Definitely a sense of changing seasons right now. A week with fewer visitors, our housing, some art has been discovered plus growing concerns surrounding Grandma.
First of all, our housing.
It did seem strange handing the keys of our house in Dunstable to some friends of ours. As they’re our friends, that makes it easier and one less thing to worry about.
That’s not to say it has been plain sailing – I needed to organise an energy efficient report, a gas safety report and an electrical safety report which has involved having our friend Val carry out some work. Getting a tenancy agreement from our solicitors is proving less than straight forward. While I was working, I quite often accessed legal help in one form or another, so I am quite used to dealing with lawyers and always got on well. This time, however, it is somewhat fraught and I’m not getting the service I expect – made worse as I’m spending our own money, not the Government’s money.
However, we are nearly there. So soon this will be one less thing to worry about.
Fewer visitors
Here in the Dusty Museum, normally the doorbell rings quite a lot but this week it’s been much quieter. Less Amazon, no carers, no social workers, or friends dropping into say “hello” in a socially distance way. Oh, wait a minute, Val has been to do a few little electrical jobs here as well – it feels like sticky plaster repairs here – all the wiring needs ripping out but this is not the right time.
Instead of the usual visitors, we did have a visit from Fire and Rescue. Now before you get worried, we weren’t on fire and no, there weren’t any flashing blue lights outside. Instead a couple of firefighters came in to change the smoke alarms as the batteries had run out. Having clocked the complicated layout, they said it would be a great place to come and do some training – finding people in odd places in an odd house. Well that all seemed exciting but I put my foot down and said NO when we clocked it would involve filling the house with smoke to make it realistic.
Update on Grandma
At the time of writing, she is still in the rehab unit. She is not making any progress and although we have seen her a few times, she never really engages in conversation. It is almost as if she’s winding down, she’s had enough and we know, sooner or later, nature will take its course.
In the meantime we know she can’t remain in the rehab unit for long, especially as she isn’t making any progress and needs continuous 1:1 attention. It seems likely we will be finding a nursing home as her needs are probably beyond what we can meet. It’s really sad but we are bearing up.
The peculiar painting
I have just started decorating the Pink Room; it’s a bedroom at the front of the house. In the Pink Room is a very tall tallboy at about 8ft tall, with eight rows of drawers. On the top I could see some old folded blankets and curtains, which I carefully took down (along with 30 years of dust). Underneath, facing downwards, was an old oil painting of a young boy, with a dog on his lap – see photograph above.
The painting is in a moderately elaborate frame with gold leaf and clearly very old. It has a small tear in the canvass, unfortunately near the middle. Rachel remembers the painting being on a wall when she was a child until it suddenly fell off. Her father took it somewhere to enquire about having it repaired but the cost was prohibitive at the time and the painting was then stored in the Pink Room.
Rachel vaguely thinks the boy is a Daniell, or someone in the family from a couple of hundred years ago. I can see we will be adding ‘art detectives’ to our rapidly growing portfolio of skills (property developer, interior designer, painter, decorator and so on).
It is a painting which I believe was done by a talented artist. I’m just not quite so sure about the teeth, though I guess the dog wasn’t keen to sit and smile for a couple of days….