SEAL OF DISAPPROVAL

Hector reports a discovery: he lives in the Silicon Zone.

This does not please him. It especially does not please him because The Cage, now nearly complete in terms of the renovations he and Mrs Hec required of their purchase to make it truly habitable, has revealed itself to be the constructional equivalent of a political office. It leaks like a sieve.

Hence, as a result of this (southern hemisphere) cyclone season, many unauthorised entry points for wind-driven rain have been identified over the past few days. They can all be fixed. Anywhere else and they would probably not exist, but The Cage is in Indonesia, where building standards are not, shall we say, quite what they could be.

Having recently spawned Cyclone Melanie, which at today’s date is briskly sailing the seasonal route to the north-west coast of Australia, the Bali area is again wet and blowy. It makes things nice and green and the annual wet monsoon is always welcome for that reason.

But at the same time, as Hec’s disreputably unbelieving Aussie mates are apt to say, “Enough, Huey!”

Thus far, since Christmas, he has discovered that every window – Ha! A notional term – lets in the wind-driven rain, and every door (ditto). The roof, “retiled” in 2006 according to the previous owner now safely repatriated to the Godzone, has a tendency to leak through the lining. The new bamboo blinds, while effective in keeping out the sun (Ha!) and deterring modest little mango showers of the sort the monsoon usually produces, get into a flap early in the piece in a real blow, and let everything in before flying away.

Hec’s always been a stiff-upper-beak sort of chap, but his patience is wearing a little thin. Especially since painting of the interior of The Cage has just been (nearly) completed and will now have to be redone in several significant areas because, well, paint and high-pressure water input do not really mix.

The solution is silicon, extruded from a tube into all the points through which Mr Huey can infiltrate his raindrops. According to Mr and Mrs Hec’s urgent audit (ongoing) that’ll take about a ton of goo.

Welcome to paradise! Bring your Sydney-to-Hobart wet weather gear with you – and your galoshes too.