Change is a Fine Thing

Change is a Fine Thing

It was the chance they had been waiting for. It was now or never. Marina looked at Joseph.

He had come home from work and taken off his tie and jacket, changing into jeans and a shabby vest. He still made her stomach lurch with delight, just looking at him, even when he was dressed like a hobo.

Mending the front door knob now , which had come adrift in the night, he was doing what made him happiest. He liked fixing things. He was good at doing handyman work and could turn his hand to anything. She was overwhelmed by her feeling of love and protection she had for this man. A lock of hair fell over his forehead and his lips puckered in concentration. His fingers so long and slender grappled with the Phillips Head screwdriver and Allen Key , removing the screws and tightening everything up. He made it all look so easy. If she had been left to do it she would have made a complete mess ending up in tears of rage and frustration.

They had enough money now, to put down a twenty five percent payment . She was planning to take him at the weekend, to have a good look at the farm that was coming up for sale. She had seen it advertised in the Agri Newsletter.

“It is exactly what we need to improve our situation. There is enough land to plant more olive trees. The cottage is big enough for us, with room to spare for visitors, (she was thinking also, of eventual new additions to the family. How she would love to have his children).”

“Plastic is vile and horrible.”

“The buildings do not need much restoration, so we could move in right away and there are no transfer fees. We would, of course have to mend the roof , that is a priority but apart from that there are no structural defects. That is what the agent said, on my last phone call to him.”

“More than eight million tons of plastic are discarded into the world’s oceans every year . In ten years, that makes it eighty million.”

“We can easily afford to make it habitable with your skill and knowledge of building and repairing things. We have enough funds to add to the existing number of olive trees which are already bearing fruit,” added Marina , putting a glass lid on a dish of leftovers, from the night before.

“There are ‘Trash islands’ or ‘Garbage islands’ floating in the sea. They look like land islands from a distance but they are uninhabitable.”

“We will be able to give local people near Malmesbury , employment . They can help with tilling the soil and planting trees and later on, the harvesting which is done by hand. I have always loved olives, haven’t you? And think of the olive oil we can produce, the farm has equipment for that.” Marina stowed the fruit compote in a ceramic dish and placed it in the vegetable drawer of the fridge.

“ One of the most famous of these islands is the ‘Pacific Garbage Patch’ between California and Hawaii. It is 1.6 million square miles and contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. In 2015 two trawlers scooped up 1.2 million pieces from this garbage island and each piece was examined and classified, the exercise taking two years.”

“How many trees do you think we ought to buy, for a start, Joseph?”

“All animals can be harmed by plastic waste. Birds, fish and shellfish often mistake plastic for food.”

“ The farm is on the banks of the Nel’s river has its own supply of water. The photograph shows banks of lovely lawns and fields of yellow daisies. There are wild flowers too which we can market to the florist shops in Cape Town.”

Marina knew how Joseph longed to get away, away from the city with its smells, smells of exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke from employees who were prohibited from smoking indoors, from dust bins which frequently stood not emptied. He longed most of all to get away from all cars with their constant hooting, the long queues of taxis with the drivers shouting through their windows, ‘Mowbri, Kaap! Mowbri Kaap.’ There was the constant rush to do things, everyone always in a hurry, like stampeding buffalos, sometimes knocking each other over.

Marina knew how he longed for the open countryside. It seemed to call him to its smells of freshly cut straw, of rain on the earth, of the sweet smell of horses and grazing sheep. They could probably keep a few sheep, she thought. Could they sell the wool to some of the local farm workers she wondered?

“Every year, 100 000 animals in the sea are killed by plastic. The beaches in Bali, a holiday resort, are covered by mountains of plastic rubbish.

More and more people are buying bottled water, when they could be drinking water out of a tap. Most countries have drinkable water. The empty bottles are thrown into the oceans.

‘The world is waking up to plastic damage’ said David Attenborough in 2019. In June of 2019 people in Glastonbury queued up for tap water (nice change there!). Attenborough said, ‘That’s one million bottles of water in plastic that have not been drunk by you.’

 People say you can recycle plastic but plastic recycling is a myth. There are thousands of four story high mounds of plastic rubbish which are never seen by the public.

Burning plastic gives off toxic fumes harmful to humans.”

 “Joseph, please switch that damn thing off. I can’t hear a word you are saying.”

 “ I said , yes let’s go for it, the sooner the better and then I can resign from my job,” Joseph replied .

“What ? and give up our only source of reliable income? Maybe we should see how it works out for a while . You can commute to Cape Town for a few months . It’s only 70km, an hour’s drive.”

“There are alternatives to plastic.”

“I don’t think I can last out, any longer. The other staff are driving me insane. They think I am missing a few pencils from the pencil box. The word pollution is not in their vocabulary, they cannot see with their own eyes the plastic garbage that suffocates the world, so they ignore it. It’s no good people planning to go and live on another planet, however exciting the prospect may seem to them. Good luck to them, that’s all I can say because if you ask me, there isn’t another planet. They should stop looking for more planets to destroy.

Sorry about the radio programmes muttering away in the background, Marina love, but I couldn’t resist listening to it.”

“We can keep bees too, Joseph and produce our own honey."

“Good idea! Here’s to a diet of olives, olive oil, cheese, bread and honey, mmmmmmm. I’ll give in my notice on Friday.”

Joseph worked for a packaging factory that used only plastics.