"I'm not fucking going into one of those places. You can stick your retirement village right up your fucking arse, I've lived in this house for the last fifty years and there's no way that I'm leaving it now. I don't give a flying fuck what you say, I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself." I was angry, angrier than I could ever imagine being, so angry that I was using language that I'd never used before in my life. But what Warren, my son, was suggesting was the cause of my outburst.
"But Dad, look at you, you haven't shaved in weeks and when was the last time that you washed the dishes, and look at the place it's in a hell of a mess. You are not able to look after yourself, and I insist that you will be better off in a home where you can be looked after properly."
"You insist. Who are you to insist? Since when have you had my interests at heart? Look, I haven't shaved because I don't want to. Ever since the sixties when you mother asked me to shave off my beard I've wanted to grow it again, but I knew she didn't like it, so I've held off. Now that she's no longer around, I've decided that it's time that I did what I wanted to do for a change, and if that means growing a beard, then I'll grow one. I think that it balances out the fact that there's no thatch on the roof, I'm completely bald on top. As for the dishes, I haven't washed them because I wait until I have the dishwasher full before I turn it on. Do you realise just how long it takes to fill it up when you only use one plate and one cup for each meal?"
"But Dad, look at you, do you know how to use an iron?"
"Yes, but why would I need to iron this shirt, I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not trying to impress anyone, I have no-one to impress. It's too late in the day for me to start a new relationship, and I don't think that I'll find anyone as good as your mother, no matter how hard I try."
"But in a village you'll be with people your own age."
"I don't want to be with old farts my age, have you seen them, they look terrible shuffling around with their Zimmer frames like a mob of old zombies. I'm still fit, I ride my bike every day, I walk the dogs twice a day, I'm not overweight, I feel great, my joints all work well, I don't have any of the illnesses of old age, like dementia. I read lots of books, I do crosswords, I write stories, my brain functions as it should. I want to stay here in this house, my house, the house that I built for your mother, the house that we lived in all our married life, and you want to take that away from me, why?"
"I just think that it's the right time to make this move."
"Well I don't want to go, and that's my final decision, and I would ask that you respect that decision."
"Just think about it, that's all that I'm asking, just think about it."
Like hell, I thought to myself, that's not all, he wants me out of this house and into one of those villages for a reason. "I'll think about it, but I'm not going to be rushed into making a decision that's going to affect the rest of my life, okay?"
He mumbled his way out of my house and to his flash new car. This was the first time he'd been to see me since Connie's funeral. For the three months before her death he was a constant visitor, he couldn't do enough for her, couldn't lavish enough attention on her, obviously hoping to impress on her what a great son he was, and what a wonderful wife he had, and weren't her grand-children simply wonderful? It was sickening, but that all stopped after she died, and then when her Will passed through probate and he found that she had left her half of the house and everything else to me, he hasn't come near me. That was a week ago, and he has now changed tack and is trying to convince me that I should move into a retirement village and sell the house. I would not be surprised if he hasn't already had a valuation done to work out how much he stood to gain from the sale, and my subsequent removal. The way that I felt at the moment he stood to get fuck all.
I bought the block of land the day after Connie and I announced our engagement. She was with me when I selected it from the others that we had looked at and had seen the plans for the house that I would literally build on it. Connie and I had been boyfriend/girlfriend ever since Primary School. Our families lived next door to each other, and we saw each other every day. We helped each other with our school work and graduated Primary School at the top of our class. High School was much the same except for the competition for our affections. It was an academic High School where each student had to pass an entrance examination, so the level of intelligence and scholastic ability was above average. With more students with similar ambitions and interests, came more students interested in each of us on a more than scholastic level. Several boys tried to attract Connie's attention, but these were politely rebuffed until they gave up. The same with me, the girls were forever telling me how smart I was, how good at sport I was, and how handsome I was. I explained to each of them that I was Connie's boyfriend and that she and I were going to get married when the time was right, and that time would be after we both graduated University.
My father was a Builder so I grew up with houses and house construction, so it followed that I should study Architecture. Connie studied Medicine with the view to becoming a Paediatrician. Our personal and academic lives made it impossible for us to have anything more than a rudimentary social life, and this was centred on the Church Youth Group. There were social events that we attended, to take a brief break from our studies, there were religious programmes that we participated in, but chose not to lead, as this would take up too much of our valuable time. Outside of University and Church our lives were our own, we spent much of our time with each other, either at her house or mine, and nothing was said when we decided to sleep over at either one or the other home. Nothing was said when we became lovers, apart from her mother sitting her down and having a long discussion about the propriety of her and I having sex before we married, and my father and I having a similar discussion from the male perspective. The outcome of these discussions was that we took the necessary precautions to ensure against an accidental pregnancy.
The design for our house was a part of my final year assessment. We each had to design a commercial and a domestic building and produce scale models of each. My commercial development consisted of a shopping precinct centred on an open space that could be used for casual and formal gatherings, and that included such new, for their time, things as cafes and ice-cream parlours. Most towns' shopping precincts centred on a main street with each shop having a street façade, and this, I argued, was inefficient in that to get from one shop to another could involve walking the full length of the street, while my development proposal meant nothing further than a stroll across a pleasant central open space.
My domestic building had been developing in my mind for many years and was the culmination of information garnered from my father and his contractors about the best practice for a comfortable house. In Australia, with its sometimes harsh and changeable climate, the main consideration was to moderate that for the comfort of the occupants. This, to me, could best be achieved by having a thick outer wall with a void between it and an inner wall. If the void was well ventilated, any heat that would penetrate, a prolonged heat wave would be necessary, would rise in the void and be vented into the outside air. Surrounding this would be a veranda, sufficiently wide to provide shade in the hot months, and allow a certain level of sunlight in the winter months. By doing this, the cost of heating and cooling the home would be significantly reduced, and the cost savings over the life of the structure would more than defray the energy costs of providing heating and cooling. As it turned out I was way ahead of my time in modern thinking by copying the design and construction that was common in my grand-father's time.
"How did it go?" Dad asked over dinner the evening following my assessment interview with the Professor. Connie was with me and she smiled, she knew already how it had gone.
"I think it went well, at first he couldn't understand why I would settle for the more expensive construction method, but he changed his mind when I pointed out that it had been used successfully for decades in parts of the country where the climate ranged from hot dry summers to cold winters, and where the overnight temperatures often dropped below freezing. While heating costs were minimal in those country homes with an unlimited supply of firewood, such was not the case in suburbia and that the householder had to buy energy, an additional cost that would be more than the additional cost at the construction phase."
"Tell him about your shopping precinct." Connie said, her voice tinged with pride.
"Yes, that. He was at first sceptical with that one, but then he remembered seeing a similar shopping centre in the US that was based around a pedestrian mall, although this one was a covered mall, he saw the benefits of having an open space mall. I have been led to be believe that I will pass with a Distinction."
"I'm so proud of my man, aren't you?" Connie said as she leaned over and kissed me.
"Yes we are. Now what are you going to do about it?" Dad asked.
"I have a couple of firms sniffing around, and I need some advice from you as to which one is the best, you've worked with them."
"I know, I have been approached by two firms sounding me out as to what you're thinking of doing. They want to know if you're going to work in the commercial or domestic areas."
"I haven't yet decided. While my preference would be towards domestic, I think that there's more money to be made with commercial. What do you think?"
'There's definitely more money in commercial, but a comfortable living can be made from the domestic."
"So it comes down to need over greed. If I can be satisfied with having my needs met I should stick to domestic, but if I want more I should go for the commercial. I think you all know the answer to that." Another kiss from Connie confirmed that I had made the right decision.
As it was I became involved in both. I chose the firm of Harvey & Partners, a company that employed Dad on a regular basis to build houses for their wealthier clients. My first job was to sit in on client discussions and develop the Chief Architect's concepts into complete plans and specifications. I worked with Structural Engineers on some newer designs that were sufficiently different to need new Spec's. While doing this I spent my lunch breaks refining the plans and Spec's for my own house. George Harvey looked over my shoulder as I finished the North Elevation of the house. "That's very good, is it for a client that I don't know about?"
"No Sir, this is my house, the one that I'm going to build on the block that Connie and I have just bought."
"Those outer walls, what are you using?"
"They are field stone with brick quoins."
"Why use that, aren't you concerned that the limestone will break down over time?"
"No, with the verandas protecting them from most of the weather, and the use of Mason-seal as a further protection, they should last for centuries. I was at a winery in McLaren Vale a couple of years ago, and while I was talking to the Winemaker, I mentioned that the main house was in remarkably good condition considering that it was built over a hundred years ago. He told me that his Grand-father had built it, and that it was a field stone construction, and that the outer walls had been erected by a gang of farm labourers in one weekend. All that they had was a couple of guys that could lay bricks for the quoins, some forming boards and a lot of hard workers to mix the lime mortar slurry to pour over the stones that had been loaded into the forms. As soon as the slurry came into contact with the limestone the water was sucked from the slurry, meaning that the forms could be raised almost straight away. By working their way around the house, they found that, by the time they were back to where they started, it was safe to move the forms to the next level. The field stone was all collected from the property, it was all stone that had been dislodged during ploughing for the vineyards."
"I like the design, if you want to redraw it using a different outer skin, say brick, I think that we can use it as one of our range. We'll pay you for it of course, and any other designs that you come up with. If you can keep this up you'll make partner in no time."
