Burra Maluca

Tereza Okava wrote: ...if we need to use graywater in the garden we hook it up directly (usually from the washing machine outflow) and use it at the time it's produced. I do low-tech: the water out of the machine goes into a large trash can, and I put my normal hose for gardening in there, create suction and position the hose out in the garden where I need it.

Ours is even more low-tech - all the greywater downstairs (washbasin, shower and washing machine) feeds straight into a pipe which has a heavy-duty hosepipe attached to it. One of my daily chores is to move the end of the pipe to the most deserving fruit tree in front of the house.

The water tanks we have are fed from the water-mine on the terrace above the house. One tank supplies this house and is buried underground. Then there is an IBC tank which sends water next door to supply my son, then there is another IBC tank next to it and the overflow from my son's one goes into that. The idea being that his house-water tank fills up before my irrigation tank does as his drinking water is more urgent than my irrigation water. Any overflow from that feeds back into the gulley that the water mine itself overflows into. As though we're just 'taking what we need and letting the rest flow by'. There's also another IBC tank on the next terrace up which is emergency fire-fighting water which we fill from our neighbours' water system as it sits above our water-mine.

One thing to note in the EU is that the system of measuring water-pipe is odd.

One inch water pipe in the minds of most people older than about 40 refers to the internal bore of the pipe. In Portugal an inch is a polegada, related to the word for thumb. An inch is around 25 mm, but one inch water pipe is usually sold as something like 32 mm as these days they measure the external diameter of the pipe, not the internal. So if you go into a store that knows their stuff and ask for one 'polegar' they'll sell you something like 32mm, depending on the thickness of the pipe walls. The translate app tells me that the word for both 'thumb' and 'inch' is pouce in French so it's likely that something similar will happen in France.

We have one wonderful shop called Regacentro near here and there is one guy in there who I swear is autistic and you can ask him the most complex and confusing questions and he'll go quiet for a minute and they give you a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer and go off and fetch the bits you need. And he's always, always right. Just don't expect chit-chat from him. A man after my own heart...

"When you asked her what her name was, she said 'Gwen' but that doesn't make sense because gwen means white and she's green.

"Gwen is my middle name. It's the name my father and my brother always called me."

"I never knew that!"

"No-one else ever called me that. Ever. And it's been a a very long time since I heard anyone use that name. I wasn't expecting to hear it and it completely overwhelmed me when I heard it."

Rosa thought for a while.

"So if us dragons are all a part of you, what part is she if she uses that name?"

"She's a memories dragon. She is my memories."

"Is that why she's so long?"

"I guess so. I'm not getting any younger..."

"But why is she so scary? And why is she wrapped all round your legs and weighing you down?"

It was my turn to think for a while.

"I guess it's because some memories are a bit heavy and painful. And they end up buried where you can't find them any more because that way you can carry on with your life. And then when you do something to recall them they are a bit overwhelming because you've never processed them."

"So how do we persuade her to let go so you can move again?"

"I guess we have to figure out a way to untangle her."

"Oooh that reminds me - I found this." Rosa scuttled off to fetch something.

"What on earth is that??"



"It's a big glob of tangled old threads that I found in the bottom of the sewing basket. Maybe I can untangle them as you untangle the memories dragon."

"Might as well I guess..."

Rosa got to work.

"There's an old photo of a sailor on the bookcase - is that Hugh?"



"Um, not exactly. It's my grandad, Uncle Hugh's dad. But his name was Hugh too."

I stared at the photo, and the dragon around my legs squeezed harder for a moment.

I'd never known my grandad when he was a young man, only when he was very old. But the photo was very much like my brother at that age. Which was surprising really as whilst I always called him grandad, technically speaking he wasn't as my grandma had been raped by his brother while he was at sea and my father had been the result. Abortion wasn't legal then. I decided not to tell Rosa about those bits of memory.

"So Uncle Hugh was named after his father!"

"Actually, he was Hugh Joseph, as he included his brother's name as Hugh was the first-born son."

I remembered how my dad's name was just John. No second name. I guess that was relevant.

I also remembered the incredible sibling rivalry between my dad and my uncle. My dad was bitterly jealous of uncle. I guess he was always treated differently, and my dad would have felt that even if he didn't know why. And I had a strong suspicion that he never did know why.

And then I got to wondering about the sibling rivalry between me and my brother. I never got to the bottom of it but it was unnaturally bitter. And it did sound like my grandad had had similar issues too. The phrase 'generational trauma' came to mind and I made a mental note to research it sometime.

Rosa was making good progress with her untangling and I suspected that the dragon tangled around my legs was relaxing just a little too.

So excited about this - Lidl have them in as a BBQ season special offer but it's just the right size to slide into the firebox of the cookstove after a burn so we can cook up a little pizza or some roast veggies or something.

Not that I'm planning on lighting it up until at least October, but it's good to keep our options open!

Sometimes in life we find ourselves suddenly face to face with something scary and unexpected. And in those times it's good to be able to choose how we react. My first instinct was to scream in terror, or maybe fight. But I like to give creatures the benefit of the doubt so I very nervously took a deep breath and asked her a question.

"Who are you?"

The dragon stared straight into my soul and replied with just one word.

"Gwen."

My heart froze at that name, and a tidal wave of memories engulfed me, knocking the air out of my lungs as the world went black.



When my vision cleared, it became apparent that I had not been swallowed whole, despite what it felt like at the time. But the not-so-baby green dragon was sliding over my legs. She was rather heavy, too!



And then she coiled herself around and around my legs, weighing me down and holding me tight. Finally she took the end of her tail in her mouth and went back to sleep without any apparent intention of ever letting me go.



Rosa was the first to speak.

"Mum, who is she? Is she dangerous? And how we do we untangle her from your legs?"

I thought I knew, but I was still in too much shock to speak.

"And why does she have such a long tale?"

Oh Rosa, they are big questions. Such very big questions...

We fitted all our windows with sun-protection film. Not as natural as chalk paint but you can leave it up all year round and it's surprisingly effective. During the day, you can see out through it perfectly but people can't look in as it's mirrored. During the night, if you have the light on inside, it's the other way around so bear that in mind if you have neighbours!



Image from temu

It claims to filter out 90% UV, 89% IR but only 20% of the visible light.

I'm not sure it's quite that effective but it certainly helps and is very affordable. I think ours has been up a couple of years now and looks as good as new, except for the bit near the cooker where it's been splashed with hot fat, but that's hardly surprising.

We also extended the roof when we changed it so that the south-facing windows are shaded from the sun during the hottest months of the year. The only problem window now is the west-facing bedroom window but pulling the blind down during the late afternoon seems to help with that.

I live in a very similar climate and have similar problems with young fruit trees, notably cherries and peaches, but also figs to a certain extent.

I suspect the reason I don't have the same issue with almonds is that I tend to plant them in the worst soil because they are more drought hardy so they are forced to grow more slowly even when we have plenty of spring rain.

Cherries and peaches are my main problem with this. If we have a wet spring they try to grow like crazy, putting all their effort into growing leaves because they are young and stupid and think that the spring rains are like overly-supportive parents who will always be there to help. They are wrong. And when the supply of money ground-water runs low they suddenly find that can't support their extravagant lifestyle foliage and begin to suffer terribly.

I've learned to be brutal when I see this happening and remove some of that beautiful lush growth so that what water the meagre root supply can gather has some hope of being enough to supply all the remaining leaves.

We have one cherry tree that pretty much died the first year we were at this 'new' place. It has now started to put some new branches out from low down and seems to have learned some sense and concentrate on its root system instead of too much leaf. There is a peach tree the same age that did something similar - it grew absolutely enormous and then tried to fruit on the young branches and we didn't want to cut it so it ended up with all the branches trying to break off as they were weighted down with fruit. We trimmed it a bit but it still struggles. Last winter we cut it right back and pretty much forced it to start again. It's a stupid looking shape now but it looks like a teenager who has learned a hard lesson and has finally grown some sense, and the right amount of new branches.

When figs do this, they seem to teach themselves and not need trimming. When they realise that water is in short supply they drop all their leaves before they actually burn themselves out and then grow just enough new leaves so that the available water supply can support them. I've never had to trim a young fig tree - they seem to know how to make the adjustments themselves.

I think the first thing I'd do with almonds that grow too fast is to not feed them - let them find all their nutrients the hard way so that they don't try to grow too fast. And they if they do still seem to be growing too much, trim them, even if it seems like the wrong time of year.

Us tree-parents need to show a bit of tough love sometimes to keep our babies alive until they get the hang of it themselves.

Over the next few days, Rosa and I learned to pace ourselves with the recorder and learned a couple of new songs together. Roxa collected figs as they ripened and seemed to be having some sort of hoarding-contest with Vermelha. The raven had escaped from the laundry basket and gone off in search of more mischief to get up to. There was still no sign of the missing baby green dragon but as it was so very hot outside Rosa and I took the opportunity to explore our new shared interest and have a few good heart-to-heart chats about things.

The next tune we learned was Au Clair de la Lune which wasn't particularly exciting but it did seem a bit familiar to me.

"Did you used to play it when you were a little girl, Mum?"

"I don't think so, but I heard other children playing it. I don't think I played recorder for very long."

"Did you  have your own recorder?"

I tried to remember. "I think I did, yes. But I can't remember what happened to it..."

It was strange, because the more I thought about it, the more I absolutely remember that I'd had my own recorder. But the memories just stopped, almost as though they had been smothered. Or buried. And I had no idea why.



Then we moved on to Sailor, Sailor on the Sea.

"Oh I like this one, mum. It sounds like it's rolling along over the waves, rising and falling like the surface of the waters."

I smiled. She was right. We don't get to visit the sea very often but sometimes the dragons fly back to Wales to visit Ceridwen and Rosa loves to look down and watch the pattern of the waves and the light glinting on the water.



"Mum, last time we flew back from Wales we flew over the bit of the Bay of Biscay where Uncle Hugh lost his ship. It must have been very sad for him."

"Yes it was. It affected him terribly. It was around the time of the equinox when all the winds and ocean currents change. There was a storm and he requested that the owner authorise a tug to pull the ship in but the owner refused and the ship sank. He spent hours in the water with his crew waiting to be rescued. He got frostbite in his feet, which were still black decades later when I was nursing him. He watched a lot of his crewmen drown, then he spent weeks in hospital where more of he crew died. When we all moved to Portugal we had to delay the journey until after the equinox because he wouldn't sail anywhere around that area at that time of year. And we had to cross the English channel, not the Bay of Biscay, because the memories were still so strong."

How strange it was that a simple tune can trigger all those memories. There were more memories too, but I chose not to share all of them with Rosa. I remembered how when Uncle was completely bedridden after a stroke (induced by drinking two bottles of vodka a day for many many years, probably to drown his memories) he would refuse to take laxatives because he'd watched the nurses in that hospital carry out his crewmen that had died in the night, wrapped in sheets, and had somehow convinced himself that nurses killed off patients by giving them laxatives.

I also remember what a difficult man he'd been to get along with. He'd been thrown out of two Seamen's Missions, one of them twice, for bad behaviour, and yet somehow I'd had a natural affinity with him. We were both misfits, and hermits, and followed our own rules rather than those imposed by society. He'd been living with my parents for years and took great delight in winding my mother up. Eventually I had stepped in and offered to take him to Portugal with us, which would at least allow my poor mother to live out the rest of her life in relative peace.

Looking back, I'd say he was probably autistic, like me. We didn't know about such things then though. Would it have made any difference if I had known? We are such a complex blend of our nature and our memories and experiences that untangling them all is almost impossible, though it's often interesting to try.

I'd been lost in thought for quite a while now, with a simple tune going round my head and many memories stirring and surfacing like someone had reached down into a giant cauldron and stirred the pot to bring all the bits that had sunk out of reach up to the top again and served them up in a big bowl to me.

But what I hadn't realised is that something else had been stirring and rising too.

Something green, and long, who had been hiding under the shadows and dirty laundry at the bottom of the basket.

Rosa noticed her first. She froze, and fell silent, staring as a green head with a fiery tongue emerged out of the shadows and looked for all the world like she was going to swallow me up.

"Mum!" Rosa whispered to me. "I think we found the missing dragon. And she's grown!"

Of course Lidl, which is very much like Aldi, can scupper any grocery list you might have with all it's lovely offers...

Just don't forget the milk!



Lyrics, for anyone who struggles with the accent...

I've been shopping in Dunnes Stores now all me life,
When suddenly walks in me lovely wife.
We haven't got a drop of milk
And the rent man's on his way,
I got me hair washed cut and blow dried
so we've no funds left today.

We'll go to Lidl, Lidl, whatever the feck it's called
We'll go to Lidl, Lidl, the prices say it all,
I got a pair of shoes an anorak scuba gear
chicken nuggets satellite T.V.
I got the whole back garden decked out for 13.43.
I forgot the milk, and she'll f##king kill me.

Every month the magazine comes out,
from camping gear to brand new German stout.
The mother wont touch the meat
She still thinks that its odd and the father's wearing Lycra,
just to walk the fecking dog.

We'll go to Lidl, Lidl, whatever the feck it's called
We'll go to Lidl, Lidl, the prices say it all,
I got a lawnmower, volleyball laptop dartboard
a box of Hitler tea, I have the Christing fecking sorted
with enough for J.R.B's , I forgot the milk.

Now me shopping's less than 20 quid,
The cheap auld Mars bars take up half me fridge,
The Tayto's still crap, we'll forgive them for that.
´Cos the vodka almost kills you with a sip

We'll go to Lid, Lidl, whatever the feck it's called
We'll go to Lidl, Lidl, the prices say it all,
I got a weighing scales, beach towel, head torch
and a foot spa for herself.
I got a little German midget to come home and wash the delft,
I forgot the milk, I forgot the milk, cheers.

It was 40 C (104 F) here a couple of days ago which is pretty unheard of in June.

Windows are shut the moment the outside temperature gets up to within a degree of the inside temperature, sometimes as early as 8 am.

Blinds are pulled down if there's any direct sunlight on them.

Windows open again when the temperature in the evening falls to very nearly the same as the inside temperature and then stay open all night.

Then my summer-time cooling kit...



A cute little plant mister that I keep by my side, filled with clean, pure water, and a cheap fan I bought a couple of decades ago and is still going strong. I spray that right in my face if I start to feel too hot then fan myself. It's an amazing burst of coolth but unlike an electric fan I soon get fed of wielding it and put it down, which means that next time I get hot I feel the benefit again but it allows my body to gradually adapt to the heat.

For an amazing blast of coolth, I spray my bare feet with the mister too.

Any physical work is done early morning or after 7.30 pm. Daytime is for doing the bare minimum.

Laundry is hung indoors to dry for the evaporative cooling effect.

I have a small supply of linen sheets and silk bedspreads, because even if I  don't need any covers over me when I go to sleep, having all the windows open means that I usually need something over me at some point if the breeze picks up. All windows have fly-screens fitted!

Sometimes I'll rinse my hair in the middle of the day just for the cooling effect as it dries.

"You know, Mum," Rosa began. "I don't think Nigredo means to be rude when hides in the laundry basket. He's just very sensitive. People don't understand him."

Rosa carefully lined up the edges of her bit of fabric and began to stitch.

"I think you're right. He has very sensitive ears, like I do. He just has no filter and doesn't realise other people might think it's rude to be quite so blatant about hiding from my music."

I thought about it some more for a while. "In fact, he reacted very much like a bit of me wanted to when you brought the recorder to me. There was a bit of me that wanted to scream 'Noooooooo!' and run away and refuse to even touch it."

"But why, mum? Don't you like music?"

"Well I do like it. But it overwhelms me. I think it's because I'm autistic. Most autistics have at least some senses that are extra-sensitive. And while I'm not as bad as I used to be I still find sounds to be very overwhelming. Especially repetitive ones. It's like they pull my whole brain after them until every emotion is being triggered at once and I can't think any more and just want to scream."

"A bit like when all the pixels on a screen light up at once and all you can see is white?"

"Yes - a lot like that! Same when people talk too loudly, or if there are several people at once who might try talking to me. Or if there's a television on in the background. Or if the lights are too bright. I need relative silence to be able to think."

Rosa thought for a while.

"Of course Nigredo has always liked hiding in the laundry basket. That's where I first met him! Do you remember?"

"Why yes I do actually! You hadn't been here long and were being a little bit bossy. The other dragons don't like being told what to do. Same as me really. And eventually they told you and you were very upset and went to hide in there. Maybe baskets are a natural hiding place for dragons..."

"It was terribly dark and lonely in there and I was feeling very sorry for myself. It felt as though nobody loved me. But of course they DID love me, it's just that it felt like they didn't. They were just trying to explain to me what I was doing that was upsetting them. Right at my darkest moment in there, I found Nigredo was in there with me and he talked to me and explained it all to me."

"Nigredo is just a big softy really. He does all the things that everyone else pretends they are too good for. But he does them for all the right reasons. You're right. He is very misunderstood."

Rosa carefully finished off her stitching and turned the little silk purse she'd been making the right way around to show me.

"There - look what I made Mum! It's a new bag for the recorder!"

"Oh that is beautiful - well done Rosa! And it's just the right size, too!"

Rosa glowed with pride for a moment.

"Mum, it's mid-summer's day. Aren't we supposed to turn the mattress and change the sheets?"

"You're quite right. End to end on a solstice, side to side on an equinox."

I stripped the old sheets off and shoved them in the laundry basket and Rosa went to find clean ones while I spun the mattress around. It was a very hot day, reaching 40C for the first time this eyar, so Rosa chose a white linen sheet with hand-made lace edging that we had found in an old cedar chest when we bought the place. She said it needed to be used and didn't want to be in storage any more. Roxa came in with the first figs, Vermelha came to examine them and compare them with one of her own treasures.



I put the recorder in the little silk bag and smiled as I remembered buying the old curtains over twenty years ago from a charity shop - a pair of pure silk door curtains for £3. One of them had been used for years but had got water damage on the end and now wasn't long enough to use as a door curtain any more. It was good to see it being used for something nice where the fabric could shine again.

"I think I should go and put those sheets on to wash. The laundry basket is terribly full! And then tomorrow we can have another go at playing the recorder again."