You have to give a little....

Monday 9 November 2015

24 degrees.  A golden day

Spent the morning going through all the little bits and bobs that have been hanging around and needing doing - signing and stuffing things into envelopes, filing, writing cheques, finding flu documentation and getting rid of sundry papers.  Quite a lot went into the bin. Sorted out the mountain of papers stuck to the fridge, posed on top of my hardly ever looked at cook books and ones getting wet on top of the fridge.  Married pen tops up with pens. Put the new pegs on the line.  Tripped up over the dog many times.  Put away all of the laundry.

Uncharacteristically, felt very flat and depressed.  Don't know why.  None of my clients are currently torturing me.  The weather is glorious.  I am on top of work things.  A friend suggested we meet for a coffee and then go the Salon de Noel at the end of the month. Perhaps because things are winding down.  Looked at the golden leaves on the garden and remembered a walk with a friend and her dogs.  She had rung me up and asked

 'Do you want to go for a W A L K?'
 'Why are you spelling out walk?'
 'The dogs are listening'.

Wrote a card and wrapped a little white hydrangea heart for the lady whose house I sold to the young couple from China.  She is moving out today and the Acte de Vente will sign within the next ten days.  Arrived at hers to find her youngest son talking to an attractive French girl.  The furniture was all gone but still a lot of stuff remained.  She is actually leaving in a couple of days time.  I hope she is going to apply a phenomenal amount of elbow grease because the place was seriously grubby.  Garden a mess with weeds everywhere.  

We had a cup of tea and I read the meters and, oh God, she has lost all of her electricity bills.  Lets hope EDF can find her by her very strangely spelled surname. Normally they require the PDL number on the electricity bill.  She had found the water bills and the rates bills and the domestic waste bills.  I stuffed them in my handbag and produced her card, with a flourish.  She looked confused and said why the F was I giving her a Tax letter. Retrieved it and produced the right envelope.  She was very touched and gave me a big hug.  Left after an hour.  The end of an era.  Will no longer be able to pop in when I am in this town and enjoy an hour in the garden and conversation.  She says she is not having a leaving party.  She has no one she is sad to be leaving.  Strangely, she is not staying with her sister who lives nearby but in our town, miles away.  Her sister is an odd bird.  The only thing they seem to have in common is their shockingly bad language.

Back home and OH is busy clearing out the old fruit orchard and chopping down non producing trees.  He has stacked wood around their bases and is burning them out.  The smoke lies low in the orchard and wraps itself around the trees.  Dog wants a walk.  Make sweet and sour chicken and look at FB.

I had been asked by an American lady to participate in a Secret Sister where you give a present to someone whose name is at the head of a list and then pass the list on to six of your friends who then give a present to the head of the list and put their name in second place.  As an experiment, this was so revealing.  Within minutes, people were telling me it was a scam.  I got emails and PM's and phone calls.  Interestingly I was contacted by three people who were happy to do it but whose friends and family flatly refused to have anything to do with it.

Since when did we start listening to something written on the internet (Snopes scams) and stop listening to our hearts and intuition?  The SS asks that you spent 10 dollars on someone recommended by someone else.  You then pass it onto your friends or people you know.  For me, the SS is about the spirit of giving, spreading a little happiness, perhaps getting to know new people.  It does require trust that people will pass on the list, putting you literally first to their friends and contacts.  Can people not trust strangers even to the extent of ten dollars?  The three people who said yes to me saw it as something fun and one said she thought it was paying forward and another said the world would be a better place if we were all more willing to give.  One sent off her present immediately.  My SIL asked why on earth would I be interested in joining in with something like this?  So much was told in these simple words.