By the Middle Ages, Stow came at its thirst problem from a different angle. There were at least twenty one ale houses, and by some accounts every single dwelling in medieval Stow was set up as a pub. To be fair, a lot of these drinking dens were no more than the front rooms of cottages whose occupants had seen a chance to make a quick groat or two on market day. They used to pull up a bush by the roots and hang it outside, which in an illiterate age, and before the development of intuitive street signs, meant 'Ale for sale'. Goodness knows why a bush. The only explanation I've seen is that the Romans used to hang up a sprig of vine leaves to indicate a wine shop, and that the British, not having vines to hand, used a bush instead. Sounds pretty thin to me, given that I'm talking about a thousand years after the last Roman had belted off to beat the barbarians back from the gates of the mother city. Was the fourteenth century landlady so unimaginative that she had to resort to a symbol that ran the risk of deluding thirsty visitors into thinking she was running an early example of a garden centre? Why not hang out a flagon for instance? Admittedly, I can see you might not have a spare one, or probably they didn't have handles in the fourteenth century to fix them up from. But there must be a thousand things more suitable as a makeshift pub sign than a herbaceous shrub. OK, I concede I can't think of any right now that don't involve writing or flashing neon lights. So I suppose if bushes are what you've got to hand, they're as good as anything – once people get used to them.
By the fourteenth century, Stow was in its heyday. Twenty-thousand sheep could be traded in the open space between Huffkins Tea Rooms and the Co-op on market day. And back then there was none of this buying lamb futures, or trading in sheep derivatives. You didn't pay till you could see every last one of the woolly little creatures bleating in front of you. It must have been a logistical nightmare. But the medieval Stowites were well-organised. They designated overspill areas, first in Sheep Street (the name gives it away), and then in fields immediately outside the limits of the little town. These holding zones were all linked to the Market Square by a series of long narrow alleys threaded between the houses. They were known as 'tures' and still are. It's one of these old sheep runs, the one called 'Fleece Alley' that passes alongside our prospective home.
You'll have guessed by now that I love the way bits of history pop up hundreds of years, and sometimes millennia later. So I've got mixed feelings about having to get in an archaeologist. On the one hand, it's expensive. Around £800, would you believe, for a few hours on-site plus a written report. And if anything of historic importance is found, all work has to stop while experts investigate. And that delay would cost us. For example, in Bourton-on-the-Water, just down the road, a company there decided to build itself a second warehouse. The archaeologist was brought in, as per the rules, and soon turned up evidence of an Iron Age settlement right where the new building was due to go up. Word has it that it cost the company £70,000 or more because the landowners have to find the cash to pay for the excavations if they want their building to go ahead. If that happened to us, we'd be bust.
On the other hand, I'd love it if some incredibly precious but very small and easy to dig out artefact turned up in our burgage. I mean, who wouldn't want a Roman Mithraic altar outside the bedroom window? Or I'd even be happy if a pair of fifteenth century wool shears was found mouldering down a drain hole. I don't tell Maggie my fantasy.
Still, one way or another, the archaeologist suddenly becomes an important figure in our lives. And I'm looking forward to an informed discussion with a Simon Schama-type figure on second century BC water supplies and the impact of the plague on Elizabethan lamb yields.
So on the appointed day, I arrive early on-site, though not early enough to catch the vicar and his dog, evidence of whose recent presence I think I detect in the glistening patch at the base of the front wall. As usual, there's not really anything for me to do while I wait, except keep out of Jason's way.
People are fascinated by building sites (I've noticed they even put special little windows in the fencing round giant construction projects in London). And here in Stow, locals now regularly stop for a chat to see how it's going. This makes me look busy and involved rather having to just stand there like the kid with flat feet on sports day. Today there's a young lad peering over at Jason and Nik who're marking out the position of the foundations.
I start up a conversation with the boy, who – I assume from his remarks – must be doing some sort of sixth form course on local history. So with not a little pride, I explain to him that as it happens we're expecting an archaeologist this very morning to investigate the site. I'm just about to tell him that he's welcome to stick around when he says, 'Yup, that's me.'
Jez, it turns out, is in his mid twenties, an archaeology graduate of Winchester College. It was his shorts and Arsenal shirt that threw me.
'There aren't many jobs around for professional archaeologists,' he explains. 'I'm just temping for the research company.'
But will he know a second century Roman baptismal font when he sees one?
'OK. Cool,' he says, taking up a business-like legs-akimbo stance as Jason prepares to dozer out the first foundations. 'What we're looking for here is mainly medieval stuff, or maybe, just maybe Iron Age or Bronze Age. As you'll know,' he adds with what could be a patronising glance, 'the Romans didn't actually settle in Stow.'
'Yes of course,' I laugh, 'everyone knows that.'
'They just scooted by along the old Fosse Way.'
For the next four hours, Jez peers into holes which Jason is delicately scraping out with the JCB's claw. At no point does Jez hold up his hand and shout 'Stop', or point with knowledgeable amazement at some unrecognisable but promising lump on the growing spoil heap.
During the coffee break, he tells me about a recent dig in a large housing estate near Bath.
'You'd never believe it,' he says. 'In the twelfth trench, on the twelfth day of the month, at around twelve noon, they found the first of twelve bodies. It was mental.' He shakes his head in wonderment at the extraordinary nature of an archaeologist's life. 'Freaky,' he adds.
Do archaeologists hallucinate with all that staring into pits? Or has this one watched Shaun of the Dead too often? Or maybe he's detected my boyish enthusiasm and doesn't want me to be too disappointed.
Still, Nik, who's just arrived in time to hear this, can beat it – for body count if not the level of juvenile dementia. In Gloucester, a new road was going through an ancient burial ground where it was believed twenty skeletons lay buried. 'Anyway,' says Nik, '250 bodies later…'
Jez taps with a rueful foot against a ginger beer bottle, circa 1930.
Three weeks later, we receive a very nice fourteen-page glossy report saying nothing of historical importance had been found.
Plans for the oak are now top of the worry list. After flirting with several different carpentry companies, we settle on a traditional one-man outfit that Anthea's worked with before. We're still quibbling about prices. And everybody seems to be talking about something different. For Maggie and me, the important things are looks and cost. To Jeremy the structural engineer, it's physical support for the roof and walls. Nigel, Anthea's oaksmith, thinks the place will 'feel incomplete' unless we have a roof with a framework made entirely of oak beams as well.
It's now the beginning of October and the first seeds are whirly-gigging down from the sycamore tree next door. Another site summit meeting is called for. This will be our first face-to-face meeting with Nigel. Now, what would you expect someone to look like who lovingly crafts oak trees and turns them into houses? I think about this the night before, and come up with a vision of a kind of giant hobbit. Cuddly, but strong and determined. I reveal my vision to Maggie over breakfast.
'Now, now,' she chides. 'Just remember Simon Schama in an Arsenal shirt.'
'So you're saying I'm guilty of stereotyping.'
I take her silence as an affirmative.
It's misty and chilly in Stow as Nik, Anthea, Jeremy the surveyo
r, Maggie and I huddle against the now roofless, frontless, but still-standing Big Back Wall, waiting for Nigel. Nik and his guys have completed the demolition – including all the special safety procedures for the asbestos roof – in half the scheduled time so we're back on track. The space looks open and empty. Big enough, in fact, to take our new home.
A large pickup truck pulls into the road, and a tall, balding, gangly man with a grey beard jumps down.
'There's Nigel,' says Nik.
Nigel smiles, nods, and says in a quiet, but cut-glass accent, 'Sorry to hold you up. The wagon wouldn't start.'
I study him, trying to decide whether he looks more like Bilbo or Samwise, though I have to say that when he reaches under his vast baggy sweater, pulls out a small tin and starts to roll a cigarette, the J. R. R. Tolkien image is somewhat blurred. He nods at Anthea's first explanations while his tongue moves across the Rizla paper.
The plan is that metre-long curved oak braces will support each end of the huge beams spanning the length of the main room.
'I know they may seem intrusive, these braces,' says Nigel. 'They do stick out, I'm afraid, like big wooden brackets, but without them the whole structure of the building would be unstable.'
'Oh, no, I don't think they're intrusive at all,' I say. 'They'll be part of the character of the place.'
'Yes,' says Maggie. 'But what about in the kitchen? I think we might forever be banging our heads on them. We can't have oak braces over the hob and the sink.'
'Hmm,' says Nigel, 'Maybe you could redesign the kitchen.'
I wince. Redesign the kitchen! Does the man know what he's suggesting? Visions of chaotic culinary workflows and shattered marital harmony flash before my eyes. This is like war breaking out between your children. It's a clash between tradition and cooking, both almost as dear to me as the desire for our new home not to fall over. I'm just about to throw my arms up in the air in exasperation at the unfairness of life, when Jeremy comes over the hill on a cavalry horse.
'Well, look here,' he says, marching us over to the Big Back Wall (having metaphorically dismounted first, of course). 'I was just about to say, I've been doing some calculations, and we're going to need to put in steel columns, embedded at the base in the concrete.' He kicks a pebble to indicate the spot. '… to make sure the wooden columns don't shift.'
'Steel!' I protest.
'That's right,' says Jeremy.
'But that's going to look horrible!'
'No, you won't see them,' says Nik. 'We'll plaster over them. All that'll be visible is Nigel's oak.'
My shoulders relax again. 'So where does that leave the kitchen and the braces?'
'With the steels in place, we can probably do without them there,' says Nigel, flicking the butt end of his roll-up onto a heap of rubble left tidy by Jason.
'And does that mean we could also do without oak rafters in the roof as well?' asks Maggie. 'They're terribly expensive, and nobody's going to see them. It'd be like wearing a diamond necklace under a T shirt.'
'Sure,' says Nigel. 'Fine by me.'
And he looks at Jeremy, who smiles and says, 'Agreed.'
'Great stuff!' I say, 'Team, team, team!' forgetting for a moment that this cinematic quotation was immediately followed by Godfather Robert De Niro beating the brains out of his treacherous fellow mafioso with a baseball bat.
Jeremy scratches his chin. For the first time he looks concerned.
'So what are we going to do about that droopy old wall?' he muses. I'm getting mixed up. If Jeremy jokes, does that mean everything's really OK? Or, does he make light of potential catastrophes so that the customer – me – won't keep having heart attacks? But I want him to tell it like it is, now. After all, Maggie and I could be casting nervous glances up at this wall for decades, as we eat our muesli and watch Newsnight Review and every minute in between.
'Let's hope the steels stop it falling over,' says Jeremy, patting the wall as you might do Great-auntie Flo on her 103rd birthday.
'But you said it was a damn good wall,' I squawk. 'I made a note of it.'
'It is, for what it is,' he says, 'Ha ha.'
'I suppose it's a lot easier to pop in a single piece.'
I knew it was a daft thing to say as soon the words left my mouth.
I'd asked Nik what an OSMADRAIN SOMETHING CHAMBER was, the label half-obscured on a crumpled delivery ticket. He'd explained that it was a large pre-cast concrete cylinder that you put below ground under a manhole cover and over the main drain. He'd added, 'We used to have to build them out of bricks. It was a helluva job, standing in a slimy pit.'
And that's when I said it: 'I suppose it's a lot easier to pop in a single piece.'
'I tell you what,' he says, 'if you're here Monday, you can see us "popping it in."' You'd think I could spot sarcasm at 50 metres by now.
Three days later, I call at the site late afternoon. Simon's head, woolly cap above cigarette, pokes out from the top of the hard grey canister half-buried in the mud. Simon is Nik's business partner. He nods, a hand emerging to flick away the fag, then drops back out of sight.
'It took three of us most of the day to heave it into place,' Nik explains. I mumble something sympathetic, cut my losses and leave.
Nik and Simon are our biggest counter-weight to the bad luck that keeps bobbing up. As well as organising all the work, administering finances and contracts, Nik has another key role: keeping our spirits up. He's also not averse to laying blocks and brushing muck (which we now know to be the technical term for neatening up the edges of recently applied mortar in a wall). Site work however, is mainly Simon's lot. When he's there, as he has been the last couple of weeks, the job rattles along, with drains dug, foundations filled, till we imagine we'll be ahead of schedule.
That is until the Great Radon Barrier Crisis.
At first we were told that our site is not exposed to significant levels of the carcinogenic gas, radon. Then the building control officer – that's the bloke whose job it is to make sure we comply with all the detailed regulations governing how the house is constructed – says it is, after all. In some areas of the country, radon from natural sources can build up in the soil, then seep into houses, and, it's thought, cause cancer. Nik reassures us. The radon count under Stow is low, but building regs are very cautious.
'All you need to do,' he explains, 'is put a bitumen seal over the whole concrete base of the house.'
'Fine, can't see a problem,' I say.
'Then it would need to go up inside the walls to the ceiling.'
'What!' I squeak. 'Up inside the walls to the ceiling! You're kidding.'
'Nope.'
'You don't mean covering the whole of the Cotswold stone wall inside the house with filthy black tar!'
'Well, it's a kind of black fabric. It's not "filthy tar". And you wouldn't see it. It'll be behind the plaster.'
'So what happens to my exposed stone wall along the length of the living room? This is a bloody disaster!'
'Mmm. I see what you mean.'
I scuttle off down to Maggie's shop to pour the poisonous news into her ear. She's advising an American woman on the quirks of French couture, processing a credit card payment from one of her local regulars, and supervising the delivery of some designer jeans, all at the same time.
'This style's called Lauren Vidal… pop your PIN number in please… put the second box in the corner over there… maybe Nik knows some other way of doing it,' she says. I nod and leave.
The other thing I should have mentioned about Nik is, he's not one of those builders who stands there scratching his chin and shaking his head and saying, 'It's a problem. I knew we should have never tried that. I don't know what we'll do about it.' Nik likes to tell you the answer in the same breath as announcing the problem. And if the solution's not obvious, that just makes him more determined to hunt it down and serve it up on a plate. If you're ever going to be silly enough to do this converting an old stables yourself, and you ask me for one piece of advice, I'd say
, 'Find yourself a Nik and a Simon.'
So I try to hold fast to this faith for the next couple of days till I'm rewarded by a phone call. And sure enough, he's found a trump card again.
There's a new product, a radon-proof membrane which you fit over the base of the building, and – here's the important bit – in our case, it only needs to be fixed on the inside walls for the first metre above the floor. This bit will be hidden in plaster. Then above that, we'll have our 3 metre's height of exposed, butter-coloured Cotswold stone, once it's been pressure cleaned, that is. Nik's already got the OK from the building regs officer, and the builders' merchant has told him they'll get it in from the factory in south Wales.
The only problem – or what we think is the only problem – is a delay of a week or so till we get our hands on it. So what's become a sad and familiar story is played out again. No other work's possible till the stuff arrives.
I stop by the site that morning just to walk about and picture what it'll look like when this is where we live. I need cheering up. You'd think by now I'd be used to this stop-start rhythm. But, as Maggie will tell you, patience has never been my strong suit. All I see are two stone walls, a hard concrete floor, an idle cement mixer, and slag heaps of muddy rubble. There's a morose silence about the place. It's like a teenager's bedroom at eleven in the morning. It'll be noisy again later, but right now its sulky messiness feels permanent.
A Horse in the Bathroom Page 15
