Finished

I'M STILL feeling a little numb but the sense of relief at bidding adieu to the two workmen who have finally hung the kitchen blinds is almost overwhelming.

After nearly a year of planning, of making decisions and not a few changes of mind, after talking to architects and kitchen designers, of dealing with joiners and plumbers and electricians and decorators - finally the last touches go in, and the job is complete.

A whole new kitchen - and our first celebratory meal in it? Fish and chips, from the local chippie! I'm just too exhausted to begin cooking the planned stir-fry, and My Good Lady is aching badly - a sure sign of stress.

We do pop open a bottle of celebratory bubbly later, and toast our spiffy new room and all who cook in her. But we're just so relieved that it's all done, such a weight lifted, that we're both a little subdued tonight.

Maybe we should have left the Veuve Clicquot until the weekend.

In Hamlet mood

DON'T quite know what's been wrong with me lately; I've been out of sorts with myself and the whole circumambient universe.

Not ill, you understand; it's as if I'm treading water all the time, not able to put my feet down on anything firm.

I feel a bit a like Hamlet, having lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises, and take no delight in either the goodly earth or in the works of man (aside from Shakespeare - my God, how that man could write!).

Wish I could just wake up one day and feel some enthusiasm for something, for anything.

This numbness, this apathy, seems to be sucking me dry.

Hence the lack of blog postings recently.

Hope you'll forgive.

Visiting

I’M PLEASED to see that Mike is looking so much better than when we last saw him, in hospital, and being at home again has done much to raise his spirits.

Finally, too, all the health organisations are giving him and Helen the support and assistance they both need – including all-night care and one of these fancy beds that can alter positions at the push of a button or two.

Not that all the departments are working in anything like harmony, of course – that would be too much to expect. At the moment, in fact, they seem to be falling over one another in their offers of help, while being uncooperative with each other.

Still, if their internecine squabbling produces the results that are required, who cares?

Anyhow, we pass an agreeable afternoon in our friends’ company, and we return home for our dinner – an unusual flop for My Good Lady, a vegetable curry that somehow fails to inspire either of us.

We watch a little telly this evening – I forget what – before MGL calls it an early night; the poor love is still drained from all the stresses and strains of the kitchen installation.

Who knows, I might even have an early night myself.

Unsettled

AS WEEKENDS go, this one is strictly run-of-the-mill, with us both carrying a burden of weariness after months of upheaval and decision-making concerning the kitchen.

It's odd, really, how you can keep going while the adrenalin's pumping, but once you relax the sheer weight of what you've done falls on you like a wall.

And this seems to be our problem. We're both tired but still emotionally inflated and unable to fully relax.

We're sleeping badly. We're can't focus on anything properly. We're both testy with one another for no reason.

And speaking for myself, I feel stretched thin, somehow, almost to breaking point.

I would say we maybe need a holiday, but I'm not sure I could be bothered with it all.

I'm just feeling too damned unsettled!

History lesson

DISMAL DAY, rain and more rain.

A delivery this morning brings me a package from Amazon - a book I ordered, a history book that I read when I was doing my A-levels.

The Strange Death of Liberal England was first published in 1935, not long after the events it describes transpired. I remember George Dangerfield's account of the collapse of a major British political movement as both informative and hugely entertaining - more like reading a engaging novel than a dry textbook.

I suppose I've always been aware that we are all passing through our bit of history - and all the more so when I look over some of the events I've witnessed in my own life, social and political.

And the lesson history teaches us? I suppose it teaches that change, inevitable and unstoppable, is not cyclical in shape, but more of a spiral - sometimes it appears to be going back on itself, but it never really does.

It's like the old Zen saying has it: "The water changes always, the river remains the same".

Anyhow, I look forward to reading my book.

Banking on trouble 2

NOW, would you believe, we're having to await a decision from the House of Lords!

I'm referring, of course, to the dispute we're having with out bank, about the charges they've imposed on our £18 overdraft.

We've had some success on a refund: the first £35 fee is to be returned to us, and the first, monthly £28 penalty has been cancelled. The second one, however, remains, and is a definite bone of contention between us and the bank.

The bank appears to think this charge is wholly reasonable - after all, we were overdrawn. We disagree.

A £28 penalty on an £18 overdraft is a charge of about 130% - a rather steep rate of interest, at least to us!

The bank is insisting that this money will be drawn out of our account at the end of the month, unless the House of Lords turns down their appeal against a court ruling that bank charges are too high.

(Seems we're not the only ones complaining about such extortionate rates!)

So, here we are awaiting their lordships' decision with more than just an academic interest.

Banking on trouble

FAIR DOS, I own it’s my fault that we’re overdrawn at the bank.

While the kitchen was being installed, I was writing out cheques as if they were going out of fashion – the joiner, the plumber, the electrician all demanding individual payment.

I thought I had them all covered, but no, I miscalculated; I fell short by £18.

As punishment, I’d expect a bank charge of a few pounds. Instead, I’m hit by an unauthorised overdraft fee of £35, plus two months’ fees of £28 per month, plus interest on the whole lot!

Am I being unreasonable in thinking this is disproportionate? Nearly £100 in fees for an accidental overdraft of £18?

My Good Lady certainly doesn’t think so, in fact she’s got her dander up well and truly. She’s been trawling the internet to clarify the legal situation and tomorrow we’re making an appointment at our branch and you can bank on it, there’s going to be trouble!

More to follow...

After the spring sunshine

WE ARE sitting in the Geriatrics’ Corner of the Pub, gazing out at the slashing rain rather pensively.

After such a splendid April, it’s as if we’ve been plunged back into the miseries of winter; we even have to put the fire on in the lounge this evening.

Thing is, it’s a bit of a nuisance, this weather, because with the cold winds howling around us, we’re unable to open any of our windows to let out the smell of paint.

The result is, I quickly start to get a headache – bad enough indeed for me to reach for the Paracetamol tablets.

Still, back to the Pub. We’re chatting to a couple of friends, Paul and Judy, who have just taken one of their sons to the airport – he’s off, first to Thailand for a few weeks, then on to Sydney where he’s hoping to get work for at least six months.

“He looked so young, going off with the rucksack on his back,” says Judy, rather tearfully. “He looked more like a schoolboy than a twenty-four year old man.”

And I can’t exactly offer her a word of comfort by saying he’s not gone the other side of the world…

We contemplate the inevitability of growing older. PD is there, too, at the moment trying to sort out the barbeque for his youngest grand-son’s christening.

I remark on the fact that recently I looked in the mirror and saw my father! I couldn’t believe how like him I’m growing, at least in appearance.

And just for a moment, there seems to be a shared moment of awareness – a whole generation of people having to face up to the prospect of their own mortality.

We gaze out at the rain silently, each of us wrapped up in our own thoughts, yet all of us, I think, somehow gripped by the same general sentiment: that we’re all getting on a bit.

Yes, after the promise of that spring sunshine, the rain and wind do seem all the wetter and colder.

Brave new kitchen

SO WE clear out the kitchen again, in readiness for the decorator who is due to arrive tomorrow.

I take down the greasy curtains - a particular bugaboo with My Good Lady - and the curtain tracks; then disassemble the ill-fitting roller blinds - another of her pet hates.

By the time I move the dining table into the bedroom and the chairs into the study the room looks positively empty and echoing, and somehow - naked.

And, I must say, the tattered, faded old wallpaper next to the spanking new units and and appliances looks seedier than ever.

We've been leaving decorating the kitchen until now, but I can't help wondering if we shouldn't have done it years ago, and whether we haven't been just a bit lazy. One of those jobs you put off and off... It really is in a disgraceful state.

By this time next week, though, we should have a new look around us, and with a bit of luck we might even have our new carpet down.

Brave new world? Well, brave new kitchen, anyway.

Walking days

WE’RE IN the Geriatrics’ Corner, along with the Friday crowd, and we’re discussing with Dick Gobble the joys and sometimes the pains of fell walking, of which he’s an ardent practitioner.

He’s just been on a longish walk over the north western fells of the Lake District, beginning at Buttermere. “Buttermere,” I remark, “my favourite lake. The jewel of the Lakeland crown!” He agrees. He sketches out the route he took last weekend over the tops towards Wastdale.

Some of his companions, however, were not as experienced at fell walking as Dick. And the weather, always a little unpredictable, changed from sunshine to slashing rain and wind in the space of a few minutes.

“It caught us so quickly we barely had time to put our waterproofs on. And one woman was wearing jeans; she had no waterproofs with her at all. She got absolutely soaked!” Dick shakes his head at the folly of it.

But I’m put in mind of our fell walking days, that of My Good Lady and myself, when we first lived in Cumbria. We’d often go out for a day or half a day, out towards Grasmere or Coniston or Hawkshead. Simple, happy pleasures.

All in the past now, of course; my old fell boots now serve as gardening footwear, my rucksack has long since been retired to the back of the wardrobe. I still have my Wainwright guides on the shelf along with all the old Ordnance Survey maps, but they remain undisturbed.

I can still enjoy Dick’s walking days vicariously, though.