Steps, swearing and cats; Or going up in the world...

What is the point of having a second storey if there is no way up? That is to say, there is a way up but if you have vertigo as bad as me, then there is not a chance of getting me up that step ladder. It is a perfectly wonderful, sturdy well-put-together ladder, as demonstrated by my large Dalmatian man scooting up and down it. Am I going up it? No. I am told I am missing out on the untold beauties of the view from the terrace. Still not going up there.

We need something more permanent and vertigo-friendly. If you look around at many of the houses around the village and beyond, most of the Dalmatian concrete houses of the '80s look similar; a large rectangular footprint, reminiscent of a child’s drawing, with a front door centred between two windows that open onto a long terrace. Upstairs, the layout repeats, typically reached by a set of concrete steps along the side.

The builder forgot the stairs in our case. I find this quite curious. It’s not just the lack of stairs, it's also the question of where they were going to go. You can’t put them at the south - front - of the house because it would interrupt the two terraces. There's no space on the west side because of windows, doors and the konoba entrance. Then on the east side, you have the garage and a large downstairs window, which only leaves the back - north - of the house.

Traditionally having a doorway on the north side of the house is a bad idea. It’s cold, wet, and windy in the winter. Still, this is where the access is easiest and because of the slope, there will be fewer steps.

Up on being told where the steps were going, tiny Baba Mara was keen to point out the inclemency of the bura winds. She had seen our chimney smoking and had come over to say hello and share some gossip. She had forgotten that the house had no internal steps so was unable to answer why they weren’t included.

“Work on this house started when your mother was pregnant. And the two cherry trees over there were planted the year you were born.”

Strangely, I saw meme a few days later which said, that for each of us, a tree had started growing on the day of our birth. A tree for each of us. It’s so wonderful that these cherry trees were his trees.  There is something wondrous about these cherry trees being linked to Boško’s own timeline - a subtle reminder that our progress, both in construction and in life, starts small.

Back on the construction site, he was constructing a wooden structure to support the concrete filling. In true Boško style, as he bashed the nail with his huge Dalmatian hammer, it glanced off the exposed bedrock and slammed into his fourth fingernail. Blood poured out as fast as the expletives and his capacity for creative swearing was demonstrated.

One hundred words for dispersing the pain.

This was only the first nail so it set back his vision for the first day of work. Him being him, he patched himself up and kept going. Before the end of the day, we had a fully sealed, solid wooden construction ready for the next step. The concrete.

It is a village truth universally acknowledged that a Dalmatian house must be in possession of a concrete mixer. We certainly needed one. One bitterly cold winter afternoon we borrowed his company truck and went to acquire a bright orange mixer (or as he called it, rumena - blush), much to the amusement of the saleswoman at Pevex.

We were ready to go with our steps. Mix, splash, swoosh. Mix, splash, swoosh. The heavy, cold stuff sloshed around the wheelbarrow as he trundled over to the steps. In the end, it took ten full mixer loads to fill up and finally smooth over the five steps and the top landing area. We sat back and admired the handiwork. There was no leakage and everything was standing firm.

The rise on the steps had to balance a piece of wood at a perfect angle, so he nailed it in place to make sure that it touched each step exactly right. He narrowly avoided disturbing the smooth surface on the top landing as he did so. He is a perfectionist which is what makes the next part so infuriating for him, and adorable for me.

“Imagine after all that smoothing work if a cat or fox was to walk across that, or even up the steps.”, I said, comically.

“That is not funny”, he replied.

“But you have a history of animals wanting to be near you”.

He didn’t reply to my nonsense. I could tell that he was eager to see the result of the set concrete because the next day when I was at work, I received some photos. He had been up to the house to remove the wooden framework to see how the concrete looked.

A cat had wandered up the steps, cautiously at first, leaving perfectly printed paws on the bottom step. The second, third, and fourth had clearly seen it pick up speed and wonder how the heck it had got into this mess. On the landing area, the cat had wildly spun around, panicked and leapt off the concrete, leaving a feline autograph of some style. I rapidly sent off a photo of this evidence to various cat-loving friends. The consensus is that we leave these prints in place. 

Onwards and upwards, the work continues...