Long weekend, the st 29th being as late as tuesday, that's five days off, in a row. Theoretically we'd be supposed to attend lectures on monday, but that won't happen - even if they were held, I guess mere ten percent of the students would come. Or less - most are out-of-towners and will be at home. And heating the buildings for just one day also makes no sense, and wouldn't quite work - the first day after a holiday it would be a bit cold in the morning.
And we got guests - uncle Staja arrived with the speaker boxes. Boxes? No, one box. The last person on Earth who doesn't know that stereo speakers come in pairs.
He made the other one during december, though not of the same material. The first one was panel plank, as it was called, which is glued 20x20mm slats covered with two layers of cross-grained veneer on either side. Among the strongest formats of wood that I know of, without being any expensive kind of wood, this is plain pine. The other one was the same, but not fresh wood, he repurposed some kitchen cabinet doors. The only downside was that there was some paint left in some places, hard enamel, got into the grain and won't leave. I later painted them over with the leftovers of the old paint we still had from four years ago, ergo purple. The frontside I tried to cover with bajc (didn't find a translation - it's a dark brown powder you dissolve with water, works as a stain), which didn't exactly work, because the front panels, that came from Eči, were already treated with something and didn't soak. But after about three layers I got it more or less right.
I dampened the innards with žima, which is a rough (equally untranslatable, because all search engines give me results for zima, i.e. winter, fuck the engrbian habits of pretty much 90% of people, to whom they adjust) bunch of strong fibers, allegedly seaweed, not too tightly pressed and glued together, so it contains lots of air. It's the traditional filler for furniture upholstery, e.g. armchairs, mattresses and couches. The end result was the magnificent sound that I then enjoyed for about twenty years.
The boxes were so robust and strong, that we sat on them, or used them as step ladder when reaching for stuff on top of furniture, or as a coffee table. Once we were burgled when we were away, and among the stolen things were the so-called crystal wine glasses and these speakers. Arpi told us that he's seen them on the flea market.
Don't remember which was the year when this occurred: uncle Staja and tetka were guests, and slept on my couch, while I managed elsewhere, probably on the small couch in the living room. In the morning, among other regular chat, we asked them how did they sleep. Fine, except they kept waking up - „how can you sleep at all with all those trains passing?“. We all said „what trains?“ at the same time.
The track is 100m away from the house as the crow flies. We're always here and we learned years ago to just filter out the trains. They noticed them.
28-IV-2023 - 19-I-2026