Things have been moving at quite a pace in emptying our house in getting for our tenants; see below for the low down on this. Also Grandma has been in hospital for a little over three weeks now, with a few ups and downs.
I think I’ve mentioned earlier in my blog how we needed to work through the choices we had with the house.
- Should we sell it? No, why should we, it’s our home and we aren’t ready for that.
- Should we leave it empty? We could but that might bring damage.
- Should we rent it out? We could but who do we have in there? Renting can be fraught.
So we approached a family we knew and who might do with a little more elbow room.
Two or three months ago there was no urgency to remove our things from the house until we agreed things with this couple. Then the reality of the task hit us and it exposed the different approaches Rachel and I sometimes take.
Perhaps it’s the male – female minds at work here as we have completely different approaches with these things. Nevertheless we are working through this, making allowances for each other. Rachel reminds me how I shouldn’t be so impatient and impetuous in my eagerness to have a pleasing home with my ‘stamp’ on it.
Although we now live in a considerably bigger house, I have struggled trying to find room for everything while it waits to be sifted into:
a) keep
b) sell
c) give away or
d) throw away
Every week the wheelie bins are full; sometimes I have to jump up and down to squash the contents. Not just ours but the empty house over the road (yes we know, a bit of a cheek!) and our house in Dunstable. The conservatory is almost full, we can just open the door. The front large garage is full (somewhere in there is my Honda Jazz – SORNed – but you can hardly see it). We have two attic rooms, both are now pretty full. The back garage is also carrying a fair amount of stuff – bikes, windsurf kit and three beds plus….. sorry, lost count there. Nooks and crannies everywhere are crammed. The cellar is my last point of desperation – if we run out of room everywhere else, there’s plenty of room down there, although it is rather damp and less than ideal.
We continue to be aware of our emotions. We didn’t plan this move, although we always knew it might happen one day. It feels as if we have been torn from our family home. We have. But it’s still ours and happily we can lend it to someone else for a while, another young family so they can hopefully enjoy being there. That does feel good.
The latest on Grandma
We are now into the fourth week since her mini stroke. She has been discharged from the main hospital to a rehabilitation ward on another site and has been there for almost a week. We call everyday and in true tradition, often get told something new.
We have, however, managed to have a couple of very brief calls with her. She has never been comfortable using a telephone so the conversation is mostly limited to “yes”, “no” or “I dunno”. Her speech is low and gruff, still a little slurred from the stroke. Overall we feel she is giving up, tired with life and being prodded in hospital with different tubes going in and out of her. All she wants is sit in her arm chair at home, listen to her radio at FULL volume and to dose off to sleep. And who can blame her?
It is hard, especially for Rachel, in not being able to see her mum – the Coronavirus has stopped all of that, apart from the time when we were called in to effectively say our farewell. Having said that, the rehab ward is a little more relaxed and there is potential for us to visit once she has been declared clear from COVID and she is able to sit in a wheelchair and be brought to a special visitor’s room. Each day we hope to visit, each time we are told it’s not yet possible.
The adventure!
While I might have framed our move to the dusty museum as an adventure, it doesn’t mean it’s all fun. We came here in the summer when the field were golden and the harvest was about to start. It was hot outside and we were living in a new place; a bit of a novelty you could say.
Now the clocks have changed, it gets dark early and it’s much cooler these days. I will talk about our heating another time, and my efforts to reduce the £2,000 heating bill each year while increasing the temperature in the house.
I need to remind myself how any adventure can be bumpy. There are twists and turns, problems and snags. Not just golden fields, warm weather and heaps of anticipation.