Torrential rain and the joy of seeing youngest offspring again

Friday 24 July 2015
Heavy showers 21 degrees

Again, awake at 5 am.  Started to read wonderful Raymond Chandler pastiche novel called Don't cry for me Aberystwyth.  Eventually everyone woke up and cousin took me into Andover to try and get some cash out using card and passport.  No RBS in Andover and no other bank would give me any cash.  Went to her shop and watched the rain through the windows and it smelled sweet and heavy and had a slight metallic overtone.  Very quiet morning with only two clients and one had driven from Bournemouth!  She said the traffic was terrible and cousin started to look anxious as she had promised to drive me down to Portsmouth and rain was now torrential.

Looked through some lovely magazines and found a delightful flower petal brooch so started to construct it with felt base and daisy petals made out of scraps of brightly coloured fabric, found in the scrap fabric bag.  12 pm arrived and I went to have my nails done in a neighbouring unit.  I have only once had a manicure and it was in France and their way of doing it is very different - in France they soak the fingers in warm soapy water and then push back the cuticles and cut off virtually all of them.  It had cost 12 euros and I had a french manicure which was gorgeous with pink nails and white tips.  Felt elegant, hand wise, for once.  The English nail lady, wearing violently blue hair, started by buffing and filing the nails and this took out most of the horrible ridging on my thumbs and then she took up a scraper tool and cleared out just the dead part of the cuticle.  Base coat to protect the nail from the chemicals in the varnish, three top coats of aquamarine varnish, and top coat to seal in the colour.  Perhaps I am unfair on my home applied varnish - two hastily applied varnish coats and I expect it to last for a few days.  I am currently typing this on the 29th and there are only a few tiny chips.  

Back to shop and ate sandwich and carried on making brooch.  Lady came into the shop to hold the fort and cousin and I headed off at 4 pm into heavy traffic.  Took an hour and a half to get down to the coast but finally arrived at a very long street of terraced houses and stopped in front of a narrow property with a thick moustache of a privet hedge.  A hammer on the door and thumping of feet on the stairs and there was my youngest WF and my heart just burst with joy so see him and hold him and hear his voice and be near him again.  He is and always will be my baby.  Haven't seen him since his graduation a whole year ago.  He looked well with a little bit of stubble and hair neatly cut.  Cousin had wee stop and then left and hugged youngest again and we had a cup of tea and we had dinner of chops, peas and baked potatoes after a quick trip to the shops as the cupboards were absolutely bare.

Fortunately there were two rooms to choose from and I took one upstairs with a new mattress which was very comfortable.  This house is 100% better than former house which had a year's worth of loo rolls bursting out from the under stairs cupboard toilet and thousands of flyers and junk mail in the hallway.  Had to go to bed at 10 as was completely bushed.

To Alton, home of novelist Jane Austen

Thursday 23 July 2015
22 degrees Alton, Hampshire

Woke up at 6 with a thick head so had lots of water,  back to sleep and felt much better at 8.  Had toast and tea and talked to cousin about all sorts of things and she told me about her last trip to the US and how her sister (who lives in the Californian desert) has a mania for having the air con at at ice cold levels and is very difficult about where to sit in restaurants and wouldn't stop in a motel until she had checked out the room and specifically the size of the closets and she wouldn't walk down stairs that weren't air conditioned and her mania for packing and repacking her suit cases.  Decided it may not be a good idea to ask her if we can come and stay for a week or two.  That amount of time with OH may just push her over the edge.

Second eldest daughter decided she would come on day out with us so we made a packed lunch and set off down the narrow lanes with their high hedges.  Everyone drives massive four wheel drives even though you barely get an inch of snow and the landscape is relatively flat.  They travel at some speed too - I suppose you get used to it.  Down to the mellow village of Alton and the former home of Jane Austen.  A rambling spread of lovely red brick buildings around a jewel green lawn and garden full of hollyhocks, herbs and insects.  Of Georgian date, the interior rooms are well dimensioned with Laura Ashley wallpapers and sash windows overlooking the village or gardens.  The table where Jane wrote is so small - barely larger than a tabouret seat and very low.  All of her major novels were published here in this ocean of tranquility.

We had our lunch in the gardens and watched the other visitors - mostly very overweight English ladies of a certain age, with a small sprinkling of Italians and Canadians.  On the way out, we discovered the kitchen, separate from the house and there were bonnets and dresses to try on so second eldest daughter and I dressed up and I was dwarfed by a particularly large bonnet and cousin had hysterics.  Went for clotted cream tea in nearby tea shoppe and it was delicious with Earl Grey tea, fruit scones, strawberry jam, mounds (lashings?) of clotted cream and all served on translucent and delicately sprigged china.  Then to Basingstoke where I purchased a new and capacious handbag, a notebook for recording brilliant ideas and a half year diary in bright colours and which I stand a fair chance of finding in the chaos of the kitchen.

Back home and discover eldest daughter (32) and son (26) have arrived and there is a letter saying that eldest daughter has just been accepted at Southampton on a nursing course (her third degree) and cousin is ecstatic and bursts into tears and there is lots of joy and gin.  We then had to decide what to do with the bursting punnet of gooseberries picked up in Alton village and we get out Delia Smith Summer cookery and cousin says we will make an American all in one pie and it would have been a lot easier to make if we had not had the gin.  No wonder it is known as mother's ruin.  We manage, eventually, to produce roast chicken, mash, veg, rather tart gooseberry pie and custard.  Lovely to be eating around a large table full of family.  

Cousin's children are very well travelled.  Youngest, (20) daughter is currently off surfing somewhere exotic.  My youngest hates travel and eldest never manages to hang onto money long enough to get the cash together to go.  Still don't know if he is going to be able to get any time off on Sunday to come down and see me and youngest.  My youngest WF says sleeping arrangements could be difficult as some rooms in the house are taken and others are being decorated.  One room, which had been locked, is now open and it transpires that the former occupant had kept a ferret which had peed everywhere.

Try to watch American Hustle but am seriously distracted by a car seat which is attached to a wooden base and positioned in front of the main sofa.  From a former car, cousin's OH said he found it very comfortable so, when car was scrapped, he took it out and uses it when he watches Tour de France.  Cousin folded it down and put her feet on it.  So did selection of children.  I couldn't keep awake and had to go to bed at 10

Material heaven and the bottle run

Wednesday 22 July 2015
Deliciously cool

Woke at 5 am, found some paper and wrote for an hour.  House silent, ducks hooting and calling on the stream.  Pigeons coo-cooing.  Cars started leaving at 5.30 am.  Had first breakfast and went back to sleep until 7.30.  Came back down and was having breakfast at the large oak table when cousin's OH appeared, unusually attired in work shirt, tie, lycra shorts and trainers.  He was about to cycle to work in nearby town just 5 kms away.  Although a number of years older than OH, he is still slim and nervously active and watches no telly.  His passions are DIY and classical music.  In fact, no one really watches TV here, they don't spend time with virtual things or people, they spend it with real people.  No Internet, second eldest daughter aged 30 and about to go and work in Bristol, had used up all the monthly allowance by streaming a film.

Went to cousin's shop in Andover which she runs with a German lady.  A divine environment full of beautiful material, pattern and colour.  I check emails and phone and discover OH has tried to ring me many times.  He is with MM and trying to visit the chateau and the old guy with dementia isn't letting him in and he says he doesn't have the keys anyway.  OH very stressed and has been hassling the local agent who is supposed to have the keys and wont let him in without the say so of the renter.  He also left messages saying he cant find the chateau and he has left the client there on his own and another one, saying he thinks he has been caught by a speed camera.  FFS.  I text him the phone number of the renter and then switch my phone off and spend a pleasant morning looking at books, drinking tea and deciding what to make.  Afternoon comes and switch phone back on and OH rings and tells me about an email offer which has come through and says I need to ring owner and I say I will email.  He then starts going on about other people I need to ring - English people to whom he is actually capable of speaking and then he starts giving me a list of things to do so I hang up and switch my phone off.  Bastard - it is about time he got off his fat backside and got things done himself.

Rooting through piles of things in the shop, come across a most divine little patchwork bag consisting of strips of fabric stitched together in vertical panels with boxed base and little handles.  I have brought some fabric with me so get cracking but am challenged with cutting as the cutter blade is blunt and it transpires that I cant multiply 8 x 2 as I only end up with 14 panels.  Have laughing fit.  Three other ladies come in for afternoon session and similarly entranced and all decide to make little bag which cousin sells to them in nine quid kit.  We all finish for five and cousin is dealing with phone client so I go out and look around the commercial zone where she has her unit.  

The day is fresh with scudding clouds and a light breeze.  I find a florists and go in and am washed over with the smell of blooms and foliage and cool damp.  Obtain hand tied bouquet of pink pompom dahlias, tiny white chrysanthemums, feathery pink astilbe and frothing ladies mantle.  Not a garnish carnation or tortured forms of bamboo or orchid in sight.  The florist's partner is a house clearance man and she had a treasure trove of shells, crockery, paste jewellery and a tiny 1930's wedding dress.  There was a stunning ivory manicure set and a mother of pearl phoenix button, gleaming on the dull surface of the desk.

Cousin finished and we drove back to hers.  A knock on the door and it was a committee member come to do 'the bottle run'.  Cousin got a kids low slung trolley from the barn and we rattled off up the road to ask for liquid contributions to Saturday's tombola at the annual flower show.  Obtained about 20 bottles and then to the pub where we passed 1.5 hours and I was expiring with hunger as we had only had a small bowl of chips.  The other lady was all for having another one but I insisted on going back for something to eat so we finished off the chili and cousin had a fourth glass of wine, I don't know how as she is tiny and how can she absorb it? and collapsed to bed, feet and head buzzing.

Over the sea, the sea.....

Tuesday 21 July 2015
Furnace hot at home

Woke up horrifically early after restless night with cramp, heat and rib pain.  Felt exhausted. OH woke up at eight and started going on about things I 'needed' to do before we left.  He also said he wouldn't be checking my emails whilst I was away and I said I was on holiday and I was most certainly not going to be looking at work emails.  We had words.  Spoke to eldest about September holidays.  Finally set off at 11 and, of course, the GPS wasn't working because the end had dropped off the car charger.  OH wasn't paying attention and went too far west on the auto route before waking up and insisting on driving back in the other direction and then striking off into unremembered territory to pick up the northern auto route and cut off the long and expensive corner.  We had quite a lot of words at this point.  Apparently it was my fault for not buying a new adaptor.  Drove in stony silence and got to airport at 2 by which time I had to check in immediately.

Flight was absolutely having and, oh joy, I was seated next to the window.  A young woman sat next to me.  Limpid dark eyes, sparkling white teeth, head band and voluminous ugly brown cotton clothing.  She was an Italian trainee Buddhist monk - ex dancer - on her way to stay in a monastery in Warwick.  We talked about zen Buddhism, mindfulness and reiki. My former impression of Buddhist monks was that they shaved their heads and wore orange and were all blokes - opinion largely formed by 1970's TV series Kung Fu (ah glasshopper....).  The ocean was a blue bowl with tiny white boats, the size of shrimp, their sparkling wakes spinning out behind them.  Within an hour, the white cliffs of Kent appeared, clouds piling up on the like like freshly squirted Chantilly and the Buddhist  and I watched people turn on phones and frantically scrabble for their luggage. You will find people are not zen here, I remarked.  We waited for the throng to go and left last.  The air was fresh and the temperature could not have been more than 22.  It was utterly delightful.  By the time we got into the terminal building, all 223 other passengers had disappeared from sight and we ambled along the long corridors and stopped to admire two portraits of the Queen, done in pixelated form and using real photographs of people.  The Queen as her people.  Loved the symbolism.  

I lost the young Buddhist somewhere in the ticket pickup zone, picked up my bag, which was the last one on the moving carpet and got to the platform just in time to get the train to Clapham Junction and thereafter the connection to Basingstoke.  It was heaving and very very hot.  Managed to find a seat in an area between carriages.  No one was speaking to one another.  After so many years abroad, I habitually strike up conversations but they fizzled out almost immediately.  Everyone was glued to their phone.  No one looked at one another.  I experimentally sang some Abba songs.  No one even looked up so I studied my fellow passengers.  An Asian girl in voluminous black clothing and headscarf.  Eyebrows like Groucho Marx.  Man with glasses in grey suit.  Tie too tightly tied.  Very loose shirt with badly attached buttons.  Asian guy with electronic cigarette plugged into his mobile phone.  He, like me, was very hot and fanning himself.  Woman in heavy checked dress, thick legs encased in beige stockings.  Frowning at her phone.  Everyone was dressed in shades of grey and black and I was a peacock in bright pink and blue.  Finally arrived and the doors opened with a burst of delicious fresh and cool air.  

Texted cousin and sat on bench.  People were scurrying by, everyone plugged into some sort of electrical device.  Non stop flow of traffic.  Coffee and tea shops everywhere.  What was particularly marked was the lack of smokers - they are everywhere in France - here they are corralled into a small corner of shame.  Cousin's OH came and picked me up and we rolled at terrifying speed (low slung MG) through the idyllic country side and villages with names right out of an episode of Miss Marple.  Cousin's husband is a bit of a DIYer and nothing is safe.  Noticed some complicated wire work hanging down by my ankles and there were liberal amounts of Scotch tape, holding things in place.  He is an eye consultant  and I imagine people coming around from surgery with bits of Scotch holding their retinas in place and seeing him at the end of their beds and he is telling them not to touch anything and it will settle down in a week or two.

Arrive at cousin's village and it is chocolate box pretty with knapped stone and flint cottages and thatched rooves.  Village pond with gently weeping willows.  Coots scooting around on the mirrored surface.

Lovely to see cousin and we have cup of tea and chili and then walk.  Evening fine and clear with light breeze.  We get back and she shows me photos of her trip to India and then produces the most exquisite silk embroidered fabric.   I am done in and head up the stairs to gwelli.  Cousin's husband has been working on the house for 18 years.  Paintwork looks as if it has been eaten by rats.  Every other house in the village is immaculate.  Where I am has rat eaten paintwork, semi derelict barn, selection of beaten up cars (in various states of repair) and two large and malevolent cats called Bert and Ernie, despite both being girls.  Bad cramp in night.  Wake to find both insteps fizzing.

Preparing for the Grand Depart

Monday 20 July 2015

Stinking hot and dripping.  I hate Summer here

Leaped out of bed early and started putting things in suitcases - ended up with one very full and the other virtually empty but they weigh the same because of the Tablet which, although small, is extremely heavy but not so much as the now unreliable laptop.  The screen keeps on freezing even though I have taken off vast amounts of stuff and deleted back ups. Because I wasn't paying attention, I deleted all backups so now have nothing to go back to. A laptop variation on burning all one' bridges.  My most important photos are on the Cloud and emailed to myself so I am not concerned if it all goes txts up.  The laptop has taken also to whirring and overheating.  They seem to have a life of between three and four years before expiring in a state of being overloaded and overheated.  I don't particularly feel overloaded, for once, but I am definitely overheated and cant wait to escape to the cool shores of the land of my birth, where you can be outdoors all day, every day (providing you have appropriate footwear and a brolly).  Have been sleeping badly, especially as I seem to have done something to my rib.  I was leaning over the sink to get open the window and release the shutter, when I felt something give and now my left lower rib really hurts and wakes me up in the night.  

OH went to do some shopping and walk dog and I blasted through my work to do list and cleared things that have been lurking for a while.  There is another requested visit during my absence - for the chateau with the dry rot and leaking roof.  If my guy doesn't make an offer, I am stopping visits if they wont drastically reduce the price.  Spoke to a potential seller who again asked the question, how can you guys charge so much?  I said if he was happy for me just to do the advertising and nothing else, then we could charge the same as the UK agents.  If he wants me to do accompanied viewings, full translations, ordering reports, communicating with all parties for up to six months, then he can pay the going rate.  Or he can sod off (I didn't say that).

OH came back and we had a quick bite of lunch - poached eggs on lovely brown cereal bread - then into the furnace to see my notary.  It is not good news about the US lady - she has to agree to sign the release document or the funds will be blocked and the only way the seller can get hold of them is by going to Tribunal - where he could take the opportunity to sue her for further damages.  Our rental unit sale and two other sales are on track.  I asked her to write to the sellers of the Villa (buyers NZ ladies) because they have let the garden go to rack and ruin and I asked her to threaten to retain 1000 euros to get it sorted out.  That should get them moving.  Lastly, I gave her the details of the new sale.  Back home and yet another shower.  Finished packing and made dinner and watered.  Showed OH where to water and pleaded with him to actually water the soil and not just zizz about the hosepipe and wet a few leaves.  I am praying for rain whilst I am away or it will all be dead as proverbial dodo.

Bought train ticket from Gatwick to Basingstoke on the train line website - am going to have to change at Clapham Junction and Waterloo - two places I have never been to - the excitement and the journey await!!  Speak to youngest on Skype and cant wait to see him. Eldest is going to try and get some time off.  He hasn't yet learned that you need to inform employers early of your intention to have day off.  He waits for them to say when he can have leave.

Spend night tossing and turning and being very hot and my rib hurt.

Thoughts on hornets and the productivity of husbands

Sunday 19 July 2015

Pretty much very hot all day 34 degrees

Had a lazy start and lay in spare bed and wrote this and drank tea and listened to the birds in the tall trees and the bees in the chimney.  The chimney breast is along one wall of the spare room and the bees come back every year to nest in an inaccessible nook.  Every year I try and smoke them out and every year they decide to stay.  This year, they have been joined by quite a few hornets.  Solitary creatures, they have a heavy drone and examine slowly the beamed ceilings, looking for a hole in which they can lodge themselves whilst they construct their intricate nests.  I squirt them with furniture polish - they don't like the smell and leave quickly.  I don't wish them any harm but they are easily the size of the knuckle to the end of your thumb and I don't want to be on the receiving end of a sting.

Went down rental unit and made up the bed and put out the towels.  Treated myself to a wonderful tarte au fraise

The main computer decided it wouldn't switch on today so OH did lots of hoovering and weed killing.  He hates my laptop.  Despite the fact that most people use two hands to use a laptop, he uses one and makes life difficult for himself.  He moans incessantly and I take the laptop off him.  He is much more productive without technology.  I found him later on in the day looking at polo shirts on EBay.  He is not the right shape for a polo shirt.  Watched Mamma Mia and ironed.  Pierce Brosnan would look good in a polo shirt....

1.30 came around and I was obliged to go out into the furnace and meet the sellers on whose house I had the offer yesterday.  The lady works in an old folk's home and does three 12 hour days in a run before having two days off.  Sometimes she only has one day off before recommencing the cycle.  I wouldn't like to spend that much time with anyone or anything.  Nine til nine with people with incontinence, dementia, mental problems.  She says it is a challenge.  Her husband grows grape vines.  He has much the better deal of it.  His vines are immaculate, as is the house - he does the housework too.  We have a drink in a bar and the lady stuffs down some strange French tapas and they sign and then, with relief I go home and we have a siesta.  Dog has disappeared with the neighbours dog and is presumably running around the locale.  Find him later at the neighbours, after having to repel the other neighbours dog.  He doesn't like being squirted with the hose pipe although he is up for a little wetting and managed to soak my dress too.

Get a brilliant review from the US purchaser of the little heart buttons.  Look at Etsy and find some inspirational resin jewelry makers.

A deal is struck!

Saturday 18 July 2015

Top and tail of the day, big thunderstorms - very hot in middle 
36 degrees

The air was fresh this morning and it was still raining.  We had all slept well, despite the lively skies.  Fortunately the dog's hearing is not what it was, and the plaster walls had escaped the frantic rakings that he used to subject them to in order to relieve his stress and anxiety.  Also fortunately, the pain in the bum neighbour's dog is terrified of them and we haven't seen him in days.

Had tea in bed and enjoyed the light breeze coming through the window and the gentle patter of rain on the shingles.  Wagtails ran across the apex, tick ticking away competitors.
Yet another order!  For raindrop cabochons.  Packed it up and send it on its way to Scotland.  Thought longingly of cooler weather and found a picture of a kangaroo in a NSW vineyard, its solid and iconic shape outlined by the snowy landscape.  There is a terrible drought out in Oz and the farmers are going broke and being forced off their land by the banks.  It is scandalous.  The bankers are responsible for so much misery.  Australian farmers are suffering like the dirt farmers in the US in the 1930's and yet we never hear about it on the news.

Figures in hand, I went to see the sellers of the contemporary house.  I was deliberately late.  The man and his daughter were hovering in the hallway.  The lady was at work.  I put in the offer at the lowest I dared in order to give myself headroom to get up to the amount they actually wanted to pay.  The man was disposed to accept it, having had the day to think about it, but the lady (buzzing like a hornet on the other end of the phone line) insisted on having five grand more.  When you get to five grand difference, you know you are not far from a deal.  I left after an hour and a half and much coffee and licking of my toes by their manic bichon frisé.  A kitten battered a cork, hanging from a string on the back of the chair. He is an attack kitten rather than a cuddly kitten.  He also batted away the bichon, which must look like an elephant to him and tried to eat my handbag.  Kittens are fearless and have undeveloped palates....

Back down town, I rang the potential buyers.  No answer.  Ten minutes later I rang them again.  No answer.  I became convinced they were with another agent.  Sat on a bench and chewed my hangnails and finally they rang me back and said they were at the coast and trying to park and would ring me back.  Half an hour later and I had gone into a bar and read the design magazines and drank yet more coffee and had to go and hide in the loo from someone who is hard to get away from, they rang back.  We agreed a deal and I rang back the happy seller and I said I would get buyers to sign offer document and see them tomorrow.

Back home and felt rather boiled and hyper and had egg and bacon and siesta.  Back down town for 7 to meet the buyers.  Air was stifling.  36 degrees.  Skies turning yellow and stiff breeze blowing.  It is party weekend in our town and there was a very annoyed smoker shouting at the Tabac owner who had sold out.  He was singing happily and didn't seem remotely concerned.  I noticed he had a pack in his pocket....  The buyers arrived and I took them into the little rental unit and we all had lots of water and they signed and I went back home and enjoyed some excellent Jamaican jerk chicken, tomatoey potatoes and green beans, prepared by OH.  Thank heavens, one in the bag.  Just need to get the sellers to sign and everything over to the notary and then I can go on hols in peace.