We had just about decided to withdraw the old house from the market place for a while when up turns a woman with two children (about the same ages as ours were when we moved here) who seems to want to buy it. She wants to make sure first, however, that she can have an extension built onto the back. I know I should shrug at this but can’t push from my mind that it will be pretty rough on the neighbours, living cheek by jowl as we do, having new people and a temporary building site to get used to. On the other hand, it’s exactly what we might have done at some point if we’d had the money.
I have noticed that the new wave of incomers here don’t seem short of a bob or two, cluttering up the village centre with their 4 x 4s, opening up antique shops and children’s toyshops that only people like them can afford to patronise, employing the local girls (my daughter when she was here) and sacking them the week after for wearing the wrong kind of jeans, not realising that what goes around comes around and the one you sacked or bad-mouthed last week is very likely to be the barmaid you just ordered your vodka and cranberry from. Anyway, I ramble. I am feeling unsettled, have continuous headaches and cannot read the signs. I am dealing with this by eating too many biscuits, and they are not even the biscuits I really want because I would either have to make those or go and get them from a specialist baker which I can’t be bothered to do, so it’s just Maryland cookies, which is better than a poke in the eye, I suppose. One musn’t grumble – though why the hell not on one’s own blog I can’t think.
So what else is wrong? Well nothing, really. I have lost the plot again with writing focus and even my doppelganger seems to have gone quiet on me, but tomorrow – headache or not – I plan to inhabit the delectable garden studio that has been neglected of late and go back to the shocking pink notebook that has also been neglected and write my way into a better frame of mind with caffeine, pink pills and cookies, whatever it takes. And lest I should fall into miserable speculations along the lines of I am a talentless pretender with nothing to say, or if I have then I’ve forgotten, I will remind myself of the night out I had in Brighton on Sunday, and the bottle of wine I won on account of one of my verses (task being to compose a love “ode” to someone by the name of Nicola) which went something like :
You wouldn’t pickle ‘er,
but catch a glimpse of lovely Nicola
you’d wish that you could drink and bottle ‘er.
Now give me the wine or I’ll throttle yer!
- and has a kind of kick to it, I think. Even though I say it myself as shouldn’t.
9 comments:
I'm trying to write this whilst my two half-term darlings run hither and yon so excuse the rush, but I did enjoy your verse. I'd have given you a bottle for that. Oh, and if you want a grumble, you grumble ---you supported me the other week when I was huffy and now I'll support you. Huffers of the world unite !
I know what you mean about the house sale and caring about the neighbours. We've been in both positions. At our last house, our neigbours were desperate to sell and eventually sold to some builders who wanted to use a lot of their garden as a drive to the new bungalows they were to build in the meadow behind us. They felt guilty but we understood. Similarly when we sold that house we were in fear of the plans our purchasers had for the home we'd put so much work into. Actually they murdered it -- turned it from a lovely 19th century cottage into a ghastly Homebase version of what they thought 'the country' looks like (incomers ! hah!!) but there you are. It's dog eats dog in the property game and, much as I hate that kind of mentality, you need to think of yourself and your health and make a move based on that.
Take care, take drugs, caffeine and whatever else gets you through.
hey signs, hope the house sale goes through and you can relax, my parents are thinking of moving, and i feel so stressed on their behalf already! you can't get gazumped (sp?) up here, but it's still often perilous . . .
So has this woman actually made an offer or is she still trying to find out if she can work out an addition before making an offer?
I feel like my wife and I are in the same boat -- our lovely little house is need of an extension but we are nowhere near having the money. And if we ever sold it, someone would come in and tear it down and build something larger.
I hope today is progressing along, that you are finding your voice and realizing that you are far from being a "talentless pretender." I loved your "Nicola," I'd love to meet 'er.
Wow, I loved your poem, it had me laughing out loud (and I really need stuff that makes me laugh at the moment) and I think your prize was very well deserved.
Hope the house thing goes through OK for you.
Best wishes from Liverpool
Well thank you kindly, cusp, not that I can drink much of the stuff you understand, but a little of what you fancy etc. - amused by the Homebase vision.
Hi nmj, the way I feel at the moment, I don't mind either way, but I want a break from the in-between not knowing.
goodthomas, she hasn't come back with an offer yet - but she won't really be able to get any definite answers about planning etc. until she actually owns the place. I'm not holding my breath.
D'you know what, I never actually got a proper look at Nicola - bit of poetic license there :)
hi maggie, I think you must have slipped in there without me seeing - I'm sure there will be lots more where that came from after a glass or two.
That verse is worth a case of Dom Perignon. Have you seen the latest proposals to label bottles of wine with information on how many 'units' of alcohol they contain? Here's me thinking that if I sneak a third glass of wine which polishes off the bottle, that's three units - the daily limit for a woman. Not a bit of it. A bottle of wine is somehow 9.8 units, like about a week's worth. How do they figure that?
HI Signs, just discovered your blog. I am impressed by your writing (and you attitude). I dread to think of how stressful it must be to have to go through selling your house. Keep on writing ...
Units? Too much information, Pants, bring on the Dom Perignon please and you can raise me the third glass.
Hi, digitalesse, nice to see you. Brushing up on the attitude, one does one's best - thanks.
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