Getting ready 2

Remember this?

Richie came and repaired.

 I painted.

And the Building Inspector approved.

Getting ready

Viewed from the kitchen sink, the yard is cheering up. It's still in need of a thorough pressure-wash, the fence and the bench need a lick of paint, but it's not as dreary as it was a month ago.

This year's planting will be entirely in buckets and recycling boxes. Why? So that they can move house with me. Amongst the baby bedding plants are clematis(es) and lavenders, herbs, a little oak tree, an ash, and, out of view, a bamboo. The acer and the two very big planters with climbing roses will stay; the rest comes with me.

Like the yard plants, I'm getting ready to go too. The rather peculiar house four doors up, the one with the garden of a million fag ends, was up for sale recently, and two weeks later, a Sold sign appeared. Very encouraging. It's time I got the valuer in, but I'm not quite ready enough. I love my house, and I want it to look loved and cared for when it has viewings. The newly-decorated sitting room floor was painted yesterday (I love painted floors), and the furniture, slightly thinned out, has been moved back in. The cats' climbing frame is back in the bay window, destroying at once any pretence to a sophisticated ambience. They liked it just fine in the kitchen during the decorating; they could watch cooker, cupboards and fridge all at once.

I even tackled the small attic, unlovely depository of books, boxes, stained glass and all its paraphernalia, a table, a large chest of drawers, and a horrible old carpet (the spray-on fluff kind, all we could afford, way back when). I cleared enough space to plant my feet squarely without standing on something. There is still much to do in there before I can paint the grubby scuffed walls, but it's the last major job to be tackled indoors, the last Room of Shame. Ok, so it will be full of boxes, but they will be tidy boxes, closed, labelled and neatly stacked!

Mark the paver called today to view and estimate for the repairs to the front path; if my garden grew healthy plants as rapidly as the broken concrete of the path does, I'd be happy. We think Indian sandstone will go down instead, as it weathers well and doesn't look as bleak as concrete. There will be Before and After photos.

I've stayed pretty much on track with this plan to move, but it's been slow; much better for my stress levels. It's a rather terrifying thing to do, move on your own, and in the teeth of disbelief and opposition. Eventually, though, it's going to be time to go. Dorset? Devon? Somerset? Who knows; not me, not yet. A garden, though, definitely. Those plants would love to be in real soil instead of black plastic. And we would all love to breathe country air.

Best get a move on, then.

Industrious

Homespun lace curtains. A WIP if ever I saw one.

Cobwebs always remind me of Miss Havisham.

I'm sure they weren't here last week.

Time for a quick whisk round with another Object of Terror to little cats.

Safest to rush upstairs and keep watch on the landing.

Pernicious weed?

The gardener's bane....

....or soup opportunity?

Ground elder. Picked young (today, by Roger, from the patch round the rhubarb), and made into a simple soup, it's not pernicious at all.

Dee-licious, in fact.

Egg 2

Another gift from Millie. Inspected by all, growled over by Hamish, cleaned up by Scooter.

Shell disposed of by me, with pursed lips.

Procedural matters

I've been worried these last few days about Margery....

She talks readily, cheerfully and in detail about her health, and would tell you all about it herself if she could, so I know she won't mind in the least if I do. This is not a post for the squeamish.

Margery is my cleaner. This is the term she uses, no pretension to being a Housekeeper, although she doesn't mind in the least being called a Treasure, which she undoubtedly is. She has been coming to help me for ever, since the days when the only way I could afford my mortgage single-handedly was to have a couple of lodgers. Usually daft young 'uns, students who (like their parents) preferred a bit of motherly landlady oversight rather than to flat-share with other domestically-challenged young people. While delightful, they didn't have a clue about keeping a shared house in reasonable order. I worked long hours and wasn't prepared to be chief cook and bottle washer, continuously fighting to stem the tide of squalor at home, or being in a perpetual strop about the state of the cooker.

Enter Margery.

She was what used to be called a Home Help, and was glad of some extra private work. She did her White Tornado act on the shared areas once a week, and a house rule was established that things should stay nice for at least half a day after she left. The lodgers tried hard to comply, bless their clueless little student socks. The house rule was resolutely ignored by the cats, but as Margery doted on them, they got away with it; they still do. They have rather more mixed feelings about her, attached as she so often is to that object of terror, the hoover. Margery could hoover competitively for Britain and win.

I'm deeply attached to her.

When my mother moved to this city, Margery became her cleaner too, and they got on famously; being a Home Help meant that Margery understood the needs of the elderly, and would cut toenails, go to the Post Office, sit chatting over tea and biscuits and put the world to rights, sometimes exchanging trenchant (rather right wing) political views that supposedly could not be uttered in my hearing.

A very touching moment occurred after my mother died and the dog came to live with me. She knew and loved Margery as a visitor to my mother's home, but had never seen her at my house. The first time that Margery let herself into the house, the dog, still subdued, anxious and grieving, threw herself in ecstasies of delighted recognition towards her, the first happy moment she had experienced for days. Margery holds not only much of my domestic history, but a wealth of memories of my mother.

Now that I have the house to myself, and am perfectly capable of doing my own housework, I still have Margery to help once a week; she says it's like coming to family, and who am I to argue? I can't imagine her not coming. But she offers much more than cleaning.

Apart from her energetic ways with hoover and mop, she's talkative, lively, opinionated, and a superb story-teller - she often tells me about a film she's watched, always something light-years away from my usual taste, and I find myself listening, rapt, open-mouthed, to her narrative, delivered in a broad Geordie accent, punctuated with sweeping arm movements and, sometimes, a faithful re-enactment requiring full use of the kitchen floorspace. Thrillers, horror films, gruesome and terrifying dramas; all are material for Margery's considerable comedy skills at re-telling. I love those moments.

But there has been a recent cloud. Margery has been finding swallowing difficult, feeling that she had a lump in her throat, with other symptoms that sent her to her GP. Immediately, to our considerable alarm, she was fast-tracked to specialists, and various procedures followed. She would describe them to me later, either by text or in person, and I now know exactly what happens, more vividly than a hospital leaflet or a doctor could convey.

First: The Camera Up Me Nose. Margery was anxious. Having her nose explored came as a surprise, as she had been expecting The Camera Down Me Throat. "There was nothing there. They're sending me to the gastros."

A few days later: 'The Gastros' and the Barium Meal. Margery's partner had experienced this procedure himself, and slyly, he told her that it was a flavoured drink, perhaps strawberry, banana, toffee. Sweet-toothed, she hoped (in vain) for toffee. The vigorous re-enactment of this horrendous experience made me laugh despite the ghastliness of it all.

"Eee, it was just like drinking gloss paint. Glug. Glug. Glug..... and I wasn't allowed to burp, or they'd have to do it all again.... and the Barium San'wich! A triangle of bread dipped in gloss paint!" What did it taste like? "Like chalk. Chalk-flavoured gloss paint."

See what I mean? Could your GP have described this common procedure to you so clearly and honestly?

Yesterday: The Camera Down Me Throat. I haven't seen Margery yet, but she reports that she has a hiatus hernia, and not the dreaded possibilities we had feared. Newcastle has the highest incidence nationally of stomach and gullet cancer. I asked if it had been a horrible day, and she texted back:

it was sprayed me throat which was ok tasted like bananas n this thick tube which they described as thin i was burping n drooling with a thing in me mouth protecting me teeth bt it was over in 5 mins not comfortable at al glad its over x

Later, when I rang her, she said that biopsies had been performed too; she was quite sanguine about her ordeal, and added "It didn't hurt or nowt, like." I'm printing off the diagram below for her; she'll love it.

We await results, hoping for good news; I look forward keenly to the re-enactment she'll carry out for me next week; it's bound to be lively. And educational, in ways I might not have imagined.

I wish...

...that I could blog-share the scent of this desktop plant with you. As its somewhat insignificant flower opens, its scent becomes more pronounced. Sweet but not sickly, a little like jasmine, the room fills with a subtle perfume in the evening. Lovely.

Tomorrow there will be...

More Radio 2. And gloss paint.

Shocking

Kitchen bags. I've remembered, aided by a quick peep behind a door.

Von was closest. This bag holds the heap of 'stuff' that sat on the kitchen worktop at a time long past, when a rapid tidy round was required. Shocking.

I'm not going to tell you how long it's been in there, waiting for me to sort/file/bin/shred. But there might be a Christmas card in there somewhere, and yes, I'm ashamed of myself.

This morning's Accomplishment: getting to Homebase first thing to buy paint. Mercifully, rush hour points in the opposite direction, and was over by the time I returned. Wally doesn't start so early, as, sainted son that he is, his old mum's breakfast has to be got first, but he's here now, applying masking tape and dust sheets to things, and being stalked by Scooter, who can't resist the sound of tape being unrolled. The dog is helping too.

And for all those people who said "This room doesn't need doing again, surely?" - all I can say is: take your pictures down......

Shocking.

Tuesday pick 'n' mix

A moment of ugly, no-hiding-place truth yesterday. I am a Lazy Woman. I realised that while I enjoy the placid slowness of my mornings, never rushing to get dressed or to do very much before noon, I'm falling seriously behind with the immense, juggernaut-like task of sorting out this house. And it was beginning to prey on my mind.

Drifting about in a dressing gown, drinking tea, and thinking about nothing very much all morning would have to change into something more productive.

So last night I made a Resolution. I would get going earlier each day, and try to Accomplish Something before lunchtime. This would mean spending less time at my computer reading other people's blogs, my own emails, anything that took my fancy in the vast ocean of useless information that is Google.

I even made a list, filled with vague generalisations like: kitchen bags. Too vague, actually; I now have no idea what I meant. But I do understand seed trays, pond liner, ironing. I especially understand small attic, and that in itself is a terrifying prospect.

So far so good. So far today:

More than an hour spent working on the allotment. Bees, butterflies, birds, tra la. Tidying, weeding, planning. A snapshot of Eddie the Poisoner's latest contraption to keep the squirrels off his bird feeders; they can't quite climb the plastic piping and they slide to the ground, defeated. He is thrilled; his war might even be won.

Almost emptying the sitting room so that Wally (the painter and decorator so beloved of Millie when she was a kitten) can paint tomorrow. And only now, as I write this, do I remember that I was getting my own paint, and that I'd put it off, until I forgot. Thank goodness Homebase is open till 8 p.m. The kitchen is full of sitting room furniture, and the cats are wildly excited by it. Moving a little chest of drawers, the underneath of which I thought I'd blocked off to avoid every cat toy in the house ending up there, I found this little cache:

I noticed that my sansiveiria (Mother in Law's Tongue) was in flower. The flowers are small and easily missed; they exude a small sticky drop of nectar, and have a faint sweet smell. Mine was rescued many years ago, on the point of death, from the desk of a vicious plant-killer work colleague, and although it has remained wonky and misshapen, I have to admire its persistence.

I responded to a Freecycle notice and picked up a pair of Dartington glass candleholders, thickly encrusted with old wax. They cleaned up beautifully.

And I read your blogs, checked my emails, vacuumed the stairs (Margery is having a 'procedure' tomorrow - more of that in due course when we find out if we should stay worried or not), and decided that this new productive life would be ok after all. 

Still wondering though: what could kitchen bags mean......?

Orderly queue

I always find one or two little people waiting for me outside the bathroom......

There could almost be a thought bubble: "Poor idiot woman, she knows water falls on her when she stands in that room, but she goes back, every day...."

Street Explorer

Give that cat an award for bravery.

Scooter and Hamish, those most fearful little woodland creatures, are now venturing out of an open window, so long as I am with them. Although they still run away from me if I look at them the wrong way at all, my presence gives them courage to creep outdoors for a few moments.

Usually such acts of bravery occur only in the walled back yard, although even the flutter of a leaf will send them fleeing back inside as though pursued by ravening wolves. It's a hard life, being a scaredy-cat.

The dog and the girls, bold and confident, are fond of sitting on the pavement at the front of the house, where they (rightly) expect passers-by to make a fuss of them.

But on a quiet sunny afternoon, with no traffic moving, Scooter was lured out.....

Hamish wasn't.

Suddenly Scooter spotted Millie in the distance - and he was off!

Lottie looked mildly surprised; the dog wore an expression that clearly said "It'll end in tears!"

And it did, of course: Scooter panicked, dashed wildly into Sandra's house, upstairs, downstairs, and out again, and then hid under a bush, howling loudly and piteously, until rescued by Millie and me. His expedition had lasted about 30 seconds. But, for the first time, he had ventured at least 10 yards from home.

Hamish asked if we could have the window shut now. The Great Outdoors was altogether too big and dangerous. Scooter agreed.

There's no place like home. No basket like the dog's. No need to go anywhere else.