"Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead".
Flossie's coming home...
A gentle rain falls, as it usually does, on the green hills and valleys of the principality. It moistens many pubs and many churches; it falls on the heads of people on the way to the chip shop in Newcastle Emlyn; it drizzles mildly onto late-night drinkers emerging unsteadily from late-night sessions in many a country pub. The gentle rain falls onto many, many bleating ovine entities, rendering them pleasantly aromatic; for Wales has the highest sheep density of any country in the world.
Somewhere in West Wales, the rain falls onto six green acres upon which stands an old shepherd's cottage, with what used to be a cow barn attached to it. The lights are on in the cow barn, and there is the sound of techno music coming from within.
If you were to enter the cottage, the first thing you would see would be a life-sized sheep-shaped stool and a one-fourth-scale Highland cow on wheels in the entrance lobby. If you were to open the door and go into the cow barn, you would see:
In the corner of the room, a Dell Pentium II-300 PC next to a desk upon which is a large monitor, a keyboard, some speakers, a power supply and a naked circuit board with glowing LEDs. A small plush cow sits on one of the speakers; a small plush llama on the other. Cables snake from the circuit board to the PC and to a large Sony wide-screen telly against one of the walls. There is a large, plush goat standing on top of the monitor. There is a 2-foot-high plush dromedary camel standing on top of the telly; on its hump sprawls a somewhat smaller and rather stoned-looking additional plush camel. Next to the telly on the left is a stereo; there is a medium-sized plush dromedary camel standing on it. To the right of the telly is a speaker; there is, as I am sure you have come to expect, a small plush camel standing on the speaker.
To the left of the stereo is a wooden cabinet containing two Nintendo 64s (one US, one UK); a PlayStation, a Saturn, a 3D0, and a shitload of games. Joysticks and controllers lie in profusion in front of the cabinet, and a bunch of cables snake out of the back off towards the big telly. To the left of the cabinet is the other speaker; a somewhat confused-looking plush goat stands on the speaker.
On the other side of the room, facing the telly, is a couch and an armchair. In front of these are two tables. On one of the tables, there is a mug that recently contained a cup of tea, three remote controls, a green Nintendo 64 controller with rumble pack attachment,a packet of fags and three copies of New Scientist. The other table is mostly filled by a large, seated, plush Bactrian camel.
In the corner, there is a massive CD collection and a big pile of Red Dwarf videotapes. On the walls there are some pictures: one of a cow, three of llamas, three of individual sheep and one of a flock of sheep, and, above the fireplace, a framed picture of a herd of camels.
On the screen of the big Sony, the beginnings of a new videogame are displayed. The image is unusual; for there are no visible pixels.
Yak is home.
My, but it's taken a while to get here though... but hey, it's worth it :-)
I left the US on the 22nd of August, and spent the next few days de-lagging, drinking lager and eating curry, a deep necessity to restore the dangerous lack of proper British Vindaloo sauce in my metabolism, a non-trivial condition resulting from too long spent in Foreign Parts. Once the curry balance was safely restored, I hired a ship and headed off up to Wales, with the intention of crashing at an obliging mate's for a few days and searching for places that the Prettiest Sheep in the World and the Yak might happily live peacefully. I travelled hither and yon and whatever is beyond yon, examining a multitude of places, most of which were not quite right in a number of ways - some were too new and had no character, some had neighbours close by who would not be best chuffed to have some hairy oik staying up all hours cranking techno and indulging in sheep for a neighbour. Some were too small, some didn't have enough room for the Prettiest One, and many were just way too far from the pub.
I was not disheartened; I went on searching, drinking beer and having occasional curries (just to be on the safe side). And eventually, sitting in a chip shop on Lammas St in Carmarthen (almost a supremely excellently-named street, that - I am sorely tempted to go out there one night with some paint and fix the spelling) - anyway, sitting in that chip shop, reading through piles of estate agent's bumf, I spotted this really nice place - or at least I read about it, for although there was a picture it was very blurry, and anyway, as we all know, estate agents use special reality-distorting cameras, which make even the tattiest old hovel look lovely and which can magically make a gaff surrounded closely by houses on all sides appear to be standing in splendid isolation in idyllic countryside. I was fully expecting that when I went to visit I would find yet another unsuitable place and that it would probably be next door to a particularly busy bus-station.
Nonetheless, I thought, finishing my chips, it's probably worth a look; so I leaped into the hired ship and tootled off in the general direction indicated by the estate agent's directions. After an initial amount of automotive faffing around during which I missed the place entirely, I found it and was pleasantly surprised - nice land, stables even, and a really nice gaff surrounded by some cool gardens. I was greeted by the little old lady who was selling the place, and the first thing she said to me was "It's under three offers already".
Bugger! thought I.
Still, since I was there, I thought I'd better have a butcher's anyway, and it became apparent that this was by far the best gaff I had seen. Nice cottage, a bit bigger than when I lived in Wales before - I could stand up in all the rooms and walk through doorways without risk of smashing my brains out, always a bonus. And this big room that was a converted 5-stall cow barn that just had "Media Room" written all over it. Two bathrooms, useful for when the lads come to visit (coz that bastard Mark always hogs the bathroom. God knows what he gets up to in there). One of the bathrooms even has one of those things in it for washing your arse - not that I have ever used one, but for a habitual curry-eater, who knows, one day it might come in useful... Nice land, stables, pretty back field with a tree in it and a gate that I could just see Flossie waiting at for the morning Digestive, and room enough for plenty of other furry ungulates. Not too far from the pub. Not too close to the village. Just right, in fact.
And, as it turned out, none of the other interested parties (one of whom was some Icelandic diplomat, apparently) actually had the wonga ready to hand, being as they were all caught up in the dreaded House Buying Chain. Since I had no house to sell, if I could organise financing smartish, there was every chance that I could nip to the head of the queue and nab the place out from under their respective noses. I envisioned this happening, and imagined the Icelandic cursing that would undoubtedly ensue under those circumstances, and decided to give it a shot. All I had to do was sort the mortgage and get in there, hire a solicitor, and it'd be done and dusted in a couple of weeks. Sorted.
Hah!
Fat chance mate.
It's never quite that simple, is it?
I went to the bank and went to see the mortgage dude, an amiable-enough Welsh gentleman who amused me by trying to pronounce my email address "llamaman" like it was a Welsh place name, and we began the initial round of paperwork filling in forms about filling in forms, which I hoped would result in being granted permission to actually apply for a mortgage. They needed information from America, which is, helphully enough, more or less perfectly out of sync with the British business day. And it was bank holiday in America too, so a few days got wasted there.
Then, once the possibility of maybe being granted a mortgage is arrived at, the mortgage people have to hire a surveyor to go in there and basically tell them that the place is not going to fall down. There is then a wait until said surveyor actually gets his act together and goes in (he didn't go one day, apparently, because "it was raining". It's Wales! Of course it's raining! That guy probably only does ten day's work a year! hehe). And then, bless his little cotton hoof-coverings, the surveyor decides to recommend that the bank not grant the full mortgage until some work is done on the roof and some damp-proofing on a couple of the walls. Joy.
This means that I now have to arrange and send in my own round of surveyors, to assess how much the work is going to cost, which takes another couple of weeks, and the little old lady is getting very pissed off with all these people coming in and is making noises about the Icelandic dude. I can feel his Nordic breath breathing down my neck, but he still isn't ready, so the process carries on.
Finally, after my guys are done, the bank send their person in again (and the little old lady is doing her nut) and, lo and behold, he decides that it isn't as bad as all that after all, and there is no need to withhold the mortgage! Two weeks of faffing about that was totally unnecessary! Oh well - at least it's sorted now, and we can advance to the next level, which is actually applying for the mortgage. More forms, and then head Office decide they need more information from America (actually they already had a letter signed by the CEO containing the info they needed, but it wasn't actually addressed to the specific guy who was dealing with it and was therefore, apparently invalid). Eventually - oh joy! I am granted a mortgage.
But still, it's not over. Now I have financing, but there is still a bunch of legal jiggery-pokery, the actual conveyancing, that needs to be done, and until this is completed, one of the other dudes could still get in there and snatch the place out from under my bovine nose, which would definitely provoke a protracted fit of colourful swearing in darkest hexadecimal. I have to sit and sweat it for another month or so, fretting and eating extra amounts of super-strength chicken Vindaloo and drinking more lager to keep my strength and spirits up. The deeds get lost and have to be found again. The present occupier is unable to name a definite completion date. I wait. I hope. I eat curry.
Finally, getting on for three months after I left the US, I move in. Unfortunately, my furniture does not, since although it has been in the country for a couple of weeks, those lovely people at UK Customs had decided to waylay my shipment and poke their official noses into every nook and cranny, searching for Ghu alone knows what; so my first few days in my new abode are spent sitting on the floor by day and sleeping on a leaky lilo at night. Finally on a Friday a large truck arrives with my stuff, which the Customs dudes have finally decided contains nothing nefarious.
Fine - except that on the Saturday, I had to leave for the US...
So, it's only really in the last couple of weeks that I have actually been able to live in the new house; and for the first few days it was fairly chaotic, with nothing in place and much stuff still lying around in cardboard boxes. But now, looking around the Cow Barn and its accoutriments, it finally feels like I am home. And, after the last few months, I certainly don't intend to move again in the forseeable future. I have a nice gaff, room for plenty of beasties, and an amazingly wicked system to write games on. Tomorrow I am going to see a fencing dude and have him fix up the back field, and shortly after I shall be reunited with the Prettiest Sheep in the World. Soon there will be a pinball machine in the entrance lobby along with the cow and the sheep. And next weekend the lads are coming up for the inaugural Welsh Weekend - a good hearty piss-up and mega games playing session, hopefully the first of many.
I know I've found a good space, a place where I can create wicked games, play lots of Robotron X and Top Gear Rally, get off it with my mates on occasion, watch East Enders, listen to music at all hours, eat takeaway Chicken Vindaloo, and be with many beasties. There will be llamas here, real ones, not plushies.
YaK is in his lair, and all's right with the world :-)
"And I sit in the canyon with my back to the sea
There's a blood-red dragon on a field of green
Calling me back..."
(Roger Waters, from the very excellent album "Radio K.A.O.S.")
It was decided, in the end, informally and over curry; most propitious circumstances for any decision, in the Yakly books. The pace of things is constantly picking up in the world of X, and in the end it just seemed sensible that I should get the business and hassles of a transatlantic move out of the way slightly earlier than I had originally thought possible, so that I can be comfortably ensconced in a new Welsh abode, ready for when the pressure is really gonna start hitting hard, so that I will be back in my optimal coding environment. Wales, where Trip-a-Tron was made, where Llamatron was made, where Tempest 2000 and the VLM were created... Wales, where I have done my best work previously, and where I can live the semi-hermetic rural life to which I am best suited, working on the stuff of dreams, getting visited by my mates at weekends and going out down the pub in the evenings... Wales, where a YaK belongs.
Wales.
Where Flossie lives :-)
Of course there is now a ton of things that I have to get organized in order to smoothly disengage from residential mode and hopefully outta here on good old Virgin flight VS019, deprived of fags and quaffing copiously of the in-flight gin and tonics, in time to get to Wales by late August or early September to begin looking for a suitable permanent Yakly abode. There are bound to be plenty of hassles along the way, but I shall just keep remembering that, once I am through it all, I shall be somewhere just down the road from a pub that serves proper British beer, where I can go and eat the most excellent spherical fishcakes from the Newcastle Emlyn chippie whenever I get a craving for them, and where, should I happen to gaze out of the window, lost in a moment of abstraction, perhaps, as I ponder what one of the enemies in my new game should look like - I will see a plump fluffy roundness, a waggling little tail, gentle brown ovine eyes framed by delicate lashes... Flossie, the Prettiest Sheep in the World.
It'll be worth a semi-infinite amount of hassles, just to be able to come home, to Wales, to Flossie.
If you're interested to know how things go, watch this page, and I will post updates as to the progress of my translocation.
(I'll never forget the first time I had Kentucky Fried Chicken over here. I went in and ordered various bits of unfortunate fowl, and was surprised to be asked if I wanted mashed potato or a biscuit. I thought "well, that's odd, but I can always go back and make a cuppa and have the biscuit with that", so I asked for the biscuit. I searched in vain for it, but I did come across this bit-of-bread-kinda-thing that tasted a bit like Madeira cake. Subsequent exposure to the culture led to the realisation that the aforementioned cake was, in fact, a biscuit, in this strange alternate reality).
I don't dislike America - it's just that it's not my culture. I just found out that I am too British, iz all. It came to the point that I had to ask myself, given that I could do my work from anywhere, where did I really want to be? And deep down, I knew that the answer was : somewhere not too far from Newcastle Emlyn, within walking distance of a pub, with a bit of land and a few nice beasties. The US is interesting, and the climate is great, but it's not home.
And I get to be back with my Flossie again. :-)
Of course I'll miss the mates I've made out here... but they're all wired folk, so we'll still be in touch thanks to the Space Where There Is No Distance. And I'll doubtless be back frequently to visit, due to work, so I can hang out and buy games for my Nintendo 64 and enjoy being able to get cheap jeans and Inca Kola and all the other benefits of a spell in the US, but I'll know that a couple of weeks later I'll be back home and Flossie will be bleating at me for a biccy.
And, bottom line iz, that means everything to me.
Anyway, I'll let you all know how the translocation progresses on this page. Hopefully it'll end with a nice pic of Flossie happily standing outside wherever my new gaff ends up being. There's a lot of hassle between here and there, but hopefully I'll get there. Wish me lluck...