Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
After our week of roaming, it was nice to be welcomed back at Drivenik by Ouma and Aunt Milica. During our absence Dale's Mom,Dad, and youngest brother Ryan had finished their holiday and returned to New Zealand, while Gareth and his mates had met up with another group of friends for a week long cruise / party along the Dalmatian coast.
Beks, Tim, Dale and I moved into the upstairs bedrooms at the Drivenik house. Zlatko had left a 'to do' list for us, so while Beks and I began sanding the flaking paint from the heavy metal gates, Dale and Tim set about replacing the shed's rotting door. Tim is a builder by trade, so Dale the dentist became Tim's apprentice. For the next two days they scrounged pieces of timber, measured and cut them, screwed them together, and fitted the old doors' hinges, handle and lock to the new door. Then they spent another day applying two layers of wood stain to the doors, to darken and protect the wood. And since they had by now got the hang of their tools and materials, they also put together a new hatch for the shed window. In between the guys' labouring and trips to the hardware store we found time to have a couple of swims in Crikveniza and enjoy another jumbo pizza at Corso. As Beks was still suffering from her English cold, we ensured she took a good dose of Rakia to help clear her sinuses! (In the end this proved very much a short term solution, so Dr Milica stepped in and put Beks on a strict new regime of antibiotics, steam treatments, and vitamin-loaded drinks.).
By the time we had worked our way through the better part of Zlatko's list (new shed door - check! Re-painted gates - check! Grass cut back - check! Drain pipe repair - check!) Ouma had found a few more jobs for us (pruning the dead branches from the fruit trees and fixing a leak in her bedroom). There was also a mysterious drain smell wafting through the downstairs bedrooms... After searching fruitlessly for the source of the smell, we were almost ready to give up when Tim noticed a small metal hatch in the floor of the downstairs bathroom. Dale and Tim managed to wedge it open and it was obvious that here was the waste water pipe and the source of the stench. Bravely, Dale donned pink rubber gloves and put his hand in the pipe...the first thing he pulled out was a scorpion! After a brief battle with a screwdriver, the scorpion was dead, and a slightly shaken Dale again put his hand in the stinky hole. He began to pull, and out came a piece of tree root, as he continued to pull the root got longer and longer, until he had pulled out more than a metre of wet tree root, covered in black filth. Beks and I stood uselessly in one of the bedrooms, watching through the bathroom door as we tried not to gag, while Tim hovered at Dale's shoulder, laughing at Dale's facial expressions. With no end in sight to the tree root, Tim fetched a pair of garden loppers and Ouma found a black rubbish bag. The first metre of tree root was cut off and deposited in the black bag, then the second metre and finally the third and last metre also went into the bag. Beks and I began turning on taps everywhere, to flush some clean water through the pipe, and I fetched Dale a bucket of hot water and bleach to clean himself up in. By the time Milica arrived home with her son and daughter-in-law (who are staying in Crikveniza for three nights), the bathroom was spotless, the house was smell free, and Ouma had whipped up some of her famous prune gnocchi to reward Dale for his heroic efforts!
- comments