way that men do when they want their words to have extra import. “I have to ask...Ben, do you have a restaurant in Subotica?”
Emma and I looked at each other blankly. Subotica was a little town on the border of Serbia and Hungary.
“The only time I’ve been to Subotica was when we drove through it 2 years ago on our way up to Budapest. Why do you ask?”
Slaviša blushed.
“Well, you see, there’s been this story going around. You know this guy, Mirko Vulijević?”
“No...”
“You don’t know him?”
“Slaviša, we’ve never heard of him,” Emma added.
“Well, this guy, he ran up a load of credit, and then skipped town. There were people trying to find him, and eventually we got hold of him and he said he would never come back to Virpazar because he was working in your restaurant in Subotica.”
“Really?” I giggled, staring over at Emma. “I have a restaurant in Subotica?”
“This is what Mirko say,” added Slaviša’s son Miloš in English. Emma started to laugh.
“Do I not have a share?” she asked, somewhat put out.
“Well, no,” Slaviša continued, by now rather embarrassed. “He said that you had split up with Ben and that he had had a baby with you.”
I spluttered my beer out through my nose. Emma’s jaw dropped and she began cackling wildly. We had to get them to repeat this story several more times for clarity before collapsing in fits of laughter.
“So let me get this straight,” I repeated to Slaviša, “Emma and I split up, this Mirko has a baby with her and then I’m such a nice guy I give him a job in my restaurant in Subotica?” I called our friend Sara to check the validity of the rumour - she admitted she had heard all about it already but didn’t think it was worth mentioning to us as it was clearly “bollocks” (we’ve taught her well). Not worth mentioning to us?

I turned to Emma, christening the phantom child “Baby Dragan” (seriously, what other name could he possibly have?) before asking where he was and demanding visitation rights as his “stepfather”. By now, both Slaviša and his two boys (the younger one is called Slobodan, Balkan aficionados) were practically crying with laughter along with us. I’d never been the subject of a rumour before. It was certainly inventive.

It was also a nice little reminder that our friends in Virpazar outnumber our anonymous enemies by about 20 to one. When we’re in town we’re stopped by no end of local people who are delighted to see us and catch up – even more so than when we’re on Vis, in fact. In between unseasonal showers and repair jobs on our house there we did eventually manage a couple of days’ holiday on our (and, it seems, Yahoo’s) favourite Croatian island to round off our time away – but it’s hard to relax when you’re still mulling over what might or might not be happening a few hundred clicks south. This, unfortunately, is how we tend to view setbacks now (no matter how slight) – with a conviction that the pace has slackened for good even if most of the evidence to this point would indicate the opposite. One month, eh? Hmm. We’ll see in mid-June...