DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTY FOUR - me ‘n the worker boys

Woke up this morning, still pinching myself that I’m here. It’s kind of crazy being accepted immediately into this large family, as if they’ve known and trusted me forever – where the atmosphere is ‘what’s mine is yours.’ I see now that when Loraine said, ‘yes, come – come live here with me, with us!’ that that’s exactly what she meant – no equivocating! It is such a change from what I’m used to, I just couldn’t get my head around it. So different from anything I’ve ever known! Tried and true staff members, workmen, people she trades services with – crazy old 60-plus year-old American women she has known for only a couple days – it’s all the same. She trusts and shares what she has – her rooms, her food, her goodwill – with them all. Loraine, this woman with whom I live, in whom my life is now all wrapped up, is some incredible, magnanimous person! As it were, she’d taken me for face value when I’d said I wanted to help out, to become involved; and then, with that, opened up the way and encouraged me to become a part of the inner circle of her world.

A little more about the environment in which I live: Loraine and her former husband, Nigel, purchased the Richmoor to run as a family business. Though the marriage part didn’t work out, the goal of having the kids be a part of the operation certainly has. As involved in every aspect of the business as they are, Loraine’s children are learning some really value skills they’ll be able to use in any number of enterprises, as they expand out to their own families and homes. (One of them already has – that would be Junior, as in Nigel Jr - 1^st son, 2^nd child. He lives in Devon, has a partner, Lisa, and a daughter, Livy (short for Olivia) with a second child expected next month. (They’ve decided to let the gender of the baby remain a mystery until he or she arrives officially.) Have not had the chance of meeting them so far to date.)

A very warm and giving person, Loraine has the open-est of ‘one-big-happy-family’ boundaries I have ever seen. Official members of the bona fide family are: oldest, Charlotte, 25, who has Chloe, as bright as a four-next-month year-old could be. Then there are three brothers: Jack, 22, Tom, 20, and Sam, 17. (Sam seems to be the only active one in the bunch.) Of those, all are living here in the family complex, behind the hotel, except for the youngest two – Hannah, 19, and Jamie, 15, – who live with their dad and his new wife, Louise, and her kids, also in Devon. (I understand that Junior and his dad are running a pub together.)

Loraine has been divorced for eight years, having run the hotel for twelve. She has a near-to-marriage relationship with Andy (who is always about the place, though lives in Bristol, 70 miles away), although when I referred to Andy as ‘your fiancé,’ she drolly stated, with Andy in the room, ‘he’s NOT my fiancé.’ To which Andy replied, ‘so what am I then?’ ‘My ‘have your cake and eat it, too,’ guy, I guess.’ (You really need to see these two in action to get an adequate picture. They both are very witty and chide one another horribly, an awful lot. The jury is still out on what the dynamics of their relationship is all about – I’m still trying to figure it out. They are both active members of the church – Andy is his stake’s executive secretary, to give you an idea. Andy has been divorced for four years.)

As I’ve indicated, Loraine is in the process of buying a home, hopefully for her and Andy to move into at some future date, and on the day I arrived in Weymouth they had been able to procure the keys - prior to actually finalizing on the purchase - with the idea of getting major renovations underway. She had mentioned that maybe I could help out with stripping the walls of their old paper. No problem – I was on the lookout for times and situations where I could make myself useful, and this sounded like something right down my alley. Hadn’t stripped wallpaper for a million years – but actually did do it once or twice, back in the day when Milt and I were renovating our own home(s). Oh, it’s fun – just kidding, no, it’s not! Actually, all you can really say is that it’s laborious – very slow go.

You get this gadget thingie that heats water into steam, with a hose and an applicator that maximizes the area the steam can reach at any certain moment. You hold it up on the wall, the paper and glue beneath it get damp; you let it soak for a minute or two, and then you go to scrap, scrap, scraping. Often several different layers of paper have been put one on top of another. They don’t do you any favor, either, and come off all at once – oh, no, that would be much too easy! Like I said: steam it up and get to scraping! Oh, man, funsies! Did this from about 11 till 5ish.

You would have been pretty amazed at the sight of me today as I loaded into the work van with three hoodie-wearing worker boys – two young men, Ricky and Tom, (when they learned that I was from the U.S., they both felt compelled to ask, ‘but why – why would you want to come HERE? I told them it had everything to do with the adage that ‘the grass is always greener on the other side,’ thing!) and one middle-aged foreman, Jez (short for Jeremiah – don’t ask me!) – on the way to the site of the house renovation project. (I heard them remark on the drive over to the other house that getting the house done was her (Loraine’s) highest priority!) The incredible thing is how you can find common ground with about anybody if you let it happen. If these guys passed you on the street, looking scruffy as they do, you would have had concerns. Together on the job, with me, Loraine’s friend, they were as respectful and mindful as the best of gentlemen.

Tom concentrated on his work and was pretty quiet – interacted when he needed to. Jez (I thought at first when I heard Loraine saying his name that I was hearing ‘Jazz!’ but I was wrong.) He listened to, and checked out, my various suggestions regarding the different things I uncovered and thought worth sharing about the house’s condition as I noticed them. Towards the end of the day, I thought I overheard him say something about Birmingham and asked him if that’s indeed what I heard. As it turned out, he had been raised there and we talked a lot and made a bond around our mutual former home.

As for Ricky, who has also been in Loraine’s employ for several years, he‘s a good kid who’s had a really messed up life – been in prison at one point. (Interesting to me that he seemed to harbour no ill will towards the penal system – just accepted the fact that the time he’d spent incarcerated was the price he had to pay for his lapse in judgment – kind of complacent, like, well, you get what you get.) I’d say there’s no question but that he suffers pretty majorly from ADHD – left school at 16, when legally you could back then. He was conceived by an United State Air Force officer, his mother British. His dad left soon after his stint in the UK came to an end – Ricky thinks they married. That’s as about as much contact as Ricky has had. He said they’ve been connected on Facebook for the last couple years. I asked him how it felt to be in contact after all these years, and he replied, Weird! His mom had alcohol and heroin issues, gave up the right to her son when he was a boy, and he was subsequently raised by his aunt and uncle. She died last year at the tragic age of 45 – from an overdose. 

He said he didn’t believe in love or God, really. (Imagine that!) He’s sure had the hard knocks of life. As I mentioned yesterday, Loraine is this pretty awesome woman who can see the good in what is not seemingly apparent. Ricky has not let her down. A couple years ago he was in a very serious accident, when the van he was driving in collided with the car of an older couple. He witnessed some pretty gruesome things resulting in several deaths and suffered major trauma because of it.  He told me that he himself during the course of his treatment had died a couple times, and pulled up his shirt to show me his scars. All this resulted in him getting hooked on pain killers; by his own sheer will he was able to turn from them. I told him it all went to show that God had a very special purpose for him yet in this life. He remained incredulous, though he did listen and talk about his own thoughts. Like I said, a rough life . . .

On the other hand, it was evident that Ricky lives a pretty raucous existence – no ties anywhere, to anyone; wears wife beaters, to give you a picture. At the same time he is a really good-hearted, good-natured bloke who has become an asset to the hotel.  My heart went out to his obvious desire to be loved and appreciated, just like us all – and maybe MORE, from all he’s been through. (Reminds me of the kind of ‘alpha males’ that had to have existed in Jeff and Andrew’s missions – hard characters, but who would protect the missionaries with their own lives if it ever came down to it.) Couldn’t help but develop poignant feelings towards him – in fact, we got to be pretty close. When I asked him if he’d mind if we got a picture together, he said, ‘yeah, sure – you can tell the folks back home that I’m your boy toy,’ and then had himself a good guffaw over the joke. (Sadly, you can tell that his head injury has taken its toll on his intellectual and emotional capacities.)

Earlier that morning, Loraine, had been first to a ‘very productive,’ according to her, 7am Weymouth economic development meeting (she represents the other hoteliers on the strip, with the city), all about encouraging the tourist industry in their city, came to check out our progress. Seems like to me all they’d have to do is sit back and wait for the tourists to come to them – but I guess there’s a lot of competition from the other coastal cities. They thought having had Olympic sailing here would have made a big difference, increased visibility and all. So far that has not materialized – still it’s only been a few months, so hopefully given time it will. Following that she went for some therapy on her back before coming to check our progress, as well as to roll up her own sleeves and get to work. (That philosophy has always really spoken to me – that you are never above digging in and doing whatever it is you have asked others to do.) She has great vision for what would cause others to throw up their hands and run swiftly in the opposite direction. She brought along Polish-born, Mikey, probably the most significant of all the full-time staff who are employed at the Richmoor – he lives in the hotel. (Encountered him the first time I came to Weymouth in November – see Day 118 for an earlier photo. Also Lisa, the blonde, is still waitressing here.) I told Loraine that she’d obviously missed out on her true calling in life – to be a project manager or to renovate homes for profit. She is quite the woman, I tell you!

Loraine had purchased a complete, used, intact kitchen this very morning from eBay, before we had even started off for our ‘day laborer job’ – that’s a new one for me: a kitchen – on eBay?!), from Newcastle, all of 6 hours away. You have to dismantle what’s left of the kitchen in the house in which we’re at work, dismantle the one there, and then resurrect it here in its new home in Weymouth. Not a minor undertaking! But if you’d seen Jez in action today, you wouldn’t have batted an eye. He’s a one-man electrician, plumber, carpenter fix-it-up kind of guy – he can do it all! Loraine is one fortunate woman to have him on her team - wish I had him around my place back home! (When he’s not doing things like remodeling a home, he works in the hotel keeping everything running in tiptop form.

To paint a picture of the circumstances under which I live, to set the context, let me just say that at this very moment there are NO paying guests staying in the hotel. Many of Loraine’s guests come from large coach groups (tour packages set up by bus companies) who keep coming back year after year. This weekend she has a group coming in who will stay through Christmas itself. At that, the hotel will kick into gear – something I have not witnessed so far. Should be interesting!

It’s crazy around here, for sure - AND kind of fun, all at the same time. Everything is so random and off the cuff. This present situation is definitely going to help me learn how to think more outside the box, also to let stuff go and not let it bother me – as l readily admit that I have this gnawing urge to fix things, but I can’t, so being forced to go with the flow is going to be good for me –  all characteristics that will certainly be good for me to leave behind – or else are going to be the death of me!

 You could also say that, so far in my observation, a tight ship is NOT what is run around here. In fact, if you could peek ‘behind the curtain,’ see all the gears and cogs as it were, you might be a bit taken aback. However, when I saw it in action, back when I was a paying customer in November, and was NOT looking into the workings, I found it to be superb in every way and could only sing their praises. And, in the end, I suppose, that’s the part that really counts_ 

Photos_

 1- view out the entryway of the Richmoor – sea in the background with hunkered down dog walker in the fore (looks cold, but it's not - just wet and windy!)

2- one half-stripped wall of many

3-three layers of wall facade – original tongue-and-groove paneling, followed by green-brown paper topped with thick pale pink-painted paper made to look like plaster

4- me ‘n my boy toy, Ricky (obscured by the steam)