Things Lost and Sometimes Foiund

By Paul Buckley

I don’t know about you but it’s the small things in life that fascinate me. Some advice. Don’t put up with a 70 birthday it you’re not ready to be seventy. Just rename it. How often have you read instructions telling you even a child can assemble it. Don’t believe them. What to do when a belligerent 12 year old boy starts throwing stones through your neighbour’s living room window. It might feel like a live bee in your pocket? But usually it’s not. And then there is the face cream crisis. If you’re in Venice, watch a gondola race but don’t bet on it. Goats Rue, a fascinating plant which some farmers treat as the enemy. How did the new Prius lose her virginity? Remember that a cat who brings live rats into the house is not a popular pet. When you’re in Turkey, don’t miss the magic of a ride on a hot air balloon at dawn in Cappadocia. Read how four students from Singapore cope with their first New Zealand winter, or what can happen when you get your roof painted. Weather bombs that sometimes don’t come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Buckley
• Release date: Jul 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310073144

Paul Buckley

Paul Buckley has written more than twenty books some of which are available in ebook formats. Paul passed away in 2017. He lived most of his life in Palmerston North, New Zealand, a small city with a long name, a city that is well worth visiting. This is the place where the City Fathers constantly shift their river around to stop it flooding. Things he liked: rainbows, walking in warm rain, the sounds of strong wind, shared laughter, traveling on trains, surprising photos, hot nights, generous acts and thoughtfulness. Note to travelers, Palmerston North is in the North Island and not to be confused with Palmerston, a tiny town in the South Island of New Zealand.

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Things Lost and Sometimes Found

Paul Buckley

2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

ISBN 978-1-310073-14-4

Copyright 2012

Life’s Like That

Things Lost and Sometimes Found

The first time we lost something, we put it down to jetlag.

It is our second or is that third day in the United Kingdom and we are still adjusting to the 12-hour time shift. We take a train into Wales to begin a long days walking. Scrambling out at a tiny station immersed in the green countryside with only one house in sight. The train rattles its way on down the line.

Bruce has his pack off and is searching for something. Then he tells us, I’ve left my camera on the train. I put it under the seat and didn’t remember it when we got off.

The silence of this lovely countryside underlines the absence of the train which is carrying Bruce’s camera further away every second. We are helpless. We can’t follow the train in a car as we have no car, we have no way of communicating with the train, our cell phones are of no use because we don’t have a number to call.

I instinctively start toward the house to get assistance but Bob, who is already studying what I think is the timetable for this railway line, immediately demands I stop and wait for him to do what must be done. I obey. He finds a number for Lost and Found on the railways and dials it. He listens without saying anything for a while and then delivers a terse message saying what has been lost, on what line and how to contact us. And that is all we can do.

As we begin our walk Bruce is already thinking about a replacement camera; after all this is the start of a six-week holiday, and it would be unthinkable for him to continue without the ability to take photos. Fortunately his Panasonic camera is old and somewhat out of date. He can now get all the features he wants in a much smaller camera. If you want to be an optimist, this is a blessing. Bruce hates discarding anything while it is still working perfectly but now he has change forced upon him.

Next day he begins looking on line for reviews of new cameras. To make his decision to update easier, I decide to make an attempt to talk with someone on Railways about his lost camera. All Bob was able to do the day before was leave an answering machine message on a Lost and Found number where a message tells him that nothing will happen for six days. In six days we will be in Munich.

I ask Bob for the name of the Station where we left the camera on the train and he says, You won’t need that. So I go outside the caravan and call the Railways General Enquiry number myself. The woman I get is very helpful. I tell her our problem namely with the six day delay before we should check for the lost camera. As we are short term visitors to the UK we will never be able to retrieve the camera. She agrees to make a check with Lost and Found in Cardiff herself. Her first question is of course What is the name of the station where you got off the train? I race back inside the caravan and turn the problem over to Bob. With some hasty checking of schedules and an abortive attempt to spell the name of the station using a phonetic alphabet Bob gives the woman the information. He also gives her a detailed description of the camera, along with and our cell phone number and she promises to call back. True to her word she soon calls with the news that the camera has not been handed in to Lost Property. I don’t know about Bob but I regard this as good news. Nothing can now hinder Bruce’s search for a new camera.

Bruce intensifies his search for another camera and soon reaches the conclusion he will buy the Panasonic camera that is a newer version of mine. He checks out prices on Amazon.com before we set off on the day’s activities. That evening Bob does a bit of research and sends Bruce the welcome news that Amazon.com have the camera he wants and they have 24-hour delivery. Back in New Zealand there are no warehouses holding stock ready for delivery and we can’t hope to get such a rapid response from Amazon. There is something to be said for living near the big population centres but not much. In the end the delays don’t usually matter. Bruce puts the order in the next morning, the camera arrives the day after as promised and the problem is solved. Our holiday can continue without any shopping interruptions.

On our trip to Colchester by train we are suddenly put in the reverse position. The man in the seat behind us leans forward and asks, Is this yours? and hands us a wallet.

We deny all knowledge and ask where he found it. Under your seat, is the reply.

It is obvious that a man who got up from the seat and left the train at the last stop must have dropped it. We open the wallet to see if there is a contact number so we can phone him. There isn’t although his address is given on a driver’s license. We copy this into one of my notebooks.

After our experience with the camera we are reluctant to hand it over to the guard. It will disappear into the system and not appear until the man has renewed all his cards. The man who found it assures us that there will be a responsible railway boss at the Colchester Station who will get it back to the owner. So when Bruce and I leave the train, despite knowing that DJT is waiting outside for us to emerge, we search for that responsible person. He appears as if by magic in the form of a young man who exudes confidence and honesty.

He takes the wallet and assures us he will act immediately and try to contact the man.

Not wanting to leave this matter hanging unresolved I am keen tofind out what actually happens as seen from his end of the deal. As good luck would have it he lives in the same town as Jessica and Alice who we visited two days later. They use the web to find the street and DJT willingly drives us there.

When I knock on the door there is no response. Disappointed I try again, but still nothing. Beside the house there is a brick wall hiding the garden and Bruce suggests I look over it and there he is walking across the garden. I call out to him and he comes to the door. We tell him the story, and find out he is the man’s father. He tells us his son was contacted rapidly but by this time he had already cancelled his cards.

We didn’t think we would get it back, the man says, People aren’t so honest these days.

He offers us a reward but we assure him our visit is only out of interest. We depart satisfied knowing he got the wallet back even if it wasn’t quick enough to prevent the inconvenience of getting new cards. You can’t win them all.

We are in the last two weeks of our trip when I lose something.

It is so easy to blame someone else when you lose something and naturally I do. It is our Turkish Guide on a trip to interesting sites around Cappadocia, a delightful woman who was just doing her job. When we are several levels down in an underground city she calls for someone to produce a cell phone with a torch on it. Out comes mine and she shines it up the shaft she is trying to illuminate. No the cell phone wasn’t lost then and you might be tempted to think I am drawing a long bow when I sheet the blame home to her. But I do.

The next day we visit an Outdoor Museum, a promoters name for an ancient community of Christians who carved out chapels and living quarters from the accommodating Cappadocia rock. Many of the chapels have interesting murals and when I have trouble seeing one I pull out my cell phone to light up the detail. This is a mistake a cell phone is for receiving and delivering texts not for casual use as a torch. In this role it makes many unnecessary excursions in and out of my pocket and I become careless with its security.

Afterwards in the blazing heat we explore canyons with interesting rock formations. It is bedtime before I discover my loss. Bruce calls and texts my phone but we get no reply. We leave next morning for the south coast. Bruce keeps texting with my phone but without any response. My only hope is that someone will find the cell phone and in some unspecified way return it to me.

During the next week, Bruce keeps calling my phone and although it obligingly rings no one picks it up. It is clear that wherever it is, it is not in a place where crowds of people wander through. In particular this rules out the outdoor museum, where dozens of busloads and hundreds of people visit every day of the week.

Then I have a brain wave, Let’s text a message to my phone telling them to phone your number if they find it. Bruce is doubtful, he probably regards it as a waste of time but he gives me the cell phone and I send a text mentioning we are from New Zealand to provide what I hope is a point of difference.

We are down at the waterfront in Istanbul, on our last day in Turkey, when Bruce’s cell phone rings. Beyond all expectations it is a Dutch woman who has found my phone and read the text. She tells us the batteries are getting low and Bruce with good presence of mind tells her we will text back with our instructions. After a moments thought I realise I want it back. If the phone has survived this long in the 37-degree heat then it deserves to return home. I dismiss the other alternative, namely get the woman to send only the tiny sim card. She texts back telling me it will be expensive and am I sure I want my sunburned old cell phone back. Of course I do. I ask her to send it from Holland and promise I will reimburse her in Euros.

It is now over three months since we arrived back and the phone hasn’t arrived yet but I am hopeful and in no hurry to get a new sim card.

The third time we lose something we are most definitely not at fault, rather we are the innocent victims of things beyond our control. We arrive at Dalaman Airport on a flight from Istanbul. We wait with all the other passengers for our packs to appear on the carousel. Gradually everyone else peels away with their bags leaving Bruce and me along with another lady standing before the empty carousel. Just as the realisation that our packs are lost finally hits home a Turkish lady appears to take us to Lost Luggage to make a report. Losing luggage between Dalaman and Istanbul must be a common experience if they have a person ready and waiting to help you. However good Turkish Air is with respect to customer service it clearly has trouble ensuring bags get transferred from one plane to another.

The trouble is, and there usually are extra complications in these situations and it is no different now, we are expecting to be met by a representative from, as the email tells us, our Local Car Rental Partner, Circular Car Hire. This was the cheapest car rental company which we located through a generic care hire web site. If we spend time making the report on our packs, the representative, tired of waiting, might leave.

We decide to split up, I will go out of the arrival hall and Bruce will go off to make the report. Unfortunately in a country in the Middle East security procedures are tight and rigidly enforced. Unlike Palmerston North Airport, where exiting to the street from the arrival area (which is also the departure area), is an easily reversible process, you simply walk through the sliding door and back, at Dalaman Airport out on the street I will be as completely separated from Bruce as if we are in different countries.

Out in the sunshine I search for our friendly Circular Car Hire man but he is nowhere to be found. It is not a difficult search because at this small country airport there are no other flights and the place has emptied out completely. The number of people I have to check can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

So, in my ignorance, I try to walk back into arrivals. I get through the first door OK and after a brief wait I manage to slip through the next as it slides open to allow someone to exit. A guard is on me in a second. His English is not very extensive but it is not difficult to understand the words, Not allowed in here, as he ushers me out again. The annoying thing is this same man saw me come off the plane a short time before but regulations are regulations and I suppose from his point of view I might have loaded my back pack with explosives since he last saw me.

So there I am standing in the sun again. Normally this would not be a problem but of course I lost my cell phone in Cappadoca so I have no way or contacting Bruce. One of the men standing around by the taxis comes over and tells me that he saw a man holding a notice with names on it but he went on to International arrivals.

The directions to International are muddled but I manage to make it in, passing through the departures security system along the way. The departure hall is totally empty. Not a sign of our Rental Car representative so I head to a desk clearly labelled INFORMATION. The lady behind the desk has even less English that the rest. Finally she understands I have lost luggage and then triumphantly points toward the Check in desks of Turkish Air. I go over but of course there is no one there. I head back to INFORMATION and this time she wants me to go to the Turkish Air counter that sells tickets. However that too is closed. It is clear I am not going to reach Lost Luggage through the International Terminal.

It is a complete lock out. About now I wish we had rented a car through one of the big companies such as Avis, or Eurocar, as they have desks over in the Domestic Terminal, outside the security area. But we haven’t; we have already paid our money to this small company who have now disappeared off the face of the earth.

Outside Domestic I see a woman texting and when she has finished I ask her to text Bruce inside. She agrees but when she is still typing the message Bruce emerges from the Domestic Terminal and we are reunited.

Now we can use Bruce’s cell phone to call the Circular Car numbers. The first number is unproductive but an English-speaking man answers in response to the second. He will be with us shortly. Things are falling into place.

I like him immediately, a strong Russian looking man, he comes straight to the point. Do you mind if we give you a manual car instead of the automatic you ordered? Our Automatic car got involved in a crash. We don’t really have a choice and I am happy enough but of course Bruce prefers the automatic.

His office is at the side of a petrol station 2 kilometers from the airport. After the paperwork, we as usual decline extra insurance cover and I assumed we would walk over to our car. Things are not this simple; we will ride with him some distance to another town. It is on our way south so we happily agree. It is a pleasant drive which takes us through a tunnel for the toll of 1.50 TL. Just before the tollgates there is an arrow pointing to an alternative route up over the hills, but we don’t take it.

The hand over is also much more interesting than anything Avis or EuroCar will give you. One moment we are driving on this four-lane highway on the edge of the town and the next we pull up behind what turns out to be our rental car. It is a diesel which has very good fuel economy, he tells me then, there on the edge of the road, I get basic instruction on the car and we get in. There is no need to transfer the luggage, we don’t have any, and drive off.

Mustafa the owner of the Flower Pension is very sympathetic to our plight and promises to make a call next morning to ensure our bags get to us. Fortunately I have most of my electronic gear in my small pack. Bruce has to buy a toothbrush and a very smart looking Turkish cap, and we both buy swimming shorts. Although we get the charming young woman at the We sell everything Shop to write by hand a list of our purchases in case we want to claim from our insurance, we never do. Late on our first full day a taxi with our packs arrives. It is fortunate we are there because he cannot hand them over until Bruce has signed for them. We leave the driver with Mustafa as they try to decide where he will take the rest of the lost bags in his Taxi.

You are probably wondering what has happened with the Dutch woman and my cell phone. All I can say is ‘Never say Never.’ We arrived back at the start of August and I borrow a cell phone from Hayley. It is a more powerful and multifunctional cell phone than my basic model, but it has the disadvantage that because of all the extra options available you have to negotiate more menu options before you get to do what you want.

In the first week of November, over three months since our return, I spot a cell phone from Stationery Warehouse for only $29 and decide it is time to give up on my Dutch lady and buy a new phone. I buy a Two Degrees sim card, put ten dollars on it and begin using the new phone. At first I don’t spend time on the tedious task of copying Bruce’s contact list of phone numbers into the new phone because I still hold out the increasingly faint hope my old phone will still arrive. However by the end of first weekend, I am so frustrated at not having easy access to the numbers I sit down and patiently copy them all across.

On the following Saturday morning I go to the letterbox, (there is no prize for guessing what I found there), yes a package containing my old cell phone. I am delighted. I felt sure the woman would be reliable and was disappointed when I did not receive the phone. Now by the same extent my pleasure is all the greater, because the surprise is all the greater.

Just as much a surprise are the Polish postage stamps. So far from being from The Netherlands, Monika is from Poland. Two postcards are included, one with pictures of the city she lives in (WROCLAW) and one a lovely photo taken of a white stork returning to its nest across the bright orange of a sky at sunset. On the postcard of the city Monika writes:

I hope you enjoyed your holidays in Europe. I’m sending your phone. Please let me know that you received it and that it still works

On the postcard showing the Stork Monika writes;

About 20-25% of white stork global population live in Poland. That means that 1 per 4 storks is Pole. We also have the black stork. Poland is famous among European bird watchers. If you are one of them you must visit my country! (Yes – I’m an ecologist).

The Polish names are wonderful. Monika’s family name is SZYRMER. I have no idea how to pronounce it although Len at the lunch table makes an impressive attempt. He has Polish ancestors and he’s been to Poland.

I print off a range of pictures, some of Bruce and me and Palmerston North friends, some of scenery and of course a range of native bird photos. Although by the conversion I do using Google, the stamps only add up to three NZ dollars, I enclose a ten Euro note, along of course with a letter. Since Monika included her email address, I email a message to her. This turns out not to be a straightforward matter, as a server somewhere in Poland keeps rejecting my message. The message reads, Messages from your mail server temporarily deferred due to user complaints. It never gets through but with Bob’s help I continue to try

And now I want to go to Poland not only to see the white storks but also to meet Monika. I hope it happens.

Wrapping the House in Cotton wool

Really the name of the franchise says it all and we should have been warned, Hire a Hubby. I ask you what are most husbands like when it comes to doing jobs around the house? I can only speak for New Zealand Husbands and then only second hand, but the truth is they don’t.

The wife has a request, The latch on the window is broken, can you please fix it for me.

Invariably the answer is a cheerful yes and perhaps you think the job is as good as done. No, negotiations have just started. The man is busy with other things such as his weekly games of golf and there is an important rugby match on TV he just has to watch and then there is the night he plays poker with the boys. When reminded of the window latch three weeks later, he issues a wave of reassuring assertions, I’ve just been a bit busy in the last few weeks but the rugby season will soon be over.

Does the job get done? Well, no, and then the wife finds something else, The door in the bathroom is jamming and scraping the tiles. Can you fix that too?

Again the answer is of course a smiling yes but with two jobs to focus on he hovers in a region of doubt and indecision that prevents him working on either and this is before the third job rolls in.

In the end the wife takes a night course at the local hardware store and does the jobs herself.

The man is a bit hurt, Why did you do that? I was going to do them next weekend.

Given the average husband’s track record, who you might ask would ever want to Hire a Hubby? Well unfortunately the answer is us.

His name is Nic, and he hasn’t done too badly on the small jobs we have asked him to do, always totally unpredictable about exactly when he will begin, but in the end he does come and the jobs do get done. Nic built our berry cage and Nic built a new fence across the front making excellent jobs of them both.

Back to the house. We have already done pretty well in the insulation stakes. We were, if not pioneers in the field, then certainly early adopters.

When I bought the house there was insulation, in the form of a product called insufluff in the ceiling. However it was old and had settled over the last thirty years making it less effective, so Bruce suggested, and I readily agreed, that Pink Batts be put on top of the insufluff. According to the experts forty percent of the heat is lost through the ceiling, so this was a very good start.

Next we investigated double-glazing at a time when it had not become fashionable. One method suggested involved chiselling out the old wooden frame and fitting a second pane of glass adjacent to the first. This sounded a Mickey Mouse arrangement to me and did not reduce the amount of wood in a window, a factor if you don’t like the tedium of painstakingly painting window frames. Fortunately there was a firm in Palmerston North that did fit double glazed glass in aluminium frames. It cost about $12,000 to do all the windows and doors but what’s money when your comfort is at stake.

We questioned the use of aluminium frames saying Aluminium conducts heat - isn’t there a double glazed window with an insulated frame available? We got the usual fudged answer you expect when you are asking for something out of the mainstream, There used to be a non-conducting frame but they were expensive and nobody wanted them.

We didn’t push the issue. The firm was very professional, all the windows and doors were measured up and the fittings were factory made. The installation took place over three days, with the old windows taken out leaving only a wooden frame around the very outside and then they slipped the double glazed windows into place. With insect screens fitted to about half the windows we lived in a new environment, one without insects and with heat insulation. I did spot a design flaw in the screens, only after they were fitted of course, namely two small gaps at the top of each screen. I plugged those with tightly fitting polyurethane so cockroaches from the garden could not come inside.

As for under the floor insulation, the first product on offer did not impress me. It was a heat reflecting blanket stapled on the beams. I wanted something more substantial. Thick Polystyrene blocks installed between beams tempted me but when rolls of green stuff came on the market the problem was solved. Nic our Hire a Hubby man did take on our under floor insulation job, but this is when we found out he was developing into an entrepreneur. He did not appear himself but instead sent along two young men to do the job.

With insulation in the ceiling and under the floor, with double-glazing and heat pumps we were well set up for the winter months.

There was only one hole left in our defences, namely that there was no insulation in the walls. And despite all our other insulations, and despite air temperatures being maintained at 19 degrees by the heat pumps, on very cold mornings I still felt cold. We decide this is because on these days the cold wall no longer acts to radiate heat but instead it absorbs heat leaving us feeling colder. However retro fitting insulation in walls seemed like a step too far, a job too big to be considered.

Others have found this is not an easy problem to solve. The first product and one that proved quite popular involved drilling holes through the outside fabric and pumping in an aqueous slurry that set as it dried out. I didn’t like the idea of holes in the outside wall, I didn’t like the idea of having so much water in the walls and I did not like not knowing if there were gaps in the insulation, after all you can’t see inside the walls. One friend also had the experience of a hole in the bathroom wall that the contractor was not aware of and only after he realised he could not fill that wall did he investigate to find the bathroom piled high with the insulation slurry.

Then one day we happened to be chatting to Nic, our Hire a Hubby man and the topic of insulation in the walls came up. He said, It’s no problem. I can cut out parts of the wall and push in the insulation and it won’t be too expensive. When pushed he guessed a ball park figure of about $7000 for the three bedrooms the dining room and the lounge, and this included repainting the walls afterward, and removing the carpet which we planned to replace with a polished wood floor. All the 1960 houses were built with native New Zealand timber which looks great when sanded and polyurethaned. But I put the idea on hold.

However when we were planning this year’s six-week trip to Europe’ Bruce suddenly said, We should get the insulation put in the walls while we’re away.

It would also mean we would avoid the nasty smell of the solvent based polyurethane we planned to use on the timber floor. So we contacted Nic, explained the timetable we wanted to follow and asked for a proper quote.

Well even extracting a quote proved difficult.