Best Before 28.06.10

On Tuesday morning when I returned by cycle after visiting the gym I was accosted by Matthew; “Can I show you some bricks?”. “Sure”. And that’s what he did. He pointed at a small pile of bricks without saying another word. Sometimes people can be a little too brief conversationally and cut too much out. After twenty years of marriage it’s fine to say “Tea?” instead of “Darling. Light of my life, fish to my ocean, butter to my bread, garlic and herb dip to my Domino Pizza. Would you care for a boiled water beverage?” but this was actually my first conversation with Matthew. I ignored the 64 variations of sarcasm that occurred to me and said “If they’re the ones you’re building it with, they’re fine”. There are a lot of decisions to make now. It suddenly seems that we’ve been fannying around for months doing research without making any decisions and it really is time we were telling Matt exactly what we want. I feel a bit of pressure because I get the impression he’ll say “We need to order doors today” rather than saying it three weeks before the ordering needs to be done. My default state is ‘Panic’.

The builders spent much of this week destroying the extension at the rear of the house. This meant that the house filled with dust and our kitchen, such as it was and always had been, could no longer be used. I realised then that I eat a lot. I start around eight and just graze all day. Without the kitchen i was staaaaaarving. I may have previously been critical of them and their presence on our road but from Wednesday onwards we were dependent on Tesco and we ate whatever they had discounted because it had reached it’s sell by date. It’s helped both of us put on a little weight.

I’m now working at a dining table in the bay window on the first floor. I have a great view of the traffic but I’m able to see how popular Willy is. A couple of times a day people will spot him and stop for a brief chat.

Matthew is developing a strong dislike for Martin. He and Willy offered to sweep dust off his patio but he wouldn’t let them cross the boundary and then Matthew found him standing on our property playing with cables that came from his house. On Friday when they had begun demolishing the old extension Martin told Matthew the bricklayer would need to consult with him about where to start building the wall (you’ll recall our discussions about how many inches we would step in). “I know where the line is” Matthew told him, apparently in a tone that had a little dash of ‘F off’ thrown in. We now know when the rear extension was built since a copy of Time magazine from 1979 was behind the bricks. Another little Time capsule from Basil. For the extension to survive 31 years is pretty impressive when it was basically a load of bricks balancing on top of the patio.

Yesterday we left the fridge/freezer on the drive to be collected by a scrap metal merchant. We’ve sold the bed on ebay. We also ended up putting a couple of chairs outside. They didn’t sell when advertised in the local paper, didn’t sell on ebay and the local recycling centre rejected them because of fire regulations. I think most of our neighbours have sold their televisions and rely on us for their entertainment after some of the adventures that we’ve played out over the months. After giving them the opportunity to watch us wrestle one of the chairs into the car, only for Marianna to return with it from the recycling centre, we then displayed them on the driveway with a ‘FREE’ sign on them. A man in his seventies (at least) appeared at the door, saying he wanted the chairs. He was carrying a bottle of wine and several minutes of tug of war followed with the man offering the bottle to Marianna and her rejecting it. I went to put shoes on since I didn’t want to expose my ‘shorts and welly boots’ combo which was ideal for wallpaper stripping to the world. We thought the old man would have waited for us but he was off up the road pushing one of the chairs, having only made the vaguest of references to where he lived. I carried the other chair and we tried to move at some speed so as to catch him up. When we turned a corner he was talking to a young man with a truck. In fact, the other chair was in the back of the truck and before any explanation of whether they knew each other or how this arrangement had come about could be given he took my chair from me and placed it on the truck. And off they went. We walked back home to the sound of neighbours previously unentertained by us cancelling SKY subscriptions and tearing up their tv licences.

It’s been an intense week and weekend with trying to empty the house completely, stripping the bloody woodchip wallpaper and putting aside things we’ll need for the next week when we’re both homeless. We’ll make a couple of trips to the storage when it opens at 8 and then it’s off to work and a week of homelessness. .

The pessimist says ‘This is awful, it couldn’t possibly be worse than this’.
‘Oh yes it could’ says the optimist