Of Continuing Comical Karma April 19, 2008
Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 37 commentsThey say, don’t they, that things happen for a reason. Eight weeks ago, we were told that our landlady had decided to sell the house we live in. No problemo, I thought jauntily, I now have a proper job earning a splendid number of Great British pounds. I shall procure a lifetime of debt in the form of a mortgage and purchase a humble hovel in which to house my offspring.
Apparently, however, due to apparent crunchiness of credit and my unwillingness to live in a chicken shed, this was something of a non-starter.
I pestered every letting agent in Sussex and could I find a house? Could I ‘eck. On Friday, however, our luck changed. And, um, all change is good. Isn’t it?
Of all the houses, in all the many countrified places within striking distance of the boys’ school, we have agreed to hand over the paltry sum of £1300 a month to live in a cul de sac. Gulp. Lovely bf has already been instructed to purchase some pastel-coloured sweaters and to get his sideburns trimmed. This is serious middle-class suburban stuff. We do not do that sort of thing. We stride about, mumbling madly, covered in mud and like to Not Really Talk to People.
It gets better. In The Novel, I have a character called Rajni. Rajni is based very heavily on someone I used to be very friendly with. In fact, she was very much my bestest friend when I came to live here. We shopped, lunched, drank, did playground gossip, dinner parties, the lot until she tore whole heaps of friendships apart with the winning cocktail of resentment, poison and Merlot coursing through her veins.
Reader, in my new teeny tiny suburban strangulation of residential ruin, the woman horrid enough to have inspired The Novel will live directly opposite me. I will be able to see into her living room and her into mine.
And I think the next door neighbours might be Christians.
And we have to move next week and haven’t yet booked any hairy, sweating removal men to transfer our dismal lives from our sprawling rural lair to this stamp-sized suburban sorrow.
So. Working full-time in brain-squishifying job. Moving house with one week to organise. Two children to look after. The Novel to edit. I shall be wearing my cross face quite a lot over the next ten days. I shall be saying swear words aplenty at work; I will not be able to shout at ‘home’ in the cul de sac. The neighbours will Think Things and give each other Knowing Looks.
And, inspired by Nez and Lucy, I’ve just signed up for a photography course with the Open University as part of my degree which also starts next week. To add to the jollification, I’m hormonal and have a great big spot on my snozzle.
I’m trying to be pleasant. I really am. But arses. Oh bugger. I hope the new neighbours can’t hear…
