13 May 2005
CdP
How many strains of culture clash can one building site harbour? The answer, of course, is an infinite number: nationalities, fields of expertise, sense of own importance, ignorance, over-enthusiasm and sheer panic all contribute to untold misunderstandings.
Take one American business woman trying to open her recently purchased and newly revamped Umbrian hotel for the summer season. I say revamped but that makes it sound like the thing is finished. No: the opening date is set for June 1 but the place is still crawling with masons, electricians, floor-polishers, carpenters, plumbers, furniture-deliverers and into the fray come the contractors who will be planting the garden.
I have been struggling for months to instil an Anglo-style sense of urgency or at least of public relations into these contractors, local people who, Im told, will always do a good job though not always at the precise time you want them to. In a situation like this, however, time is of the essence and their wails about the indignity of having to share their work space with not to mention the threat to the well-being of any living organism they plant in the garden from all other varieties of humanity which form the milling throng around the hotel have to be ignored in the interests of swift action. No easy task.
Especially as my capable but time-unspecific contractors are past masters at defending themselves, huffily, with attempts to seize the high moral ground. No one trusts them, which is horribly unfair as they always deliver. People demand that they turn up on the pre-arranged day then they find that the garden is strewn with builders debris: how un-economical (ma non economico their favourite lament) is that? The owner wants a lawn but the plumbers havent even laid the pipes for the watering system and when they do, theyre all wrong because my contractors are the only people in the whole area who know how to create a proper watering system. How can anyone work in these conditions?
As they huff and puff, its difficult to get sufficient words in edgewise to point out that had they turned up on the Monday morning as arranged, rather than 24 hours later, they might have had a hotel owner paragon of efficiency herself and understandably short-tempered with anyone who doesnt come up to her own high standards who praised them for their punctuality and was prepared to back them in their subsequent thick-and-fast complaints about the other players in this complicated chess game. Had they turned up on time, they might have been better placed to tell the plumbers where the pipes should go; indeed, had they not refused point blank weeks ago for reasons known only to themselves to do the watering system themselves then the problem may not have arisen at all. And had I not paid a surprise visit to their nursery not ten days ago to find that most of the plants that I had asked them to order four months ago for this garden were nowhere to be seen, they might have had a less nervous, more supportive champion in me, the designer, who may or may not decide to work with them again on the basis of what (and how) they produce in this hotel.
What cant fail to strike, however, among the acrimony and recriminations, is that particular Umbrian involvement in whatever new project is to hand. Its a mix, if such a thing is possible, of dour off-handedness almost child-like fascination and not only from the villagers who have long considered the street-side wall of this hotel as the seat on which to perch and chin-wag of an evening and now find that they dont even have to think of topics to discuss: the antics around the hotel are more than enough entertainment. All the workers involved in the revamp are equally absorbed in each step, the garden being the last in a series of fascinating developments. My contractors may have shirked and shrieked but they keep popping up, sending helpers back to tidy and assist in tasks which, strictly speaking, are not theirs. The electrician seemed pleased rather than peeved when he offered to come back after dark to try the fairy lights beneath the chunks of glass adorning the circular central raised area. The blacksmith called in to make the rose trellises waxed lyrical about how he had had his first communion lunch beneath that very arbour. And everyone, everyone wants a hunk of my green glass: Im beginning to wonder whether therell be any left by the grand opening.