Building on Bowen

This week we have mainly been building houses on Bowen Island, a little chunk of paradise in between the mainland and Vancouver Island (‘The Island’ as the locals have it). There’s a great website over here called Craigslist which is full of adverts both professional and private. We’ve bought bikes from it (Dotty & The Diggler are currently resting out in the back garden), Em’s found a Samba band to join and I’m writing for a new arts magazine through it and we’ve both become builders (of a sort) through the mighty list of Craig. We could also, if inclined, furnish a house with free stuff, get jobs in ‘adult’ entertainment or just simply have some random sex with bored strangers from the same site.*

Anyway Ted & Heather posted looking for some labourers and as it turns out we are them. To catch the 7am ferry from Horseshoe Bay we have to leave our house in East Vancouver at 5.30 and catch the 257 express from Downtown. This means it ain’t practical on a daily basis so we’ve been camping out in Ted & Heather’s backgarden, waking up to the ferociously loud dawn chorus and getting the water taxi from Snug Cove out to the site. Now I’ve worked on building sites in the UK but I promise you’ve never seen anything quite like this. A rich bloke called Kim has bought a plot of land on the side of the Island that isn’t accessible by car, there only two ways to reach it. The water taxi, which docks at the property’s quay, about 80 feet (or around 100 steep wooden steps) below the house itself. The other way is through the woods, full of massive pines and firs, and along a cliff path so narrow there are ropes tied along it to hang on to with a massive drop on one side. The house itself is massive, made of wood and the view is of the the Pacific ocean and Vancouver Island. Must start buying lottery tickets.

Em’s unleashed a formidable new talent for pointing, essentially tarting up walls with rocks embedded in it while I have been putting up wire mesh and plastering cement scratch plates on the side of the house. And doing a lot of old fashioned picking-up-heavy-objects-and-putting-them-down-in-different-places (usually places that are much higher up than the original pick points) as well. We’re now in the perfect position for doing crime since we’ve been using a lot of cement and the corrosive properties of that substance is great for removing your fingerprints. I’ve gone pink while Em is browning nicely. We’ve got to move out of our splendid house in July and August since George, our landlord and an artist, is back from New York for a show so we’re looking for a couple of months work either on the Island or in the interior with accommodation thrown in. In the meantime we’ll do owt for peanuts so Em’s been a receptionist and I’ve been in a film with Penelope Cruz and Ben Kingsley (pretty much every film you see set in New York seems to use Vancouver instead).

*incidentally and sort of unrelatedly I suppose, I was approached by a middle aged lady the other day who wanted me to show her how to put on a condom. So, using my fingers, I did. ‘Thank you’ she said, and wandered off. Odd.