jump to navigation

Of Rural Realisation June 9, 2009

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 26 comments

Hello.  This blog post is coming to you from my wardrobe.  No, really.  It is.  In my new teeny tiny cottage, I do not have a study.  So I decided to build one in my wardrobe.  Of course, it’s not a real wardrobe – more of a vertical ditch with a curtain across.  I even made my desk and used a screwdriver and everything!  Thanks, John Lewis, your flat-pack wotsits are pleasantly put-uppable.  But half an hour?  Half a blinkin day, more like.  But I did it, all on my very own.  I’ve even treated myself to a power screwdriver.  You see?  Now that I’ve escaped the cul de sac, I’m more B&Q than Jimmy Choo.

So.  I have now been here 10 days and have learnt plentiful things.  I have discovered that cockerels actually do perform their cock-a-doodle-doo routines at dawn.  The real dawn.  Not a gentleman’s dawn.  And dawn, I can reliably inform you, is at around 3.50a.m.  Every a.m.  Not only are there the birds, horses and pigs on the land opposite my bedroom window, on the other side of the house, at the end of my garden are sheep.  I know they’re sheep.  I’ve seen them.  But actually, they do not sound like sheep.  They sound like drunk men lying in a field, pretending to be sheep.  It is most odd.

I have discovered that I can survive without the internets.  I always imagined that, when on Desert Island Discs, I’d have to confess to Kirsty that my luxury item would be a laptop with broadband.  But no.  I managed a whole week without checking my blog stats.  Luckily, lovely non-bf sent helpful texts saying ‘you have had 21 visitors so far and people found your website by searching for woll saucepans, bullet bra, arses and dastardly sentence’.  Oh dear.

I have discovered that living here will not automatically transform me into a writing machine; nor find me doing yoga in my undies on my titchy terrace before the world (exc. cockerels, obviously) wakes up; nor be able to manage without my electric blanket (retrieved from box last night and firmly reunited with bed).

But.  I have also discovered that if you get out early enough, you might just see two foxes lying with the sheep under the first rays of sun shine.  You might just see a huge red hot air balloon wheeze asthmatically over the silent, dewy fields.

Yes.  I think I really rather like it here actually.

Baaaa

Wasting Away in Many Ways February 4, 2009

Posted by Jen in : A363 Open University, Domestic Doings , 24 comments

They say, don’t they, that you have to use your creativity muscles.  Use it or lose it.  That sort of thing.  I think I’ve lost it. Hmmmm.  The trouble is that, while doing this OU course, I’m so busy and behind with the learning, I don’t have time to actually write anything.  While I lay in the dark at 4am this morning I considered that, if I were training to be a chef, it would be like having all the ingredients and know-how but never actually cooking anything.  I could have a bit of a lick at other people’s spoons and that would be that.  Tantalisingly tasty but not all that satisfying.  And I still wouldn’t know if I could cook.  By 5am, once I was on the twilight train of lucid streams of consciousness, I also considered that all those thoughts of spoon-snorfling had made me rather hungry.

The cupboards are bare.  I did go shopping but we have had The Weather, you see, which means everyone had to engage in Serious Panic Shopping.  “PANIC! PANIC!!  It will snow for years; we need to buy all the food in the world!  Imagine being snowed in without mushrooms!  And cucumber.  And other perishable foodstuffs.” Honestly, the greedy buggers had bought everything.  EVERYTHING!  Except squashy stuff in tins.  But I’m not really a squashy-stuff-in-tins kind of girl.  Today, hopefully, the world will finish melting.  This is a relief as I am currently nibbling the last Dairylea triangle within a 50-mile radius.  And, also, I cannot drive in the slidey-white.  Nor stand up.  I am so clumsy that I can fall over an ant’s eyelash, without the shame of tottering about on an ice-rink in my slippers.

But The Weather has been a pleasantly dramatic distraction from the dreariness of domestic life.  I just wish I had time to write about it…

Zzzzzzzzz

All Packed Up Unready To Go August 24, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal, Novel , 25 comments

So. Who said it wasn’t possible to re-write an entire novel in ten days flat? Here you are then… Rewrite: The Kamikaze Method.

But I did it. Four hours’ writing every day before work. Utter madness. And yesterday, I stuffed it all into a Jiffy bag almost as big as those under my eyes and off it went. It’s better than it was two weeks ago. I even cried at some parts. The Novel is therefore either bloody brilliant or the tiredness and hormones got the better of me. And, yes, I’m already thinking of other changes I could have made. The postage should have been far less considering how many holes the plot has. Oh, arses.

Still. After the Post Office, I threw all the clothes I own (spare pair of jeans, clean pants and dodgy unsuitable psychedelic hippy top) into a bag, dyed my grey hairs (and ears and right hand) shouted at the boys every 3.5 seconds before bundling us off to the airport and onto a plane bound for Jersey.

It was an odd feeling, hurtling down the runway as I was physically propelled towards my past. Last night, I scoffed Chinese with my mum before making the poor old bat frolic on the beach in the dark. The tide whooshed in, St Brelade’s Church and the Fisherman’s Chapel glowed peacefully and No. 2 son discovered a talent for Irish Dancing. On the beach. In the dark. It’s nice to be home.

Today, however, there is daylight. Jersey has changed since I left 6 years ago. It’s different. I’m different. And I still haven’t decided what I think about that.

Of Shambolic Shopping May 28, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 27 comments

I don’t even know why I thought it a good idea. Last time lovely bf and me ventured to Ikea, we didn’t speak for an entire week.

Now and again though, I get this urge. I think I’m bored with the chickens and fields and wellies. I think I want to be a bit metropolitan. Reader, I don’t know what came over me but yesterday I went to Bluewater. Gawd.

There are several reasons I should not go to such places:

1. I am very crap at driving on motorways. When I learnt to drive in Jersey, there was none of this multiple choice of lane. No lurching, heaving lorries to squish my scaredyness until squeaks pop out of my mouth. If you drive too far or too fast in Jersey, you drop off the edge. Infinitely preferable method of dying to motorways.

2. I don’t like shopping. I am no good at it. I get bored after 20 minutes and decide that I will do the shopping after a jolly good lunch and some fortification of the vino-related type.

3. I am quite easily swayed. Self-control, in my book, is something to do with choosing to wear concrete pants and steel bras.

But, I had a foolproof plan. Ikea first, for the compulsory purchase of bookshelves and shoe racks. Then Bluewater, where I would single-mindedly hunt down a new pair of glasses as my lenses have mysteriously become so scratched that I can barely see. And no, it’s not like when I picked my Clarks school shoes apart with a compass point because I’d wanted some from FreemanHardyWillis. I honestly don’t know how they became scraped just as I’d gone off them. No, really.

Lovely bf had somehow been persuaded that this would be tolerable, if not fun.

‘Maybe we should just go to Bluewater,’ I ventured en route. ‘We can order the furniture online.’

Lovely bf mumbled something at the hard shoulder. It sounded a bit like ‘oh, for fuck’s sake’ but he’d been instructed to wear his happy face and the words weren’t coming out clearly through his gritted teeth.

I’ll cut a long story short. I still can’t see; the joy of specs was shortlived. Lunch at Loch Fyne was good though. Somehow or other, I came home with a fruit bowl and an SLR camera, having become a little overexcited about an idea for a book: a photo and haiku to mark every day for a year. Lovely bf was a trifle disappointed with his purchase of some headache tablets.

Four hours of driving, four hundred quid and eight hours of my life later I was broke and still blind. Oh dear. Perhaps I need more practice?

Of Determined Doingness May 15, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 25 comments

I remember reading somewhere that ‘having it all’ means ‘doing it all’. It sounded tough, in a kamikaze 1980s shoulder pads sort of way. All of a sudden, though, I seem to have adopted this red-lipstick and high heels approach. I want it all and I want it now.

Hmmm. I think I’m having a mini-mid-life crisis. I don’t like being 39. I blame the ‘life begins at 40′ thing: I somehow feel that the next 355 days or so are the end of an era somehow. Not in a bad way; just life being marked. A defining thing.

I want it all. I really do. Predictably, I’m on yet another ‘get thin’ regime. I’ve been running nearly every day and lovely bf hasn’t sniggered even once while trying to winch me out of bed the following day when my muscles and joints are seizing up. Needless to say, he doesn’t quite get the mid-life thing. I’m not sure it’s entirely fair that he’s only just turned 32. Perhaps I should trade him in for a doddery old duffer and then I’d be all spritely by comparison?

I haven’t done even an eeny weeny bit of editing; when the new sofas for the conservatory come, that will be the place to edit. No, really. I mean it. Honest Guv.

Yes, dear reader, living in The Cul de Sac means that I now have a conservatory from which to watch my life hobble past. It’s a beast of a room and will be separated into two areas: a chill-out zone with huge great big sofas for sprawling editing and the other end containing a new dining table at which we will hold dinner parties in a most middle class sort of way. It’s getting to me, The Cul de Sac. I’ve even bought new clothes. From Boden. Shhhhhh you see what I mean? It’s all creeping insidiously into me; I even conformed and put the recycling bins out in a co-ordinated fashion on Tuesday. I didn’t mean to. But every other house had their bins lined up like soldiers by their beds. I couldn’t help myself.

Good Lord. 7am now, time for a run before I wriggle into my flippy skirt or hotchpotch top. Bloody hell. How on earth am I supposed to be a writer when I carry on like that, eh?

Of Mundane Mumblings May 8, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 20 comments

Dear Blog,

I’ve been neglecting you. You sat there, despondent, empty, waiting for my input and there was none. Zilch. Bugger all.

Soz.

I’ve been busy, Blog. I’ve cluttered up the new house with things I’ll never need and can’t find the essentials. My lady’s bathroom accoutrements are missing; I now go by the name of Olga and have been asked sweetly by lovely bf whether I will be taking up shot putting.

I have ripped brambles out of the garden with my bare hands and resemble a murder with cuts and bruises everywhere.

I have tried to catch up with my photography course. Mission, should you wish to accept it: Message in a Bottle.

‘Yes, I really feel you’ve found your level in academia,’ smiles lovely bf as I stumble about madly, clutching camera and half-empty wine bottle.

I’ve also had another birthday and have that sinking feeling that, during this last year of my 30s, I should be achieve something in the next 360 days.

But still, the sun’s shining and the swallows are a-swooping. What better day to start my shot putting career. I’ve got the frowning and grunting part mastered so far


Of Uppity Updates April 30, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings , 25 comments

Here I am, all polished and shiny as I settle into middle class suburbia. Gawd. I have been wearing my cross face rather a lot since Saturday, practising my range of swear words and generally being quite scary.

This morning, however, I woke up full of beans. Well, not actually ‘full of beans’, because I don’t really care for bean-related foodstuffs but you know what I mean.

I wandered down the stairs at 5.45, thinking about Extra-Strong Tetleys and perhaps a pre-work jaunt with the faithful canine. In the kitchen, a mountain of gross, greasy dishes peered lazily at me and I said a few more swear words. I said them quietly, of course. I live in a cul de sac now, you know.

So. Broken down dishwasher. Bugger. But things could be worse, I thought. Oh, hang on. I didn’t think it, I manifested it. Mwah ha ha ha, said the tap. I’ll run, run, as fast as I can. You can’t stop me, I’m the cul de sac tap. The water spurted and spattered. Then the dishes carefully unpacked and put away in the under-sink cupboard began to float away as H2o burst from every available pin prick of piping.

‘Gosh,’ I thought in a middle class sort of way. ‘How terribly inconvenient.’

I didn’t really think that. I thought something that rhymes with (bourgeois) frolics and begins with a ‘b’. I even said it out loud with my mouth. Quietly though, just in case.

I emailed Landlord. At 6am. When he called me back at 7 I grabbed at the biro to scribble down the emergency plumbing number. The biro I grabbed was having some sort of fit, oozing a tar-like substance all over my hands. No, I’ve no idea how I got it all over my face either. But the black and white minstrels look is still very popular in the more rural parts of Sussex so that’s good.

Yes, it’s all going swimmingly, thanks very much for asking.

 


Of Continuing Comical Karma April 19, 2008

Posted by Jen in : Domestic Doings, Journal , 37 comments

They 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.