Official: Transylvania's good for your health

Just been to my nice doctor, and Transylvania is officially Good For You. Everything's heading in the right direction - blood pressure down, blood iron levels up, blood sugar down, HDL (good) cholesterol fine, LDL (bad) down. [NB This is despite a butter/cream/sour cream/cheese/etc rich diet] Cholesterol as a whole, brilliant. Well, 5.4 in fact, but that's only just outside the Smug bracket and despite the diet described above. Even my weight's down despite ditto. Freshly-squeezed raw milk has much to offer, as has the lack of microwaves from minimal numbers of telecoms gadgets, minimal car exhaust particles, minimal household chemicals, and maximal jollity provided by neighbours, human, furred and feathered. And maximal Hobbs.

Come and get some. It's on the WHO's mandatory prescriptions list instead of statins (or it should be).

Climb ev'ry mountain

When the snow melted enough to get the car out, I dug out the worst of the snow on the track, helped by kind Maria and Chivu, and the little Skoda skidded and waggled its way up the hill, slithered over the snow and mud on the flat bit, then proceeded in a decorous fashion down to the main 'road' and made light of the packed snow and the gradient down to the valley floor and out to Zarnesti. I went straight to the tyre place and got winter tyres fitted. Then to the shops for fresh supplies before taking a deep breath and heading home. The Skoda, with its winter tyres on, apparently thought it was a Landrover, and strolled back up the five miles of packed snow and ice without a qualm. The snow had smoothed out the potholes so the road was smoother than usual. Not prepared to get caught out again, I parked outside Rodica's house, just at the top of the access road, able to creep down the hill even if the snow came in again.
One day I took my chance and headed for Brasov to stock up for Christmas while I had a chance. All was fine until I got back to the uphill road; the wind had come up and had whipped the snow into drifts and made the drive up a little wayward. In the village it was getting dark, the wind was wicked, and I couldn't get up the access road. I had to back down and park in the lane, and carry up as much as I could in the growing gloom. Getting across the flat top field was the worst bit - the remains of old rutted frozen snow, with fresh powder up to my knees and the wind blowing horizontal hard enough to knock me over. I was very pleased to reach the house after 20 slow, icy minutes struggling up, over and down.

Two feet under

Britain had been gasping for breath under ice and snow for a couple of weeks before Magura had any - although we'd had a dusting or two in October. Then on 5th December, two feet fell during the day, and I woke on the Sunday to a silent white world.

Hobbs was intrigued but unimpressed as she sank up to her uxters on the front steps. She braved it out, exploring and examining the white stuff until she worked it out.

The snow had taken me by surprise with the car down by the house - by the time I realised it was going to settle, it was too late to get the car up the hill, and it was ten days before I could get out. I was beginning to panic about the lack of green veg and fresh stuff, but I had a ton of dried stores and a ready supply of raw milk from the Banus' cow, plenty of logs for the stoves, and a spare gas bottle for the stove. In other words, I was snug as a roach in a carpet.

Hobbs takes a beating

Poor little cat. I found her sitting in the hall looking profoundly miserable, her fur matted and damp; I tried to pick her up and she screamed and hissed, obviously in pain as she staggered down the stairs, growling as she went. I put a towel on the bathroom floor for her, and she curled up on it, getting the warmth from the underfloor heating. I gave her a few minutes of quantum touch until she growled, then just sat with her, then a bit more Q touch - and repeated for about two hours until she didn't growl when I touched a sore bit. After that she got up, had a drink, mooched about, had a bit to eat, mooched around some more, slept and mooched and slept. The next morning she was still sore but playful, galloping round after the chickens and wanting to play as normal. It was a week before I could pick her up, but she refused to have her life disrupted for long by a bully. I don't know if she'd been mauled by a dog, or duffed up by one of the tomcats. She's a tough little number, and brave as the proverbial lion.

Fall back

When I got back to Magura in early October, the leaves were catching fire with autumn colour, and the new school year loomed. I'd agreed to take on the role of English teacher - profesoara de engleza - at the village school; a couple of hours a week, that's all, but I was very aware that I had no experience teaching kids, and no knowledge of English as a foreign language. What I could offer was a properly English accent, half-decent use of the language, the ability to spell and a willingness to make a fool of myself in the interests of educational entertainment. With my neighbour Roxana (who teaches Romanian and French) playing straight man to my fool, we embarked on a wobbly path of learning. So far I think I've learned more than the kids have, but we have fun and they seem to be enjoying it.

In early November, when Brits were dragging the unfortunate Guy Fawkes up on to his annual bonfire, Alina was organising St Dimitriu's Fire to keep the village safe and purify the earth for the next year. The young leapt through the flames and the rest of us watched, some with admiration, some with nostalgia. I retired around 10pm but the vim of youth kept Alina and her coterie of teenagers kept the fire going till the sky began to lighten.

Role in Hay

Met two couples and a single woman keen to housesit during my winter travels. Met Chris and Ellie in a cafe in Hay, and although the other three people were all great, they were both keen on having a good internet signal at the house, and that's not really how I'd describe it. Weak, intermittent, fickle - but not 'good'. Chris, Ellie and dog Bramble seemed like a good bet, and good sports - they have to take me on trust as much as the other way round. So Hobbs would have a friend, toy, slave or target, depending on the chemistry; either way, she'd be entertained as well as looked after.

Most expensive MOT in Britain

Had to drive the Skoda back to Liverpool for its MOT, due before the end of September. 1500 miles each way to get the certificate. Serious ouch. Must get another done in March - at least then I'll be able to do it on the scheduled annual UK visit rather than half-way through the year. Spent a night in Vienna chez Natalie and mad cat Nula but otherwise slept in the car. Quite comfortable, and Europe is civilised about letting one sleep in motorway services without penalty. And about providing hot clean showers, and good coffee for breakfast. Had two weeks in the UK, saw some chums and my nieces & great-nieces, and filled the car with books for me and for school, brown rice and chick peas (difficult to find in Brasov), coconut milk and spices (ditto) and lots of marmelade.

August freeze

I wondered why I was so cold through the night of 31st August. Slept badly because of the chill. Woke up to snow on the ridge, and the thermomenter close to zero - it had been well below during the night. August? Albeit the last night, but August? A hint of winter to come.

Mirabel plum delish

Does anyone know the English equivalent of the Spanish membrillo? Maybe it's fruit cheese, but that always sounds odd. But it's fruit and sugar (50/50) boiled well past the settting point for jam, until it's gloopy and leaving a trail like the parting of the Red Sea at the bottom of the pan. Whatever it is, I'd picked a heap of mirabels - cherry plums in English, corcodus in Romanian - and didn't really want jam. So I made this cheese wotsit, putting in a shiver of cinnamon, but only a hint. The resulting preserve was very good - solid enough to slice, really tangy, full of plummy flavour, aromatic and a lovely lingering taste. Highly recommended.

Two litres of cherry brandy

When the cherries were ripe, my neighbour Emilia came up to the house with a business-like glass bottle - the home-made wine making kind. She'd already picked the fruit off my trees, and now showed me how to make traditional cherry liqueur. Rinse fruit, remove stems and leaves, and stuff into bottle until crammed. Pour in sugar. Ram in cork and put bottle outside in sun for a week. Seven days later Emilia returned, and in the meantime I'd acquired half a litre of pure alcohol. Pour the sugary cherry juice through a funnel into a two-litre water bottle, top it up with the alcohol, screw the top on and bob's your second cousin. Delicious blood-coloured cherry brandy. Nothing like the muck you buy at Christmas - this is fruity, fresh, potent and utterly yummy.

Hobbs meets Smoke Alarm

After a nervous couple of minutes on all sides, Hobbs came to an arrangement with the chickens. If they squawked and ran when she bounced on them, they were fair game. Pom-Pom was a cert for this, but Smoke Alarm and Peachy were quick to point out to the cat that they were not to be trifled with. Fred tended to loom over Hobbs, being at least three times her height, and gave her a Look. She never bothered him, not even trying to filch a bit of bread from him. (Hobbs likes bread, and chocolate cake.)

Building to a climax

Into the autumn Bogdan and his crew were working like nutters getting the kitchen done, the stairwell plastered and the study given board walls and plasterboard ceiling. Actually getting the stairwell done involved cutting through the reinforced concrete floor: fireworks when circular saw met steel mesh. Pretty. Plastering meant the water boiler could go in, and the washing machine. First hot shower? Nope. Boiler not working. Turned out there was a leak under the floor so boiler was always on the boil but water was never more than tepid. Leak fixed, boiler boiled... hot shower. Utter, utter bliss.
In August the furniture and boxes finally arrived, after some narky phone calls to London and Bucharest. Not too much was broken despite the local carriers hurling boxes marked 'FRAGILE' from lorry to cart to stack in house. NB the Romanian word for fragile is fragil.
Bogdan tackled the stairs as a solo project and despite initial angst and much measuring and remeasuring, they went in sweet as silk, smooth as a nut, and at last I could trot up and down from kitchen to study without going outside. The cat designated them a play area. The bathroom ditto, except when the underfloor heating went in and on, when Hobbs learned that stretching out on the bathmat was a good plan.

Brazen, Peers

The sheep. Ah, the sheep. Five of them, belonging next door but believing my land, house, kitchen and vegetable matter was theirs by right. I've long given up trying to shoo them off, since giving them a fright made them run ten yards before stopping, turning, glaring and returning. I gave in and started offering them the discards of my veg, and tried them on banana peel. They loved it; fought over it. One of them is learning how to open the back door. Brazen, I call her, because she is. [Peers, because she does - under the bottom rail of the fence.] Brazen has already worked out the handle, but hasn't yet learned how to pull on it hard enough. Give it time.
Then there's the horses. Fana (down the hill) and Carina (up the hill)

are best friends and spent much of summer breaking out of their own paddocks to be with each other, often on neutral ground, which usually meant my patch. I gave them both their first taste of carrot - Fana's eyes almost popped out of her head with delight and surprise, and Carina was completely overcome. Neither needed to be asked twice, and one morning I opened the kitchen door to have both horses shove their heads into the house, sniffing out carrots, sugar lumps and other delights. If you know how to push horses backwards out of a doorway, let me know.

Black redstart baby

A Black Redstart had two broods in my house last summer - the first in May, another in July/August. There were so many holes in the attic that it was easy for her to flit in and out, and before I moved in she only had to contend with building noise downstairs. She didn't like it when anyone climbed a ladder and invaded her space, and would flit round the attic tutting furiously. Her first nest was on the north wall, propped on a beam; the second at the top of the king post in the roof. By the time her second brood was fledging, I'd moved in. One baby mucked up his first flight from the nest and had fluttered to the floor of my 'bedroom' - there being no floor/ceiling between it and the attic. The baby didn't have the oomph to fly out again, so for a week or ten days he was stuck in the room with me. I'd wake most mornings to find myself the object of a beady-eyed stare from a disapproving feathery face. As soon as I moved, he'd go all shy and scurry behind a bit of plasterboard leaning against the wall. If I lay very still with my eyes half-shut, mum would tut about, her mouth full of grubs and flies, until she felt safe to drop down, feed her chick, and zip out again. The persistence paid off. I'd been worried about finding a sad little body, but mum fed him until he was strong enough to fly up and out, and for the rest of the summer I saw him perched on top of the hayloft, happy as larry.

He was fully-grown before Hobbs arrived, and she hasn't yet caught a redstart, so with luck he survived to migrate south and will be back this summer.

Fried stake and chicken witters

Only a couple of weeks late, we moved in, with a working loo, basin, bath with shower, and sink - albeit only air mattresses and cold water. First purchases were a mini fridge and a camping stove, with which we cooked a three-course dinner for six, reasonably successfully. The big fridge and gas stove arrived but had to take up temporary residence in the dining room as the kitchen was still a long way from readiness. Next door's chickens were making their presence felt, with the cockerel Fred

and a wily hen, Smoke Alarm (she made a piercing noise like a smoke alarm battery going flat) leading the raids on my kitchen. Soon Mini Ha-Ha (two feathers for a tail), Ruby 1 & 2 (identical twins), Burnt Pan, Scorchmark, Parkin (ginger), Peachy (the peachiest arse ever seen on any hen) Pom-Pom (mad hair) and Sam Tyler (pretty boy bantam) were breakfast regulars and developed a taste for watermelon, overripe tomatoes and left-over biscuit dough.

Gunner Hobbs and Life on Mars

Once installed in Magura, Rob and I settled to a summery life of building and lazing. 'Building' for me consisted of long conversations with Bogdan about how big a hole he could knock in the kitchen wall for a new window without the house falling down, or raiding the Hornbach DIY shed in Brasov for more plasterboard, plumbing eccentricities and assorted fixings. Rob weighed in as builder's assistant, hole digger and concrete chipper. At Adriana's we discovered a small scrawny kitten who had natural charm and winning ways, being fearless and affectionate. I couldn't resist feeding him, which became expensive as he was inhaling food at the rate of a hundredweight a day.

Rob insisted we call him Scuzzy, but this struck me as grossly unfair as the kitten was scrupulously clean and self-contained. His green eyes reminded me of a character in the Hornblower TV series called Gunner Hobbs, and by dint of ignoring Rob, Gunner Hobbs he became. I later realised that what I thought was the promise of balls wasn't, but Hobbs she remained, even though I removed her from duty. As well as a Munro of food per day, the cat was inevitably allowed to sleep on my bed, which made her floatingly happy, her purr volume up to max. For a number of weeks I was adamant that I wouldn't accept responsibility for the cat or for any living thing, but as Hobbs insinuated herself into my life, it became impossible to resist, so in August she was plucked from the guest house and removed to her new demesne.

She took charge and took on the job of keeping an eye on the place and watching for interruptions.
While we were still in the guesthouse waiting for the house to become livable, we wiled away the long evening watching Life on Mars. Rob had never seen it, and liked the first episode so much we worked our way steadily through both series of Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler scrapping, drinking and being offensive, noble and daft.

Road trip: sausage, bullfrog and Klaus-Hans

The ferry from Ramsgate left just after midnight on 1st July, and for the next eight days we puttered through Europe, the Skoda Fabia loaded to the gunnels with my gubbins, my cousin Rob and his luggage stuffed into the passenger seat. We reached Bruges at 5.30am and failed to find anywhere for breakfast so ate a bit of our picnic watching a Liver Bird (or its Flemish equivalent) sunning itself in the dawn light,

not minding Rob's impression of it. Then it was off to Germany via Robertville. We fell over Blankenheim by happy accident, where we met the divine El Vira, but not her amazing parrot who was still kipping. In Aicha, close to the Austrian border, we made friends with happy locals by sticking up both thumbs and chanting 'vier-nul!' - the score by which Germany beat Argentina that afternoon in the world cup. I connected with a bullfrog by doing passable impression of its croaky challenge, but whether it thought I was its True Love or a deadly rival I'll never know. In Austria there wasn't a sniff of an Alp due to persistent hammering rain through lowering cloud; the highlights of Austria were meeting Natalie in Linz,

and Rob finding his scary friend Klaus-Hans. K-H was a six-inch high mannekin in very dodgy lederhosen, sporting manky beard, frothy stein and psychotic grin. His head wobbled and tended to fall off when the car's lurching round corners dislodge K-H from his perch on the dashboard. From Blankenhaim to Magura we had few culinary options but sausage and only a cabbage salad bought in a Hungarian Tesco saved me from porkosis.

Interim measures

I flew back to London and had a couple of days before flying out again, to Kathmandu this time. From being a recluse for 15 months, I was now globetrotting. Nepal was the setting for the wedding of Mike and Anita, who met at Everest base camp and shinned up the mountain again just before their wedding. It nearly came unstuck when Anita (first Hungarian woman to reach the summit) collapsed on the way down the hill and nearly died. Would have put a dampener on the wedding... But she recovered, and the wedding was fabulous.

We had time to see a bit of the city, and on the morning of the wedding, at sparrowfart we were hijacked from our beds, installed on a small plane and flown to Everest. Quite a sight, and made me even more convinced that humans were not meant to be in that forbidding place.

Brought tears to my eyes as I looked up at the summit (flying at 25,000ft the summit was almost 5,000ft above us) and thought about Ran, Mike, Anita and others who'd made it, and all those who didn't.

Fawns, blossom and concrete

Spring was blooming in May 2010, and my friend and builder Bogdan Coltea leapt back into action to get work going on the house so that I could move in later in the summer. The Dacia Papuc (papuc = mule), kept alive and kicking by Bogdan's constant love and attention to its ornery carcass, was back in harness hauling tons of cement, lime, sand, plasterboard, ironmongery, and men up and down the five miles of hairpin bends, potholes and rocky track that is the road up to the village. The pictures of what are now the kitchen and study give you an idea of the amount of work to be done.

Too used to comfort, I opted to stay at Adriana's B&B rather than camping on the concrete and peeing in a bucket; was fed well, slept well and spent ages playing with the fawn they'd rescued.

It lived in a pen on the lawn, guarded by Nero the shepherd dog; the fawn was fed biscuits by every visitor and eventually taken to a sanctuary.

Hysteria and blood loss

I'd planned to move out to Transylvania in April or May 2009, but the months ticked past, jackdaws nested, hatched and reared a brood, and by June I still hadn't done anything about shifting my carcass and the basement full of stuff. I finally booked a flight on 9th July, but three days before I was due to go, I had an anaemia attack that completely flattened me (take six steps and almost black out). I knew it was psychosomatic, but it was real enough. Quite scary to have one's limbs screeching for oxygen despite lungs full of air. Doctor confirmed anaemia, I munched iron pills and in a few weeks I was fine. The episode suggested I was more scared of the big move than I realised - if you'd asked me I'd have denied being remotely concerned about leaving the country and starting from scratch somewhere remote, at the age of 51, unfit, underfunded and speaking little of the language. No problem... Heeding the warning, I gave myself more time; it was May 2010 that I went out to get work going on the house again, and this time no panicky anaemia.

A novel, two novellas and seven short stories

In the Welsh lurking time I wrote 300,000 words of crime fiction - one long novel and nine stories, two long enough to qualify as novellas. None of them saleable, but all fantastic training. Using a group of readers and fellow writers to review the fiction, I learned more about writing crime stories than I'd have done in a creative writing MA course. Made friends in the process, too. Huge thanks to all of them - you know who you are. Then I had to start the big redraft of the novel to make it commercially saleable, and that process continues... Much harder than the first draft, which I couldn't stop from pouring on to the screen.

To cut a long story short

Between Feb 2004 and April 2005 five family members died, starting with my sister and ending with my mother; we got rather good at arranging funerals and thanksgivings, and all sorts of blessings came out of the sadness, but all the same it all had an effect - slow but inescapable. By 2008 I couldn't make a decision, had cotton wool for a brain, and was useless to the business or anything else. In October I gave in: struggling to regain control was pointless, and the only way out was through. As my income generating powers had vanished, I put my house on the market to wipe out the mortgage, insurance, utility bills and attendant worries. The credit crunch was exploding, and the housing market imploding. I sold three days before Christmas, for £50,000 less than I'd have got 6 months earlier, but at least I sold. By Christmas Eve I had sold or given away everything that didn't have a place to go in Transylvania, and this stuff was bunged into the basement of my sister-in-law's house in Llandrindod Wells (mid-Wales). I wasn't exactly flush, but I was free of debt and responsibilities.

For a year my social life revolved around the jackdaws living around the house; entertaining, sociable and smart individuals, they kept me going in my hermitage. I'm deeply grateful to Davisee for letting me be a recluse in her Welsh hideaway, the perfect stepping stone from urban England to rural Transylvania.