I have had enough now

Okay, so I have booked a couple of overnight respite stays, well away from my own house.

There is nothing odd about that is there? Running away from your own environment? Not when you know how I am being gaslighted by non-functioning electrical items. I know what they are about. Ganging up on me and waiting until I become properly unstable before tipping me over the edge.

You see, I am not dreaming it. As fortune has made it so, from the three boilers we run across this house, two are now refusing to do anything. One is in league with the ring main and stares at me silently and sullenly, like a horror movie only worse, while the other threatens me with growling noises, before chewing up 3amp and 2amp fuses and spitting out the remains over the carpet. The third boiler works. It is just in a place we don't talk about and is connected to a sink no-one wants to see.

Now as things stand, I have no heating, no hot water, no working sockets in half the house and three smelly children. But! I have an engineer coming! Yes, hopefully sometime before the apocalypse. He will undoubtedly want to suck out the contents of my bank account before confiding in me the news It's broken, love and You need a part for that.

Let us all pray it is not the boiler man who electrocuted himself last time.

Need to care

I think something wrong is happening with me. The wrongness may have been brought on by the menopause or something, but today I am strangely walking about the world in a softer, perhaps even a non-aggressive, manner.

The stair carpet, for example. It tried to kill me, and I merely sighed as I tripped over the hanging thread, lurched forward to swing off the banister and narrowly avoid putting my head through the picture window at the dog leg to the stairs.

In other ways, too, I have noticed a gentling in my reactions towards ordinary irritations. Those routine disturbances, like the office ceiling falling in and the oven door (or what's left of it) sinking its iron tooth into my leg, then tearing out a chunk of my jeans as I pass.

I am sure I would have bit my knuckles, ground my teeth, or kicked the crap out of the oven door (or what's left of it) before beating my fists in despair at my solitude and uselessness to do or change anything about my decaying state of life in this house.

But in these uncommon days I seem to have become more resigned to the mash, mess, and loss, which I can only put down to changes in me. The house is certainly no better. I have bound up the tap that leans with a rubber band, wedged a plant pot against the door that won't shut, banged another nail in the doorhandle, and stuck duct tape over the hanging threads on the worn, torn stair carpet. Maybe I am become resigned to it all, have given up the fight on it, and have surrendered myself to the wobble on the kitchen floorboards and the garden door handle that always comes off in your hand.

That would be sad.

So I have promised myself. Next time the oven door leans over to rip a strip from my old clothing, I shall turn round and aim a kick at what's left of it, then go on the rampage to threaten the doorhandle with two more nails and a hammer.

Bathroom wonderings

I am having a critical moment regarding the house.

Tomorrow, Peeple are coming round. Worse, I invited them.

For this sorry state of affairs, I blame the children. I suspect they have become intoxicated by a character in a book, like an eccentric Great Aunt Laura. She will be an ancient of a woman, smelling of man's cologne and dressing in Edwardian black lace. It wouldn't surprise me if she conjured up all manner of excitement at Christmas, like decking halls with holly, lighting wax candles, smoking cigars, and dispensing cheese. Naturally my impressionable offspring expect the same thing round here.

Well, we will all feel sadly disappointed tomorrow.

While Great Aunt Laura will live in an inviting mansion with seductive turrets, winding staircases, and faded red velvet curtains that hide locked oak doors, I live in a house that is a practical demonstration of the laws of chaos theory and entropy.

And, unlike Great Aunt Laura, I have to consider practicalities. When Peeple visit me, I have to think, What if they need to use a toilet?

I bet that moment doesn't happen in Laurel Towers. When the children disappear into the turreted room and the door slams shut, I bet everyone has a great lark of an adventure, creeping round passages and discovering concealed treasure. I bet at no point does anyone say, I'm busting. Where's your toilet?

Of course it will happen here. I could direct them downstairs, to the cellar bathroom. The tiles fell off in 2000-and-something and the shower stopped working and another problem, but I can't remember what. Suffice to say, the solution was costly and expensive, so let's find another bathroom to use.

Unfortunately, the original bathroom (it's complicated) is now a cupboard. I tip the hamster cleaning fluids in the bath, and I have wedged pieces of wood over the top to serve as shelves, in the spirit of There, I Fixed It. On my improvised bathroom shelf system I stack Shark's fish buckets, all home-made calligraphy ink from boiled onions, and the river stones that Squirrel collects to grind up slate. The vacuum cleaner sits on the toilet.

Of course if people were brave, they could attempt the toilet at the back of the house. They would have to squeeze safely by the pipe cleaner construction in the schoolroom which resembles a scale model of a nuclear power station, then they must pass through my craftroom the reading room, where they may be assaulted by hanging wet leather skins. Maybe it does look a bit like the cutting room of a psychotic serial killer inspired by Buffalo Bill, but someone's got to suffer for my art, apart from me. May as well be the person who wants to use the Fishy Toilet. Which, if you make it, you will find out why it acquired that name.

If none of these celebrations of bathroom artistry appeal, I could always direct Peeple upstairs. Not to the middle of the house, which we do not own, but the attic, which we do. In the attic is another bathroom which is okay but the flush broke, so until it's sorted, fill a bucket from the bath.

I suppose if it all fails, we could knock at the neighbours, and ask to use their toilet. There might be a slight problem with that plan, in that one of the Peeple coming round is in the middle of a taking them to court, so we might not get the positive response we hope for. In which case, I will feel justified in telling everyone to piss in their privet.

Now, having written all the sordid details of our bathroom failures, I cannot help but think that inviting Peeple round is not a disaster in the making, but a jolly good idea.

Once they are all here and bursting for a wee I could detain them until I have extracted a fiver from each of them to go towards the cost of bathroom repairs, and in this way turn my Christmas Entertaining Event into a type of Bathroom Charity Appeal.

I bet Great Aunt Laura would approve of that plan. I will take a leaf from her book, and also dispense cheese.

The little things of life

It's been a busy old few days.

I have barely had time to thrash the little grits onwards towards their autonomously-inspired educational achievements, let alone shackle them to the radiators.

But I had better note here the minor happenings which have passed while I have been a-busy, creating my delicious lovely things to catch your unguarded soul.

After all, you never know how things turn out. Any of the following minor events may be significant for the future.

1. Fish death.
It was sad. There was mourning. With a coffin.

The gas meter man arrived during the grieving process. The wailing had just reached a new height of emotion. I had to explain it, obviously, in case he thought I was up to something with child and manacle. I said there had been a pet death. He looked awfully sad and consoling, then I said it was a fish, not a cocker spaniel. He burst out laughing. Me, I would not dare do that. Thankfully, I shared a conspiratorial snigger with him by the gas meter.

2. Ceiling collapse.
Dig's office. An issue of not if, but when.

For many gloomy rainy seasons I have shuffled the buckets around the kitchen floor. Do not ask why a hole in the office roof has not been mended. Life is complicated. Anyway, the ceiling finally caved in, brought down, presumably, with August's rain, which we have stored there in the plaster and insulation. Well, I have abandoned the ceiling on the kitchen floor as a punishment. I will now source a new bucket, in extra-large.

3. Car crumpling.
I emerge at 9am one morning to drive the car dangerously round corners as normal, and I see someone has beaten me to the crumple point. One side of the car is totally bashed in. I suspect this is a result of the hard economic times we live in; more particularly, the man who runs the car shop down the road, trying to bring about my state of mind when I think it is worth trading in our old beat-up van for a nice new shiny van.

I can tell him now, it isn't going to work, driving your white van at speed towards my sides and rear at 2am. I am on my uppers thanks to filling the van up with fuel the other day.

4. The back door lock.
It keeps dropping off. The wilful disobedience of the thing is driving me insane. I hate the lock. It is telling me the awful truth that I need someone about the house who can do stuff. This is a profound confession, and I give it in a moment of weakness, the lock just having dropped off again, even though I have shouted, several times over, DO NOT DROP OFF.

Yes, I bought the book 100 Things You Don't Need a Man For, which hand-holds me from dripping-tap-mending to wobbly-door-hanging. No matter how helpful the text, I know it is all doomed. The state of my DIY skills are about as useful as a crippled poodle. I can just about wield a hammer, regardless of the task, but in all truth I am weary of taps and doors and locks dropping off. I want someone to sort it all.

On the bright side! I have half-mended the kitchen scales!

But I now look back and see that so many events have occurred! Any could, in the future, be significant. How is one to know? How can you pluck from a million events the single moment which will form more weightily in a life than all the rest? 

Now I have come over all Proust, with echoes of crunch, memory of buttered toast, and wonder at significant insignificance. Soon I will be rearranging Squirrel's gravel collection, and marvelling at it all.

We are Victoriana

See la famille Grit once more! Zipping out time's arse, to land smack in our proper homely time of 1894.

Captured, enjoying our Victorian fire-sitting, lace-doily making, and rat watching. Outside, the chill wind shudders the glass and Jack Frost nips unwrapped noses. (It's taken hours to zebo that grate! Will no-one think of the servants?)

Yes, there is Squirrel, suffering the stifling oppression of her Dickensian family. I am sure she reads improving and instructional work! (Unicorn crap and horse trash.) Imagine how the mother sits nightly by her side, repairing linen collars and cleaning boots. (Imagination is all.)

But soon enough, out comes the toasting fork! Now I expect the vicar to call. I shall dutifully polish our finest china and starch my apron. (Mind you, I shall count the teaspoons when he's gone.) Then we might sing Bless our Blessed Sweet Blessed Home, Bless while gathered round our old broken joanna. (Shit, I forgot. I gave it to the bloke who sings Any Old Iron.)

But then! Maiden in the corner projects the rest of us time-challenged gritties into the nearly present world of October 2012!

See! She has a marvellous electronic magic box! It offers infinite and wondrous instructions from all around the world! (Can you flip a dolphin into outer space?)

Aha! It also offers this. We are complete. In our evening of connectedness with our Victorian past, we also find instruction. Of sorts. May you too, in these winter days to come, and bless that home.

On the borderlands

We didn't get down to this month's Battle of Hastings reenactment after all.

Dig came home. He dropped by from that earth's arc which strings together your Hong Kong with your South America, then he took the opportunity to do what he normally does in response to any domestic crisis. Adopt a sudden fighting spirit of determination and resolution, take a sledge hammer to a bit more of the house, and chuck the broken remains in the front garden.

In this instance, he discovers this month's domestic crisis is my plague of rats. And the bit of the house he feels compelled to dismantle is an internal bathroom. After that, he will be exhausted, so I don't expect anything else will be touched.

But at the loss of the bathroom, I am heaving a sigh of relief.

This is the bathroom that I closed the door on in 2004 and have never entered since. It is in a slice of Dig's house that is falling apart. The ceiling on his office side is crumbling, and in his kitchen the rain drips through into a bucket. One day he might come round to pulling the roof down, too.

This is the problem with old houses, isn't it? They require such care and maintenance, and they need someone to be here, to complete that cycle of destruction and restoration. Dig finds the destruction hard to face, but the restoration almost impossible. It takes such commitment. Which is difficult for a man who is not here. So I am usually left to look at the house and think what has gone, been lost, or is destroyed.

But it is all a success! We have the horrible bathroom at the tip! Ratty and all his family too, have been given their marching orders!

See? There is good come of it, even though I am faced with a gutted room and a plague of rats.

Yes, I know this spirit is annoying, but I'm not likely to apologise for it. I am always mindful of the man whose oven wouldn't work, so he took himself off to the woods to hang himself.

Moving out

I have to clear out the house and manage this transition in a way that minimises the screaming, tears, sorrows and partings.

So my first question is, How much crap can we store in drawers? (Lots.)

Squirrel is by far the worst hoarder. She keeps everything, from torn-up ferry tickets to clothes that don't fit her, to unfinished items of craft sporting one wiggly eye.

I say to her, What are you going to do with your rock collection? Without a beat she answers, Take it home.

So that's no problem. Transporting (illegally, probably) the rocks and minerals of Hong Kong back to the shires where we already store the contents of Cornwall and the possessions of a Suffolk beach.

I jolly everyone along with a first stab. (Tiger refuses to join in.) We tip out a few drawers and compose scrapbooks, with my aim to produce a ton of cut-up paper for the recycling bin and a neat record to fit into a suitcase.


Honestly, this process of packing up and moving out is going to be hard work. I shall have to keep this record if only to figure out how to do it.

Departure

Dear House,

I am so sorry, and my confined heart is filled with concern for our parting, but it is that heavy hour. I must steady my hand, pick up my bag, collect my children, and pass your front door key into the tender care of Mr W.

You know, of course, that today I must run to embrace another.

In my eyes, they can never be as beautiful as you. Truly they do not possess as many elegant, ancient charms as you! Their light is not delicate, their floors not wooden, their walls not crumbling, and their office roof not caved in on one side.

Yet I must leave you. I must keep children with a father, stash some cash in the bank, and follow that urge I have: the pointless one where I put myself in difficult and uncomfortable situations just because.

So I must cut myself away, and look now only to the assets of your Asian competitor. I must ignore how they are basically a soulless tile and concrete block on a Hong Kong hillside, and gaze instead on their lustrous charms. How they offer great views from a delightful flat roof, a selection of beaches close by, an endless sub-tropical summer, and a view of banana trees from the kitchen window.

My dear house, I know this will be no comfort to you. I feel sure you will be anguished by my betrayal, as you live with my abandonment of you for another six months. But please do not be angry with me.

And do not fear Mr W. He will look after you. Probably better than me. He will not mess you up like I do. He will not kick the back door in like Squirrel, nor slam your kitchen door hard like Tiger in a temper tantrum. He will step gentler on your stairs too, softer than Shark when she is trying to be discreet. Although yes, he might move in some heavy machinery to your kitchen, just for temporary storage while he builds his new shed.

Now, I must depart. Please do not let the tap explode in your anguish, frustration and grief, like you did that morning when I set off to Hampton Court. I did tell you I was only going to look.

PS. I have thrown out the posy of flowers from your hall, collected by the children from the garden.

Forgive them. They will do the same in their new abode. They are children, and fickle, and live casually, as children do.

So there's a lesson

Yesterday I am discovered, by Mick the neighbour. Passing, he glances up at me. I am draped sad and exhausted over a garden wall, pathetically tugging at an ivy trunk as thick as a builder's biceps.

'Do you need any help?' he calls.

Of course I imagine I am very English about this offer of help. I muster up what I think passes as a smile and I whimper, 'That's very kind of you but I'm doing fine'.

I do not know why I say this. I am caked in ivy dust, layered two inches in insect corpse and am a woman in defeat.

But even at this stage it is impossible for me to accept any offer of help. I do not know why. I do not know whether being a home educator is something to do with the mix. We certainly become very self-reliant types. Maybe it is because whatever I need to do, I can usually do it. I have lifted concrete, laid paths, built brick walls, cooked dinners, taught river erosion, painted walls and made clothes. (Sometimes on the same day.) Or perhaps I am so much on my own I just assume I am beyond the point of all help, probably with anything, least of all an ivy tree and a blocked gutter.

Indeed I will have a go at almost anything on the assumption that no-one else is going to do it, so better get on with it. Only electricity defeats me on the grounds that I cannot pick it up and handle it without having my hair stand on end. (Household finance also has the same impact.)

Well today I have my lesson. I am atop the wall again hacking feebly at the embrace of ivy arms, and Mick cycles by, stops his bike, and says, 'I'll be back in five minutes with my big clipper'.

Moments later he returns with he-man clippers and rubber gloves and he's up the ladder and into the gutter with the ivy. Three hours later and we've achieved more than I would singly have done in three months. The devil twine is eliminated from wall, gutter, wood, tile, and flashing, and I need not wake in Hong Kong at 2am worrying about another season's green and woody growth clutching the fabric of my home to slow but inevitable destruction.

I am utterly grateful to Mick, grateful not only for the he-man clippers up the ladder, but for ignoring me a little and bringing his benevolence to my house.

And I am chastened. I am not about to trade in independence and armour for helplessness and vulnerability, but I recognise that it should have limits, this permanent assumption of self-reliance. I should know when to stop and say, Yes, I could do with some help, thanks.

For once, not me up the ladder.

I have all the help I need, thanks

I am entering a week of mostly domestic labours. I must make the house fit for purpose while we are away. That means, write obsessive notes about the heating systems, install a drainpipe in the kitchen, provide the telephone number for the local police station, and cut back the ivy that is heading its way towards the kitchen window at an alarming rate.

None of this will be any help for the poor sods who must occupy this house while we are away. They will merely look at the boiler suspiciously and wait for the tap to explode, but all my hard work makes me feel better.

However, my labours are made a tad more difficult this week because I have all three children at home.

Recently, I have got away lightly. Squirrel has been on her residential horse week at the local stables; Shark has been throwing herself about tree-tops in Wiltshire with PGL; and Tiger, I am shortly to give away to a lady who lives in a lake. (Okay then, Allie the watersports teacher. Stage II windsurfing course.)

But with one child always away, it has meant a relatively quiet time for me. Twins amuse each other, or they are fuming so hard in mutual telepathic hatred that they separate as far as possible apart. In either case, I have a quiet house.

This week, all three of my lovely kids are together. So I must perform drainpipe fixture and ivy surgery and be a referee.

At this point, please don't say, Grit, ask them to help you!

Having competitive triplets helping out is usually no help at all. My preferred strategy is to manoeuvre them as far away from me as possible, so I have at least a fighting chance of finishing the job I started.

If I don't do this, I find the following happens. Despite the fact that we have an engagingly diverse house with many secret holes and corners where people can hide away, all the kids magically seek each other out and must occupy the exact same space as everyone else.

Worse, at some point, the entire ugly crowd of them will cluster around my parent body. Do you find this? You could have acres, but the offspring will find your old worn out torso, then need to occupy the precise space your bum needs by health and safety legislation to navigate the turning circle in the smallest angle of the entire house, i.e. between the fridge and the washing machine, or the cooker and the chopping board.

So all four of us wedge ourselves there. In a shape roughly 12ins x 12ins. Elbowing each other in the face while I am trying to stick a drain pipe under the boiler.

I will intermittently lose my temper and yell Maths! or Spelling! This ensures everyone suddenly scarpers and everything goes quiet. But it is a temporary solution. Within the hour the magnets in their noses start working again, and they find each other, and me, and come and stand exactly where I am standing with a drainpipe, then they will complain that I am standing in their way.

Well, today I make it hard for them.


I tell everyone we are going to do some maths. Then I quickly climb up this shonky ladder which I have wedged up on a bit of wood in a wobbly yard, and I start wielding a rusty saw and begin a stream of unseemly sweaty cursing.

It is not too long before the fear of maths wears off, and a curious child wanders into view.


She asks what I am doing up a ladder swearing into the street while waving a saw menacingly at the neighbours.

Personally, I think it is obvious. This machine is going at full pelt ...


... and there is a lot less of this stuff crawling all over the garage.


Then she asks, is there anything she can do? After ten minutes lengthy instruction while I become irritable because there are only two buttons on the shredder and I promise it will not electrocute anyone, she begins to feed into it ivy strands at a snail's rate of one twig every five minutes.

Then the other two appear. One starts complaining that I am in her way because she wants to play where my ladder stands, and the other starts up a campaign for ivy rights. Within minutes they have the bright idea of taking the sawn branches off me to build unicorn hatching grounds all over the garden table, thus creating a second domestic labour for later. That one will be much harder because I will have to fight the wretched unicorns for the ivy and then try and put it into the shredder in secret. Not possible.

So this will go on. All week. Drainpipes, gutter, ivy, floorboard, you name it. Help. That's all I can say. Help.

I want no holes on my return

One problem has consumed me, of late. It has changed my thinking, affected what I do, driven me half-mad with suspicion. Seeking resolution, I scour internet sites after dark, taking quiet comfort from similar tales of woe.

The children are alarmed. They watch me falling to the floor at a moment's notice. But I must do it. There I can better scrutinise the underside of the upholstery. They see me stop, then climb on furniture to stare at pelmets. They hear me, mid-sentence, pause with a distant stare, to examine -

Well, there is nothing else I can do. I know they are here. They drive me to frenzied activity in bedrooms, wardrobes, cupboards, stairwells, behind curtains. I need two varieties of nozzles under the sofa.

I know it is taking a toll. Whatever their need, mother's not here. I can only hope to spare them the worst, and try not to let myself be discovered, undignified, on hands and knees, scrutinising the back of a chest of drawers. They call me to come and look at their paintings and I groan, because I am on top of the furniture with a pair of rubber gloves. When they need dinner, I am busy, furtively squeezing mops behind radiators. Probably a life with foster parents will be more rewarding than this OCD mother.

But it must be done. I am focused upon it. I must secure my borders. It is true that in the last month I have only seen two of the enemy, flopping lazily about the air as if nothing in the world could harm them. Well I can, and I have a hammer.

I would not ordinarily mention this normal domestic circumstance, because there is very little education in it. Yet it is an achievement of sorts, so in the daily diary it goes. And I think I am winning. I have shook, washed, exposed all to sunlight, scoured, wiped, vacuumed (three times over) and am turning slightly purple thanks to overdoses of oil.

But I have no idea what the children are doing. They are doing godsknowwot. These days they keep their distance from me, in the garden, probably, hiding up trees. I distinctly remember a moment when I banished them from proximity to any fabric, and they made off into the garden in a hurry, maybe in case I removed all their clothes.

Now, I must be off, to slide under their beds with a pointy vacuum cleaner nozzle and peer at their bedboards.

It is the only way, if I am to rid my house of the enemy.

Vinyl floor Wednesday

Do you know how difficult it is to buy a piece of crappy vinyl; 4x2, totally black and costing less than twenty quid?

It is so difficult that I spend all day trying to do it. CarpetRite have an enormous laugh at my expense, as does CarpetsRite4You, RiteCarpetRiteout, RiteupyourCarpet, and RiteCarpetBastards.

One of that lot tells me offcuts are thrown away. But I only want an offcut. I don't want it fitted, for goodness sake! That would be a step too far. Or at least I think it is.

And that's my other problem. Is it me, or does something happen to your brain too when you pass between the automatic doors of the complete retail flooring solution?

After ten seconds I suffer from Total Vague Syndrome. I can barely recall why I came in. I could be persuaded of anything. That I want my vinyl pink, fitted, and vajazzled. The store assistant nods. He could be from the Village of the Damned.

Then I begin to stare alongside him, without purpose to muse aloud if carpet will be the answer to a problem I can't recall and could carpet in a kitchen work? If I vacuum it every day and give my life and soul to the carpet, but remember the kitchen carpet in Northumberland?

You see? My thoughts wander in no good direction since it is six years since we sold the house in Northumberland. Or is it five.

To spare you more ordeal and because now you would rather be watching Deal or No Deal, I shall be brief and tell you that I did, after five hours staring, acquire an offcut of vinyl from RiteCarpetPalaver.

But by then I was totally brain dead and forgot the reason why I was living as well as the measurements so handed over twenty quid for 3x1 in black and silver.

I apologise to any reader coming to grit's day hoping to be shown a good time.
But look at my vinyl.

In preparation for visitor

Aunty Dee is coming to stay for le weekend. She will have one big shock. She will be able to walk in this house without having to duck, drop to her knees and crawl, swerve out the way, or be hit in the face with a wicker fish.

Yes, I have been tidying up (chucking out) as all visitor to Gritblog kno.

But while you kno about all this frenzy of Gritwork, Aunty Dee will be aware of the enormous quantities of crap I have lifted out this house and deposited in archival storage (landfill) only by its absence! Unlike you, she will not kno of the pain involved, so beautiful, clean and tidy is this house now.

Yet there is more! Not only will she be able to walk over the floors, she will have a choice of bedrooms! The White Room (rotting cellar) or The Garden Room (curtainless shed tacked onto back of house, once hiding hole for gardener).

But I am still not finished. The struggle of my own psychology and the demons of the cleaning process yet continue. There are things that remain undone. This is what I must now do.

Show courage. I must be fearless. I must enter the disused office toilet and empty the entire contents of a squirty duck into the monstrous porcelain.

Fear about this has paralysed me so far, but I MUST DO IT. Those stories I tell myself about evil red-eyed rats using the toilet bowl as a portal from Hell are NONSENSE. From this point on, I will repeat to myself: I can do it. I will not be intimidated by toilet bowls.

Show strength. I have the body of a reasonably feeble woman, but this shortcoming must not prevent me from mustering all my muscley power to take an axe to the piano. (Musicians, do not chew your soul in pain at this destruction. The piano is crap, broken, and was sold to me for a tenner by a man who couldn't stop laughing.)

Show resolve. Yes, if the children shovel in soil again to the schoolroom floor I will shovel it back out again! I have a RULE. And the RULE is, The outside stays outside and the inside stays inside. Unless I say otherwise like flowers.

I will be firm and resolute and determined, and not like last time, when I merely look at the pile of soil in resignation and sigh, Whatever, sure, fine, okay, I guess it is a nest for parrots, like you say, even though the only parrot we have got is made of polypropylene.

Show wisdom. I must only pick fights with Squirrel over really important matters like the RULE, and not over everything.

If I fail in this wisdom and start picking a fight over the glue gun, then I will only create pain for myself, i.e. the struggle about whether it is worth going to prison or should I experience the satisfaction of knocking her into the middle of next week when she starts with the eyeball rolling, lip curling, and general disdain, contempt and mockery. (Where she inherited these character defects from, I do not know. Dig, probably.)

(And that last one is nothing to do with the tidy-up, but is an ongoing issue.)

Now, I must stop blog and start toilet duck.

For the educational record

I see that yesterday I was aspiring to the society of the local tip. Sadly, I must now come home and know what riches I already possess to make my life complete: age (old), circumstance (unemployed), status (housewife), husband (gone) and skills set (zero). That wealth I must reconcile myself to enjoy, and consider it a satisfying meal, albeit served humbly (yesterday's dried toast salvaged from bin).

I must remember that I am set on earth not to enjoy the fine company of our young men down the tip; nor to savour the gracious living next to the asbestos bin (yes, really!); nor experience much of good company (not these days, what with Squirrel pulling that lip at me).

I am here with other, worthier goals.

To wit: discover what a child's education can be, if it is not made up of conventional school.

Yes. That is it. You see, me and this blog must be focused on our principles and endeavours. We must together chronicle the wonderful, daily, educational learning environments of Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Our liberating, inspiring, and truly worldwide education! (The Local Authority EWO and Social Services woman might come knocking.)

So, there must be an education, happening somewhere round here today, that I can report.

Um.

Er.

No, don't worry! I'm sure I'll find it in a moment.

It's in here somewhere. Give me a minute. I'm sure we've all done something. Of course if I look hard, I'll find it! Talk amongst yourselves while I sit here and have a think.


That is the problem with house tidying, isn't it? Nothing else happens, except that which makes sense in house tidying. Clearing up, throwing out, clearing out, throwing up. It all leads me to nowhere, except into long pointless arguments with the inside of my head about how I would secretly like to throw out those painted babies with the missing legs.

Frankly it would be easy to do because I don't care a jot about them. I mean, would you? They are hardly the stuff of romantic childhood. I can't tenderly bring Dolly out the cupboard in ten years to recall, fondly, Ah, that was the day Squirrel painted her face blue, then we put her in the washing machine, and one leg fell off. As I remember, Shark filled it with mud and buried it in the garden.

Well, I can't report that. I must instead find something worthy and educational. It is my mission.

Otherwise, someone will stumble by this blog looking for supportive messages of educational salvation and moral endeavour, but come across nothing more than the prattle of an ancient, hopeless old crone, pathetically seeking companionship down the local 'community recycling centre' and wandering about a gutted garage bumping into pianos with her jaw clacking away to herself. I mean, I have to do some incoherent arguing with myself whether to chuck out a plastic dismembered doll; whether this counts against me as another instance of motherhood disloyalty; and whether Little Eric at the tip would find it really funny if I hid her in garden waste and let him discover it as he's turning over the top layer with his pitchfork.

And we wouldn't want that scenario, would we.

Anyway, I have now found something.

Thank you for waiting.

The other evening, we attended an independent cinema screening of Our Hospitality (1923), complete with piano score played by living pianist.


We discussed the development of cinema from silent to talkies, the comedy of Buster Keaton, and what an audience can enjoy about slapstick with a piano accompaniment in these post-structuralist, post-modernist, 3D cinema days.

Then I came home and discovered this. Satisfying. And undoubtedly I can call this an education in media studies, film history, critical thinking, emotional expression, cultural awareness, visual literacy and how we can laugh at the same thing at the same time thus, human bonding.

Ha. Now I can return to my endeavours at the tip with a clear conscience.

With my stranger's eye

I walk into this domestic interior and it's like walking into a stranger's house. I don't know who this person is, but they seriously piss me off. I mean, what is it with the wicker fish hanging from the ceiling, the silk book nailed to a wooden door, and the scary home-made face pinned about with beads dangling over the stairwell? What weird shit is that?

Half the stuff I'm looking at has no memory for me at all. Worse, it's all held in a house which looks unattractively battered, filthy, falling to bits, and covered deeply in dust, not just of months, but of years. It says to me someone has been seriously conning themselves regarding distressed wooden flooring and original Victorian fittings. The reality is much, much worse than they've been admitting. It has set me off crunching anti-allergy tablets like there's no tomorrow. Which a bacteriological analysis would probably conclude there won't be, unless someone gets started with 50 litres of antiseptic, a super strength vacuum cleaner and a roll of 200 bin bags.

Well, there is an advantage to having a space in my head that is being filled up by the sight of domestic clutter for which I have no memory and no emotional attachment.

It is that I can become ruthless without guilt or remorse. I am starting to hurl stuff into plastic bin bags. I need to do it quickly and short-sightedly, before memory creeps slowly back up on me, before I have chance to look at what's in my hand and start thinking about it. If I do that, I am sure to be pin-pricked with a moment in 2004 when it will be all fond and pointless and 'aaahh that was the day Squirrel fell off the kitchen table, and while I waited to see if she had concussion we all made wooden spoons decorated as dollies. Aaaah, I cannot possibly throw the dollies out now!'

Bleugh. I want to be ruthless. I want to clear the junk out. Don't let the children know, but I am already determined to lose my mother memory for longer than I really do. Secretly I know I will enjoy this vicious streak where I betray memory with a bin bag, assault small cuddly objects, and seek out the inner ugliness of countless small items that have plagued my life for the last ten years. More fool me that I allowed everything and everyone to do it while I stupidly sank under a wave of clutter and never once did I even try and wave.

Well, no more. I am tired of feeling overwhelmed by stuff. Without immediate memory of it, I can see it for what it is. It is neither homely nor comforting. It is simply an assembly of junk that needs dumping.

There will be limits, of course there will. Although at 2.30 this afternoon I temporarily forgot what they were. Cruising by the local lake on my new MOT wheels I merely popped in the watersports centre to see what they could do for three home ed, summer-term children. Within five minutes I had given away two of my daughters on a last-minute, cheap deal activity holiday starting Monday. Irritatingly, the third wouldn't go. Seriously, Squirrel, are you absolutely sure you want to stay? What? You're staying all week?

Return to Blighty

The honeymoon is over. At 5.12am precisely, for me.

For Tiger, not yet. Running into the garden in total joy to dig up the unicorn she buried last August is, for her, the culmination of nearly nine months whining, complaining, and periods of plain bonkers.

I have noted, however, that the IhateHongKongIwanttogohome routine has lessened in the last two weeks. That could either be due to her awareness of impending dates and times, or it could be that in desperation I have been fooling with her brain and slipping drops of Vitamin D3 into her tea. I have Mac's assurance that it is like a natural boost of sunshiny happiness.

Actually, to coincide with our glad return home, we are all on some form of medication right now. Dig normally hits the N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine so that he can look awake in the company of serious people, rather than channel the hobo economy-travel vibe that circumstance and his gutter-class family have forced upon him. Squirrel meanwhile has become hooked on some strawberry chewy vits, and Shark needs the inhaler which she left in Hong Kong (prompting first trip to doctor within two hours of being in house).

As the Primary Nurse for this Emergency Travelling Hospital Unit I have convenient access to all meds so am quietly knocking back the Piriton to prevent the allergic reaction to my own domestic interior.

Dust, cellar mould and monstrous creatures that are bigger than the Eiffel Tower (if you put them under a microscope) are lurking here, waiting to kill me. First they will blow my nose off. I know because they have done it before. Really, I would like to pick up the entire house and put it through a wash cycle, if only the washing machine would work. (It does not, but keeps good company with the dishwasher, boiler, oven, and toaster.)

But I see that Eli and Mr W who have been looking after the assemblage of dust and broken stuff that we are proud to call home have done a sterling job. They have removed the car battery, ripped out the bedroom carpet, disposed of the fridge, and even acquired a new key after our neighbour came and changed the front door locks. So they deserve a chip supper, incidentally the other item that Tiger has been pining for, alongside a horse and a semi-rotted unicorn.

So that is it. The news report for today. Normal domestic interior, non-working stuff, a trip to the doctor and family medication to cope with it all. Hurrah and Welcome Home, Grit.

See the actual excitement of international travel

And how I know we are home. Thanks, Tesco.

Did six months pass already?

I count the months on my fingers, and can barely believe it's true, but we left England, and the house, in August. Looked after by friends, the house has stayed up under a battering from junk mail, rain, snow, flood. Now Dig is there, saving us from bailiffs probably, mending a boiler, certainly.

He calls on Skype, and I see him, sitting exactly where he sits in the familiar office, ill-slept and time-worn in a grey-soaked England morning, beamed to me by screen; I sit in evening time Hong Kong. There's a strange reversal for you. He has the cold house, and the boiler that rattles and bangs. I have the warm evening, crickets and birdsong.

All I can I think, is how it's true you can tell yourself the same thing, over and over, for years. I can do it, even though it becomes hard work, and some moments it's nigh impossible. Like, that house, where I lived for over twenty years, right until August. The house where I'll live again from April, that is a beautiful house. It is, I'm sure of it.

Even though, on my screen, behind him, I can see the ceiling light in the office. Is it still really there? I forgot. I hate that ceiling light. Now I remember how it upsets me, everytime I see it. I wonder, how can I imagine I missed that room, when I see that light? How can I want to live with that light again, when I dislike it so much? Who would look forward to living with a ceiling light they couldn't change?

It's not as if I haven't tried. I bought a replacement, but then I clumsily dropped a brass curtain rail on it by accident. I smashed it, even before Dig never managed to put it up. Then I resolved to do something about the ceiling light, but now it's too low down on the list of priorities. I have to face it, I might never do anything at all.

Surely more urgent is the paint peel on the ceiling and the place where the plaster fell off thanks to the leaky water pipe in the upstairs neighbour's bathroom. And the pane of Victorian glass that smashed in the beautiful oak door when the ladder fell over. The bookcase door that doesn't close. The decorative wooden lion on the mantelpiece with its chin and bottom teeth dropped off. The piles of papers over the floor that somehow no-one can ever pick up. The exhausted armchair with the straw poking out the arms; the wall lights which don't light; the cellar that's wet and crumbling; the mirror that's cracked; the walls that are grey; the unused, unplugged fax machine, gone into hiding under a yellow towel, occupying the shelf space where the printer should be. The printer sits on the floor, surrounded by boxes.

I look at the whole now. It's falling apart, more than ever. I wonder if I've done what I can do about that house. It's a house I can't realise myself inside. It's a house I want to leave. It's a house I want to live in. I must keep it alive inside my head. Dig, even though he looks crumpled and worn out with travel, he fits this house, surrounded by papers, hidden by piles of mail, sat by a desk spilling with wires, a discarded keyboard, telephones, jottings of things to do.

For six months, I've only imagined that house. Now I see it, I feel powerless to change anything at all, even a light. And it makes me sad, the thought that living with what's there, how it is, how things stand, they'll always stand. It has to be enough.

There's no way out but to tell myself this. Underneath the mess, the chaos, the hopeless prospect, it is a beautiful house. It is. It is.

Planning, doing, achieving

We are preparing for the arrival of Aunty Dee. Her presence seems weeks away, but if we don't get on with it, she will be here and staring mournfully at the state of the floor wondering what possessed her to travel several thousand miles to be asked to sleep there.

For the arrival, we must:

1. Buy a bed. This will involve Ikea. Me and Dig will stare glumly at furniture that we don't want and don't like while the kids run around in delight and tot up forty thousand dollars on pink plastic wall lights and furry flower rugs. Forced into making a decision on the bed because time is running out, we will put it to the Squirrel test. She is the only one who can be bribed to test each display bed in store as if it was her very own. In five minutes we can apply the equivalent of five years regarding durability and resistance to glue, scissors, footprints, and a cuddly platypus called Platty.

2. Look at the washing machine. The one in the cupboard that I have never used. It is time. Aunty Dee might have underwear that she does not want to see on a Facebook page set up by the local laundry woman who posts pictures of our smalls for the merriment of three million Hong Kong Chinese. To approach the washing machine I first slap on rubber gloves, and press its buttons with the end of a wooden stick. This is sensible. I have been electrocuted and I am not having that experience again.

3. Put up hooks. Behind doors, on walls, in cupboards, in hall. All kid coats, bags, hats and towels permanently live on the floor. Either buy hooks or charge entrance fees. We might be an early work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

4. Put it off for as long as possible, and maybe until she is on the airport bus to Central, but eventually squirt blue, white and green fluids around, hoping that by their very presence the collections of moulds, dirts and unidentifiable marks will simply get up and go without the aid of cloths, brushes, or me.

5. Strap the broom onto the handle. It came off after the kids took it to the roof and used it as a pole vault.

6. Find some miracle cure for the ongoing curtain problem. Honestly, these curtain tracks are rubbish. Sticky tape, string, and staring at them in a menacing manner are no solutions.

7. Resolve to sweep the floor every day. Yes, I will do that. No I won't. Yes I will. Could we hire a maid for two weeks?

8. Be resourceful with cardboard boxes. These inexplicably mount up against the walls. I fancy they appear overnight, almost as if brought by fairies. I have an aversion to throwing them out in case I can build a table from them. I am sure I once saw a craft book about making attractive furniture from cardboard. I would very much like to have a go. The fairies are trying to show me the way.

9. Make Dig do stuff. I don't know. Just help. I have run out of all strategies, like self piteously saying I do it all, when this is clearly not true and I do none of it.

10. Buy place mats for the dining table. For the last two months I have employed sections of beach mats and pieces of cardboard because somehow buying place mats was like making a commitment to living here. I deny it, but I cannot expose Aunty Dee to a piece of cut up beach mat stuck together with dried alphabet pasta. Let us not forget what is her main employment.*

* Social worker.

Better keep this post short

I have become obsessed by cleary-upping.

It is horrible. I think about nothing else. Only cleary-upping.

I walk about this house, putting down things up.

It's bad. I worry all my brains will leak out. Along with my capability to make a healthy intelligent mess. If it continues, I will be a hollow shell of my former self. I will wake up, wearing a floral pinny and a beatific smile, then take to smoothing over sofa cushions with an air of blessed devotion.

I may be too far gone already. Because I cleared a patch of floor, organised a shelf, and rearranged the sofa cushions. And I WAS PROUD OF IT. You see? It has all gone horribly wrong. I actually looked at the sofa cushions and thought, They look NICE.

Soon, too soon, will be gone the chaos kid fest of a house where I squat. I imagine myself already, ejecting them each morning at 7.56, precisely, to make a mess elsewhere, then patrolling the front room. My job will be security guard on early release at holiday camp.

My cushions will then be more important than my children. I will truly become the woman I despise. This blog will be filled with tales of Cushion Cover Drama! More pointless. More wittery. More twittery. Pointlessly squittered into oblivion. Phut. There it goes. 2,500 words on how I reorganised my dishwasher tablets.

For goodness sake, save me. I want to be a slattern, a sloven, a slop. I shall unshoulder this burden, take a day off, wear clothing from the stinkedoutbottom of the laundry basket, go and roll about the grass, and tell the kids, Those mud pies you made? Bring them in! We'll have them for tea.

Tidy tidy tidy

It is dawning on me, this idea, that the family will live some place else for a while.

I had the thought that I must clean up the house I leave behind.

I did think, Don't bother. Then I would simply exit the front door. Easy. But then I thought, if I did that, bad things will happen.

1) The debris, presently piled floor to ceiling, will rot and fester and stink. After three days, the neighbours will call the police. They will break in to look for the decomposing bodies I surely have stashed under the floorboards. To date, they are one rat, five mice, 2,456 spiders, and one gas man. The discovery of the corpses, and how we actually live, will be shaming, and I will be disgraced in polite society forever.

2) People might come and stay while we are away. People like Aunty Dee. I would like my house to be nice for her. I like to imagine that she is not a quiet and retiring, slightly deaf spinster with a career built in social work, but that she will use our house to host a swinger party for her work colleagues. I would like to imagine that all her office chums will admire how I have artfully arranged my colour-coordinated sofa cushions and thoughtfully offered a selection of tinned fruit.

3) While we are away, anyone who comes into our house will call in a plumber. This is almost a certainty. A plumber, an electrician, a glazier, a gardener, another gas man. They will all need to come and repair the damage I have left. It is true, isn't it, that other people notice what you do not.

For example, I can live with the tap. I have learned how to deal with the problem. Admittedly, my first solution was not good. I shoved a rubber bung up the dribbling end and upturned a cup on the turny bit. This was my DIY household maintenance. The bung solution was not good. I flooded the ceiling void, short circuited the electrics, and caused several hundred pounds of damage. Of course I look on the bright side. The tap stopped dripping in the short term. About ten minutes of short term, before the explosion.

Now, me and the tap get along. But someone else will come and fear the tap exploding, and think Something must be done! When the plumber arrives, I think it would be good for them to get at the mains water tap without having to remove the body of the gas man.

4) Dig says that how you present something is how it will be treated.

For example, you might take your car to the garage. But you forget it is full of crap! Like a selection of pasta in the passenger footwell, empty drinks cartons, banana skins, soiled trousers, and swimming costumes. The stuff you carry if you have kids. But when the garage mechanic sees this mobile skip, he will not bother putting down that brown paper in the driver's side. No. He will simply invite all his mates to come and sit in your treasured vehicle, wipe their boots over the stained upholstery, discard their chip wrappers, and treat the glove box like a spittoon. He is safe in the knowledge that you will not be able to tell. And he is right.

I heed Dig's caution. I will leave my house nice so that it is treated with love by the police, crumply swingers, and plumber come to mend the exploding tap.

5) I would like to come back to a nice house! This is the most important thought I have had. When I step back home after hours of torture by kid and aeroplane, I would like the house to be here, welcoming, safe, and clean. So that is how I must leave it.

Consequently I have so far removed one bottle of two-year old coriander from the fridge, and reorganised the Spanish peseta coin collection.