Sent To Try Us

A chapter of household inconveniences (let's call them that). The boiler in our other house is not working. This more an inconvenience for our tenant than for us, but we will be footing the (ever-increasing) bill. Cheaper repairs have failed. Now it's a new pump. Last report was tenant had no heat or hot water at all, though previously they'd been intermittent. Liaising with plumber and tenant an ongoing task. We're new at being landlords (ladies?) and the responsibility is uneasy at times like these, especially as our tenant's father has just died.

We have mice. Oh yes. In fact the little blighters never really went away, but we just became more careful about not leaving food accessible. One slip-up - leaving food cupboard door open at night - and they're back with a vengeance. Nibbling the corners of flour bags, which have now been firmly rehomed in high cupboards or plastic boxes, and returning on subsequent nights to chew furiously at the wooden door of the now firmly closed cupboard. L has taped up a place behind the kitchen sink where we think they may have been coming in, and we've been putting peppermint oil on paper towel attached to the cupboard, and taping up the area they were chewing. All quiet the last couple of nights. But Amazon are soon to despatch a package of entirely inhumane mouse traps to our home. I'm sorry, but we've had enough.

The bracket of the curtain pole in the sitting room has pulled out of the wall. We've been easing up to this job for weeks. Took the curtains down, investigated, sighed etc. Today we actually tackled it with a big wodge of filler, and let's hope when it dries it will hold the screws in place once more.

The stick blender can no longer be assembled. It is still under guarantee, however, so M&S will have to replace or refund. Luckily we also have an old school blender - actually another thing inherited from my father - and I was able to blitz the beetroot soup I made at lunchtime in that.

The bathroom basin seemed to be creating unpleasant smells, but a dose of soda crystals has so far eliminated them.

L's mini greenhouse outside blew over in strong wind today. It withstood much stronger winds a few weeks ago when she was away in London, but maybe it was the precise direction of this one that did it, who knows?

The exhaust emissions indicator light keeps coming on in the car for a few days, then going off for a few days, then coming on again. It was serviced two weeks ago and they found nothing of note. I popped in there today and the friendly woman behind the desk (who is quite knowledgeable) said if it comes on and stays on it really needs looking at. It might just be a faulty sensor, but on the other hand it might be sensing a fault. Boys and wolves come to mind. I told her I was reluctant to bring it back after the last bill (two new tyres, MOT and service don't come cheap). She sympathised.

I have the feeling there's something else, but these seven seem like quite enough.

Frittering

It's all so horribly imperfect. Today I went into school feeling marginally less sleep-deprived than last Wednesday. I saw my young client, who seemed also to be marginally less sleep deprived than last Wednesday. Then I met my colleague who is the welfare and medical person in school, and a teacher (who looked young enough to be a student) to discuss a girl they want me to work with. Then I met the girl, just briefly, so she'll know who I am next week when she comes for her first session. Late in the proceedings, the young teacher remembered that the girl's year will be away on a trip in two weeks' time, and therefore she will have precisely one session with me before the Easter holidays. My brain whirred, trying to process this information, and decide what to do about it. Far from therapeutic to have a single session, then a break. I heard myself say well, it's not ideal, but we don't live in an ideal world, do we? The kind of putting-a-brave-face-on-it, compromise-filled statement I find myself making more and more in this setting. I came home. Part of me thought I should just have had the girl come for a first session then and there. But she was terribly sad, quiet and withdrawn-feeling, and I think being rushed wouldn't suit her. We do what we can.

This sleep thing is a puzzle. Not clearly, consciously nervous in a major way about the next day, I still spiral into a gut-clenching place of panic in anticipation of something about what the next day will bring. Or not bring. The best outcome is when, as last night, I can manage the panic enough to get some sleep around it. Fitful, broken sleep, each awakening a return to the familiar dread in the stomach. But sleep nonetheless. I know when I've slept because I wake up with a dream, hold onto it like a trophy. The tiredness at this time of day varies nonetheless, and is oddly sometimes worse when I've had a little more sleep, better when I've had (as last Friday) next to none. No rhyme or reason. But the weariness carries a burden of misery and despair I have to work hard to keep in perspective.

In and out of work, of being a working person. A few hours here and there not really enough to get into the swing of anything. A morning as a professional, then back home to my indolent unemployed life. And, as I've mentioned, tired. I eat a hot cross bun, answer an email, write this, stare out of the window. Feel there is probably something I ought to be doing. Contemplate a nap. A walk. Rereading the Census collector's handbook. Getting out my notebook.

On an entirely unequivocally positive note, we have booked a week's holiday in June. We'll stay in a cottage close to the beach in a tiny Northumbrian village. I am so grateful and excited. L gets her state pension in May and has decided to dedicate the first few weeks' money to this ineffable plan.

Spring Ahead Or Fall Behind

What is time passing? It is the earth's rotation around the sun, it is the spinning of the earth around its axis, darkness followed by daylight over and over again. It is the growth of plants, the return of leaves to dark trees, the vase of big yellow daffodils with slightly twisting petals. The pseudo ticking of the electric wall clock in the kitchen divides up the day into tiny segments, like grains of sand falling through the narrow middle of the egg timer. I felt this interminable progress from second to second, when as a child I moved slowly, silently from room to room, hearing, in the dining room the steady metallic clunking tick and whirr of the grandfather clock, in the kitchen the perkier, impatient tick of the red clock, a melamine plate hanging high on the wall. I pulled my feet out of the sucking mud of inertia to get from one end of the house to the other, one end of the day to the other. There was nothing happening. All space in between, no thing. What was the thing? There was breakfast, lunch, supper, even tea with chocolate spread on toast, there was television, there was my father leaving for work in the morning before I set off for school, returning on the 6.15, to come home and wash London off his face and hands, to eat handfuls of peanuts from the jar in the larder, to drink whisky and soda as he sat in his wing-back chair, while he studied the Times crossword. My mother in the kichen preparing supper to be ready at 8 o'clock, no sooner, no later. The Archers on the radio. Me in my green school uniform, going back and forth to school, down the hill, along the length of Charles Street, right into Kings Road, across the crossing. There were the school holidays when I wondered what to do. The default position of my life, this wondering what to do. I've always struggled to get started unless someone else's protocols set the terms - family routines and rituals, school rules and requirements. There'd be tropical fish to feed and occasionally clean out, a record player on the floor, mono, to play my brother's records on, and later my own. There was endless homework, and sometimes there was helping my mother (though not that much), and there were my collections of marbles and of cars, and there were books everywhere, and there was the garden, and there was the big white toy cupboard with the double doors, full of toys - etch-a-sketch and a humming top, a wooden truck with wooden barrels that rolled up a little ramp and sat on the back, kept in place by chains, and a flower press. And all the empty space in between, where nothing was.

Salt And Pepper

The salt cellar used to have a little wooden spoon. The spoon did not have a bowl like a conventional spoon. It was more like a little snout, the same all the way round, that you poked into the salt, and somehow you had more control over the sprinkling than with a more spoon-like spoon. In some move from house to house, the shaft of the spoon got broken, was taped for a while, then eventually, sadly, abandoned. The bowl survives, if scuffed, salt now dispensed with the fingers. Probably unhygienic, but quite pleasing from a tactile point of view. There is something about things we have known since childhood. The deep familiarity so reassuring whilst almost forgotten.

My Dad used to grind pepper over his fried egg and his baked potato. Probably over other things too, but I especially remember these. I used to find this sprinkling of black dots deeply irritating, I cannot explain why. Only that the use of pepper marked my father out as different. No-one else used it. And that was somehow the way my father was seen in the family. Now I love my pepper; grind it over eggs, potatoes, and most other things too.

Grumpy Queens

I confess it is not I who am learning about beekeeping - or only indirectly. L has joined the local 'Environment Group', which as well as organising litter picks around the village, looks after the lovely old graveyard of the local Baptist Chapel, now deconsecrated, which is used for music events, and whose Sunday school is home to several artists' studios and Thingamujig Theatre. In an area beyond the gravestones, they are planning a pond, and a beehive. L threw herself into things, as she does, and undertook to apply to the Co-operative Bank for a grant to fund said beehive, and successfully landed around £400. On Saturday she went on a morning's course at the Community Centre, given by the chair of the group, who is attending an ongoing training in nearby Halifax. She is still not sure if she will become a 'bee handler', but there are other ways to get involved, she tells me. Potting up and selling honey, for instance.

I expect some of the things she told me about bees are well-known, but I was in awe. A few examples. The drones, the males, have only one function - to mate with the queen (apparently one member of the course - male - had many jokey remarks to make on this topic...) The females, the workers, do all the work. The queen, once she has mated with a number of drones, lays thousands of eggs a day. Bees communicate using pheromones, and the 'waggle dance', informing each other of the whereabouts of food sources. There is just one spot in each area, where mating takes place, to which queens and drones gravitate. In the book on the table it says

GRUMPY QUEENS
If you have a grumpy queen you will have an aggressive colony. Replacing your old queen with a young one from a docile strain will change the personality of your hive within hours.

The sophistication of bee society prompted L to remark that perhaps they should be keeping us.

On The Table

my mobile phone on a folded striped napkin, cream, green, gold, dark red and blue
my Keep Calm and Carry On mug, dregs of decaf tea at the bottom
the bus timetable for bus services A,B,C,D,E
an empty packet of Ricola Original Swiss Herb Drops
a pale blue glass of water - half full
a post-it note listing varieties of strawberries Elvira, Korona, Ostara, Elsanta (no good)
a bottle of sparkling mineral water called Saskia (cheap from Lidl)
a folded blue napkin
various versions of plans of the allotment
a small wooden salt bowl and a wooden pepper grinder that were once my father's, that, in fact, I grew up with
a biro from JCS Electrical Solutions
the key to the front door (or is it the back door? our house being two back-to-back houses knocked into one, this is a constant source of confusion)
a guide to the Calderdale Way
a book on beekeeping
an empty glasses case
a round rush table mat that was also once my father's
a magazine box labelled GARDENING magazines, seed catalogues
the laptop at which I write and the trusty Labtec glow mouse (mark 2)

Which of these would you like to hear more about?

Flying

A flying visit from nephew A, who at 23 is not too old to enjoy the children's playground along the road. In fact this rather took me back 21 years or so to the toddler whose favourite thing was the 'wobbly bridge' in the little playground at Thornton-le Dale in North Yorkshire where he grew up.