Darn it

Friday October 31, 2008

A steady stream of deliveries kept us at home this morning.  A new shower fitting, plumbing supplies, and a new pressure washer machine.  So it was late before we sailed off to Sainsbury’s.

“I think I can manage this trip on my own in future,” I said.  ”So you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“Good.  I’m going to be busy next week.”

“You’re busy every week.”

“I do try.”

“Don’t think it’s not appreciated.  Just remember that old all work and no play rule, though.  I don’t want you going all dull on me.  And you promised me a trip to Porthcawl.  And St Fagan’s.  And Tenby…”

Today, it had to be Sainsbury’s or nothing.  The sun glinted on the decks and rigging of the boats in the marina, old folks grumbled their way through to the restaurant, and kidlets had the most enormous fun, dressed in Hallowe’en costumes and running about frightening miserable old fogeys in the aisles.  It’s impossible not to smile.

I made the mistake of having roast beef for my lunch.  Average canteen quality, at best, and not too hot.  I’d have done better to stick to my normal instincts and gone for the all-day breakfast brunch.  Or a jacket potato.  Graham had stinging hot macaroni cheese and chips.  I was a little jealous but couldn’t act on it by stealing chips because I need to concentrate when eating drippy food–too much thin gravy–now that my tummy tends to obtrude over the table edge.

We got the job done and returned home mid-afternoon to find a very angry Dolly waiting for us in the hall again.  She really does not approve of these lengthy daily absences, and makes us aware of her feelings.

“It’s alright, Dolly,” I said.  ”The weekend’s on us now and we’ll do our best to stay home.”

Hey ho.  Another day done.  And I’ve just now realised that no Hallowe’en kidlets have appeared this evening, demanding treats.  I’m going to have to eat all that chocolate myself.  Darn it.

Never mind the hat, where’s the humour?

Thursday October 30, 2008

Much warmer today, relatively.  I still needed a wooly under-jacket but at least it was warm enough to venture out.

Graham needed a trip to the dump, you see, to dispose of a mountain of flattened cardboard boxes before it grew too large to get in the car.  There’ll be one more mainly cardboard trip before we’re finished, I’m told, and then it’ll be down to routine trips once a month, perhaps, until we’re fully established.  And until we get to clearing the back garden, but that’s another story entirely.

The dump here, at Briton Ferry, is at first sight larger and better laid out than the one in Bridgwater.  It’s dirty, however, and poorly maintained, and peopled by idle workers who lean on railings and bins, bellowing instructions at the customers.  Now and again, for the sake of appearances, they actually heave themselves up and go walkabout, to pick up some juicy item from the trash perhaps, but mainly they just stand around shouting at customers.

Do I give the impression of not being, well, impressed.  Good.  I go out of my way to hand out praise for good service, it’s only right I should do so when the service is bad to non-existent.  For goodness’ sake, there ought to be a bloke with a yard-brush in such places so that you don’t have to wade ankle deep through other people’s rubbish to get to the bins.

Anyway.

From thence to Neath, where I needed a can of baked beans to go with our lunchtime pasties.  At least, that’s what I thought I wanted.  Seems I’d not paid close enough attention to the small print however.  See, you have to pay for parking at the Morrison’s car park, getting a refund when you present the ticket at the checkout.  But.  You have to spend £5 or more to qualify for a refund.

This is outrageous.  Instead of just the one can, I bought a four-pack, and two packs of our favourite spaghetti, a pack of table salt, and two packs of Hallowe’en chocolate bars, having been warned that the local grandparents troupe their kidlets round American style from house to house.  I looked at the Hallowe’en treats and rejected them;  if no kidlets turn up I’ll be condemned to eat the unwanted stuff myself and there’s no way I could consume that junk.  So I got a pack each of Mars and Topic, adult size and adult recipe.  I can probably manage to add them to my waistline without too much harm.

I got my refund, though.  And there was me thinking that conspicuous consumption had gone out of favour.

I don’t rate the imported Hallowe’en holiday, though I admit that Guy Fawke’s is even more undesirable.  We are interested to see the difference between the Bridgwater take on these ‘festivals’ and that here in Cilffriw.  Judging by the absence of kidlets during the week and the behaviour of the grand children who turn up at weekends on visits, we’re going to be favourably impressed.  That’d be worth a few chocolate bars.

While I was in Morrison’s, Graham walked next door to the DIY store to pick up a length of copper tube for his shower plumbing job at the weekend.  The shower fitting is coming from Amazon, and the other fixings from Screwfix.  Buying a single quarter-length piece of copper tube online is not economic, even allowing for the DIY store markup.

Home without incident, to find Dolly stamping her impatience on the hall floor, demanding to know where we’ve been and if these constant disappearances are essential.

“Don’t worry, Dolly,” I said.  ”We’re working hard to achieve a return of normality, never fear.”

Graham, overhearing, said that I’m mad, but he’s always saying that.

Oh, yes.  Yesterday’s photo of me slumped in my office chair, with Dolly on my lap, gave rise to a gentle joshing about the ‘horn’ showing by my head.  I hadn’t spotted it but then I didn’t take the picture.  It may look like it but it’s not a horn.  Instead, it’s this:

 

This is not a horn

 It could have been a horn, though.  I’ll give you that.

So then.  I’m beginning to feel a lot better now, adjusting and picking up the shattered fragments of my good humour from whence they fell.  Turning back into ex-pat mode is bound to upset a chap, just a little. Isn’t it?

Cold enough

Wednesday October 29, 2008

With a whoosh reminiscent of the freezing scenes in The Day After Tomorrow a blast of Arctic air has descended upon the Kingdom.  It’s been cold.  Joint freezingly, teeth achingly, nose tingely cold.

Graham put several layers on and went to work in the unheated garage, setting up shelving and such.  He gave up at lunch time, with considerable gratitude, and has been wise enough to stay indoors ever since.

Dolly and I exchanged looks early on this morning when the sun went in and the planet darkened about us, and settled down for a lovely long, lazy day, snuggling together as much as we could decently manage.

 

 

Dolly and me, snug as snug

 

Work on the house is proceeding on several fronts but in one crucial particular has ground to a temporary halt–IKEA have let us down on delivery of the new living room storage furniture, adding another nine days to the wait.  Until this item is delivered and installed we can’t get to grips with the great pile of cardboard boxes in the living room and second bedroom, and my study, with hifi, books and decorative stuff waiting to be unpacked, displayed and stowed.  Even the pictures are still languishing, waiting for our rooms to adopt a more civilised state before we decide which is to be hung, and where.

As we’ve taken a few steps forward we’ve been obliged to take a largish one back, and to admit that the shower that came with the house is beyond sensible repair.  We’ve ordered a new one.  Another item on Graham’s list.

All in all, though, we’re doing awfully well.  Apart from today, that is, which Dolly and I declared to be a snow day.  Not that we had any actual snow down here in our little valley, but it was cold enough.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Tuesday October 28, 2008

The whole day at home so I waded into the pile of correspondence, making phone calls, web site visits, and writing letters to inform Tom, Dick and Harry that we’ve moved.  By lunch time the pile was finished and filed away and I’d started on the job of working through the househole files one by one.

“How’re you doing?” Graham asked when he came down from the loft where he’d been fixing insulation.

“Fine.  I’m almost done.  When you hear me talking to the TV licence people you’ll know I’ve finished.”

And I am, too.  Almost finished, that is.  All the important changes done, and it’s less than a fortnight since we moved in.  With luck and a following wind I’ll have finished the job tomorrow, though Graham tells me he may be ready to take another car load of flattened cardboard to the dump in the morning.

The house is becoming civilised, too, not least as the fabric of the place–thick brick, block and concrete–warms through after a long time with little or no heating.  More and more stuff has disappeared into storage furniture and cupboards, and when the new living room Besta storage arrives next Tuesday the last of the cardboard boxes will be unpacked, their contents stowed, and pots and pictures fixed in place.  It’ll not be long before bare walls are covered.

“And then you’ll rip it all down room by room so’s you can paint walls and woodwork, I suppose,” I said.

“Well of course.  And new carpets.  What would you expect?”

“Nothing more.  Nothing less.”

You wouldn’t believe how much

Monday October 27, 2008

I feel much better now.  Continuing my ceaseless search for a decent supermarket, today we went to Sainsbury’s at Quay Parade, overlooking the marina on the River Tawe in Swansea:

 

Birds eye view of our new supermarket

 You will have to forgive my excitement and pleasure over such a mundane thing as a really good supermarket, to be known in future as Sainsbury’s, but those who know me will know how important it is for me to have somewhere decent, civilised and affordable I can visit for provisioning.  I really need somewhere where all my needs are met under one roof;  as it is, this one is too large for me to walk around completely without a rest at a couple of points along the way.  Fortunately, it has a really good coffee shop-cum-restaurant, shown in the picture as the circular bit stuck on the right-hand side of the building, where you can sit with a completely acceptable cup of espresso to rejuvenate the spirits while the legs recover from the strain.

“This is like coming home after the hell that is Tesco’s,” I said.

“You can say that again,” Graham said.

“No, once is quite enough.  We don’t want our supermarket to get ideas above its station.”

So, round we went, filling our medium-size trolley with all the food and drink we shall need for the next five or six days, along with a small boost to my store-cupboard.  There’s no actual need to go back until Saturday, but I’ll make it on Friday, aiming to avoid the weekend crush.

Not that there’s likely to be a crush.  It was busy today, but wide aisles made it seem quiet and civilised.

On the way home I remarked that I felt much better.

“How do you mean better?”

“Oh, in the way that a legal alien in New York might feel when he discovers a reliable source of Cooper’s Traditional English Marmalade.”

“Ah.  That kind of better.  Does it make you feel happier, though?”

“You wouldn’t believe how much.”

Is it wine time yet?

Sunday October 26, 2008

I took today off.  It was no great problem–Graham had things he wanted to do indoors and the WWW (Wet Welsh Weekend) came in on time and under low, low cloud.  If it’d been any lower we’d have been looking down on it.

I had a little wander around the dripping wet garden this morning, waterproof held out over my head like a giant plastic cap, but apart from that I’ve stayed indoors, dry and warmish.  I say ‘warmish’ because we’re keeping this house a little cooler than the last to avoid horrendous bills for winter heating.

And now, just a couple of minutes short of 18:00, and dark because the clocks changed in the small hours, taking an hour off the evening and pasting it on the morning, I’m ready to flop in front of the TV until dinner time.  Very shortly now my routine evening call out will start up:  ”Is it wine time yet?”

Everyone will want one

Saturday October 25, 2008

Graham needed some new fixings so’s he can apply the new mirrored bathroom cabinets to the walls here.  He did explain the mechanics and the technology of it, talking of the constructional difference between the solid block walls we have here and the plaster-board and glue walls we had in Bridgwater but the sense of it all flowed over my head.

“I’m sure you know what you’re talking about,” I said.  ”Heaven knows you’ve demonstrated it often enough over the years.  But to me it’s a foreign language.”

“OK,” he said.  ”Just so long as we can go over to the DIY store in Neath.”

“Well of course we can.  When?”

“Now?”

And so it was that we motored into the carpark by the Morrison’s supermarket and slid neatly into the only vacant disabled driver’s slot.  A great Saturday morning racket was going on with strangely-clad young people cavorting to what may have been music several amplifications before but which by that time was a lot closer to modern demolition methodology.  Somewhere in the mix, coming between a planet-busting thumpy base and a window-shattering screech of electronic keyboard, there was a voice track.  Least-ways, it was most probably a voice track, and the voice was most probably singing.  You could have fooled me.

“Is this the Song that this is supposed to be the Land of?” I asked, theatrically.

“Funny bugger,” Graham said, at least as offended by the rackets as I was.  As was just about everyone in view, judging by the screwed up faces and the hands pressed protectively to ears.

Graham strode off to the DIY store next door, leaving me to tackle the supermarket.  It’s not a bad supermarket, really, not when you make allowance for it being a busy Saturday and for it being rattled by over-amplified thumping music, but it’s not really to my taste.  Useful, sure, but a few pegs below what I’ve been accustomed to these past few years.

Joining me in the wine aisle where I’d just picked up three bottles of ‘good French dry white’, he promised to help me navigate over to Swansea on my next shop so that I can see what the Sainsbury’s is like.

Then, because I needed to sit down, we had a cup of coffee and a strangely constituted yet oddly delicious Danish pastry.  Rhubarb and custard, would you believe.  Somehow I don’t associate rhubarb with Denmark.

“What now?” I asked. 

“Home,” he said.

As we drove down the slope from the main Cilffriw road into our quiet little cul-de-sac I remarked that it was good, that it felt like home, and that that feels as good as it gets.

“You’re right,”  Graham said.

“Of course I’m right.  I’m a poet.”

“Well, don’t say it too loud or everyone will want one.”

The little wood across the road

Friday October 24, 2008

To Ikea in Cardiff today, on a day that started out dull and dreary but ended sunny and warm.  The trip is some 41 miles though it seems longer–driving on motorways in Britain gets duller and duller as the volume of traffic increases.

For whatever reason I felt sour and jaded.  No, the reason is obvious, I’m tired to the bone and any journey is a battle just now, with my joints and sinews seemingly determined to beat me down.  I’m certain it’s no more than tiredness and the after-effects of the stress of moving house so I’m not too worried about it all.

The coming weekend will give me a chance to recharge.  I have to shop tomorrow for the two days and, with Graham needing to go to a big DIY store, the chance presents itself to shop in Morrison’s, Neath, for the first time.  I’m having a bit of an internal battle on supermarket choice just now.  I hate to say it, and I really never expected it, but I miss Sainsbury’s.  Neither Tesco’s satisfy me, not even the giant one at Llansamlett;  it’s not just about quantity, quality is important, too.  The nearest Sainsbury’s is in Swansea, some nine miles away.  It may be that I shall try the journey before deciding finally which shop will get my custom.

Gosh but I was glad to get home, though.  Sure, a trip to IKEA is always fun, and I love the breakfast, but it was so good to pull up on our driveway, take a deep lungful of good sweet air, and feel that I am home at last.  The end of the road, just two houses away from our driveway, joins onto a good-sized piece of wild woodland, with oak, birch and ash.

One giant oak is known to the local kids as the Magic Faraway Tree and, looking at it, I can see why.  It has a magnificent spread and even now, in the early autumn, its leaves make a dark, mysterious world I’d love to enter just so soon as my pesky legs will take me.  Closer to me, though, there is a lovely stand of silver birch, apparently self-seeded from a giant parent that was lost in a great storm some years back.  Beautiful, standing tall, a filmy cover of leaves against a sunny sky.  Hard to think of a better sight than this to straighten a bent back.  Not even the lamp-post spoils the picture for me, nor the magic of the little wood.  After all, even the dark forest in Narnia had its lamp-post.

 

Silver birches

It’s good to be needed

Thursday October 23, 2008

Rather a horrid, dark, damp and drizzly day.  One which matched my physical spirits;  while my soul soars, my poor old body is lagging behind.

“I feel like I should curl up under the covers and stay here for a week,” I said when my morning call appeared, bearing hot coffee.

“Sorry.  You can’t do that.  Next week, perhaps, but I need you this week.”

“Oh.  Well, it’s good to be needed.”

Once I’d got through the first coffee barrier I was needed to help carry four Billy bookcases up from their temporary home in the garage to fill the wall in bedroom three where the inherited rubbish bedroom furniture had stood.  Then I was needed for chauffeur duties.  Then I was needed for lunch-making duties.  And now, free, as the dark day yields to a dark night, I’m finding my own ‘needed for’ tasks before I’m needed to cook dinner.

It’s good to be needed.

The red recliner

THE RED RECLINER

lounging, I depend
on a broken recliner

the rain means
no chickens
glaze my path

though it is still
indisputably red

–John Bailey
  October 2008, Wales