rafael pyton

I should, by my reckoning, be out there travelling the edge of the world on my Ducati. I should be naked in Punjabi. I should be writing sonnets in Cuba. I should be snorkeling in Aruba. I should be hanging at the house of Grimaldi, rocking with Vivaldi, and outbraking Fittipaldi.

But I’m not. I’m being boring. I quite like being boring, though. Sometimes I even make a point to surpass all known borders of being boring. For instance, do you know what I did for kicks this winter? I insulated the loft…

And ye gods have mercy, I’m now going to tell you all about it! Feel free to freefall to the floor!

In any cold case, there are no toys in the attic. Just sawdust, 100-year old sawdust that will enter everything, even your skin. I was wearing a breathing mask, but I’m still coughing.
Hey, do you know what I found up there on the third floor underneath the ceiling? No, not bat droppings. I found tobacco weeds hanging for air-curing. They had been there since Sir Walter Raleigh. Smelled a bit nice, too. But since you ask, no, I did not light up the very vintage leaves. I sort of regret it in retrospect.
Indeed, I threw them away. Everything else I could find, for that matter, went into big black plastic bags, that I pulled out through the could-be-a-bit-bigger hole in the ceiling. Twenty huge bags of crap, stage one complete.

Stage two involved more dust. This awful sawdust was piled up in huge mountains, and needed to be redistributed. I counted to 97 of those big black bags that I huffed and puffed around up there. Yes, 97. It was not done in a few weeks, and I could have used a bit more comfort. Banging my bold head against the rusty nails in the ceiling did not help… yow, that stings… in an instant you’ve developed a fucking bad case of Tourette’s.

Stage four was the best bit. I skipped stage three, because, frankly, you don’t need to know any of this. I bet no one has ever blogged about insulation before. But I was talking about sowing my oats in stage five. And stage six it is, yass sass, finally you get to do something that involves a machine!
As I was to insulate with EKOVILLA, the coolest insulation material there is [no, sheep wool is not cooler - but once again, I bet no one ever called insulation materials cool before], I needed a side-kick - and he went by the name of Torkel.
EkoVilla, by the way, is recycled paper fibre. Remember those unbelievably creepy guys in the back of your class, who used to chew paper and then throw those slimy pieces of pulp in the back of your neck? Well, that’s what EkoVilla looks like. The resemblance stops there, however, because it is dry, and soft like a babyduck’s feathers. Angel beds, the rumour goes, are made out of EkoVilla.

Picture this: my man Torkel is outside, dwarfed by a mountain of EkoVilla bales, throwing them into a machine. This machine goes “whoof”, and sucks up the stuff like crack-whore looking to score… oh, sorry. Maybe not the family metaphor I was looking for, but what do you do when you go-go. The machine is connected to a really long hose. Follow the hose. It goes ten metres up along the wall like the anaconda in Anaconda, then through a ventilation hole in the wall - and there I am, handling the hose like a… oh, come on. But insulating with EkoVilla actually is a lot like pissing, which is probably why it was so much fun. And compared to the sawdust relocation program, it was done in a doodle.

There you have it. Not quite around the world in eighty days, but all the way to the loft and back. Earlier, the house was being cold in the winter and hot in the summer. No more. I say no more. It is yet another sparkling victory for the DIY-amateurs of the world. Unite, brethren! We fight the holy fight! Never let a professional do a man’s job! Hip! Hip! Harumphh!

In an ideal world, I would have time to blog every day. On second thought, is that really an ideal? In any case, I must not moan. I have a decent job - that’s eight hours a day, usually more. I inhabit a century-old house & garden in dire need of tenderness - that’s about three hours a day, hopefully not forever. I have a 2-month old daughter whom I love impossibly so - and there goes the remaining hours, plus a bit of the big beauty sleep.
Now, where in the nothing that’s left is a man of today supposed to find the time to write a few sentences? Stay on top of current affairs? Take a few minutes to daydream? I have books to read, movies to watch, music to steal and listen to. There are wonderful recipes to be tried and tasted, Ducati roads that demand bending, relationships that beg of mending. When do I stop and recollect my memories? Let the winter sun linger on my cheek? Have a drink with the boys? Call my mother? Complain about the pain in my legs? Simply process the information that keeps coming at me from every direction at all times? I must know all, feel all, and let everyone know that I know all and feel all! Breath?

Quality of life can only be defined, in my mind, by the amount of time you have to really pursue what you dream of. Sadly, very few get here. Most of us only chase the case of being able to have the time to pursue the dreams - and when we finally get there, we’re to old to have any cool dreams left to pursue.

Life. Such a pointless exercise, yet so delectably palpable. I don’t know whether to scream in anger or praise the fate and fortune that brought me here. Perhaps it is relevant, then, to scream in anger because I want more life. I want two lives. Three would be better still.

Well. Thank you for wasting a little bit of it. I just gotta run now, you know. I’m in a horrible hurry to get nowhere. But I guess it doesn’t really matter if I’m a little late…