Fiona's Quiet Life

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17^th Octo­ber and still no men to fin­ish the French windows,.…..it is 12 days since the put them in but i can still see day­light round the edge.…and of course nobody to fin­ish the kit­chen floor either.that is 8 months since they dam­aged it put­ting in the new kitchen.

They have also prom­ised me ?700 towards the repair of the mosaic tiles in the hall but where is the ?700,

so the sur­prise party for my hus­band Basil’s 80^th birth­day is in less than 2 weeks and i have an unfin­ished kit­chen and hall floor, the room that is to house the chocol­ate foun­tain etc, has no floor cov­er­ing and a French win­dow with more day­light com­ing in all round it than through it..and Abby ‚Ian and some or all of the grand­chil­dren will be stay­ing here from next Thursday.….…where i ask myself, sleep­ing on what?

And when upstairs half of the house was get­ting his new bath­room in they flooded his hall­way and now we have dis­covered wet rot in the floor affect­ing both flats.…..at least Rentokil’s insur­ance people replied to my phone call, even though they said i had ter­min­ated my con­tract 6 years ago.….…..i asked them what they had done with the sev­eral hun­dreds of pounds we had paid them in dry/wet rot insurance…they found my policy eventually.

.….….so his half of the upstairs/downstairs party will be as messy as mine as he has half a bath­room and half a hall floor.…..maybe we should ask our guests to bring tools.

i wish the people that wanted things i offered on freeshare(.changed it’s name from freecycle.).….….….would come and col­lect them , my hall­way is full of books, stamps scarves,bubble bath,and an old pro­jector that shows ancient films on reels. today i offered lots of cop­ies of golden hands magazine, they tell you how to do all sorts of knit­ting and sew­ing things but all in 1970’s style. Glas­gow uni­ver­sity was offer­ing approx 800 old med­ical books as they have no room for them , i won­der if there will be any takers.

Ancient parent’s flat is at last on the mar­ket in Dum­bar­ton it has been empty for about 4 years as i have not been able to get out to see to empty­ing it, i even­tu­ally had to say to Davy ” fill a van and take all the stuff left to the tip” which he has done . it is a great relief as it has been weigh­ing heav­ily on my shoulders, the pro­ceeds should go along way towards the ?507 per week it is cost­ing 94 year old mother to live.

Basil’s demen­tia has reached a lovely phase where he sings to me a lot of the time. now that the thyroid is under con­trol we are get­ting a little sleep thank heavens.

Nic­ola and Chris are mov­ing to Bris­tol sooner than they thought as the buy­ers have brought for­ward their date. .…..i shall miss the wee boys.

the apple tree has almost fin­ished throw­ing apples at me.….a good thing really as they are in the fridge, the spare room, the gar­age, the grand­sons, great granny everywhere.

Mickey came in bring­ing some of the lovely Java chocol­ate that i like so much from Lidl.

Asda have delivered lots of party drinks and bin bags.….…i wish M&S delivered food , i would cater the whole party while sit­ting her with basil instead of hav­ing the worry of going out and leav­ing him alone..

today i have been scan­ning hun­dreds of old pho­tos of him going back 70 years , i scan them in batches of 5 or 6 them sep­ar­ate them and res­ize them , they will be a slide show dur­ing party, the machine i bought to play his old 78’s has a bit miss­ing and i dont know if i have mis­laid it of if it wasn’t in the box.

the leaves are fall­ing from the trees , i had hoped they would last till the end of the month till after the party. i am tak­ing in the hanging bas­kets at night in the hope of pre­serving them till them..

ah well back to the photo scanning

he says he wants to watch tele­vi­sion tonight, we rarely watch but Jane Hor­ricks is on and we like her. so i have to bring a telly in here to the bed­room, my com­puter is sup­posed to be a telly but it says there is no signal.grrrr. a pity as its screen is superb.

ok this time back to the scanning.….he thinks i am play­ing com­puter games

this is a long ver­sion of the one i sent to the biggest blog in his­tory where we are all being recor­ded for posterity.……however long that may be.

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laptop broke down 2 days ago.…..so i have moved main com­puter into bed­room and con­nec­ted it to the new hub, which refused to work for ages say­ing the wire­less key was wrong even though it is prin­ted clearly on the hub.working now though but for how long.

he upset today hav­ing been reminded of the death of his brother on this day in 1965 and hear­ing of the death of a friend yes­ter­day and the news that Nic and Chris are mov­ing south on 11^th Nov instead of 24^th Nov.

today i must shop as we ran out of food two days ago and have eaten the emer­gency supplies.

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mean­while it is now Tues­day and there is still day­light (and cold air) com­ing in round the doors because they hadn’t read their work­sheet and were about to fin­ish it off com­pletely dif­fer­ently to what i have asked and am expec­ted to pay for.

there are now only 17 days to the party and we still have no proper kit­chen floor cov­er­ing or floor cov­er­ing in the spare room.

the upstairs flat’s new bath­room sprung a leak so they have their floor up as well.….……it is going to be some party.

Nic and Chris have sold their house up here and bought one down in Chip­pen­ham. One gets used to very small boys in the house every week. it is going to be very quiet.

Ancient parent’s equally ancient din­ing table is going to have a new life as our garden table. that saves me wor­ry­ing what to do with it.Dave says he will have the flat cleared of junk by fri­day, we shall see.

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the win­dows are bet­ter than i ima­gined. they com­pletely change the feel of the whole house. It seems more sunny and elegant.

i am exhausted. cleared so much from gar­age and garden but it is worth it.…..men came and emp­tied my skip as fast as i filled it, at least they asked first, they were after metal. i was delighted because that means it will be prop­erly recycled instead of landfill.

basil has had me clear­ing out the cup­boards and draw­ers in the bed­room to dis­tract him from the pain in his legs.….….now the draw­ers are empty and there are little piles of things all over the floor.

Toyota gave me a bottle of cham­pagne yes­ter­day as a thank you for co-operating in their Prius recall.….…..as if i would not get some­thing done that might save my and other people’s lives. it was 2 weeks after their registered let­ter telling me that the steer­ing column might crack caus­ing sud­den loss of steering.….……what would have happened leg­ally if i had driven the car and caused an acci­dent , they had warned me so leg­ally would i be responsible.….….yes

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There is now a large hole in the wall, i do hope they put the french win­dows in soon.

i have cleared all the rubble from the garden and filled a skip with all my rub­bish, my hands will never be clean again, i shall try steam­ing them later as even bleach wouldn’t work. just made them more sore.

cere­mo­ni­ally threw some cush­ions on the skip that i saw in pho­tos that Basil was look­ing at of his old house 40 years ago. the table lamps will go soon and a lot of other things that his ex wife cast off when she cast him off. china.….….cutlery.….…furniture.….…i am fed up with it we have been mar­ried 20 years i think it is time to have my own choice not his ex wifes fath­ers idea of nice.….….….i have much bet­ter taste any­way, neuvo poor as opposed to neuvo riche. ( can’t spell new in French, ) well why should dys­lexia stick to only one language

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