Back Already

Well, I'm back and only a day later! All I have to do is switch on the computer instead of the TV...

I have an hour or so to kill before Romina and Carlos come round with some furniture they are lending me, so will do a quick bit of typing. Where to start? It has been a while and much has happened. Obviously the initial euphoria has waned a little but I still have mornings when I wake up and wander through to the living room, throw open the French windows and sigh with happiness at what is out there. Then of course I go through to the kitchen to make my coffee and sigh with exasperation at the mess it is in.

Still, that is no different to what it would be anywhere else in the world and I remind myself I have only been here two months and a lot has been done in that time.

All I have to do is go up and look at the cupola and it all seems worth it!

The best news of all is that I am an auntie again, though it was very difficult knowing that my new niece will be a couple of months before I get to cuddle her. Here is the brand new Marnie with her proud Daddy:

Well, no she isn't as the blog is not accepting pictures again! Will try another posting just for pics.

The Spring has sprung in Buenos Aires. It is gorgeous most of the time, with the occasional day that looks and feels wet and dismal like Manchester and clears the filthy air for a short while. The most beautiful thing about the Spring is the jacaranda trees blossoming mauve and fragrant all over the city. They are amazing and ever so slightly ghostly. The flowers are starting to fall now but they have been going for some weeks, so we can’t complain. I’ll try to take a couple of pictures before they come fully into leaf. Gorgeous.

So - quick summary of progress in the flat. All the living room, vestibule and hallway are now painted white, which is a huge improvement. One of the spare bedrooms is decorated, although I am waiting til the second one is done before having both floors cleaned up and laminated. My bedroom remains the same, though I have sorted out the insides of the cupboards and did finally unpack my suitcases.

The kitchen is where the main saga has been - appropriately enough as it was where most of the filth and sacrilegious abuse of an old building were to be seen. First the suspended wooden ceiling came down, to reveal that there had been a plaster ceiling with mouldings around the edges. These had been hacked out in order to tile the walls with some truly ugly floral motif and make way for the tongue-and-groove cockroach penthouse.

Then when I dismantled the filthy old kitchen units, I discovered that there was a lovely patterned granite floor underneath the weird platform on which the base unit had been built. Although I guessed it must continue under the cracked ceramic tiles, I reckoned there would not be time to have it all ripped up, so had that part of it cemented over instead.

The more I sat in the kitchen and looked at the hideous tiling, the more I came to loathe it and when it transpired that the kitchen I had ordered was going to be delayed, I decided to have all the tiles ripped out. At that time Alison was staying, so I had to wait til she was gone.

So, up came the floor tiles and there indeed was the original floor. It is still covered in a layer of cement residue but I have bought an angle grinder and my little handyman is going to get to work on revealing it properly. I have done a corner of it with wire wool and elbow grease and I know it comes up OK. It is clear though why the old slut had it tiled over - most of it is white but ingrained with …. You guessed it, filth! Anyway, the angle grinder makes short work of that. Sadly it also makes a lot of dust.

In fact it was like the battle of the sexes here the other day, with the cleaner at the front of the flat trying desperately to leave at least one room dust-free and the men at the back making more and more of the stuff and merrily leaving the doors open to maximise coverage. We were all walking dust around the floors anyway, so the poor cleaner didn’t stand a chance. She will win out in the end though and harmony will reign.

I have been overruled on the question of tearing out the wall tiles as that really would take too long. Save that job for next year. It fact, with rather rough plastering over the ceiling, it doesn’t look too bad. So that will all get painted quickly before whenever the hell the kitchen units and the worktop turn up.

The units have been made by a carpenter out in Villa Crespo who was recommended by my lovely Bolivian plumber. I went to look at them last week and pay the final wodge of money but realised that he had made them wrong - the section with the drawers was positioned underneath where the sink should sit, which is clearly useless. So he had to take the whole thing apart and move the drawers over. He tells me it is all done now and I can go to look again on Monday.

The worktop is being made by another company who everyone say are the best in Argentina. Not sure why but as they are just downstairs here and not that much more expensive than anyone else, it seemed like the best option. It is all one piece of stainless steel with thick wood backing and a double sink in the middle. For some reason, Argentina offers either that or a marble worktop with sinks set underneath and I have a bit of a thing about the rim of crud that gets caught in those ones, so I have gone for the uber-hygienic option. Not that the filth here freaked me out or anything - oh, no!

I think the base unit may have to go out through my bedroom and along the balcony to get into the kitchen through the servant’s entrance because the normal door to the kitchen is very narrow. Yikes, should have thought of that sooner but to be honest I didn’t realise it was going to arrive fully assembled. Hhhm.

The balcony outside my bedroom is piled high with bags of rubble though, so all that has to go downstairs to be left on the corner for recycling. Somebody will want it. People will take anything here. In fact there is a whole nocturnal army of people called cartoneros who live off everybody’s rubbish. A bit like the Wombles I suppose but on a larger scale.

All the domestic and commercial rubbish goes out on the street in the evening and these people come and sift through it bag by bag, taking out all the cardboard, the glass, the plastic bottles and polystyrene for recycling, plus anything else that they might find useful for themselves or to sell. For the most part, they are very well organised and put what they don’t want into black bags for the bin men to collect after midnight. Sometimes though it all goes horribly wrong and the streets get covered with some very yucky stuff I won’t go into.

I think it is very enterprising of people to do this and though it is a deeply unpleasant job it has to be better than just wasting everything tipping it into a hole in the ground or out at sea. If they can make an honest living of it, good for them. I am squeamish enough though that I separate all my rubbish for them, so they don’t actually have to go through my bits of steak gristle and coffee grounds to get the good stuff. The couple of times I have thrown out clothes, I have folded them up clean and put them in a couple of plastic bags in with the recycling stuff, rather than just out with the general rubbish. So I hope they are having another life somewhere.

In fact, you rarely get just plain begged at here although there is a huge number of seriously poor people. What does happen is that people will come up and down the trains or the traffic lines, selling small things for a peso or two. Very often it is useless, ghastly little cards with Garfield or the Blessed Virgin and some sickly inspirational message. I never buy those! But if it is something vaguely useful like biros or hair bands or torches, I usually do. Often it is stickers which I end up giving to street children who probably go straight off and sell them again.

Yesterday I was on the underground and during the short journey, ten different people in quick succession came through selling stuff, which was a little overwhelming so I didn’t buy anything even though one or two of them might have been useful. Then a small boy - probably eight or so - in urchin attire plus Elvis sunglasses came in and started singing really badly but with great gusto. Sadly I had to get off the train before he got to me for money. I would happily have kidnapped him actually, he was so sweet. I hope to see him again one day but of course I do hope he goes to school instead!

So what else is new in the flat? More plumbing to be done - I have bought a new vanitory unit for the bathroom and a new sink for the laundry, although thanks to the random rules in electrical shops concerning what they will take as ID to back up a credit card, have so far failed to get the washing machine. Anyway, the old laundry is coming out - more bags of rubble - and the plumber will put in the new one and hang some wall cupboards that the carpenter has made to match the kitchen ones. I hope all this happens quickly - ha ha ha.

I have bought a TV and had cable installed, though annoyingly this does not come with broadband, so I will wait for that til I am back from London in the new year. Also got a stereo but so far have been unable to run the iPod through it, so haven’t used it for much. It plays DVDs, which is odd but useful. Oh, and I have to send the TV back because it rather bizarrely starts off with a black and white picture and only goes colour after it has warmed up.
As you can imagine, my Spanish is being stretched by home ownership! My vocabulary is also a little weird, so don’t anybody try a normal subject like politics because I am likely to turn the conversation round to different kinds of plaster.

Last week Linda took me out to an area her architect had shown her where there are some great antiques shops. So - we bought stuff for our flats and resolved to go back soon and buy more. I am having another bed like mine renovated and delivered here for one of the spare rooms. I also got a huge sideboard in the same style - it is Louis XIV or XV I think, but am no good at these things.

Then there was an amazing shop just choc-a-block with chandeliers. Chandelier heaven it was. Overwhelming though; I was tired by then, having seen too many beautiful things, so I decided not to make any decisions. In fact the guy said he could bring a selection of chandeliers over to the flat so I could see what looked best in situ. Who ever would have thought that would happen! I can’t wait, I have always wanted a great big chandelier and now finally I have the perfect room. Will it be crystal, will it be brass? Will it be iron, will it be glass? To clean it will be a pain in the arse! See, I have poetry in my soul.

In a sense, I am not keen on buying furniture as it will only clutter up my huge and gorgeous room but it can’t really be done without. I have more-or-less decided to get a 3 piece suite in the same style. I have sat on a few and they do seem to be big and comfy. Of course, none of the ones I have seen is upholstered in anything approaching acceptable, so will have to find the perfect fabric too. Hhhm, I wonder, pink or purple?

Well, Romina and Carlos have just been and gone and I now have dining chairs. Blimey! Table to follow tomorrow and they are offering all sorts of other stuff that is cluttering up their house and might be of use to me. I’ll have to go over and take a look before saying yes to it all. Shame they could not stay for a drink and a catch-up but next time they will. I showed Romina the mess that is my kitchen at the moment and promised to have them over for a meal as soon as it is all up and running.

I can’t wait til the flat is in a better state so I can actually get more of my social life back. I didn’t even go to Club Espanol this week as I was knackered and encrusted with rubble from the ceiling. There wasn’t a hope in hell I could get clean and start feeling like a girl in time to catch my favourite boys, so I just carried on working til the sun went down.

In fact, Michael and Oswaldo will be here for a flying visit right about the time when the flat should be looking gorgeous and I can start being sociable, so I just can’t wait for that.

We went to Porteno y Bailarin on Sunday as it was Carlos’s birthday (the cheeky host with the little hat) and he had promised to give the demonstration again with his business partner Jorge. They did it once before on Jorge’s birthday and it was just the most hilarious thing. I took film of it with my little camera but it came out very dark. I’ve made a DVD of it and it comes up ok on the TV with the brightness up to the maximum, so I will give that to Carlos next time I go. If I can ever work out how to adjust the brightness on the actual film and how to load it onto you tube or something, I will do that and link to it from here.

The other thing that has kept me busy was having visitors in Bs As.

First Heloise came from South Africa, which was just great. She was not here for long but we spent some quality time together, eating excellent steaks in my local restaurants and drinking some rather good wines and just generally chatting away as if we had known each other forever. Not often you meet someone like that so I loved every minute.

We also went over to Colonia for a day, which is a little town across the water in Uruguay. Chief reason for going was that I needed to renew my visa and as Heloise had in fact been before, she just led me straight to this great little restaurant she knew and we sat there all afternoon over a very long lunch. Then on the way back to the ferry, we stopped into a craft shop and I bought a really beautiful cow hide. Yes, it was a bit of a strange impulse buy I admit but it is a thing of beauty and looks great on my wooden floor.

It has already been the backdrop for a couple of photo shoots, it is irresistible. Alison went home with some lovely pictures of her on the cow. Heloise took a sweet one of me, which I may or may not post below…

And that’s all I’m admitting to with the rug.

So then Ros and Hazel came from London, closely followed by Anne and Italian Linda, and Alison, who stayed here with me. For that of course, I had to get one of the spare rooms decorated, though in fact I failed to get a proper bed in in time so she had to make do with the amazing all-purpose fold-out bed I got for Susan (it is now back in the living room being my sofa).

It was a little weird at first having all those London faces here in my new life but not at all unpleasant. We had some lovely meals and time together, though Ros is threatening to go back and tell everyone I ate fish one time and vegetarian pasta another, so my reputation as a carnivore is in some danger! It is true too, though she did also see me tuck into a couple of bits of beef, so I hope I can salvage something!

The nicest thing was spending time with them out of context, as in milongas there are few people you really get to know more than superficially. Ros in particular is always busy organising something and Alison is always a bit quiet.

I rather rashly invited them all and a few local Brits over one Saturday night for a little party, thinking I could just go to the lovely baker and get a stack of empanadas to feed them with. But yikes, she closed early that day, so I had to go to the grocers and make a quick decision about what I could throw together to feed a dozen people who were due to arrive in 2 hours…. I settled on chicken satay and got the butcher to cut me a load of chicken breasts, while I ran round the shop picking up peanuts and likely looking ingredients. I had made the chocolate refrigerator cake in advance, so pudding was easy. I got a load of fruit an Alison set to work making it into a big salad. I threw a load of pasta in a big bowl with some olive paste and chick peas and smoked tomatoes (God, I wish I could remember where I bought those babies!) and made a salad of that. I don’t know now what went in the satay sauce - I just kept adding stuff to the food processor - but it came out nice and spicy, and I managed to marinade and bake the chicken in time so I got away with it.

In fact, the girls came over again in the morning and we made a brunch of the leftovers, so that was good. Poor Ros had been having sleepless nights courtesy of some party animals in her building, so we all got on the internet to find her a good hotel so she could enjoy the last couple of days. It was the Art Deco Suites on Libertad and she recommends it if anyone is coming out here. Moving her out of the flat meant we missed the chance to go down to La Plata for the day but it seemed to be worth it.

Hazel was here with her teenage nephew and I saw less of her than of the others. She discovered some pretty whacky museums though, so I must try to make time to follow her recommendations.

Well, that’s going to have to do for a posting for now as I am starving and it is nearly eleven o’clock. Definitely time to fire up the grill and get some steak out of the fridge… Then I may even be in bed before midnight. Still struggling through Middlemarch, which I started at the beginning of October. I now have a lovely stack of books that all the lovely visitors left behind and I am a quarter of the way through the epic saga of provincial life. There is a lot more writing than there is story!