Moving experiences...

Things I covet: Jim Lawrence tassel

If someone bought your house, how would you leave it? Would you leave it clean and tidy? Perhaps you would add a note about how to turn things on and off and good wishes? Maybe you might even leave a bottle of bubbly and some flowers. A little something to say you cared and hoping that the next owner of your house enjoys it as much as you did.

Maybe you’d do none of the above and just shut the door on a chapter in your life. Being an Army Brat I was brought up to leave my lodgings spick and span. I have an abiding memory (although it may be erroneous) of watching my mother on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor in last ditch attempt to leave our Army Quarter ( military term for house) in Germany, spotless. Finished she closed the door and hassled us into the car where we awaited the Housing Officer to pass the property clean enough so we could leave.

I kid you not these guys would come with clipboards and white gloves to check absolutely everything. They would don white gloves to make sure you had cleaned everything properly, the door lintels the light switches, behind the cooker, under the fridge everywhere. I don’t remember what the penalties were for failing but as a child of eight or nine I got the impression they were dire indeed.

As an itinerant Student my landlords loved me such was the ingrained need to leave each lodging spotless, in fact there were times I felt that the property was left by me far better than when I arrived. I know that when I sold my flat the lucky girl who had bought it was dumbstruck at how clean it was left, so much so that she rang to thank me. So you may forgive me a little when I get righteously indignant when I hear of people leaving their homes in rather a poor state.

Friends of mine bought a beautiful house and moved in a few weeks ago. The couple who left, she an interior designer, were great. They took everything, virtually everything even though they were going into rented accommodation in the same village. They removed every light fitting, every fixed mirror, every flower pot (after dumping the surplus soil on the ground where the pots had previously stood); they even took the gas canisters that ran the hob breaking the connections so badly that new ones cannot be fixed. They took all the chopped wood. If they could I am sure they would have drained the oil – there again I am not sure that they did not.

However, they did leave behind filth, everywhere. Evidence of the great anger they obviously felt about leaving their home. They also left behind two pairs of curtains and told my friends so very magnanimously. I was immediately suspicious. If they had taken absolutely everything else that was not physically cemented to the floors of the house, why would thy leave the curtains behind? In fact when the negotiations were going on for the house my friends were offered all the curtains at a price way too steep for my friends to feel comfortable with, despite being told rather forcefully that the curtains were designer and that my friends should be so lucky to be offered said curtains.

We were shown proudly round the new home and I tried to avert my eyes from the dark patches in the carpet and the badly scraped walls, the piles of dust and ingrained dirt on the bannisters. We were shown the curtains.

“They aren’t our state but they aren’t so bad," said my friend, “just a little stained on the bottom.”

I pricked up my ears, stained? I said: "Let’s have a butchers..."

I approached the curtains already knowing what I would find. I gingerly picked one up

They were stained alright and also felt a bit damp too. I sniffed and staggered back a few paces. The bottom of the curtains were drenched in cat pee.

Now if the previous owners had just left the curtains and said nothing at all about them I would have just considered them filthy people with no sense of pride, but because they actually said they had left the curtains for my friends and they said it so magnanimously I can only say one thing what complete and utter prats and what a nasty thing to do, downright deliberately nasty. And remember this is an interior designer we are talking about, one who still has a business to run.

I must admit I did add after sniffing the curtains that it was blooming lucky they hadn’t opted to buy the rest of them!

Blogging is good for you - and I have proved it!

It's been seven days. SEVEN. LONG. DAYS. I have not blogged.
Now is this a good and healthy thing and have I put my new found time to better use? Well, Yes and No would be my answer. Yes, I am sure it is a good and healthy thing not to blog for a week but I can't say yes to actually putting my time to better use...
My desk is still cluttered, my house disorganised, my children running wild and the garden neglected or should that be running wild and the children neglected? To be honest since both are outside I fear the words are interchangeable.
Which actually bodes well for my argument that blogging is good for you  and you should shout it from the roof tops. For while I haven't actually put my spare time into being useful, ordered and housewifely, I have used it in other - how shall I say it? -  less productive ways.
I am now a seriously proficient patience player and there are few of the original 32,000 Windows FreeCell games that I have not managed to solve even if it has taken me in the small wee hours of the morning to achieve it. Luckily I have yet to find Game 11982 which I have been reliably informed is the only unsolvable one there is.
I have also spent a lot of money on stuff; stuff that I otherwise would not have had the time to look at let alone buy had I been blogging and I had to do it normally rather than the Internet which then meant that I had to actually get in the car and drive to the shops to check it all out dragging my poor beleaguered children with me.
Pity the poor shopkeepers of Bury St Edmunds when I descended last week. Touching and fingering the merchandise, asking for different colours ans sizes necessitating countless trips backwards and forwards to storerooms while my children rampaged round the shop causing palpitations in among the breakables, barging past other customers and shouting and laughing so loudly as to be heard over the canned muzak. I am sure they all breathed a sigh of relief when we finally departed. loaded to the gunnels as they say.
Based on my one week without blogging I can honestly say that blogging is good for the environment, I mean I would not have used the car to go shopping if I had been able to blog.
It is good for family relationships nay the good of the whole global community, if I had been blogging I would NEVER have subjected my children to the enforced  trauma of watching Mummy buy a new pair of jeans...and a shirt and a scarf and a pair of shoes and a pair of boots and a ..... well they wouldn't have had to do it OK. They are boys these things will have a HUGE and PROFOUND effect on their abilities to see women in a positive light.
Blogging saves you money, a lot of it. If I had been blogging we as a family would have been considerably plumper in the pocket at the start of this week.
And as for my nerves? well now that I am blogging again I feel almost human and shall bounce down the stairs to cuddle my poor neglected garden and weed my children....

The Gods work in mysterious ways…

I have a lot of things to do and, like everyone else, not much time to do them. I travel at speed but that can be my undoing.

Today it cost me £80.

Luckily that was all.

It was a hectic morning sorting out stuff, the paraphernalia of life builders, painters, plumbers, children, dogs, visitors, piano practise and of course taking the boys to their crash course at the local swimming pool affectionately known as the “Sink or swim” programme. It works, trust me or rather the bods that came up with the idea.

Anyway life being what life is I realise that I am going to be late I am cruising through all the stuff I have to do to the extent that I am not actually thinking. I have passports tickets money as I like to say which in this case meant boys swim things, my blog book and my handbag. I am ready to rock and roll.

I get the boys in the car tout-de-suite, the CD is on and booming, the car revving and I am off in a flurry of gravel with minutes to spare.

Ten yards on I come to a grinding halt with the car nose in the air and I am not going anywhere – fast.

In my mad dash to get where I was meant to be going ten minutes ago I failed to notice that the HozeLock reel was out, the really really expensive one that weighs a ton but winds up the hose in a trice. I have driven straight over it and am now on top of it with both front wheels four inches off the ground. This being a front wheel drive means that I am stuck and I cannot even rock the car off it. God how I hate modern vehicles sometimes!

Luckily the builder, painters, plumbers and gardeners who are here on the final push to finish making my house a home were on hand to physically lift the poor old car off the Hozelock and I was safe to carry on my journey.

Safe in more ways than one. The shock of running over the hose was slightly more profound than I had anticipated. For up until that point I was buzzing, almost high on adrenalin and quite obviously not thinking let alone looking at all. What if it had been one of the dogs? What if it had been one of the builders? Or a child? What if I had gone out and hurt someone.

I was a very chastened driver as I drove sedately down the drive and yes my children were late to their swimming lesson but as they say better late than never….I think the Gods were watching over me.

PS. Was very impressed with Hozelock, I mean the reel did break but by 'eck it took some doing!

Too clever by half...

The Boys are on holiday, I am working and I’ve got the builders in (when do I not have the builders in!), it means I am distracted to say the least. Anyway, sometimes I think I can do it all and I get too clever by half.

This morning I had one of those moments. Working hard and calling people on the telephone, trying to make deadline to actually keep my job requires a lot of juggling especially when I am also trying to manage builders, plumbers, painters, gardeners, and odd job men – please I do nothing by halves at this place – just adds to the frisson of excitement that makes up my usual workaday life. Add to that the vagaries of keeping two little boys amused and you might understand why I might just might get a tad confused.

I had been trying to keep the boys entertained without resorting to the TV as that would make me a “Bad Mommy” and we all have standards/guilt to accommodate, I was failing. So I sent them outside. For a while there was blissful silence but then I heard squeaking and name calling and “I’m going to tell on you!” right in the middle of an interview which I was trying to listen to with a semblance of professionalism, so I closed my office door effectively blocking out my boys. I heard them stomp upstairs, huff outside my door and retreat. I did not hear them go back downstairs. There were more squeaks and squeals emanating at intervals during the interview so after it had finished I went off in search of the trouble makers. I stalked down the corridor, there was an ominous silence. I heard scuffling in the upstairs bathroom and I noted a strong stench of cleaning fluid and a lonesome loo roll weaving along the corridor.

Got the little blighter I thought with satisfaction, he’ll not be doing this again and bellowed in stentorian accents as I approached the bathroom: “YOU CAN JUST STOP WHAT YOU ARE BLOODY DOING RIGHT NOW YOUNG MAN!!!!”

There was pause as the guilty party thought about the problem then a voice, about several octaves blow that of my youngest, said:

“Ummm I was just cleaning the loo so I could sort it out as you asked me….”

It was the plumber….!!!!!!

Secrets

Do you have secrets? Secrets you can tell no one, not even on your blog? I have a secret. I will never be able to tell it and sometimes the strength of that secret overwhelms me; and yet still I keep it.

I keep it because it is precious. At least, it is precious to me. If I told my secret it would never be the same. For my secret is fragile, as fragile as gossamer that drifts in the breeze on a summer’s day, and yet if my secret were ever told, it would be strong enough to destroy everything I hold dear.

I long to share it, for the burden I feel is sometimes so great that I weep under the duress and live in constant fear that the truth will out. I shall betray myself.

And yet I must not, I cannot.

It gives me great joy and yet the heartache I feel holding it sends me into the depths of despair. It changes everything and nothing at all, for I will never share it and I am the only one that keeps it. I treasure it as secrets must always be treasured.

10 top tips to survive a family weekend…

1. Travel with an open mind …or no mind at all. It is always best NOT to think or dwell, as the case may be, on things that may or may not happen… you may be pleasantly surprised to find out that you and your partner are NOT (this time) told that you are overweight, your car is too dirty, your hair to long, or your children too feral…
2.  It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and confirm that you are…best left to your brother/sister-in-law to fulfil those fantasies
3. Never speak until spoken to – you never know you may not have to speak to them at all!
4. Remember prior preparation prevents piss poor performance and seem suitably surprised that you have been given the room furthest away from the rest of the family and don’t forget to tip the hotel management for “understanding” ….
5. Arrange a massage/beauty treatment lasting three hours on the first afternoon, it is wonderfully relaxing and by the evening you are so chilled out nothing and I mean nothing can upset your wa especially as you did not have to go on the annual family yomp across the moors in the drizzle…
6. Leave everything to your partner – after all it is not your family you are dealing with…
7. Do NOT volunteer or else you may land up looking after everyone else’s children at the swimming pool while the rest of them prop up the bar, there again this may be the perfect cop out (remember MOST teachers agree it is not the children that are the problem…)
8. Arrange for children to create a crisis necessitating a trip to A&E 40 miles away…
9. Be NICE to your partner they will owe you…!
10. Smile …you’re on holiday!