Wellington Road

My grandfather’s house is likely to be sold sometime this year. At the moment it now belongs to my mother as next of kin and although it would be nice to retain it in the family (my grandparents owned it for a good 60 years) practically that is just not going to be possible.

I’m going to find letting go of it very difficult. It is a house that holds very happy childhood memories for me and it is a house that I have visited on and off every week for the last 40 years. As children me and my sisters would spend every Sunday there with my grandparents and during school holidays every Wednesday too.

It was an idyllic time. Grandparents tend to be softer and more easy going than parents so my memories of my time with them are very warm. I can remember my Nan used to have a huge square dining table with fold out leafs and for some reason my sisters and I, when very small, would play beneath it, sitting on the crossbars that braced the legs, imaging we were in a vast sailing ship.

I can remember also being in my Nan’s kitchen, standing on tiptoe to see the stew bubbling on the cooker or later, when I was a little older and taller, being allowed to stir the boiled milk into the custard powder as my Nan stirred it in. It was a special treat to be allowed to help my Nan cook in her kitchen.

Whenever I visit the house now – and I am visiting frequently to make the most of it while I am able – I am assailed by these memories and more. It is both a comfort and a heartbreak. Just the smell of the house almost fools me into believing that my grandparents are just in the next room. I guess metaphysically, if your beliefs are that way inclined, they kind of are. I find myself pining to go there – seeking comfort I guess – and yet when I am there the absence of life is very upsetting and just brings home the reality that those who gave the house its true warmth are no longer there.

The furniture, the clocks, the ornaments all seem to speak with voices that I can’t quite hear but that I can feel... old times, past times, times gone by. Happy days as my Nan was often fond of saying when she herself reminisced. But their voices are fading now. Getting quieter. My days of access to the house are numbered. I’d love to buy it (if I were a millionaire) but I have to be realistic – it’s smaller than my own house so would not be practical. And keeping it as a shrine is a very bad idea. My sister and her husband are looking to buy a house but sadly not in Leamington so it is not an option for them either. And my mother, living in Sheffield, quite understandably wants matters sorted and settled as soon as possible.

It is inevitable then that the house will be emptied, sold and find itself occupied by new people starting a new history together within its walls. It’s the right thing to happen. But it makes me sad to think of it. Silly, I know, to get so emotionally attached and sentimental over bricks and mortar.

For at least as long as I have been alive my Nan had an old fashioned egg timer hung on the kitchen wall. Above it, painted into the small wooden panel that it is mounted upon is the legend “Kissin’ don’t last, cookin’ do”. It always amused her to read this out to us as children. With my mother’s permission I have taken this egg timer home as a small keepsake.

It reminds me of my Nan and of how little time we have with those we love.

And of how, despite my Nan’s wry amusement, sometimes it’s the cooking that doesn’t last but the kissing, the love, that does.

Lost And Found And Losing It

After days of moping about the house, dejectedly fingering bookcases, cupboards and drawers for a sign of my great Uncle’s missing spurs, I finally found them yesterday morning.

On top of the cabinet in the dining room, admittedly contained in a nondescript Marks & Spencer’s carrier bag, but in full view. I must have walked past the damned thing countless times in my search for them.

The sense of joy and relief I felt was akin to finding a, well, a long lost treasure, funnily enough. But this joyous feeling was matched by a corresponding sense of discomfort and chagrin at the realization that I cannot for the life of me recall putting them there.

I don’t doubt for an instant that it was me though.

It is a worrying thought that my heretofore prized memory has let me down so completely. I never lose things. Never. Or if I do misplace something the memory of where it is usually comes to me within a few days if I avoid thinking about it and just let it come in its own good time.

Not so this time. I’d been looking for the things for weeks. It was only by getting desperate and looking into every single box and bag, every nook and cranny that I found it. And even finding it didn’t jog my memory of actually putting it there.

Such a complete loss of memory is worrying. I’d even begun to wonder if maybe I’d lent the spurs to someone (unlikely) or even accidentally thrown them out in the post-Christmas sort-out (so unlikely as to be impossible). I’d really begun to doubt myself.

All I can think now is that the emotional trauma associated with the spurs and my granddad’s recent death somehow contrived to burn out a few brain cells. It was a one-off brought about by being in emotional extremis.

But in the meantime, just in case, I am going to start wearing a dog-tag with my name, home phone number and address on in case I am ever found wandering around a far-flung train station, drooling and looking confused.

Be careful next time you come across some unattended baggage – it might be me.

When A Knight Lost His Spurs

I’m going to gloss over Christmas and the New Year. Not because they were especially bad (though circumstances could have been better) but because between illness and grieving I am just sick to death of harping on and on about my own misery and I really don’t want this blog to become my own personal version of the Jeremy Kyle Show*.

(*And, no, just for the record, I haven’t had a sex change operation, sold my liver to raise money to feed my crack addiction or produced 17 kids of wildly differing skin tone from a surprisingly restricted gene pool.)

Upon my grandfather’s death I inherited his medals and other war time paraphernalia. In themselves they are not of much monetary value but in terms of personal family history their significance is obviously immense.

Last year, at another funeral, I was given some other war time paraphernalia that used to belong to my grandfather’s brother – some cavalry spurs, a silver plated cigarette case and a pendant among the many treasures.

Naturally I’d now like to bring these two historical archives together in one place and create a source of family memorabilia that will be worthy of the name “heirloom”.

But do you think I can find the spurs and the cigarette case?

They have vanished.

Not. Not just vanished. That is way too passive. They are deliberately hiding from me; withholding evidence of their visual corporeality. I am convinced of this.

Normally I have a great memory. I can remember dates, times, appointments, things to do and things I have said. I can definitely remember where I have put things. Especially precious important things that need to be kept safe.

So why the hell can I not remember where I have stashed the spurs? It’s honestly like my memory has been wiped by rogue aliens with a penchant for bodily experimentation or I have been (without my conscious knowledge) recruited into the same American military camp that trained Jason Bourne. I have hazy recollections of storing them on a shelving unit and then moving them elsewhere at a later date where I thought they’d be safer.

But this safer place is now completely and absolutely unknown to me. That particular memory cell has ripped itself away from its fellows, climbed out of my ear and somehow abseiled into oblivion.

I have checked all the logical storage places.

Nothing.

I am now checking all the illogical storage places in sheer desperation... behind the cooker, the ice compartment in the fridge, underneath the rug in the front room...

Because I know they are in the house. I know it for a fact, for sure.

But yet they remain lost.

Completely lost. Lost in the last place that I put them.

My God, is this what dementia is like? You start hiding things from yourself, losing things simply because you cannot recall the original care you took to store them safely?

My God, is this the actual start of dementia?

*Sigh*

Happy New Year everyone. Whatever year it is.

Meeting The Neighbours

It’s funny. Only two weeks ago I was lamenting to my wife, my friends and my work colleagues (anyone who would listen in fact) how much I missed university. The buzz. The creative atmosphere. The sense of higher learning and personal development that offered a sense of relief from the relentless toil of 9 to 5.

And then a week ago the university came back to me...

...in the shape of new neighbours: students.

Oh joy.

Now I might have had my gripes about our old neighbours – the Polish family – but really they were lovely and hardly any trouble at all (as long as you averted your eyes when Mr Daddy-Pole was squatting in front of his barbecue like a Sumo wrestler in shorts so tight his genitals appeared to have been shrink wrapped in cling film). They were quiet. Kept regular hours. And mowed their lawn occasionally.

They had a young family like us and so there was enough common ground for us to harbour mutual respect for each other’s home lives and need for private R&R time.

The same cannot be said for the party animals now living next-door.

OK. I’m being a bit harsh. I’ve had one disturbed night out of 7 but really, given that they’re going to be here for at least 9 months, the odds aren’t great for me maintaining my beauty sleep regime.

Friday night the loud music kicked off at 10.20pm. Not a constant thump-thump-thump (which would be bad enough) but a horrible start and stop track that seemed to be on a permanent loop. It was maddening. However, end-of-week exhaustion worked in my favour and I did manage to drop off... Only to be woken at 1.0am by the same track now being pumped so loudly out of a car parked out the front that I could hear the house bricks vaporizing with each thump of the bass.

And then the music was unbelievably drowned out by a sleep shattering barrage of giggling and shrieking and screamed conversations whose beginnings, middles and ends consisted solely off “yeah, man, like, yeah, like, yeah man...”

In the end I had to don trousers and coat (it only occurs to me now that I was in danger of adopting flasher chic) and go outside and politely hail them over the hedge. Tempted as I was to give them a mouthful (I’m only talking strong language here, OK?) I decided to keep it polite. I figured it might be wiser not to launch straight off into a war on my own doorstep. I asked them if they wouldn’t mind “keeping it down just a bit so that their neighbours could get some sleep?”

To be fair to them, they apologized and the music volume was instantly dropped. And within minutes they had all disbursed and gone back to their hashish bongs or whatever it is they’re called these days. And I was able to get back to sleep.

However I was tired and grumpy the next day. And I suddenly recalled all the things about Uni life that had begun to irritate me greatly when I was there.

Students and their fun and their music and their good times and their living life to the max and their craziness and their drinking and their inane loudness and their totally in your face youthfulness and ebullience.

Bah humbug!

Come back Mr Cling Film – all is forgiven!

Stepping Outside The Barricades

The first time we put Tom into his cot it dwarfed him. He looked like a peanut in an empty warehouse. We filled the space with soft toys and spare blankets but still he looked lost.

Somehow, over the last year or so, despite our watching him intently he’s managed to sneak the act of growing past our eagle eyes. He’s grown stronger, sturdier, more self willed and determined. And longer.

And the cot has slowly shrunk around him. First it reduced itself from warehouse to wrestling ring – allowing Tom to charge around its railed edges in an endless game of ring o’ roses. And then it shrank further still. It became a one child pay pen. At full stretch Tom was practically touching the far edges with his toes.

And then, inexplicably, it became a pleasant prison. One he never complained about being inside – thankfully Tom has always loved his bed – but one he suddenly began to try and escape from a couple of mornings ago. The early signs were there. Tom was gearing himself up to “go over the walls” (as opposed to smuggling himself out with the laundry).

Such activity sounded the death knell for the cot. The drop down to the floor was such that Tom would be likely to suffer a broken neck or at the very least broken limbs.

Such a likelihood was simply unacceptable.

So the cot was dismantled yesterday afternoon and reconfigured into a proper bed. Tom’s first.

I must admit I felt... sad, regretful. There was something comforting about bedding Tom down in his cot each night. He was safe and secure. Contained. He could come to no harm and no harm could come to him.

He was also still my little baby boy.

Now, suddenly, I have had to re-adjust my thinking. Accept that he is no longer a baby. He is a very active, singularly determined toddler. He’s a proper little boy.

After we’d rearranged the bedroom yesterday afternoon we allowed Tom a little playtime in it. This proved to be a good move. He was very excited by the changes and his frequent squeals of “ooh look” indicated he was pleased with the new arrangements.

The test was bedtime of course. Rather sagely we managed to wear him out so that he’d be less reluctant to get out of bed and it seemed to work. He was tucked in and snuggled down. All his usual furry toys were there.

I snuck up to see him after half an hour and found him sprawled on top of the bed – the blanket kicked off as usual – sound asleep. Mission accomplished.

This morning he was up at 6.10am, running around the bedroom, dipping his little fingers into all this amazing stuff that Ben leaves lying around in the room they share. He loved it. So much so he really didn’t want to go downstairs today and only did so under duress.

So. Another developmental stage has been encountered and passed. The baby has gone. And I shall miss him dearly. But the boy that has appeared in his place more than makes up for the loss. I daresay as his confidence grows his morning wanderings will take him to the stair-gate at the top of the stairs or to the bathroom and all its myriad opportunities for mischief... I suspect I shall not get much of a lie-in for the next week or two...

But despite and perhaps because of that I feel immensely proud.

Welcome to a little bit more of the world, son.

A Fence Is The Best Defence

The Bloggertropolis security compound was strengthened and fortified against all rogue incursions of the canine variety over the weekend.

A sterling local company of fencing experts who go by the name of ID Fencing descended on the ol’ homestead early Saturday morning and disgorged enough woodery and nailery from the back of their flatbed truck to construct a fully functioning watchtower complete with machine gun posts and sniper slits.

Alas, such an item of garden furniture was beyond their remit to build and so instead they worked like Trojan’s to put up a 6ft fence that greatly diminishes the possibility of anything larger than a squirrel ever gaining access to the inner sanctum of my lawn and herbaceous borders.

I’m proud to say my backyard is now tighter than a gnat’s arse.

We’ve even seen a drop-off in the amount of cat poo that normally bullet-holes the lawn which, as far as I’m concerned, is an added bonus.

Although we’ve lost a little bit of view and the illusion of space the good definitely outweighs the bad. For the first time ever we feel safe and private in our garden. And more importantly we feel that the kids are safe. Our troublesome neighbours with their rampaging rottweiler left over a month ago but we decided to push on with the fence plans regardless. You never know who might be moving in after them – a wild cat maniac, a boxing kangaroo aficionado or even a man in a cloth cap with a penchant for cock fighting. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

As it happens the fence was a wise move.

The fencing boys – being local lads – were able to inform us that the garden that abuts onto the bottom of ours belongs to a “half way house” of indeterminate variety.

Marvellous. And I thought we lived in a nice area. Hyacinth Bucket as opposed to Onslow and Rose.

Seems I was wrong.

Seems we have the Gallagher’s living at the bottom of the garden. Or to be exact, rejects from the Jeremy Kyle show. During bouts of weekend gardening Karen has been able to eavesdrop on drunken protestations of love and drunken death threats should one or other of the rehabilitatees veer from the path of physical faithfulness and exclusive intimacy. Not so much the course of true love as the coarse...

Anyway, Mr and Mrs Ex-Jailbird own a ruddy great pit-bull.

*Sigh*

I’m wondering if there is still time to electrify the fence and build that watchtower...

Cleansing

Karen and I are off for the week enjoying another money saving Staycation holiday. Rather than just laze about (which, let’s face it, is what any normal person would do) we’ve elected to give the house something of a cleaning blitz.

Shampoo the carpets. De-web and de-mould the windowsills. That kind of thing.

It’s a big job and trying to do it with 2 very active children makes it harder still. After all a 2 year old does not appreciate the dictat of not walking on a freshly shampood carpet for a couple of hours until it is dry. And the 8 year old doesn’t give a damn; making a rendezvous with his PlayStation is of a much higher priority.

It is stressful, all this “deep pore” cleaning. And I can now appreciate why my mother used to get so irrate with me and my two sisters on “hoover days” during the summer holidays.

My mother would, without fail, hoover the house twice a week. Mondays would be a “light” day – sitting room and hall only. But Fridays would be the big “all over” day. Upstairs and downstairs. The whole Shebang.

There is something about adults performing cleaning chores that, I swear, just makes kids behaviourally uncooperative. We’d inevitably play up and earn the short, quick arm of my mother’s temper. If we were particularly bad a phone call to my Nan would be in order and she’d speak to us on the phone. Never to tell us off. I don’t think I ever saw or heard my Nan angry but the shame of knowing my Nan felt the slightest disappointment in us was usually enough to bring us all back into line.

God, but I wish she was still alive and on the other end of the phone today.

With the carpets shampood yesterday we all elected to go outside for the afternoon. For the little one this is actually a bonus. He loves being outside in the garden. Rain or snow he loves it. The 8 year old, however, has more of an ambivalent attitude. The garden is great in theory but he’d much rather be inside plugged into his PlayStation or his Nintendo DS.

Except he managed to break the latter in a horrendous fit of temper on Sunday evening.

Every Sunday he has but one chore to perform:

Clean his room.

And, my God, is it a performance. A 2 hour job (at the most) usually ends up taking over the whole day and the whole house. Karen and I have to put more energy into getting him to do it than the job itself would actually take if we were to do it ourselves. But there is a principal at stake here so we persist.

There will be tantrums. There will be wailing. There will be gnashing of teeth. There will be shouting. There will be playing with his toys rather than just tidying them away. There will be miniscule attempts at cleaning and then a million “tea breaks” to recover. And then there will be naggings to get on with the job and get it finished and then the whole cycle will start all over again.

Usually the threat of “no gaming” until the room is tidy ensures the job is eventually completed. With the absence of my Nan on the end of the phone it is the only and best alternative.

This Sunday, however, was different. This Sunday he was told he’d be banned from the DS unless he tidied his room. He said he’d done it and promptly started playing. When we checked we found that the sneaky little so-and-so had merely covered the mess up with his duvet. So gaming was duly banned.

This was when the temper kicked in. And I mean Temper. We’re talking Zeus hurling flaming thunderbolts. We’re talking The Incredible Hulk throwing Chieftain tanks into massive military fuel dumps. Two large tubs of Lego got overturned – 1000+ pieces all over the floor. And then the DS got thrown across the room. £120 quid’s worth of kit broken in a fit of pique.

Karen and I were not impressed. My Nan would have been speechless.

We cannot afford to replace such equipment willy-nilly. So the boy is now Nintendo-less.

The boy of course was distraught. And showed it by having an even bigger tantrum. And then realizing he’d be spending the next 24 hours picking up ALL the Lego from his room before he’d be allowed the ameliorative powers of the PlayStation had another even bigger tantrum.

This was Sunday. And Monday. And part of Tuesday.

The Lego wasn’t completely tidied away until yesterday afternoon after 2 days of sheer hell. Tantrums, complaints, shouts and more attempts at merely concealing the mess rather than actually cleaning it properly.

Karen and I are both exhausted.

Apparently the 8 year old is only possibly on the “borderline of the Aspergers spectrum” according to our local GP.

Christ. I pity those parents with kids who have the full blown version.

The carpet of my mind now needs a deep clean. My mind needs a shampoo.

A good scrub all over please someone.

Twitching The Nets

There’s been a double departure from out street this week.

Two sets of neighbours have vanished in the night leaving an assortment of detritus in their wake (an old mattress, a swivel chair and an assortment of mildewed shelving).

The first was the Polish family that lived in the counterpart to our semi and used to impinge upon our back garden privacy by staging volcanic barbecues every weekend and walk around in bollock revealing shorts whenever there was the slightest hint of sunshine.

I shall miss their loud arguments in Polish – the wife was particularly vocal – and their pigeon English as they tried to make small talk with us with the small change of their English vocab. But what I won’t miss is the door slamming, the stomping up the stairs, the late night hoovering or their eldest son who played the guitar so loud late one night that I was forced to go round and knock on his front door.

I didn’t get very far. His parents were out and with typical teenage nerve he tried to tell me that he didn’t even own a guitar and that the music was coming from a house about 20 yards away on the other side of the street... totally overlooking the fact that while he was stood at the door talking to me Mr Hendrix had mysteriously downed tools mid-lick. I wasn’t happy: after being on this planet for nearly 40 years, I’ve pretty much worked out how my hearing works and can divine where sounds are coming from and know when someone is trying to take the proverbial.

The damned temerity! I came away wishing I’d clipped him around the ear but the guitar playing didn’t start up again so I guess it was a victory of sorts. Young whippersnapper!

The other departure is even more welcome. The people whose Rottweiler has terrorized half the street for the last 2 years have finally gone taking with them Cujo (or whatever the dog’s name is), sundry ill fed rabbits and a particularly pernicious black and white cat that couldn’t deem a day done until it had shat on our lawn.

Our youngest, Tom, has (alas) inherited his father’s ability to wonder across an open field and step straight into the only instance of animal excrement for miles around and then carry it into the house in a compact little pat on the heel of his shoes. Suffice it to say, I shall not miss the cat at all.

The biggest relief though is the removal of the dog. Some of you will be aware of the worry and trouble that it has caused us and other neighbours by frequently escaping from its own garden and rampaging through ours and everybody else’s.

I am an animal lover but this dog was terrifying. Huge, bad tempered and slightly unhinged. Not what you want snarling around when you have young children who love nothing better than pottering about outside.

We last saw the dog last week. Again on the loose. Eyes wide with agitation. Bounding up and down the street and biting chunks out of the bumpers of passing vehicles.

The Poles (at a push) we shall miss. But as for the doggers...

Good riddance to ‘em.

Playing Hide And Seek With The Neighbours

Our neighbours are many things but they are not nudists or naturists or given over to holding Druidic ceremonies in their back garden.

Which is fortunate as the fence that divides their good green earth from ours is (a) dilapidated and (b) only about 3ft tall even when it is upright.

We can see absolutely everything.

Every barbecue. Every attempt at sunbathing. Every sweaty session with the lawnmower.

And they of course can see us doing the same. With the exception of the barbecue as that’s an activity that Karen and I haven’t yet embraced (we’re quite capable of burning our sausages in the oven, thank you very much).

Now, our garden lives are quite innocent. Neither of us are growing marijuana or opium. Neither of us are burying hated relatives under the patio of even stuffing their decomposing body parts into green wheelie bins for the local council to take away.

We ain’t got nuffink to hide, guv’nor.

But a little privacy would be nice. A little privacy would be welcome.

We get along fine but I’ve noticed that whenever they are in their garden, sat around their Ikea table, we have only got to appear around ours for them to immediately disappear inside. Or if we’re in our garden playing with the kids and they suddenly appear we feel strangely inhibited. That entire side of the garden is somehow off limits for us to approach or even look at. Especially when Mr and Mrs Neighbour are stalking around in their very highly cut European shorts (they’re Polish) ‘cos let’s face it, a camel toe on a man is not a great look.

Instead we nod hello politely and one of us relinquishes their claim on the outside world and disappears back inside, no doubt grumbling a little.

It’s a ridiculous situation.

And one Karen and I intend to remedy as soon as possible once the money from my aunt’s will is divvied out.

The plan is to erect a good 6ft fence along that side of the garden. Previous quotes gave us a ball park figure of £1000 – which is why we are currently unable to ring-fence our little compound to our mutual satisfaction.

This will have the benefit of not only allowing nude sunbathing and gratuitous camel toeing without risk of causing offense or traumatizing the children but also prevent a certain rogue rottweiler* from invading both our gardens like a canine blitzkrieg.

We’ll effectively be erecting a Cuprinol enhanced Maginot line only without the watchtowers or the gun emplacements (though I’m hoping that these can be added at a later date).

Happiness, it seems, is a warm high fence and good border control.

Which sounds scarily like some kind of BNP manifesto. Gulp. But honestly, folks, it’s not meant to be. I just don’t want any more glimpses of my Polish neighbour’s man bush...

I just want to be able to enjoy my garden without being reminded of 1970’s editions of Health & Efficiency magazine.

Is that too much to ask?




*Re: the dog. We’re no further forward. The dog warden makes regular visits and the owners pretend to be absent. However, although we’ve heard the dog barking on several occasions we haven’t see it marauding or pillaging for a number of weeks now. But until the fence is commissioned neither us nor the Poles can fully relax our guards.

Tilling The Good Green Earth

This post is in praise of my gorgeous wifey, Karen, who for the past few weeks has worked her little green wellies off enforcing some kind of ideal middle class order upon the bramble infested jungle that once was our expansive garden.

The thorn bushes at the back of the garden have been brutally slashed and uprooted – uncovering various grotesqueries from within their thorny bowels: dead cats, the skulls of Cro-Magnon man, broken pot shards and ale bottles and a castle straight out of the Brothers Grimm replete with dainty maiden throwing down mile upon mile of golden flowing hair. All this detritus has gone into our green wheelie bin to be recycled whenever the local authority deigns to perform their fortnightly pick-up.

Actually, apart from the shards and the ale bottles all the rest was true rubbish, i.e. a complete fiction.

My wife has balanced this secateur driven frenzy with some choice acts of cultivation.

We now have a magnolia tree.

We now have a herb wheel (with an ‘h’ officer).

We now have a vegetable patch (red onions, potatoes, garlic and chillies being some of the produce that will shortly be available for consumption).

And I believe plum trees are also on their way.

It has been a sterling effort completed (gratefully) without the assistance of either Alan Titchmarsh or Charlie Dimmock. Indeed, in deference to the neighbours and clear notions of public decorum, all Dimmocks have been kept properly covered up.

After all, cultivation and titivation should never be mixed – unless, of course, the beds involved are not herbaceous...

Will Be Done

I find myself in a weird position this week (no jokes about reading the Karma Sutra upside down again please). My aunt’s estate (the aunt who died back in September) is, I think, finally being sorted out on Friday. Certainly my mother has received a call from the solicitor to pay them a visit on this day to get things “finalised”.

Without going into personal and, frankly, uncomfortable detail the basic facts are these: the estate looks like being divided up between me and my two sisters as neither my mother nor my grandfather want a single penny of the money.

I feel rather ambivalent about the forthcoming “jackpot”.

On the one hand I won’t deny that the money – any amount really – would be a huge boost to Karen and me and could see us airlifted quite spectacularly out of the foaming waters of dire straits (as opposed to the foolish guitar licks of Dire Straits). It could see our debts cleared, the mortgage possibly lopped down to a more manageable size... maybe even a few improvements around the homestead and a holiday somewhere inland in the summer.

I have no idea of the amount coming our way and to be honest I haven’t felt comfortable enough to enquire... and yet, secretly, furtively, speculation has been running rife in the daydreamy part of my brain. I can’t help it.

If £££ I could do this and this and that. If... if... if...

I guess it’s only human nature and, after all, why not be grateful and just enjoy the breaks that life throws your way? Life isn’t routinely so generous... make the most of the opportunities, I say.

But it also feels distasteful. And disrespectful to my aunt’s memory. As if somehow she has been reduced down to some moderately impressive figure on the green screen of an ATM. Was this all she was good for? All this money and what good did it do her? Suddenly the £££ symbolizes a wasted life and opportunity after opportunity shunned out of fear and ignorance.

Maybe I’m just being oversensitive? It seems wrong somehow to benefit from death and yet, looking at it philosophically, somebody almost always benefits. That’s as much a part of life as... well, death, really.

Why, this time, shouldn’t it be and mine who find the golden ticket? When I think how hard Karen and I work and yet how little progress we seem to make financially... I think we bloody deserve it.

Ho hum.

I guess all I’m trying to do is convince myself that it’s ok to be pleased about what’s coming...

A Bigger Grindstone

Define poverty.

Living on the streets?

Starving, having to steal food to survive?

Dying, having to sell your body to live?

Or just not earning enough money to be able to live decently?

Karen and I don’t particularly lead a profligate lifestyle. We’re not out partying every night (in fact although we went out for a meal Wednesday night to celebrate out wedding anniversary it was the first time we’d been out together in over 5 months). We don’t hit the shops every weekend in wild shopping splurges.

And yet, doing some sums and some short range financial forecasts we discovered that we’re pretty close to being in the crap. Karen needs to return to work in September as we simply can’t afford to have only one of us working indefinitely. This means paying for child care for Tom. Even if Karen only works school hours to try and relieve the burden of this we still need to find an extra £400 a month to cover the nursery costs.

We just do not have this money.

It’s ridiculous. We can’t afford to work. But can’t afford not to work. What are we supposed to do?

We only have three options.

1) Give up the rat race, claim benefits and hope we don’t lose our house as a consequence. Neither of us fancies this kind of lifestyle. This option is definitely out.

2) Bite the bullet and accept that over the next 4 years or so until Tom starts school we are going to slide inexorably into debt. Well. Not so much slide as bullet-train into debt.

3) Bite a bigger bullet and do all we can do slow that inexorable slide right down to a more manageable level. This means me getting an extra part-time job to bring in extra money to cover some of the child care costs. A morning or evening cleaning job most likely.

Karen isn’t happy about it (and I’m not exactly ecstatic) as she doesn’t want to see me flogging myself along the rocky road to a heart attack. But the alternative is a sizable debt that could totally destabilize us and take us decades to pay off. With the economy so shaky at the moment it seems to me some extra money coming into the house would not be a bad thing at all.

So. I am now officially looking for work. Even though I already have plenty. Full-time job. Part-time web design business. Novel on the go. One more year at University. Maintaining a wonderful home life.

Busy busy busy.

Sigh.

So does all this mean that I’m poor? Or just not poor enough?

Who knows? But at least I’m not sewing Nikes in a Kolkata sweat shop... or selling my body in an Essex lay-by.

Faith In Human Nature

A few months ago I reported on a monumental act of misfeasance.

Back in February somebody stole our green recycling bin that had been newly delivered to our house by the local authority. I had to go to the police (as directed by said local authority) and fill out various reports before we could be allocated a brand new one.

All this on top of some petty thief’s criminal attempts to foil my magnificent recycling plans was too much to bear. I suffered apoplexy, hysteria and gout and was hospitalized for several months. I suffered hallucinations and wrote them down as blog entries. I was not a well bunny.

Imagine the horror then of returning home at the end of last week to find that our general refuse bin (black this time) had also been snatched.

It was gone. Just gone. Left out for the refuse team who were due to empty it that day and then stolen in the prime of its life.

In the space of a second I was on the edge of full mental collapse.

One bin goes missing and you feel – despite the annoyance – OK, just kids messing about, some drunken a-hole having a laugh as he wends his way home. But two... suddenly it feels like a vendetta. Siege mentality sets in. The hatches are battened and the big guns wheeled out.

Xenophobia and misanthropy leap to the fore. Who was it? Who was it? Is this the start of a hate campaign? Are they going to steal our car trailer next? It was our Polish neighbours, I’m sure of it. It has to be! They speak with a funny accent and own three cars... it has to be them! Or it’s the chavs up the road. Of course! All that bling... it’s a telltale sign. They’ve got our bin hidden in the boot of their bright blue BMW...

By nightfall I had drafted a scathing blog, written letters to the editor of the local rag and dictated a letter to the chief exec of the council. I even considered writing to Boris Johnson but managed to reel the wavering line of my sanity back in before I crossed that point of no return.

Imagine my surprise then when, next morning, our black bin was mysteriously back on our doorstep. They’ve all got addresses on you see and some kind soul, finding it perhaps abandoned and enfeebled by the roadside had taken the trouble to return it to the family who loved it most dearly.

Oh joy.

What can I say? I felt a mite foolish. All that ranting and raving. All that class war mongering. All for nothing.

My faith in human nature has been totally restored. There are good people out there.

So God bless you, every single one of you. I shall think of you all every time I stuff a full refuse sack into my newly returned black bin.

I shall keep this country clean for you.

There is a corner of a foreign landfill that will be forever England.

Location Location Brunette

I am not in a position to buy a new house. I don’t even want to. I have no aspiration at all to own a 5 bedroom 15th century barn conversion with contemporized granny annex situated somewhere in the heart of a downy sun-kissed valley in the Wirral.

And yet I find myself inexplicably glued to the telly whenever Location Location Location is on.

Well. Actually no. It’s not that inexplicable.

It’s the lure of Kirstie Allsopp.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Phil Spencer, her co-presenter and male counterpart is a great bloke. Sort of a lumbering, genial, Bungle without the bear suit. For an estate agent – or the equivalent thereof – he’s an amazingly decent bloke. Patient, kind, a quip for every occasion up his Stretch-Armstrong sleeves and a knack for finding amazing properties that match his client’s often absurd briefs (I want a 7 bedroom bijou apartment in the middle of London surrounded by 96 acres of unspoiled forest with a salmon lake at the bottom of the garden).

But it’s Kirstie who sells the show to me. She’s feisty. She’s smart. She doesn’t pull her punches for all she may cushion them a little with the kid gloves of televisual diplomacy. She’s not afraid to lock horns with her clients and tell them how ridiculously unrealistic they are being (You want a 1.5 million pound mansion house with stables and a riding school but only have £450K in the pot – it ain’t gonna happen).

But I’ll be the first to admit her attraction is something of an enigma. She’s mumsy. Her voice is kind of plummy and whiny all at the same time – like someone who has graduated with honours from Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers (which for some strange reason I read as a child). Her mouth is slightly duck-like. Her nostrils flare noticeably when a particularly annoying client has cheesed her off.

And yet she has correctly been voted one of the hottest chicks on TV. An accolade she most certainly deserves. As Dr Evil would say: “Kirstie Allsopp is on fire”.

She’s curvy, voluptuous and lush. She’s not afraid to plunge her cleavage down to the shiny buckles on her shoes. She’s bold and brave and not afraid to speak her mind. One suspects she’s rather dirty in the humour department. And most of all, she’s a fabulous brunette (which always ticks a huge box for me).

And did I mention the cleavage? (Is there an echo in here? Exultantly, yes!)

I’d happily buy a house off Kirstie – any house at all in fact – provided she gave me a full tour of any extensive grounds and a good going over in the wine cellar. Phil could hang around outside and deliver a few quips to camera if he wanted to but other than that he’s free to get the drinks in at the local pub. Get me a Guinness please, Phil, I may be some time in my deliberations...

So it’s really annoying when week after week we’re presented with pensive-faced, mealy-mouthed couples with £500,000+ budgets who constantly turn down the amazing houses that they are presented with for the most spurious of reasons. “Ooh no, Kirstie, I know the indoor swimming pool is precisely what we wanted but the plastic windows... oooh no, I just couldn’t live with them....” “Ooooh no, Kirstie, the house is perfect in every way but it’s facing 2 points due East when really, ideally, we’d like North by North-West...”

Speaking as someone who’s clinging onto the bottom rung of the property ladder with his teeth I find this kind of rich-man’s fickleness deeply irritating. And I think I like Kirstie most of all because she patently shares that irritation. Her clients have more money than taste, they’re getting an hour’s worth of free televisual fame and they get to spend a week of their lives getting Kirstie spread-eagled and oiled-up in numerous bedrooms across the English county of their choice.

Just what is their problem?!

Er. “Spread-eagled and oiled up”? How on earth did that get in there...? Phil, just what did you put in this Guinness?

Planet Steve

I feel a little bit calmer after the histrionics of the weekend though the whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I’m not sure why it got to me so much. Usually I snarl back and then let it go; move on... but I felt quite poisoned by ‘Saturday’s event’.

I’m sure a lot of it is due to high stress levels at the moment – Karen’s pregnancy is totally exhausting her, I’m under extra pressure at work due to the extended clean-up operation after the flood, I’m still receiving hassles but no money from my horrible web site clients, a shedload of money/mortgage worries, broken sleep... gah! All of it has conspired to make me hyper sensitive and all too easily knocked off my feet by the slightest motion. Planet Steve feels in danger of shattering like a cut glass goblet at any moment. One high C and crash tinkle tinkle smash.

I guess I need to focus on the positive though. Karen is beginning her maternity leave at the end of August – so barely 2 weeks to go and she can rest properly. Her bosses have also been very understanding and supportive which has been a great help. I’ll be a lot happier knowing that she’s resting at home next month I must admit rather than flogging herself at work to the point of collapse. Work and pregnancy are plainly not a great combination for her!

As for my horrible client. Well... it’s been a steep upward curve. It’s taught me a lot about what not to do and who not to work for. Most of all it’s taught me to never ever doubt my gut instincts. Most of all it’s taught me that money should never be the deciding factor in anything. There’s very little I can do now to the site – the last hurdle is just getting the money out of the client and then I can shut my doors on the whole situation for good. I can’t effing wait.

The comments of Mr Anonymous have had one positive effect: they’ve made me review the work I produce and made me decide to be a lot more careful about how I pitch it and who I pitch it to in future. I can’t compete with the big boys and I think it’s important I acknowledge that to myself and to future clients. The people I want to deal with want something modest and affordable – not huge, corporate looking, data collecting web site behemoths. There’s a niche in the market for what I can offer and as long as my clients are happy with what I produce I don’t see that anybody else need throw their opinion into the mix.

Mortgage worries.... Geez. Don’t we all have them? After a good discussion about it all with Karen over the weekend I’m going to shop around and speak to a few banks. See if I can reschedule some loan repayments to free up some income – enough to ensure we have a decent safety margin should interest rates leap up another notch (which seems likely). Where to start is beyond me though. I find the world of finance and banking something of a turn-off and as a consequence my knowledge of such things is minimal.

So, things might still be a bit overcast on Planet Steve but I’m going to do my damnedest to encourage clear, blue skies and green horizons... if I can’t do that then I shall at the very least invest in some decent wellies.

Ragun Bow

Karen and I availed ourselves of a traditional English street service over the weekend – the good old Rag N Bone man.

After the removal of our palatial greenhouse a couple of weeks ago the garden was left with a few metallic stragglers whose rusty loitering was beginning to make the garden look extremely untidy. Swift action was called for... and it came fleet of foot on a white charger just like in the days of old.

Well. Maybe not exactly like the days of old. Today’s modern Rag N Bone man no longer employs a magnificent dray horse to pull his cart or even wields a mighty wheelbarrow with which to collect household junk. Instead our particular Rag N Bone man turned up with a huge white flatbed truck with which he merrily transported various shelving units, two old broken hoovers and a vast array of assorted mystery metal work back to his yard or wherever it is that he deposits all his hard gotten gains.

He did however have a magnificent horn (please, ladies and gentleman, please!) which sounded his approach from at least two whole blocks away. Once he entered the mouth of our street we could clearly hear the carefully enunciated call of “Ragun Bow! Ra-Bow!” and knew that our saviour was near.

The garden now looks a hell of a lot tidier but there’s still loads of work left to do... weeding, pruning, removing an old water butt....

And the water butt is going to be a job and a half. Turning on the tap to empty the damn thing I was dismayed to see nothing but a pathetic trickle dribbling out onto the path rather than the expected rush of water akin to a damn bursting.

At the current rate it’s going to take 2 weeks before the ruddy thing is empty.

Peering inside the butt I was horrified to see a thick brown soup stodgily glooping up its innards with a surface skin thick enough to land a Cherokee helicopter upon. Administrations with a space merely brought various unwholesome looking bubbles up to the surface... and a slight sense of resistance near the bottom indicated that there was something softly organic submerged somewhere in the depths of the water...

I wasn’t brave enough to find out exactly what.

Rags and bones indeed...

The Gone-House

Hello and welcome to Gardener’s Corner...

Yes, the wife and I spent the entire weekend playing Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh in our many acred garden. I’ll leave it up to you to guess who played which role.

What brought on this sudden splurge on greenfingeredness?

Answer: getting rid of the humungous greenhouse that came with the house when we bought it back in March of this year.

I’d actually put the ruddy thing on eBay for the princely sum of £1 with the proviso that the buyer must collect and dismantle it and I quite expected to get no more than a tenner for it.

Imagine my surprise then when it sold for a whopping £142!

A nice gardening mad couple from Northants bought it and the poor things spent 7 hours on Sunday taking it down. I actually felt quite sorry for them as none of us had any idea it would require quite so much work. It seems the original construction crew had sealed every individual pane of glass so the poor gardeners from eBay had to painstakingly cut every single pane of glass out before they could unscrew the frame. Talk about determination. Amazingly they only broke 4 panes which is pretty good going.

Anyway, we felt so sorry for them we ended up refunding them £40. I know. We’re soft touches but as I said I would have been happy with a tenner provided someone else did all the hard work of taking the greenhouse away.

Not that I’m a complete lazy dog you, understand – I spent most of Saturday and Sunday with my loppers and my trimmers hacking back the Forest of Arden that had sprung up around the greenhouse and its environs and uncovering various lost cities and civilizations that had risen and fallen in the verdant depths of the undergrowth.

I worked up quite a sweat I can tell you.

Now, as you can see from the before-and after photo, our garden feels like it’s gained a couple of extra acres with all the space that has been opened up. The plan is to move the paving slabs nearer the house to make a patio and then to turf over the area where the greenhouse once stood thus extending the lawn even more.

After that who knows? Herbaceous borders. Vegetable gardens. Roman water features.

Whatever. Charlie and I will be sure to fork and trowel our eager little bulbs into the hot earthy beds with fertile abandon...

Oo-er? Or Oh-ar?

Ariston And On And Off

Of course it had to happen.

Now that the first mortgage repayment has been made... now that the entire house and its contents are solely ours... the washing machine decides to go belly up and do a fine impression of a dying fly (complete with spin cycle and eco-wash option).

I came home yesterday afternoon to find the programming dial clicking manically through every point on its fascia while the washing drum sat flooded and still like Romney Marsh. My underpants were not happy.

So, as some wise blogger commented on this ‘ere blog a few weeks ago, now the house is ours so are ALL the bills. Oh joy.

Even as I write a washing machine repair man of the highest calibre has already been engaged to come to the rescue of my grundies on Monday afternoon.

Hopefully the operation will be quick, painless and cheap.

My pants await with baited breath...

An Englishman’s Home...

As from today Karen and I are now proud home owners.

All the paperwork was signed, countersigned, stamped, sealed, delivered and legalized yesterday placing our humble home firmly into the hands of myself and my good lady wife. The steel stock of The Mortgage is now firmly fixed around my throat. Its fiendish stiletto blade is at my kidneys... money demanded with menaces and all that jazz.

As my good friend Tris has pointed out: I now have the pleasure of paying for any repair bills myself – boiler, washing machine, roof tiles, gas and electricity supply, plumbing and pipe work... they’re ALL mine.

On the bright side though I own an effing house! And a three bedroom house at that. I’m on the property ladder! I’m a veritable property tycoon!

Bring up the drawbridge, love, this castle’s mine!

Housey Housey

Things are finally moving with regards the house sale! We had a letter from our solicitor yesterday to say they’d like us to make an appointment to go in and sign all the necessary documents. After months of delays it’s nice that things are finally moving.

In a lot of ways Karen and I have been very lucky – not only are we being given the opportunity to buy the house we’ve been renting for the last 2 years (which means no moving to do whatsoever – always a bonus) but we’re getting it at a remarkably reduced price. House prices in Leamington – especially for 3 bedroom – are extremely prohibitive for most buyers so to say we’ve been given a golden opportunity is no overstatement.

After some of the hardships of the last 12 months – losing the baby, money worries, illnesses and injuries – it’s damn nice to be having a spot of good fortune for once.