Weekly update – unsettled

In my weekly update, I need to talk about being unsettled.  We seem to have taken such a huge, unplanned step and moved away from our home of 24 years to live with my slightly cantankerous mother-in-law.

I can hardly believe it’s about a month now.  We have been gradually moving bits and pieces from our home into our new home which I have previously described as moving into a dusty museum.  That description remains true but we are making progress.

Speaking of progress, we have had our friend Val (who is an electrician) install a trendy ceiling light in our sitting room and change a defective shaver socket upstairs.  We have a growing list of ‘Val things’ which will hopefully include wiring in a new electric oven, once the old gas oven has been disconnected.

In terms of being unsettled, the novelty of living in this lovely old house full of nooks and crannies, is being replaced by the feelings of “we really are doing this”.  I do feel for Hannah, our 20 year old daughter.  She is away for the summer, working on the south coast.  She left our home back in June and expected to come back and find everything was exactly the same.  Instead she too will be moving and this is very unsettling for her.  Rachel and I know what, and why, we are doing this and it’s our decision.  Hannah, on the other hand, seems to have no say in the matter, although we have kept her cup to date with things.

Hannah was able to swing some time off work and come back for a couple of nights.  Rachel did a fabulous job of clearing out a bedroom (which had become a dumping ground) and making it look nice and welcoming for her.  Yesterday evening, Hannah and Rachel went back to our home just to make sure everything was going to be okay and to have a little stroll around the neighbourhood.  It must have been a poignant time and I do feel for Hannah.

My mother-in-law, on the other hand, is resigned to us having moved in.  She is reluctantly processing the realities – either we move in and care for her or she ends up in hospital followed by a care home where she would have little control over her life.  I am not sure she has fully grasped what we might be doing to the upstairs of the house!

Her general demeanour is slightly grumpy and often feeling hard-done-by.  We hear stern expressions of “I’m perfectly alright and don’t need any help” through to “will someone help put me to bed soon?”.  Most of the time she is listening to the radio while sleeping or dosing.  Sometimes she will appreciate some company and to hear an update on what we have been doing.  I have offered to read a book to her, just a few pages at a time and she said she’d like that.  I have also started reading her my Tales from the Court room which seem to have gone down quite well.

Another aspect of being unsettled is having time for each other.  We cannot allow this unplanned move come between us in any way.  Thankfully we have quickly found our spot in the house to sit by a window at breakfast time, spend time chatting, reading a few verses from the Bible and a prayer time together.  We must not under estimate the importance of this.

Practical progress

Here’s a few other things which have moved us forward:

• We have Broadband!  Yesterday the nice Polish man from Virgin came to install Broadband, a phone line and a TV gismo.  Running cables through the cellar was not something he was keen to do but relented
• We have a new TV!  This is now the third TV we have bought in 24 years and is pretty damn slick.  At 43″ it is huge by our standards but seems to be the norm.  We also got a snazzy wall bracket so we can swing the TV out into the room, and then push it back out of sight.  Cool.
• A hob and oven have been delivered, just waiting for installation.
• Clearing things out has produced a pile of scrap metal.  I left it by the garden gate with a ‘Free scrap’ sign and it was all gone in no time.
• Children’s toys, an old TV, all kinds of bric-a-brac have all gone from outside. This is lovely to see our unwanted things being used by others in the village.  Mind you, a van pulled up outside one day.  The driver asked if he could take the lot – and he did!  He did explain he was on his way back home to Nigeria and these things will be useful there.
• A compost bin in the garden is hopefully springing into life