If you have taken a look at the link in the sticky post above, you may have wondered if my wanting to get the little valley where I have my olive trees become filled with trees sponsored by well-wishers in the name of Catholic Saints is some kind of appeal to pious religiosity.
In reality it is not due to that. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be awesome if every tree gets sponsored under the name of a Catholic Saint, I do think it will and does change the atmosphere, but I really don’t mind if you want to sponsor a tree in the name of your aunt Gertrude instead, or your dog Rocky, or whatever (within reason and decorum of a certain standard, which is not THAT high, what with me being me, but it will exist at least).
The reason is that when I arrived here, the owner had cut every light fitting internally and externally and left exposed wires all over the place, as well as removed the coverings of all the verandas. It was February and it snowed literally as we arrived, and twenty minutes later our cars were stuck here near the house for three days.
We had no kitchen sink, or indeed a kitchen of any kind, just a tap sticking out of the wall and for months my wife cleaned the dishes in the bathroom tub and sink until we finally got a basic kitchen installed.
The electricity would trip every few seconds because we had dozens of external cables exposed to the wet weather and we only had one hot plate that the loyal crusader had delivered to him. And thank god for that young man, as he had arrived before us, cleaned the place, build our beds that had arrived before us, and found an electrician to at least add some lights in each room, and he had also got a plumber to fix the main water valve that the seller had left hanging by a thread. So when we got here after 2 days of travel and the last day being a 16 hour drive, at least we had a place to sleep. But we had no gas stove as a delay meant it had not yet arrived, we had no gas bottle and the cars were stuck with the snow, not able to climb back out of the little road to the house.
That is when we met the neighbour. Supposedly a “rough man” that didn’t get along with anyone. He hooked up a 50 metre extension to his workshop, the only building anywhere near our place, and with my own 50 metre extension connected to it we at least had power to a nest of multi-sockets that would make a fire-chief lock us all away for years.
His last words to me that day where: ” I have five kilowatts here. If it trips, I’ll leave you this little window open, from there you can get to the latch and open and restart the breaker. I’ll see you in a week.”
When he returned a week later I walked up the path to meet him and he had brought us a litre of his own unfiltered oil. the same one I now produce, which is literally the best in the world. No joke, it won first prize two years in a row at the Dubai expo and then the Monte Carlo Expo, and as I don’t use any kind of insecticides or any other additives to the soil or anything else, my olive oil is in fact, now even better than his, which was in any case superlative.
I told him that I really did not know how to thank him nd to please at least come in for a drink, a bite to eat, a coffee, something, and he refused everything, smiling, happily and telling me:
“Look, I am good like bread, but I just have two rules…” I listened intently, looking him in the eyes as he continued, “… people must mind their own fucking business, and not break my balls.” Even before he finished I knew what he was going to say and I had started smiling. I grabbed his hand and forearm meaningfully and told him we would get along famously, as I had the same rules.
Since that day until the day he died, that man is one of the very few human beings that gave me more than I ever gave him or even had a chance to repay him. His picture is in our lounge, and aside from his immediate family, we were the only people at the cemetery when his ashes were buried next to those of his three lost children (miscarriages all, but one had been born alive).
The other closest neighbour went to get a gas bottle and brought it half-way down the road to us, risking to get his car stuck too. The next neighbour up received Amazon deliveries for us until the snow melted and the vans would come down to us. Another neighbour I had hardly ever seen gave us some of his grapes later in the year saying he had to many and to just come get them from his vines as he couldn’t eat them all and they would otherwise go to waste.
The only person so far that could be considered to have the asshole label is the guy who sold me the property. And no one around here appears to have liked or got on with him either, so it’s not just my view.
The point, is that very shortly after we had arrived here, I really did feel as if we had arrived in the Valley of the Saints.
So that is why I thought it would be a good name for it.
And I plan to name the biggest tree we have, which is near the house and not too easy to collect olives from, after my friend and neighbour who passed away only a short ten months after we met him.
