When I look back over the last twenty one (ish) years, I am so grateful for all those memories.
Sometimes life felt hard….it felt like one agonizing step after another up a steep, rocky ascent. I seemed to keep falling and scraping my knees. I knew I had to keep going.
The effort was worthwhile. I have now all those scenic views, moments of pure wonder, uplifting, heart-warming, spirit-sustaining memories that make it hard to remember the difficulties.
It was all so worth it. It was more than worth it. It gave me a taste for life that I do not grow tired of. I want to live forever.
I am alright now, (I think) but for a long time the situation with my ex-flatmate Jack kept my nerves on a knife-edge. I know there are some people who make a career out of being the subject of idle gossip for others, but that has never been something I wanted for myself.
Although my physical injuries were healing up nicely, I was deeply self-conscious in so many ways. I was very nervous around men. I was very aware of my head! I felt secure with a hat on, or a bandana or scarf in the summer. I found London overwhelming. I felt very lost at times. I found bright lights gave me severe headaches. I always wore sunglasses out of doors. The first six months, I was hiding myself with hats, headscarves and sunglasses
But it has taken a long time to be able to battle the anxiety that other people, people I admire and respect, think terrible things of me. That realization has made me pretty dismal at times.
As far as many of them are concerned, I was acting strangely, sneaking in and out of my own home at unusual hours, becoming cagey and defensive and emotional…and then I disappeared for a year. I returned to London wearing hats and sunglasses (with style!) and not answering questions openly.
But today everything has gone out of the window. I still have three loads of washing drying outside, the big towels are on the tumble drier and a dark wash in the washing machine. I am hoping to wash the lodger’s linen today and hang it outside while there is still some sunshine and then I really need to do a rag wash – I have a huge bag of used micro-fibre and buffing cloths that I need to put through the washing machine, because I am running out of cleaning cloths.
I keep analysing my schedule and trying to work out where I can shave time off my tasks. I am a woman! I should be able to multi-task more effectively! I have sort of a game-plan. I try to have all of the ironing finished by the evening and everything is stacked neatly ready to be delivered first thing in the morning. For example, I might grab one stack and run up stairs to the top floor and deliver and at the same time make the beds and tidy/wipe the bathroom. I grab the laundry bag which seems to be always full and grab the bin liner and go down to the bedroom below. I make the bed, tidy/wipe the bathroom and grab the laundry and the bin liner and head downstairs to the utility room to start off the washing. Then I can head back up and ideally the family will be on their way out so that I can start cleaning up the kitchen. After all of that I can start the thorough clean of a the entire floor of the house. Five floors of the house, one floor each day. Now in principle that sounds straightforward doesn’t it?
However, today Dad was very concerned about his youngest, “It is so hot today the little one will be too warm in a long-sleeved school shirt, so could you find a short-sleeved school T-shirt for one of the boys?” Well, I ran from the ground floor up to the second floor. No other T-shirts at all on his room. I run back down to the ground floor to deliver the message that he does not have any other shirts in his room. I was asked to go back up to the second floor to check if there were any in his brother’s room? I pointed out that if his brother has short-sleeved t-shirts they were unlikely to fit the little one? Four years age gap between the boys. They wanted to give it a try. So, I ran up to the second floor again. His brother had three T-shirts but they are all long-sleeved. I ran back downstairs to tell them. They asked me if there were any shirts anywhere else? Well, I guessed the other shirts must be in the laundry, even though I washed everything in all the laundry baskets and ironed everything I washed yesterday (three loads yesterday). I ran downstairs to check. There were five dirty school T-shirts in the laundry baskets. Why had the two boys been through five school shirts in just one day? – I have no idea. There were also three unlabelled T-shirts which were clean, but all long-sleeved.
I headed back up to the third floor to start bed-making. Only I heard my name being called. I ran back down to the ground floor. They wanted to tell me that they were going to keep the front windows open to create a through draft. Great idea! I ran back upstairs. Then I heard my name again. The shopping had arrived. Somehow, it has suddenly become my job to deal with the shopping, even though they say they do it themselves. This is the fifth week in a row I have done it. I am pretty quick at organizing shopping – it is one of “my things”. That’s fine, if they need me to do it, I will do it. So, I unpacked the shopping. Only, it wouldn’t all fit in the fridge, so I had to carry a lot downstairs to the spare fridge in the utility room.
I was looking at my watch and realizing that it was over 50 minutes since I started work. I still had not made my first bed yet. I headed back up to the upper floors. I made the beds, I wiped bathrooms and brought the laundry and the rubbish down. I put on the first wash I headed up to the kitchen. I was a whole hour behind schedule by now. I would like to have cleared the breakfast and wiped the sides and emptied the rubbish already – but suddenly the nanny arrived. Five minutes later, the lady of the house came home from yoga. Yoga just happens to be the same time as the morning school run. So while the rest of us are trying to bribe the children to put their uniforms on, finish their breakfast and make their was to school…she is meditating and stretching.
Ay ay ay!!! My parents forbade us from using expletives…but the thought that ran through my mind was not a happy one. She was looking for some shoes. She has possibly sixty pairs I realized last week when I cleaned the inside of her closet and re-arranged everything at her request. I put the normal looking sensible shoes in the main shelves and the weird shoes (you know they types someone might want to wear for a fancy-dress party) on the top shelves of the closet. She described to me the pair of shoes she wanted to wear, while I tried to hide the horrified dismay on my face. I asked her if she meant the spice girls shoes. She didn’t know what I meant.
Well, tell me, if someone asked you to find shoes that are red, blue and white, with sequins and with a platform wedge…how would you describe them? When I originally saw these shoes, I thought they were hideous, but I concluded they must be part of a “Ginger Spice” fancy dress costume. Apparently not, I discovered today that they are the latest creation of some sensational designer – of course she would know about these things since she works in the fashion industry. After I had found the shoes, I had to put everything back into the drawers and wardrobes. Then back upstairs to clean the rooms on the third floor. I still had not cleaned the kitchen after breakfast. All the washing needed to be sorted out. I was not sure when, or if, today was ever going to end!
…I had just finished for the day – everything was looking immaculate and I turned the lights off. I was heading downstairs to take a quick shower before I went out, when…..CRASH!!!!….I turned around and my jaw dropped. A kamikaze squirrel!!!!! It had just done some kind of “Fosbury flop” and a triple somersault. As it had done so, it knocked off several plant pots from the wall. Now there was broken pottery and soil all over the patio and some of the plants had come right out of the pots. The squirrel (who must have had some kind of a death wish) was outside the window staring in at me!!! So, I had to fetch the broom and start sweeping up the soil and re-arranging the plant pots.
This is life! – things will crop up won’t they!!! We cannot control the movements of kamikaze squirrels.
Last night there must have been a terrific storm performing. I heard rain hammering down above my rooms and grand cracks and crashes of thunderous fury. I was so exhausted after the long day of house-keeping that I fell asleep very easily and slept the night through like a baby.
The children know they are not allowed to walk into my room without knocking. We are all trying to strongly discourage them from being interested in my little abode at all. Their father has forbidden them and he has told me I must tell them off if they go into my room. I am not very good at shouting at children. I respect that in some cases a parent might have to shout at their children in an effort to make them realize what they are doing is dangerous, or foolish, or wrong. I have never been a parent and I don’t know how to shout at a child. I try to reason with them. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don’t. I don’t think I am winning with this subject. The youngest hates being told off, he hates me trying to reason with him. He will run away. The only way I can catch his attention is by speaking some Mandarin Chinese to him. He is fascinated by this. He has only just turned five, but he is eager for me to teach him as many Chinese expressions as possible.
I often find their toys under my bed or in my bath tub. The lodger thinks it’s funny to encourage the children to play little tricks on me. (Afterall, when I clean their rooms I use their toys to create comic scenes…at the moment Darth Vadar is reading a copy of Vogue I found lying around and one of the trolls is sitting in a toy car with a little teddy in front of the car on his back, as if he has been run over.) I found an item from my underwear drawer on one of their teddies about a week ago. I understand their curiosity, but we must instil in them a realization that my rooms are off-limits. Young children rifling through your underwear drawer is so annoying!
I jumped out of bed because I realized the little munchkin was unlikely to risk getting in trouble like this if there was no truth to what he said. He was serious. Just up the steps from my room, sure enough was a large pool of water. I asked him to go and wake his father and tell him what had happened. So, the morning turned out to be quite different to the one scheduled. Every resident in the building has now seen each other in our nightwear. A roofer came…well, you can imagine how the day went hey? We all just got on with it and now peace and order are restored, and the house is still gleaming as I managed to do all the tidying up and cleaning as well as dealing with the leak / flood situation. Another six washes have been through the machine. The normal clothes washing and all the towels we used this morning.
Aaaaaah! I have to say on sunny days like this, England is gorgeous. It is just the rest of the year when skies are grey, and we are blown about with gusty wind and always slightly damp because the rain seems to come at you from all directions. We have to make the most of this sublime sunshine, because we have a problem that as yet we have never learnt to overcome.
Caramel 