It’s been a busy few weeks, as you’ve probably guessed from the spectacular lack of blog posts, which is irritating because I had loads of stuff to say last week and thought I would carry it over. Needless to say, when I sat down this evening I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what I was going to write about.
Bum.
Never mind, onwards and upwards.
Two weeks ago, I won ticket sot the Self Publishing Show live. I wasn’t sure how it would go but it was excellent. I really enjoyed it and met a group of authors who seem to be great fun. I also met a fellow blogger which was also grand! Even better had a few really significant ‘learning moments’ that I feel may smooth my self publishing efforts.
My hand looks much nicer than it really is in this picture. Mwahahargh!
Highlights this week! I took Mc(Not So)Mini to a WWII reenactment yesterday. That was fun. He met three friends and I had a pootle round, a wee chat to one of the friend’s Mum’s and another wee chat to other friend’s dad. They had gone as 1970s British Army and had some lovely chats with veterans who recognised their old kit. I also took a close look at a Willys Jeep and decided that I would not enjoy driving one from Brighton to Kabul which my Uncle and two friends did one summer holidays when they were students. Not just the dust in the hot bits, but driving that through rainy France. Mmm… no fun.
BTW my Uncle’s mate wrote a book and my uncle has published it. I can’t for the life of me find the link but I know it’s on Amazon, at least. I’ll have to see if I can find it.
McOther was given a voucher for a local restaurant when he retired and so we went there last night with friends. It was an absolute gas and a very jolly evening. I had lobster. Mmm-Mmm.
This week has been Life Laundry. In order to accommodate the stuff from Mum’s we have to move, remove and generally tessellate the stuff we already have. But our social lives have been busy so we’ve had to fit it all round that.
As a result our dining room looks like a furniture warehouse with various bits waiting to be polished, have the drawers hoovered etc.
Compromises were made too, because when we got to Sussex with the removers and thought about it, we realised that the rather lovely oak bookcase we were going to have wouldn’t actually go out of the room unless it was taken apart.
Looking back, I dimly remember Mum and Dad realising that it couldn’t move from the housemasters quarters at the school where Dad worked straight away because it was too big to fit anywhere in the house. So they hired this dear old boy, who was in his 90s I believe (he went on to collect cider apples from the tree in Mum and Dad’s garden for a few years and he would bring us a bottle of really good Normandy style cider).
Sorry where was I? Right, yes, this lovely old man went over there in a van, took the shelves to bits, cut two feet off it and rebuilt it. What I’d forgotten but think I now recall, was that he brought it back to Mum and Dad’s in pieces in his van and rebuilt it there. Which means we can’t remove it without taking it apart.
Luckily one of the removers was a carpenter.
Unluckily, he took one look at it and realised that it was nailed together with tiny nails and he felt it very unlikely he could take it to bits without breaking it.
Luckily, I was allowed to make a substitution so now, as well as the collection of little bits and bobs Mum had (which she, or her Grandmother who started it, I’m not sure which) called ‘funnies’, I have the cabinet they have always lived in, which was going to be sold. It’s too big to fit into my office, but it comes in two parts. The bottom cupboards can go in one place and the top half with the shelves will work fine as a display cabinet. I discovered, to my amusement that the cabinet has legs, which obviously nobody has ever liked, so they have travelled with it from house-to-house and owner-to-owner stuffed in the back corner of its under cupboard, so to speak.
Not as bad as it was, we’ve cleared a way through
Meanwhile I’m also having Mum’s desk, which means I have to empty the one I have. There is a startling amount more stuff in there than I anticipated. I have filled three boxes so far and will easily fill two more, which is a bit horrific, but I suspect most of it will go back in the drawers of the new desk. The old one doesn’t have drawers but it did have shelves. I genuinely think Mum’s will accommodate more stuff than the old one, even though it’s half the size, but it might be different things because some things—the books for example—will need shelves.
Then it’s a case of shuggling everything around so the two armchairs I’m having fit in… and a footstool. It should be OK. It’s just a case of having a massive clear out. Gulp.
Once that’s done, I need to start putting my toy collection in the auction. It’s glorious and I love it but most of it is in 35 boxes in the loft above the garage and has remained there for the last 16 years. It comprises Dr Who toys, Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet toys, the odd left-field thing like Austen Powers action figures and a lot of StarWars stuff. The only things that are worth anything are the 1970s StarWars 3” action figures, which, naturally, are the thing I like best of the StarWars stuff, and are about the only things that are small enough for me to actually keep.
Once that’s gone, or at least, the big bits, I can put all my stock of books on the shelves so I know how many copies of each I have and organise some other things—which are currently dotted about the room—onto the shelves out of the way. Having sold some of Mum’s stuff, I can also put my more interesting detector finds in the glass fronted display cabinet too, so that’s grand.
Obviously, I should embrace the opportunity to have a sort out, and I kind of do, but I also really, really want to finish the WIP and actually, if Real Life would just SOD OFF for one fucking moment I could probably knock that book on the head in a few weeks. But Real Life is showing no signs of pissing off and leaving me alone any time soon. The minute I get one thing sorted another person asks me what the status is with X, Y or Z and I have to ring people and find out. And I need to pay the bequests which will leave me with perilously close to nothing to pay the bills and run the house until it’s sold.
Seriously, don’t bother growing up. Being an adult is absolutely fucking bollocks. I hate it.
It got me thinking, though. I think one of the hardest things about getting rid of all the stuff is that everything has a story. It’s something Mum and Dad bought together shortly after getting married, or it’s a poignant reminder of some member of the family I utterly loved. Or I remember thinking it was lovely. Or ‘dear old x’ gave it to Mum and Dad.
Some of it’s been in the family for years, seriously, there are every lady member of the family’s wristwatch from about 1910 onwards. All lovely. All worth about £100 for the scrap gold or silver value. I feel like the curator of a museum which is closing whose last duty, before signing their own P45, is to put the collection up for sale.
It’s an odd feeling.
As I write this, I know there will be people reading who will be thinking that these are very first world problems and that I should grow a pair and belt up. And yes, they’re probably right.
But this blog isn’t about me being strong and overcoming against all odds, this is me writing about how I feel, however wretched that may be… or a bit sad, in this case because lord knows, I’ve done wretched and this really isn’t it. But I digress. My point is, I didn’t write this to open the batting for a game of ‘I’ve had it much harder than you with anyone’. I am actually aware that I’ve had it a lot easier than many people with regards to ‘stuff’. Emotional toll? Not so sure but maybe sometimes cash and stuff can make the emotional toll easier to bear.
Talking about the last 10 years to a friend whose wife had lost both parents relatively fast but had needed to deal with a similar situation, albeit for a shorter time, he asked who I had been ‘talking to’ about this. Had I had therapy or counselling? I was intrigued because it had never occurred to me to do that long term. I did a six week course of counselling with the NHS when it all kicked off back in 2012. Six weeks was all you got then, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get that now. But it was very good and from then on, I just applied what I’d learned.
So if you’re reading, fingers poised over the keyboard to comment about how you only had one pot to piss in which your parents shared with the neighbours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the rest of the time had to go without, can I humbly invite you not to, because if anyone does I will, I’m afraid, politely tell them to fuck all the way off.
If anyone starts playing ‘I’ve had it harder than. you’ with me, they can fuck off.
None of my regular commenters will … but just in case anyone else happens upon this, here’s a truth. My parents didn’t have an huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but they had enough to show me that it’s not the universal panacea those who have none believe it is. Having enough wealth to live comfortably can really, really help. And for Mum and Dad, it did. But it didn’t lessen their suffering, or mine and my brothers over the last ten years. Sometimes people have to face things in life are just really, really harsh and their wealth, or lack of it, makes no difference.
Obviously comments deliberately taking the piss about licking t’road clean wi’tongue or that meme with the mountain about ‘our parents route to school’ are allowed.
In some ways, it would have been easier if my parents had nothing. There would have been no big questions and nothing to lose although there’d have been a LOT more work and a lot more hectoring homes to see that they were cared for properly.
Amazingly, I don’t begrudge spending £1m (more than their life savings, and some of ours) for them on their care. It wasn’t my money (mostly) and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I really don’t mind. What does get to me, a bit, is that they did. They saw their life savings as their nest egg to have fun with and the rest as an inheritance for my brother and I, and their grandchildren. It was taken from them to pay for something they had paid tax all their lives to be given for free as part of the NHS. What they got for being good citizens and saving for a rainy day was a fair distance along the path to institutionalised destitution.
Yes, I am lucky I am to inherit anything and I know that for dementia sufferers it’s very rare to have anything to leave your children, rare to live in your own familiar surroundings until the end and rare to come out of it with any assets at all. I am lucky to have something as piffling to deal with as trying to tessellate furniture. Or feeling sad about letting go. I know that. I don’t need to be told. This is just an honest account of how I feel, because if I’m feeling this, there are probably other people somewhere feeling it too and if just one of this finds this, reads it and feels a bit less daunted and alone knowing they’re not the only one, then my work here is done.
On the upside, the house sale is projected to complete in September, which isn’t too far away, I’m crossing fingers and praying that, maybe, what I might get for Christmas from the ether is my life back. I’m not holding my breath, but I can hope.