Looming goodbyes

A week into January, and much of the snow had gone. My housesitters arrived in Brasov on time (miracle) after a three-day journey from Newport, South Wales. Chris, Ellie and dog Bramble were waiting for me as I drove into the station car park. Travelling fantastically light, with only a change of clothes (seemingly) and a sack of lentils, they had come to look after the house and Hobbs while I went back to Britain for three months. Hobbs galloped up the hill to meet me and was perplexed by the arrival of two strangers. Indignant about the dog, and livid when the dog was invited into HER house, without even a prior consultation.

She spent three days ambushing the dog and getting her retaliation in first, but Bramble took it well and made allies of Furnica and Albine next door. Chris and Ellie were made very welcome by my neighbours - they're the same age as Roxana and Rodica up the hill. They took over my teaching role, so we introduced them to the children on the first teaching day of the new term, and I had to say goodbye, knowing I'd miss them.

What is 'home'?

Joanna Penn posed a good question in her blog (the Creative Penn) this morning - what does home mean to each of us? When I thought about it, it got complicated. West Sussex, where I was born, is always home - the deepest roots left undisturbed for the first ten years; when they were yanked up in August 1968 the uprooting left enough in the earth to keep me tied to the place. But when I go back now, I'm both deep-down happy to be there, and utterly bereft to have no place to be. I belong, but I don't. It also revives all the emotions of those years - good and bad. If I had the spare cash I'd buy a few square yards of land where I could put a shed: somewhere to call my own. A spot big enough to be buried in. My mother's ashes are there, and we planted a tree over them, with another tree for my father alongside. Some of my ashes will go there in due course, but not all.

London was where I lived for eleven years, but never home, not really. I love going back there because I know it, and enjoy driving in the city because I know I will leave before long.

Liverpool became home for two decades, and I loved it with a passion. Still do, and am writing this in the city on Grand National Day. It's the best of English spring mornings, cloudless sky, warm sun, not a breath of wind, birds shouting their heads off and the city full of visitors for the great Aintree spectacle this afternoon. But it's the one place I can feel lonely; since I sold my house here I have no base except with friends; because I love the city and know a lot of people here, I can feel isolated and disconnected when I'm footloose.

Transylvania - it's 1,500 miles away from Sussex, but it's the closest I've come to finding that deep-rooted connection with a place. Every time I reach the village - turn the last corner and emerge from the forest to that glorious view, there's that same feeling of being planted, the fundamental security of being held firm in the earth. It's the geology - from South Downs chalk to Carpathian limestone. Calcium carbonate, that grows beech forests and snowdrops, blackthorn and marsh orchids. Elements I absorbed from the veg and fruit my father grew in River echo in the food grown on the foothills of Piatra Craiului.

So this is where the rest of my ashes will be planted, under the same tree that blossoms in Sussex soil for my parents.

And you?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back, batless, from Transylvania

Well, I was whisked, and now I'm back. I had nine splendid days in the glorious Carpathians, in the full flush of spring, with cherry blossom everywhere, new lambs, calves, foals, ducklings, housemartins nesting, sparrows fighting, beech trees brilliant green, and snow still on the mountains.

huhhhhhhhhh

That's a sigh. In 2.5 hours a taxi should roll up at my door to whisk me off to Manchester Airport. While typing this I'm listening to Radio 7's Ladies of Letters Go Global, in which Pat Routledge's character Vera is crossing the Carpathians on a donkey with a Transylvanian villain called Roman. From the sound of it the writer hasn't been lucky enough to visit the region in person, or she'd write something a bit more credible. It's funny, though.
I'm not now going to meet the author as promised earlier. Grr. He read his readings on Saturday (ie this evening) in Sibiu, and is leaving (on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again) at sparrowfart on Monday. And my abode is a good 2 hours drive from his. So that's that, then. What a shame. I'd virtually written the piece for the Times Lit Supp.
The weather's been glorious, apparently, but it's due to change tomorrow, about the time I touch down. Hey ho. So I don't know whether to take weatherproofs, snow shoes or shorts. This time last year there was a big and very sudden freeze (down to about -20C overnight) which burst pipes and cut the village off again for another few days.
When I come back, I will have 10 days of Carpathian gossip to relate.
La revedere

Doing the Timewarp

Transylvania may be rocky, but not a horror show

Transylvania is one of the world’s strongest brands. Everyone recognises the name, and can tell you the other name that goes with it. Even children who look blank at the mention of Ghormenghast or Ruritania know all about it.
So when I mention that I have a house in Transylvania, the first response is usually: ‘What, Dracula country?’
The next is usually: ‘But it’s not real, is it?’ Or at least it was until the holiday home industry discovered it. Transylvania – the largest region of Romania – is now the next best thing for the bargain hunter. Luckily for me, most people want a holiday home on a sunny coast, and are happy with an apartment in a hideous white block amongst a hundred other hideous white blocks, as long as they can see blue water and have easy access to beer and pizza.
In my village, the bread is delivered every other day in a horse-drawn cart; milk comes from next door’s cow, and if you want to eat out that night, you have to drop into the cabana and let Adriana’s mother know by noon what you’d like to eat and when. Even if there were a menu, pizza wouldn’t be on it. I’m the first and still the only foreigner to buy a house in the village, and the prime source of gossip and entertainment.
The village, the name of which translates as Hill, is in one of Romania’s three national parks, and is on the road to nowhere except the next village, Cave. For me, born in a Sussex hamlet called River, this is just fine.
The place is, in fact, Sussex up a mountain, with added wolves and funny hats. And it’s a Sussex of 50 years ago - this is my time machine, where at first glance the 20th century has made little mark.
It’s a long way from my terraced house in Liverpool.
How I got there was a matter of things falling on me out of the blue. I suppose I had something to do with it, but it seems as if I just stood there and said yes.
In 2003 I wanted a holiday, and turned up a website that offered a week in Transylvania. How could I resist, having been brought up on Dracula movies? What I could see of the area on the web looked great - medieval towns, unspoilt landscapes, cheap prices. Bargain.
My first night – this was August – there was a thunderstorm. My room looked out onto a range of pointy green hills, and I sat on the balcony and watched the lightning stab through them as the thunder did its thing. The howling from a hundred canine throats was probably just dogs but this was Transylvania, and the children of the night – what music they made.
That week was a revelation. I was half-expecting Gothic pine forests, darkness and suspicious locals. What I got was light, warmth, colour and an irresistible welcome. Yes, we got taken to Bran Castle, alias Dracula’s Castle, but apart from a mention of 14th century ruler Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), it was all fairytale romance. Not a long tooth in sight.
Dan Marin, our guide, took us by horse and cart up to Magura – now ‘my’ village. The road, a stony, rutted track, winds up from the valley floor through beechwoods full of hazels, dog roses, sloes and the odd spruce. After the twelfth hairpin came the view across to velvety green meadows scattered with wooden houses. We all duly caught our breath. The road winds round the side of the hill and then along a narrow ridge lined with houses and populated by dogs, chickens and small children. Stunning, unspoilt, magical. We ate lunch on a terrace looking over fields full of marigolds framed against the pale mass of a mountain ridge. I got stung by a wasp which had crawled up my trouser leg, which made the afternoon’s entertainment, but I was relieved to learn that although wasps and bees were OK at this altitude, mosquitoes weren’t.
I went home knowing I’d be back, but not even dreaming of buying property. But life is twisted.
(more later...)

Buna ziua!

A place of unearthly beauty, this part of Europe. Transylvania is NOT a fictional setting dreamed up by Bram Stoker, but a province of Romania, full of mountains, unspoilt forests, lakes and wildflower meadows.

This picture was taken as the sun set, looking back down the pass to the nearest town, Zarnesti. My village, Magura, is 1,200 metres above sea level (about the height of Ben Nevis), and that altitude, and being about the same latitude as the south of France, the climate is rather like West Sussex of the 1960s when we had proper weather and defined seasons. Magura, at the moment, is under a metre of snow; spring happens fast, and summers are like the best English summers, hot but not sticky, and the village is too high for mosquitoes (huzzah!!).

Lots more photos to come, and tall tales.