I’ve moved in with John (My Dad’s mate from the bowls club), Sandi (his wife) and her kids, Zed (14) and Nicole (8). John moved out here 4 years ago when he married Sandi and offered me a roof and some work so I could carry on further in my travels.
The house is about 20 miles from Naples town in ‘the estates.’ Thankfully, they’re nothing like the ‘estates’ in England (that kind of place is called ‘The Projects’ over here). The estates are new houses built in snakeland (I couldn’t think of the right word so Nicole helped me.)
Snakeland is pretty apt as there’s snakes (Rattlesnakes, black snakes, water moccasins), poisonous spiders, tarantulas, alligators, crocs and surprisingly enough, black bears! No kidding, John found some bear poo in the garden the other day. Its perfectly round and bigger than horse poo. And there’s no horses around here.
So far, i’ve seen a couple of small water moccasins (poisonous snakes) and an Alligator in a lake, and I’m here for a while so I’ll try and get you some pictures. There’s also loads of bugs, little lizards and tropical looking wall climbing frogs. Sometimes at night, they climb up the windows and you can see them eating at the ‘All-you-can-eat’ bug screen which the bugs get attracted to by the light inside.
Check out this crazy little spider I nearly walked into the other day. I used the Macro lens and the flash to get a decent close up of it and it looked amazing.
The day I got here, 7 inches of rain fell (on top of that which they’d had earlier in the week) and almost caused the whole place to flood. I saw a field of cows in water up to their knees and various lakes with ‘Buy this Land’ signs poking out of them. That night, the sound was amazing. The air was totally alive with croaks and pops and song’s from thousands of every type of lizard, frog and amphibious being in the tropical groves out the back. It hasn’t rained since then. It gets humid (and hot) in the afternoon, but apparently that’ll pass over in the next month or so and we’ll just be left with a nice dry heat.
John promised he’d try to get me a bit of money to carry on up to New York after here. (And hopefully to travel a bit with Mr and Mrs GGG who’re coming out on holiday late November.) The evening I got here someone came around who was moving house and needed an extra pair of hands so I did that the day after. Since then I’ve been helping out John with various jobs at some of the properties he does the grounds keeping for. I’ve done all kinds of jobs from screwing in light bulbs and carrying ladders to painting rooves and putting up doors!
One of the places he (we) look after is a marina called 'Tin City.'
There’s lots of scope to do that kind of thing here in Naples. The town is full of Million Dollar houses, condos and apartments. Not to mention the amount of fancy boats, cars and the small airport that has private jets flying in and out roughly every 10 minutes or so! The thing here seems to be that no one in town does anything for themselves. They don’t cut their grass, put up shelves, paint their walls or move their furniture. Why should they? They only come to Naples for the winter when its too cold up North. These people don’t have time to do menial tasks like this, they’re busy fishing on their yacht in the Keys!
Step in Del Boy and Rodney.
John is without doubt a Del Boy, wheeling and dealing with the rich and working classes alike in Naples. Always on the lookout for work and kickbacks and the odd drink here and there. And he’s good at it too! He’s managed to blag me a trip out on a boat into the backwaters Naples on Wednesday, plus he’s trying to sell my geekiness to a couple of people who may want websites created. There seems to be a lot of that kind of thing going on out here with favours done for favours and few cans of Bud keeping everyone sweet. It doesn’t seem to be on a level of customer service, its more like a philosophy of ‘Pay it Forward.’ You show you’re worthwhile and people will buy it.
And I, like a good Rodney, know a Kango from a CAT (courtesy of working with Dad and at Shaftesbury Hire in the UK) so I carry the tools, try not to look gormless and hope I don’t fall off the roof as John does his popcorn-charm-bullshit with the richfolk.
Richfolk who I must say are pretty good with us ‘workers.’ For instance, painting the roof (above) with satin (reflective) paint in 90 degree heat, thick humidity and no breeze caused me to get just a little toasty up there. Peki, the Cuban woman who lived there while her 78yr old husband went off to do some work for NASA said 'No Problem. Here's a towel, jump in the pool out back.' I think I heard a hiss as my skin touched the water.
But thats just it. There seems to be little or no class distinction between the white collar and the manual workers which there is sometimes in the UK. She saw I was baking hot and said 'Use my Pool to cool off.' We did more for her for being so nice.
Everyone does their job around everyone else and the fancy lookin’ wheels of Naples keep on turning.
Back at home, John (obviously) gets someone else to do his lawn. Here's me on the tractor/mower.
He'll kill me for saying that, he's very garden proud. Its more of an honour than a chore to drive the mower! He's justifiably proud though. Being a keen gardener, back in Romford there was no way he could even dream of growing a cabbage palm, pineapple plant or banana tree!
In the next couple of weeks I may get to do some hunting or target shooting with a guy called Joe. I'm still thinking of learning to skydive for a future career (SkyDive CameraMan) and Florida would be the place to do it with its constant blue skies. And theres talk of clearing some ground on a 'beautiful little island' in the Gulf of Mexico which would involve chainsaws, machettes, a mower/tractor and one of those wood mulching machines.
Who'd have thought I'd be looking forward to doing a bit of gardening?