What I've Loved This Week....

... is planning. The plan for moving 2 houses into space currently occupied by 1 quite average sized one is continuing apace. Cupboards have been emptied, the contents have been packed into boxes and transported. The boxes have then been unpacked, moved around, reviewed and left in piles. Some of them have been put in alphabetical order.

A bizarre game of musical cupboards has taken place. The contents danced round until the music stopped and each time one of them was left out. Some cups and saucers lost and are sitting on the dining table.

Most importantly of all, the kitchen drawer has been emptied.

Don't pretend you don't know what I mean. We all have one. It's the drawer where you put things until you need them or until you find their matching bit or when you're tidying away in a hurry. In there, I have found the following:-

• one umbrella cover (umbrella lost approx 6 years ago)
• one eighth birthday candle (son now 12)
• several allen keys (flatpack furniture still holding, mainly)
• one mobile phone charger (phone no longer used)
• one bottle of Tippex
• one tube of glue
• approx 23 loose batteries
• one bank card (approx 6 years out of date)
• several store cards (some of the shops now under adminstration)
• one as yet unidentified object (appears to be something technical, like a bolt thing, with a washer on it. Clearly important and being kept until it's true potential is realised)

I'll be honest, unless the other half was moving in, this drawer and it's entertainment value would have been undiscovered for some time yet. You see, I knew there was an upside!

I'm kidding of course. I can't wait until he's all moved in.

And I'd have done the drawer when I needed a battery for the remote.

But go on, you can tell me. What's in your kitchen drawer? I promise, it's just between you and me.

All Change

I've spoken before about the fact my house is on the market. Other half's has been on the market too but after a thorough review of our going forward strategy (ie 3 bits of scruffy paper with barely distinguishable numbers on), we decided we'd advertise to rent his house out. Up on the lettings market it goes, one couple come to look round last week, and another family on Monday. Nothing heard from the first couple, the family like the kitchen, love the bathroom, happy with the rental asking price and can they move in on the 1st December?

Well then. Right. OK.

This is going to require a feat of logistical genius so enormous and so daring, you would weep with the planning. Not to mention the fact that at least one half of this intrepid couple gets stressy when she can't immediately remember where an earring is. So what we've got to do is merge the 2 households into one household. Right Mr or Mrs Maths Genius, how many times does 2 into 1 go? Yep, that's right.

Examples of conversations this week:-

"Well you can't bring that crap"

"You're going to have to get rid of some of this shit"

"If you can't make 2 small shelves work for you, that's not my problem."

"Will they have to go in alphabetical order?"

"What do you mean your iron's better than mine?"

"I'm just going to dump it."

"Where are we going to put it? No really, where exactly? It won't fit. It won't. Not with the bed. Unless you open the door and climb STRAIGHT ON THE BED."

As you can see, it's a work in progress. I can't think of 2 people who'll handle it better.

And at least you're guaranteed a comedy blog for the next couple of weeks.

This Week I've Loved...

... not really a great deal. I've felt out of sorts, a bit fed up, and down in equal measure and consequently the blogging's been all over the shop. I've not gone round and read all your lovely posts as I normally would, I couldn't get the stupid new phone to work properly, the laptop's had a bit of a wibble and I think my knees have entered old age with me tottering along behind at an ever increasing rate.

I'm meant to be on a diet, but I'm so hungry I could eat my own feet. I went out for a drink on Friday and was ridiculously drunk at such an early point in the evening it was like being 15 again. The house is still on the market and I'm thinking of selling raffle tickets to prospective viewers.

I know this mood will go soon, and I'll be the happy, snappy, clappy woman you all love, and I promise I'll be back on Tuesday with a proper blog but until then have a look at these people:-

This week I've loved blogs:- sometimes you know where you are with a blog. There will be blogs about children, about current events, crafts or photography. And some blogs are so delightfully random that you rock up on two consecutive days to find serious discussions about censorship and humourous ones about bed-wetting. It's one of the things which takes me back over and over again to see Heather in Lapland, and I really think you should pay her a visit. Especially now, as she's about to become very famous, and you can say that you knew her way back when if you go now.

I've also come across a blog this week which is new to me, and I can honestly say it contains one of the most movingly written posts I've ever read. I'm not going to make any other comment because I wouldn't be able to do it justice, but I think it would be lovely if you could go and put your arms round Brighton Mum.

It's over to you now my lovely people, come along and make me smile. What have you loved this week?

Academic Schmacademic

I've always believed you should try your hardest at school, work for your exams, go to college, work hard again, go to university and be as academic as you possibly can be. (I'm a bit more "do as I say, not as I do" than I care to face up to, but no matter). Of course, I want my son to be happy, well rounded and popular, but it would really please me no end if he was clever as well. I know that by the time he gets to university age, it will be compulsory for him to be in full time education until he's 43, and it will cost me £65,000 per year for the privilege but needs must when the competitive mummy drives.

Similarly, I've held a disregard for what I consider to be "soft" subjects at universities, not quite proper subjects - English, yes, History, yes, The Beatles, no, and a similar no to anything relating to Coronation Street. I see more and more schools offering vocational subjects, media studies and apprenticeships and I applaud them, I really do, but also part of me thinks "where are the proper subjects?" Why don't children have to remember things any more? Why don't they have to learn stuff by rote? Why don't they just do exams? Why don't they write on slates any more? (I jest, but not too much.)

And yet this week my entire belief system was turned on its head. When I couldn't turn the tap off, when I couldn't turn the water off, when I fetched one neighbour after another, when a neigbour turned the water off, when the same neighbour tried to fit a new tap, when the same neighbour smashed my wash basin in half, and when I viewed the wreckage of what had previously been a well functioning downstairs toilet, I caught myself thinking "I hope my son grows up to be a plumber".

Of course, he'll have done a degree first, and he'll be incredibly clever. And when he can explain to you why he's just smashed your wash basin very politely and possibly in 3 different languages while he gives you a brief history of plumbing through the ages, you'll know I was right all along.

Patience is not my Virtue

Sometimes my patience is given a test, and today is one of those days. Normally, I’m quite a tolerant person, but of late I seem to have developed an entirely new persona  - we’ll call her Daily Mail Woman. I find increasingly I’m either outraged, horrified, or astounded. And almost never in a good way.

At the moment I’m attempting to sell my house. I understand we’re in a recession, I really do, and I know this is never going to go smoothly. In fact in a survey today, I read that moving house is rated as 4^th in the top causes of stress.

I wish.

I wish I could get as far as moving house. I’m still stuck on the selling part and already my blood pressure is 830 over boiling. We’ve had a few people round to have a look, the estate agent has shown some of them round, the other half and I have shown some of them round, probably we’ve shown the same ones round so dreadful has the process been so far. In fact there’s probably just one couple that’s been shown round 10 times. And the feedback I’ve had so far? “I’m not sure about the heating” (I have warm air heating, rather than radiators.) “I’m not sure about the parking” (I don’t have a drive). And my personal favourite “I’m not sure about the carpets – do you think the owner would take them up and put other ones down?” (Yes of course, we can go out together and go to the shops and choose them, no expense spared and the treat’s on me. We can be new best friends for ever.)

But even that isn’t what really makes me cross. It’s articles in the newspapers declaring that the “home dream “is over” for young”. Apparently, such is the average cost of a house now, a buyer will have to save an average deposit of 10%, roughly equating to £18600 and £29700 in London.

How much?

Not if you buy my house you won’t. I don’t live in a slum, I have a good family sized three bedroomed house and I live within an hour’s commute of the UK’s second city (no, not Manchester), a journey which I undertake twice a day so I can get to my job. I’ll accept I don’t live in a leafy suburb of the Home Counties, I don’t have a conservatory, laundry room, integrated fridge/dishwasher/tumble dryer/chef/butler and I won’t even put down the carpets you like.

So the dream of buying a house isn’t over. It’s nonsense. In these times you have to be realistic, you have to live where you can afford, and you have to make a choice and stop waiting for the magic fairy to bring you a five bedroomed mansion with a walk in wardrobe and a dog.

You have to buy a house you can afford.

Mainly mine.