Madam opens a door

Joyce has been doing her magic around the Hout Bay house, transforming our “replace this immediately as I’m not setting my foot on that” type carpets into as-good-as-new.

The inside of the house is now spotless and ready for the removal van’s arrival on Monday. However, there is something we need to do outside before we’ll move in.

We have a carport for three cars. Unfortunately, we noticed (the hard way) that Heikki’s 4x4 is too high for the remote controlled doors. We don’t want to leave the car on the street for the night, and replacing the doors is not high on our to do list. Thus, we decided the better option is to dig the floor of the carport.

Joyce, is our knowledge bank when it comes to things such as people, places and weather. We asked her if she could recommend someone for the job. She arranged her friend and neighbor, Aubrey, to come and work for us for a couple of days.

Aubrey started with us yesterday. With a shovel, a pickaxe, and bare hands, he removed the bricks covering the carport floor and dug the earth underneath.

Today, he removed some strange concrete formation that he had unearthed from under the bricks (perhaps a wall of a swimming pool?) and started re-laying the bricks.

It’s been blowing like mad today, and the rain’s been coming down hard the whole day. Weather wise, it’s been the worst day since we moved to Africa.

At about 12.30 PM I went to ask Aubrey if he was cold. He’d been working solidly for 4 hours and I thought he could do with a warm drink and something to eat.

I went to see him at the carport and urged him to come in the house. I asked him to come to the front side of the house, as the doors closest to him were locked. (With the trellis security doors we have, opening the doors closest to him would have meant opening 4 doors. We have dozens of keys for different security bars and doors. Although they are labeled, some of the labels are wrong. Finding the correct keys for all the doors will be a big task.)

After a while, I saw Aubrey walking to the front of the house. I didn’t hear him come in, so I went outside. It had stopped raining. Aubrey was there, in the front garden, looking at the swimming pool. He’d seen the pool-guy come to the house the day before, and now I told him what all the salt sacks were for. We talked about the pool for a while.

I then asked him to come in.

“Is there an open door over there that I could use?” he asked, pointing towards the back of the house. “No, I meant for you to use this door”, I said, as I turned around and started walking back towards the front door.

Aubrey started laughing nervously. “You mean come in through _this_ door?” he said, pointing at the main entrance. “Yes, of course” I said, “please come in, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.” He continued laughing, but followed me in after I convinced him it was all right.

This situation was something that neither of us had expected. He couldn’t believe I allowed him to use the grand entrance, and I hadn’t expected that there was anything even slightly odd about it.

For the next half an hour we chatted in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating slices of bread. I learned more about his life than he learned about mine, as he was shy to ask questions. Or not shy, I suppose. Perhaps it’s something that’s simply not done.