Dreams and Dreaming: or, Every Boy's Book of Farming
A couple of minutes before three in the afternoon on a Wednesday - in the Ahmadi Oil Fields in Kuwait this means rush hour soon. Knocking off time in the oil sector here is three, and Wednesday is of course the end of the working week so any minute now the roads will be filled with floods of Chevy Caprices (managers) and Toyota Camrys (supervisors). The somnolent sub-continent expatriates from the saffron part of the world will tidy up and leave on their rattling buses sans air conditioning, unless you count the missing windows and holes in the bodywork. As to the fate of the retained management consultants, including yours truly, we hope to be out of here before nightfall.
So tomorrow I'll sneak into the local company office, avoiding the local partner and his dozy rows of "work on weekends to please the boss" poor, wan and lifeless consultants. All I need do is seize my air tickets from a certain desk and run for the lifts.
Air tickets? Glad you asked. Finally, insh'allah, I am out of here on Saturday evening wallowing in the luxury of Emirates Business Class. To Dubai firstly, I shall raise my glass of water as we pass over Riyadh because I have deliberately avoided going there first (security alerts and the chance of various lurking people handing me more work). Then early on Sunday morning off to Johannesburg (and I shall raise my middle finger as we pass over the shattered remains of my home country, soiled as she is with the filthy finger stains of Mugabe and his forty thieves)... yes dear readers, I'm going to South Africa.
Briefly mind you, a long overdue arthroscopy and the grim memory of bad dental surgery in Saudi that cost me three teeth earlier this year have combined to make me think I'd be better having it done closer to relatives and priests. But still, a couple of weeks lying round my brother Kim's house and monopolising his TV sports channels will be pure heaven. And I may get the chance to be driven out to Mooi River, some 7okm from Pietermaritzburg, to look at some land that Brett might want to sell me.
You'll be able to see it in the background of this picture. In the hills overlooking a large dam, green and pleasant and about 500 acres in size. Of course I have absolutely no idea how I might earn a living in a quiet rural area, but that's a detail for later. For a long time I've dreamed of my own space, water, trees, sun and green mellowness. It's true that the first iteration of the dream had a gorgeous wife at my side, smiling proudly as I planted my first chickens or milked a rutabaga or whatever it is that farmers do. She'd have produced a passel of little kids that I could teach to fish, and I'd have become ever more laconic and lantern jawed, straw in my mouth as I whipped the herds of broccoli into shape. Times change, however, and there have been some forced edits to the dream. The wife became increasingly rodentine and eventually decamped with a Pom, preferring the gentility of suburban Frimley to the wilds of Natal or Tasmania; my early researches into farming have indicated that it is a back breaking profession with huge risk and minimal reward, and many of the major components of this life seem to be vegetable-based which is worrying considering I have a severe case of Chernobyl thumb (the ability to kill anything including a weed while trying to feed and nurture it).
Some dreams are meant to remain that way perhaps. Then again, I remember the words of a bloke called Charles, who runs Nando's Chicken in the UK " Follow your passion, not your pension". Don't always play safe. I have already invested everything of value I ever had in the pursuit of a new way of life, so it would be a bitter blow to give up now and retreat back into the corporate womb.
So an interesting time indeed. My knees freshly coated with ibuprofen gel and wincing in anticipation, my butt parked on a chair in the flat in Sharq, I'm slowly starting to pack for Pietermaritzburg. And what adventures await me there!!
So tomorrow I'll sneak into the local company office, avoiding the local partner and his dozy rows of "work on weekends to please the boss" poor, wan and lifeless consultants. All I need do is seize my air tickets from a certain desk and run for the lifts.
Air tickets? Glad you asked. Finally, insh'allah, I am out of here on Saturday evening wallowing in the luxury of Emirates Business Class. To Dubai firstly, I shall raise my glass of water as we pass over Riyadh because I have deliberately avoided going there first (security alerts and the chance of various lurking people handing me more work). Then early on Sunday morning off to Johannesburg (and I shall raise my middle finger as we pass over the shattered remains of my home country, soiled as she is with the filthy finger stains of Mugabe and his forty thieves)... yes dear readers, I'm going to South Africa.
Briefly mind you, a long overdue arthroscopy and the grim memory of bad dental surgery in Saudi that cost me three teeth earlier this year have combined to make me think I'd be better having it done closer to relatives and priests. But still, a couple of weeks lying round my brother Kim's house and monopolising his TV sports channels will be pure heaven. And I may get the chance to be driven out to Mooi River, some 7okm from Pietermaritzburg, to look at some land that Brett might want to sell me.
You'll be able to see it in the background of this picture. In the hills overlooking a large dam, green and pleasant and about 500 acres in size. Of course I have absolutely no idea how I might earn a living in a quiet rural area, but that's a detail for later. For a long time I've dreamed of my own space, water, trees, sun and green mellowness. It's true that the first iteration of the dream had a gorgeous wife at my side, smiling proudly as I planted my first chickens or milked a rutabaga or whatever it is that farmers do. She'd have produced a passel of little kids that I could teach to fish, and I'd have become ever more laconic and lantern jawed, straw in my mouth as I whipped the herds of broccoli into shape. Times change, however, and there have been some forced edits to the dream. The wife became increasingly rodentine and eventually decamped with a Pom, preferring the gentility of suburban Frimley to the wilds of Natal or Tasmania; my early researches into farming have indicated that it is a back breaking profession with huge risk and minimal reward, and many of the major components of this life seem to be vegetable-based which is worrying considering I have a severe case of Chernobyl thumb (the ability to kill anything including a weed while trying to feed and nurture it).
Some dreams are meant to remain that way perhaps. Then again, I remember the words of a bloke called Charles, who runs Nando's Chicken in the UK " Follow your passion, not your pension". Don't always play safe. I have already invested everything of value I ever had in the pursuit of a new way of life, so it would be a bitter blow to give up now and retreat back into the corporate womb.
So an interesting time indeed. My knees freshly coated with ibuprofen gel and wincing in anticipation, my butt parked on a chair in the flat in Sharq, I'm slowly starting to pack for Pietermaritzburg. And what adventures await me there!!
posted by Shane Hodgson at 12:58 pm
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