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The Room of Thomas

(or, Swiss Mist, With a Twist)

It's 4.27 p.m., Swiss time. I've just finished cleaning a room, and I'm pretty whacked.

The room is 1350 metres above sea level, on a farm in the mountains, 60 kilometres south-west of Zurich.

It isn't my own room. It is - or perhaps was - the room of Thomas.

Thomas is a wandering farmer. After working here for some months - over the winter and into June - he wandered away for the weekend 10 days ago, and hasn't yet returned.

It's perhaps not surprising, for this is a remote spot, with steep-sided pastures; difficult even for the cows and sheep to graze; yet more difficult for two-legged animals to do whatever work they have to do.

A hard-core track runs out before it reaches the farm. Then it's a 20-minute trek along a rough path, though supplies are brought up by cable car from the village far below.

It can't have been easy for Thomas: being here; working here. I know, because since he left I've been doing some of the work that he did. Every day, cleaning out the rooms of the five cows and three donkeys; feeding them and the small flock of sheep; and putting them to bed at night.

I've helped to repair fences, on slopes that seemed almost vertical as we worked our way up with bag and tools.

I've sweated a lot, often in the pouring rain, carrying a share of the heavy equipment, from solid iron bars to big hammers. But the farmer, Hanspeter, carried the really heavy stuff, including a chain saw that was needed to cut and shape new posts. A man of muscle, resourcefulness and resilience, he's been here for seventeen years.

Thomas was here for a few months or more. I'm here for just four weeks, to help out and extend my experience of life and work. On Monday, some even more short-term visitors will arrive - a group of schoolchildren and their teacher. They will stay for five days.

So, I've been cleaning out Thomas's room to prepare for the sudden influx of more than a dozen fifteen-to-sixteen-year-olds. And I've been pondering on what impact the experience of being here will have on them; their lives; their rooms.

I wonder about Thomas too. I tried to treat his room with respect in the cleaning of it, separating the bits and pieces that I thought may still conceivably have value to him from the clutter of bottle tops and fag ends.

Thomas spent a lot of time here cleaning out the shit from the animals' rooms. He hadn't spent a lot of time cleaning out the shit from his own room, for whatever reason.

I've discovered that the Swiss word for 'shit' is 'mist', and there's certainly been a lot of it around, in more ways than one.

Over the last couple of weeks, one grey rainy day has followed another. I've prayed every morning for blue skies, and ached at the prospect of another day of leaky wellington boots and wet cow shit. I've ached in body too, with the sheer physical effort of the work I've been doing.

It's taken me three, sometimes four hours to do the work that Thomas probably did in one or two. But then he's bigger than me, and younger.

Despite having to battle with my own limitations, I've generally appreciated my close encounters with the animals. Their 'mist' smells sweet from the meadow-harvested hay that feeds them.

It seems appropriate, somehow, to be shovelling shit, in this place, high up in the mountains, at this time in my life. I've been shovelling shit out of my own life, my room, in other ways over the last few years.

At 43, I'm coming through - I think, hope - the latter stages of a major mid-life crisis, which has involved periods of severe breakdown and depression.

I recognised a need to do physical work; that it would help me to heal. It has, and does.

Now though I'm feeling pretty shaky. I'm in a strange country in unfamiliar circumstances. I don't speak the language, but Hanspeter treats me with respect and courtesy, with a bit of teasing and humour. It helps.

I get through, each day feeling the relief to know that I've done what I had to do, and maybe a little bit more. I must be doing som