Now and Next

13 February 2018

The Will is still ongoing:
I am waiting for mother's  tax declarations to be investigated as they do not match. The first was from her husband. a man 31 years younger, and he declared as he evidently has for 4 to 5 years that she had property rental income but as he had already transferred her 50% of the property to him this was clearly an untruth.  The second from me ( it took me 8m months to acquire her N.I. number as he ignore my request for it.  Almost five months later I am still waiting to make sure I owe nothing on behalf of her and if she is due a rebate, it goes to the sole beneficiary, my brother, who insists I am a liar and deceitful and not following my mother's wishes. These are not HIS original thoughts but the thoughts of someone else.
AMENDMENT : June 2018: I now have the proof in writing.

Stress and Fatigue:
After almost 15 months I have almost totally relapsed into complete fatigue with whatever title they wish to call my condition: Fibromyalgie,  Myalgic Encephamolitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or all of it|!
The symptoms for each day are never the same... new pains in the muscles, lymphs or nervous system appear.. sometimes I realise "oh that pain has gone!" ... another time .. "I've never had this pain before!"   Fortunately, I am able to get moving but it takes hours.
Worse than all the pain has been 'emotional lability" - a pain in itself.

New idea before Moving house if I  ever do:
Moving on: 
As I am about to embark on another concerted effort re-organising personal possessions which I do not need, I thought perhaps as a form of motivation, I could document the rubbish going out.

My cat died    
how did I not write about this tragedy!

THE WHITE COMPANY cotton bedlinen after ironing!

Brand new unused-on-any-bed, 200 thread count Egyptian cotton bed-linen, after 8 washes with a Bosch machine that is hardly used plus Persil powder, water softener and fabric softener and Bosch steam ironed whilst wet... on at least four occasions!
I would not even put this on my own bed let alone that of guests!
I took them to a professional laundry service following others' advice, before I consider THE return to THE WHITE COMPANY... but this stupid laundry company have made black blotches on them and folded them differently ... even the original creases can still be seen...
It is at a cost of £14 in addition to the £133 that they cost me.
I WILL RETURN THEM in the original delivery box with all the original packaging,  once I get them back ( hopefully washed again! ) on MONDAY!!!!
I am an unhappy bunny!

Feeling the pain and rising above it........

I felt the breeze change last night. Autumn cometh.
The weather has changed: temperatures  in / out  for day / night have been similar for some time BUT NOW a 10C degree difference between outdoors / indoors accompanies the rain, scuppering an idea to clear the wood pile! Sabotage!

I feel Life's tempest brewing ......

I haven't posted because living alone allows too much opportunity for introspective thinking on making sense of this world and I am fast coming to the conclusion there is NO SENSE:  it is all NON SENSE!
LIFE is short.  Perhaps it has to be enjoyed no matter how hedonistic.  I've invested too much time and energy in the man that I thought I loved. I know I did love him even back in 1998 when first we became unstable.  Why has it lasted so long? Why does it take so long to heal? 

MY STRUGGLE IS THAT I HAVE deeply rooted PRINCIPLES of prudishness, pride, honesty, loyalty, integrity, decency and dignity and feel that I should be honoured and cherished for my womanhood and that THAT is also what I should offer for any man who wants to be with me!
BUT IT AINT ALWAYS LIKE THAT!!!!!!
I've made errors of judgement with my principles / behaviour but I don't have to punish who I am. 
One tries to go with the flow of life... tries to keep busy... tries to keep calm and reflect, consider motives for what I WANT TO DO IN MY LIFE, now that someone says I am a liberated woman with a thousand voices and says I rock his boat !
How nice! How flattering but it can't last!
BUT then the dream and reality of unreality crashes on the rocks! The rock is on a stormy sea. I clearly contributed to The Previous One's behaviour.  it wasn't all my fault even though he blamed and criticised me for my imperfections, failings, weaknesses. THAT is exactly what he worked upon to keep me down whenever I got strong.

Why is it that my rebellious teenager or my playtime seeking child won't listen to my adult? 
 
How much can anyone ever believe anyone?
How much can anyone trust others ... or is it all to be interpreted as a pack of lies as each one of us in the world seeks to meet our own individual needs in a selfish world?
Have I become too cynical?
Have I too much time to think?
Is it because I've been down on the floor so many times, picked myself up, dusted myself down and started all over again that I will keep doing that until I learn what it is I need to learn?
Someone please shout at me the blindingly obvious!
How can anyone ever protect themselves from the pain that is bound to come when one has had pleasure or feels bliss when it all disintegrates?
I get blissful whilst on my bike, whilst looking out with wonder across stubbled fields, clover, fields where millet ripens, huge leaved crops that must be the Nicotiana family ... tobacco,  yellow and green sunflowers in serried ranks, praising the SUN, which I do too ...... I bow my head as I eat my apple and praise God for the fact that I am alive and mobile and my happiness pours forth into the world.
I need to be emotionally inert.  That's a laugh a minute ... it'll happen when I am dead!
One tries to see good in everyone ... and know that as human beings we all feel the same ...
One tries to be compassionate and caring. I do try to love who I am and what I am so that I can share that love with others. It all sounds so trite.
One tries to know purpose in life and to what degree of fulfilment one could achieve for Self and to give to others.
I wish to meet new people, go to new places, hear new stories, do new things, see culture, so that I can learn more about REALITY.
I want to go travelling, be a hobo, but the time is not yet here.
There is a roof to be re-roofed, a kitchen to be gutted,  a bunion to be lanced, logs to be collected / delivered / stacked and how to do this with a hobbly foot will be interesting and then the rest....
This the former professional, a sometimes feisty woman who used to juggle two kids as a single parent with a full-time teaching commitment working all hours that God sent in order to prove my worth (the failing school grew from a roll of 30 ish children to 120 on roll when I was Acting Head [for my sins]). I studied for my degree status  at the same time. Before that the three of us lived in a house with subsidence where inside temperatures were below zero! Was I too busy with my job to take care of me and my kids. On reflection it did not seem to be enough but it has to be because it cannot be redone!

Mindful in solitude, I try to do the following but make little headway because of self-sabotage. 
1. Wake up ... go to sleep.
2. Eat and drink a balanced diet to lose weight before the foot incapacitates me for 3 to 6 months.
3. Exercise - I spent too long on my bottom last winter.  This Summer into Autumn I am proud of activity. I can easily walk fast for an hour in the morning and cycle for an hour or two each afternoon / evening.  It is not enough. BUT is enough for someone who had M.E., who could not walk between two groynes on a beach without a helping hand, who had to crawl up the stairs and shuffle down on her bottom, who fell asleep whilst the kettle boiled!
4. TRY to tick off jobs and tasks...e.g. currently having to make a decision on MUTUELLE payments as this is a task that has been shelved for 7 years and the recent enquiry with quotes is one year old... I have to pay out for my health costs because I have chosen to live in France. Only a percentage is picked up by the NHS... (what is that these days?)  Other goals must be to decide how to purchase a new vehicle so I pray that my little Clio keeps on moving....
5. TRY to Sort & Clear out STUFF I have not used, do not use, will never use again... Whew that is such a challenge!!!!!!  There in my attic are family photos ... newspaper cuttings, memorabilia, treasured items of monetary and emotional value...  There on my computer are photographic memories and a muddled collection of writings....and the whole story needs strategic thinking and a million ways of threshing to dump or keep in an honoured way. It's pretty scary to open sealed boxes from the past, when memories good and bad arrive to hit one in the head and heart. Currently the floor is littered with books not sold at the Books Festival ... not the same as a UK Literary Festival! but that is what this village needs to do.  It is stuck in old ways and is not keeping up with modernity... One can't keep presenting the same format... We did that at school for sports day and barbecue nights and then someone came and shook it all up!!!!! It needed a revamp and so did we, the staff!
6. TRY to think clearly, proactively. logically. No thinking would be good too.
7. TRY to formulate ideas for a plan for the future!
8. Laugh A Minute!    It keeps a level of sanity in the why of why this has happened in my life.

It's my blog... I can write about what I choose.

Oh woe! Not the woodburner again!

Quel horreur!
This was not supposed to happen! But it has, just one week before Christmas!! Just when I was beginning to think that for the winter I could move to an uncluttered, renovation-free environment of a new bedroom,  just beyond the oval room that contains the woodburner! How unjust!
Now, on the shortest day of the year I await the woodburner installer and know I am just within the guarantee period.  It was good that we used fireproofed plasterboard.  However, it wasn't waterproofed and the wall surface has bubbled. The glass hearth has to be cleaned and it seems that the oak flooring below has been stained. Certainly the skirting board and air vent are sticky.  Whether any of this can be cleaned and with what substance or whether items have to be replaced as yet is unknown. I would prefer the minimum of replacement!  Goodness knows how many more labour hours, material costs, and worry will be needed to create calm from this chaos.

I feel devastated and tired with all this renovation lark! I want my life back. I am sure my friend who is helping me to renovate feels the same if truth be known!
A record of the event
On Saturday night 17th December 2011 I thought I would sleep in my brand new single Victorian iron bedstead with brand new duvet and bedlinen in a totally uncluttered room,  free from office stuff, free from renovation materials,  free!  Indeed it felt as if I was on a retreat and all was calm and still in my life!  I lit the fire in the oval room about 6pm that evening.  By 8pm it was cosily warm.  I went to bed about 10 and woke unusually at 4am on the Sunday 18th December,  made myself a cup of tea and did some writing.  Then I slept like a hibernating hedgehog until late..11h30 in the morning!  I was tired! The fire was alight with glowing embers so I cleaned the window of the woodburner which was unusually difficult as the resins on the glass were stubborn.  Eventually, after rubbing the glass with vinegar, ash and the special cleaning product, it was perfect.  I laid the fire, closed the door safely, and went to have brunch.  When I returned to the room and saw the fire had not taken, I suddenly saw the wall!  The way in which the resin had dried on the glass hearth indicated that it had been like this for some time but certainly it was not there when I went to bed on Saturday evening.  

UPDATE: 21 December 2011

The two employees of the company arrived instead of the proprietor as promised.  Hm?  At first, the one who speaks English suggested it was not their fault and that water had fallen through the chimney breast, not the flexible flue liner, and penetrated the plasterboard and that old resins in the chimney had mixed with the rainwater.  Hm?  Apart from the lowest point in the oval hole there is no other moisture.  Eventually the same person accepted blame.  He'd climbed the ladder and was trying to convince us that he needed to put in some other flexible tubing to allow air pressure to escape, when we insisted  that we wanted to go up the ladder and quick-thinking, I dashed indoors for the camera.    It is as we thought: the chap had never cemented the chimney pot onto the chimney stack properly.  He says the high wind of last week had removed the metal that they normally put around the pot! Hm?  Whilst my friend and I were indoors discussing the phone conversation that I'd just had with the proprietor who tried to wriggle out of  responsibility, the men had removed the ladders and they refused toput them back for us to goup and see what they had done. The flaunching was not done correctly because moss should not be there nor the gaping hole for rain to tumble down!

There was some suspicion about his workmanship earlier in the year.  I'm cross that we never insisted on climbing the ladder when the chimney pot was put into place.  I thought that maybe they had dislodged the cement when they 'swept the chimney', when the woodburner fllled with smoke and it burst through every orifice and filled my room, but no that was not the reason.
However, there is a happy outcome - December 22nd. The charming director, conciliatory when he arrived, said he would pay for the interior decoration to be made good as he took responsibility.  The men will return in January so that we can see their work, take a photo, and be assured the work has been done properly.   If I were running his business this man would be justly fired!

Backtrack - July to September 2010

JULY  AUGUST SEPT 2010

My new house came to a standstill as I took stock of my life and reviewed the goal to get the ground floor of the house ship-shape with running water, a bathroom, a better kitchen and all rooms painted and decorated and NORMAL. How on earth did I think it would happen in just a few weeks? Someone once said of me in my career "Ever the optimist".when things were going awry and I’d made some naïve comment akin to 'it will be alright on the night'.

So .it seems  it will take a little longer than I thought and the plan on how to do it may change but that's OK ... and if I have to struggle a little more in life then "c'est la vie". It's my life and I'll have to do it my way even if I create a muddle as I go. I'll get there wherever that may be. I won't be beaten. That's another lesson that I learnt recently. Pick myself up... get on with it ... keep moving ... keep doing things ... don't brood ... think happy thoughts ... put the music on and dance, dance, dance to the Rolling Stones or reflect quietly with Chopin or Bach.

I am still energised and when I get back to 'work' I will enjoy it because life must be about working. I don't have time to be lazy anymore! I don't have time to waste! I don't have time to spend on negative energies. I want to be positive and happy. I don't want to experience any more horrid moments. I have things to improve and things to sort and dispose of or keep. I have places to go and things to do and people to meet as once my dearest friend once said. That said and one year later I’m aware of how much of my time has been wasted in depression and thinking about others and how my life seems to have taken an unexpected turn. What went wrong and why. Grappling with certain feelings despite all the contradictions.

What lesson am I supposed to learn from owning a stone house with its once 18th/ 19th century beautiful 'to the modern eye' stone walls which suck up the damp from the soil, but which have been covered in plastered insulation board since 25 years ago, and today, we struggle to covert a 21st century look?  

I like the look of French stone walls on the interior of a house so why do I have this house where not a stone can be seen as it is fully plasterboarded and hence potentially very warm inside? 

A message cries out to me to build or buy a modern home, a simple, unashamedly faceless practical residence of a Fairfax-type home where I once lived with its joy of an almost 'maintenance free' lifestyle that it was!   But even that dream has its challenges.  Modern sings to me... as does l'ancienne.    Pick me or Pick me.... the houses say!   Life is just not easy!  My friend wanted me to do build a new house... but I wasn't ready. I felt I did not have sufficient knowledge, expertise or confidence. It is strange because now I know what I would do and how I would do it.  The difference also is that we have some French friends who can help us and if I'd had the courage to approach them a year ago I am sure they would have helped us unravel the building regs for such a project!
For me, the wrinkles become more evident as the brain and wisdom grows.  However, it is my perception that we keep more fit in mind, body and soul by undertaking this project, now that the horrors of what I have undertaken appear to be a little more manageable and under control!
It has been a scary experience.... and I am not out of the woods yet....
MESSAGE:   
KNOW what thy doeth when a French renovation project calleth,  and even when one thinketh one knoweth all, be humbleth when knoweth nought!!!!!!!!!
As my French friends tell me ... when one buys an old house it can be aesthetically beautiful but one does not know the surprises that one purchases.   When one has a new build there are no surprises! I now believe!

Backtrack - May to July 2010

Between May and  July 2010  although I was energised by the owning of a property, evidently demonstrating vim, vigour and enthusiasm for renovating and wallpaper stripping, sanding down woodwork, clearing out junk, digging and filling trenches, rubbing down large beams, baking bread on a building site, helping to organise what might have been the start of a Midsummer ritual in my garden, after 7 weeks of what could be perceived as almost a kind of trauma about what I had done in buying my house, I decided to have a break and Do Something Different. So at the end of June and the beginning of July I decided to visit family and friends instead of or in addition to the months of March and November. Reflection and Meditation were necessary.

It was gloriously wonderful weather in England. Sunny days with privet blossom, scabious flowers and poppies by the wayside, cereals growing golden in their English gated fields surrounded by English oak trees and hedgerows. Yet though the beauty in the East Anglian fields was very marvellous I missed the French stone walls and lanes.

I am a leaf

A leaf tells of an adventure downstream

I am a leaf floating on the current.

Other leaves float alongside me.

We float separately but some are nearer than others.

Some move faster and overtake me.

I take my time.

I move faster than others,

making quicker progress to reach those who have passed me by.

We’re heading towards the sea, a very long journey.

However, I know not where I am destined

as many of us will reach a different end.

From time to time another leaf falls from a tree and joins us.

Trees were our birthplace

where last Spring we leafed into bright green clothing,

vivid, vibrant, rustling, fluttering in the breezes.

But as Autumn arrived we changed our apparel,

yellow, orange, red, brown, as trees discarded us.

Very few of us will meet the mighty ocean.

Most will be pummelled into the river bank mud

to disintegrate and be transformed into river sediment.

The rain, snow and ice could batter us to death before we’ve achieved our ageing process.

Some of us are in better shape than others.

Some of us look quite elegant and beautiful floating in style.

Others seem to be clutching at the surface of the water with leafy tenacity. 

Others have already drowned and lie at the bottom of the river in swathes.

It does not matter how we present ourselves in life.

We all have the same fate.

We all look the same once we have perished.

We journey on to enjoy the view and as we gently drift,

look down into depths of unknown territory, darkness and murky blackness,

to study the reflections of the trees who still cling onto fellow friends.

Some trees never let our cousins fall from their symbiosis remaining evergreen.

We though are free, abandoned, rejected, call it what you will.

We are made to endure a journey – an adventure downstream.

We may be lucky, we may suffer.

We accept our fate, for now we are gladly carried to what we will become.

Zaidi Zaidi - a Macedonian Song

Exquisite Sevdah sung by Amira Medunjanin from Bosnia and music from Sidonia, Romania, Estonia.
Listen to the delayed acoustics and the beautiful duduk, a variety of shawm.