Are we nearly there yet?

When I was a kid, we had a pink bathroom: pink bath, toilet and basin, pink tiles, pink bath mat, pedestal mat and toilet seat cover - and, for a long time, a pink carpet. It had a towel rail over the radiator, and our four pink towels hung on it, identical but neatly initialled by my mum -T, D, J, P - and always in the same order, so you would never use the wrong one. 

I used them all. I would get out of the bath and wrap my towel round my middle, then another round my shoulders, one round my head and the last one round my knees and feet so I was basically more towel than human. Then I would lean against the radiator, and think. Sometimes I would read. But I loved it in there, in the towels, with a hot back, with the door locked. We had to make our own fun etc. 

And my love of a good bath has never left me, nor of a good towel. By the time I left home bath sheets were a thing, and I still have the two I went off to university with. I own other towels, but I always default to these. These days I don't have a hot radiator to lean against, and it is one of the disappointments of eco-home living: no towel scorch. But on the bright side I get a very hot bath any time I want one, and I wrap myself in my bath sheet for a bit while I brush my teeth, and then fold it onto the pillow and lie on the bed to steam gently. 

So, baths. Baths are one of the things getting me through. At least one a day, and quite often two. Morning baths have Badedas in them and the main light on, night time baths have something by Kniepp or Neals Yard and have the little light on. We've painted the room dark blue. It's good. 

We did Dry January (madness, I know, but December was very wet, what with the not being able to travel to Oxford as planned and only actually realising this wasn't possible the day before we were supposed to go, that was all a bit shit, especially as we'd eaten everything in the fridge). The evening bath first made a regular appearance then, as did Yoga with Adriene. We did that every single day: yoga, dinner, Netflix, bath, bed, or sometimes yoga, bath, dinner, Netflix, bed, for a change. I had wild insomnia to start with, but it's fair to say my body has remembered how to sleep. What it's struggling with is remembering how to wake up. 

There are also books. I lost the ability to read books for about a year after my mum died. It felt extremely weird at the time, as I am generally a voracious reader. But I just couldn't make the space, even though space is what I really needed. It came back, the ability, but then it went again when M got cancer and I got made redundant and our next door neighbour died in a way that seemed to require us all to be a part of it. I lost more than the ability to read books that summer. And recovery takes time. 

During Lockdown 1 I couldn't read much (well, I read all the time, but mostly in 280 character bursts)... too much bandwidth needed to just try and make sense of the world. But by Lockdown 3 I think I'd realised that that is one of the jobs that literature does. There's nothing new under the sun, not really. Or at least no new feelings. Find the right book, and you will feel seen. 

I had a wonderful time with Convenience Store Woman -- I don't yearn to work in a convenience store but I do spend a lot of time totally baffled by people around me (#notallpeople) and I love how she works out that okay, this is how you're supposed to do it, but also entertains murderous thoughts. But I had an even better time with Housekeeping -- I got fully lost in it, a world where honestly, why would you do the things you just can't see the point of doing? It all ends in the lake anyway. I'm now reading Ducks, Newburyport, which is a full thousand pages long and I've enormously enjoyed the 150 or so I've got through so far, so I think it's safe to say I'm back in the reading game. For now at least. 

I had a lovely lockdown birthday, with a Thai meal kit from Dishpatch, which was *amazing* (also vegan, don't tell anyone), and my beloved bought me a big glass vase, into which I put flowers that arrive every month. We've got a new season of Unforgotten, we're eating as well as two people in rural Lancashire can, and we've got the broad beans in. I've started listening to Radio 3, which has surprised no one more than me, though I do remember saying years ago that there was time for classical music in my old age. I said the same about Europe though, and look what happened there. 

But it all feels very... holding pattern. I've got my first vaccine dose booked, 21 million of my fellow citizens have already had theirs, we should be landing soon, yes? 

I don't know how it's going to feel when we do, this is my current worry. I am pretty misanthropic at the best of times (though wildly fond of many people, obvs), what will it be like when we can go places? I haven't been on a bus or a train for over a year now. I've been to Lancaster maybe three times, not counting the click and collect spot in the Sainsbury's car park. I literally can't imagine going to London. On the one hand I desperately want to, but on the other, I have squirreled away into my house and my tiny list of places I go, and ... it's actually fine? 

I do realise that I am absurdly lucky on the housing front (though more on Lockdown Ecoville soon, it's making me crazy), and on the work front, and on the relationship front, and on the regularly visiting cat front -- and I am very much in need of a haircut and in want of a swimming pool, but we don't actually *have* to go anywhere, you know? When I was a teenager I met a man in Lytham who'd never been further than Preston. He was probably in his 50s, he wasn't planning to change that situation. All those people who don't have passports, even now. Imagine never having left the country. Thinking this is it. 

But I have left the country, of course. I have a mind to travel in. Maybe that's the difference. I have excellent pyjamas and a big imagination, I can go anywhere. But we just booked a weekend at Center Parcs (postponed significant birthday celebration for one of M's children) in June, and it feels absolutely momentous. Center Parcs! I am not sure this year is going to be any less weird than last year, frankly. We need to be easy on ourselves. Although my god, that first pint of real ale is going to be good. 

joella

Just another sister on lockdown

Bread (not pictured) and roses, bread and roses

Just before this year's Significant Birthday, I did a little series of This Much I Know style musings on Facebook. I enjoyed it: the taking stock, the reflecting on things from the perspective of middle age. I like to think I don't feel that different to the way I did 30 years ago, when Young Joella was at her most glorious, but I must. I absolutely have to be a fully-fledged adult by now. I belong to the generation that's in charge here, terrifying as it sounds. 

But whatever any of us thought we knew has taken some punishment in the last 150 days, hey. And there's been no shortage of white middle class takes. Is there ever? But you know the drill: if you don't want mine, you really don't have to read it. Back buttons are available.

Schrodinger's Dad 
This was the big one. The big fella. Sometime in late April, it's a little blurry now, my actually quite beloved dad, my grumpy, stubborn, 20th century, pre-Israel Israeli, principled, heartbroken, sometimes inappropriate, reluctantly-but-in-the-face-of-incontrovertible-evidence evolving dad, was blue-lighted to hospital for the second time in a month. The first time, it was with a recurrence of the thing that keeps coming for him that no one has yet been able to identify. The second time, it was with the Covid-19 that he picked up the first time. I won't lie, I thought he was a goner, that it had finally come to, as he would say, Goodnight Vienna.

I know I am so far from the only person who went through this, and I know that the NHS were doing their absolute valiant best, unlike some people we could mention, but it was terrifying and awful. There were days and nights, long days and longer nights, where I just didn't know whether he was coming, going, or already gone. I couldn't go and see him, he wasn't well enough to call, there was a mega spendy phone number that went to his bedside, but they kept moving him around, so the number kept changing, and when it rang out I didn't know if he wasn't picking up, or someone else's dad wasn't picking up, or it was just ringing into the void. The ward asked for one person to call each day, morning and evening, so they weren't overwhelmed, and one day it was me and I rang in the morning and the person who answered said 'he's asleep'. 'How is he, do you think?' 'Well, he refused his breakfast'.

Two things I now know that I didn't know then: first, he'd lost his sense of smell, so food wasn't that interesting to him, but more importantly, he's vegetarian, and they kept bringing him meat. In those circumstances, refusing breakfast seems reasonable, but at the time, I thought, that's it, he's checking out. The one thing we could do was send messages online, and every morning I typed a little message into a web form, trying to say what I needed to say, and hoped that somehow it would get to him.

He survived, though is yet to fully recover, and I have since been to visit a few times. But there was some point in the 10 days or so he was out of reach where M observed that he was effectively shut in a box with a deadly virus, and until someone opened it we had no idea whether he was alive or dead. I grew that little shell around me that I remember from my mum's terminal illness. Not very much could reach me, but what could absolutely tore me apart.

He's back at Caffe Nero now, and sporting quite the beard. A couple of weeks ago, I was in his kitchen frying up some garlic for pasta puttanesca and he said 'wow, that smells great!'. I looked at him and grinned, and he said 'my god, I can smell!' He dodged the bullet that's now hit the larger part of a million people. May his luck continue to hold.

Reassessing the familiar 
I knew about the obvious key workers. My mum was a nurse. My dad worked in local government. My best friend is from a family of teachers. I have spent most of my own working life in the third sector, but many of the same values hold. It's not about you, it's about everyone. Nobody is ok till everybody is ok. Human rights apply to all humans. Pay your taxes. Vaccinate your children. Vote for progressive government. Check your privilege. Don't be evil.

But I did not fully recognise how reliant we are on the delivery drivers, the corner shops, the butchers, the bakers and the people who keep the lights on. Andy the fish man comes here on a Tuesday. He disappeared for three weeks because Fleetwood fish market closed for physical distancing adjustments. When he came back I nearly cried with happiness. In the deepest lockdown, the appearance of his van was one of the major events of the week. You can't outsource eating. We have to remember that. I can't even go there on the care worker front, I'm still too angry and sad. PAY ALL THESE PEOPLE PROPERLY. THIS IS THE REAL WORK. (Also: monkfish curry is the best).

Inequality begins at home. 
If we're going to have more pandemics, and I imagine we probably are, we need homes we can bear to stay at home in. I'm Generation X, and, broadly speaking, we got a fair deal on the housing front. I hadn't properly realised how precarious this situation is for millennials and Gen Z, and how badly and insecurely so many people are housed. Which is to say, I knew housing was fucked, but I didn't know how fucked. I learnt back in the dying days of Thatcherism that this is a problem the 'market' will never, ever solve. You want to house your citizens decently, you have to invest public money in it. May we finally learn this lesson. May we finally vote accordingly.

Regression
Son of a gun, holy cow. Turns out we need to look after ourselves. There were the sourdough waves, the crafting waves, the Zooming all evening after Zooming all day waves, the allotted hour of exercise waves, but all that passed and we were still here, looking at the walls, wondering how to climb them. And like many people, I fell back on familiar comforts.

A lot of this was around food, and I think this was also linked to where it came from. We do have food available here in Ecoville, and the team who source it bust a gut to keep it coming in, but it is very much at the wholefoods end of things, and I found that I did not want it, even more than I usually find that I do not want it. What I wanted was pie. Fish fingers. Spaghetti hoops. Cheese and pickle toasties. Tuna mayo jacket potatoes. Ham, egg and chips. Instant noodles. There wasn't a supermarket delivery slot for love nor money, and I did not want to go into town.

So I developed a whole new opportunistic way of shopping, which was a mixture of watching the Abel & Cole website like a hawk (and huge props to them for bringing us what they could bring us every single week), and buying stuff in the local villages. I can now tell you what the Halton shop at the top has (Philadelphia! Cream! Koka noodles! Limes! Chillies!) vs the Caton Co-op (Prawns! Organic wine! Refried beans! Parmesan! Parsley!) vs the Bolton le Sands Spar (Locally made pies! Barmcakes! Linguine! Salted pistachios!).

As is the way in this house, I do the sourcing and M does the cooking. So I have been appearing through the door with all kinds of things, and he has dutifully been creating glorious dinners from them. Special mention to the miso ramens topped with fish fingers (aka cheat's tempura), the tuna steaks with chips and creative salad (aka whatever we have to shred), the many and varied frittatas and omelettes (thanks to my well-connected neighbour S, we have been well supplied with local eggs throughout), the (British*) corned beef hash - now just referred to as CBH - and the absolute standby sausage and sardine pastas (these are two pastas, not one, we're not monsters). We have eaten like kings, if the kings had been teenagers in the 80s. We're a bit fatter, but I think everyone is at this point, so that's fine. Who's even looking.

Transgression
Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in an old midnight choir, I have tried, in my way, to be eco. I have taken this a lot further than many people, to the extent that I could probably give you a list, but I won't, because then I'd sound smug, or defensive, or both, and that's not where I want to go with this. Where I want to go with this is that we all have our limits, in the places where we have a choice, and a whole myriad of factors affect those limits, as well as those choices.

When it all went tits with the Covid, a lot of those limits and those choices became really exposed, and I had a kind of dual experience of it. On the one hand there was the mainstream realisation that we are interdependent beings. Supply chains fail if even one of their links doesn't work. I had a higher than average awareness of this, partly because I'm quite old and I remember the days before you could think oh, I'd like x, and within minutes x appears in your life, as if by magic. And partly because I've spent a bit of time at the other end of those supply chains, on farms in developing countries, with small producers, with the people who don't get prioritised for anything, basically. We mostly don't know we're born, the water comes out of the taps, the lights stay on, and the shops have stuff in them. The difference between that happening and not happening is extremely finely balanced. The more of us who understand this, and make our choices accordingly, the better, and I have noticed the increasing awareness of this. Might we come out of this... better? (I'm not hugely hopeful, but there have been moments). The deep satisfaction that can come from scoring macaroni in a time of scarcity... I think, for a time there, we all appreciated that we should not take this for granted.

On the other, there was the choices that are supported here in Ecoville. I don't think we've had a good war. It's admittedly pretty challenging when you've deliberately designed a set up that relies on sharing facilities (washing machines, cars, bins, play spaces, stores, communal areas) and suddenly all of them are danger zones. There's been a lot of helping each other out, as you might expect. But as a collective, as a whole, we have not, in many instances, opened our minds to new possibilities, or extended each other generosity. In fact, we managed to weaponise the word 'generosity' a while back, which would be impressive if it weren't so depressing. 

I have instead sensed something of a hardening. The lines that have hardened are not a great surprise, maybe - I'm going to avoid the gory details, but we've had the Tinned Fish Wars, the Don't Tell Us What To Do Wars, and the Trampoline Wars. I mean, we're all a bit broken. Who can say they're at their best in "these times"? And I do, honestly, try and access my empathy (as I imagine others do too, at least those who've done even the tiniest bit of therapy) but then I boing up against its limits and ping off in the other direction. I guess you could say this is a counterpose, if the pandemic were a yoga class, which it in no way is, but we can try. 

The first sign was the washing up. I hate washing up, and we do have a dishwasher, but three meals a day at home, every day, there's stuff that needs dealing with. We ran out of washing up liquid. What's supposed to happen is you take your bottle down the street and refill it from a giant vat of Ecover. This can take a while, it's pretty viscous, but I have been dutifully doing it. And I thought no. Fuck this. I want proper washing up liquid. And I went out and bought a bottle of Fairy Eucalyptus Anti-Bacterial. Oh, the joy those bubbles brought me. I blew the little ones round the kitchen, and made giant ones with my hands. I poured it into running hot water like a cocktail waiter with a bottle of Galliano. 

I was a bit unstoppable after that. Dettol wipes. Tesco Click and Collect, feat. hash browns. Air freighted roses from Sainsbury's (see above. Fairtrade, of course, I'm not a monster). Giant bars of Cadbury's Dairy Milk. Even (and I do feel bad about this, just not bad enough) a strimmer, a whole strimmer, just for my allotment, because the communal strimmer battery went missing and I could. not. be. arsed. waiting for it to be found. So I bought a strimmer. Off Amazon.

I know these decisions are taking me in the wrong direction. We need to be doing less of this, and I have been doing more. I'm still trying to fathom why, as I'm fairly sure it's a slippery slope between this kind of thing and refusing to wear a mask because yada yada freedom. (I am not refusing to wear a mask, of course. I'm not a monster). I suspect it might be actually quite linked to the regression thing. I try and make principled choices, but actually I don't always find that easy. You have to work at it, all of the time. And when you take a kicking for not being principled *enough* (I'm not expecting medals, just not "feedback"), and then there's a *pandemic*, I think what happens is a little switch flips. I have, these last few months, rediscovered the deeeeep pleasure of driving fast, on my own, windows open, loud music playing. I thought those days were long behind me. Turns out not. Quite tempted to make a roll up at the traffic lights singing along to I Am The Resurrection, go full 90s.

Anger. 
If you're not angry, you're not paying attention. I started a 21 day Deepak Chopra abundance meditation thing that one of my lovely Australian half-aunts was hosting, because I thought it might do me some good. But I dropped out from fury on day... 4? Not now, Deepak, I thought. People are dying fully preventable deaths. I could say more about the anger (I could always say more about the anger) but actually, I read this on the LRB blog a long three months ago now and I can't top it. It's really very good.

And now what? 
I work with futurists, and the futurists are busy as hell. This has been like a fracture in time, a deep but sharp shifting of the tectonic plates. We have none of us any certainty about what comes next, and if we do, we're deluding ourselves. So much possibility has been revealed, as has so much vulnerability. Many of us have had the opportunity to think deeply about what really matters, and some of us have taken it. The bare brick of the structural inequalities in our world has been exposed in a way that I have never experienced before - at least, not in the country I live in. 

We could adapt -- we've had a sense of how fast things can change when the political will is there. But I am not sure that we will. We present as a democracy, and heaven knows it could be worse, but our electoral system is so unfit for its 21st century purpose that we have somehow ended up being led by amoral narcissists advised by monsters, and we might quite possibly be fucked. I watch the signals that my colleagues produce that indicate which trajectory we may be on... zero sum game competition for limited resources? trading privacy for access to goods and services? a radically different, regenerative future? something else? Who will decide? 

It's been an interesting time for those of us who straddle various divides, or, to use the new parlance, inhabit several bubbles. Not sure I'd wish these times on anyone, but they aren't boring. There is possibility, for those who are able (and allowed) to lift their heads up high enough to see it. There is a lot of bleakness for those who aren't or can't. I don't know where to put myself really. But imma stashing some tins of sardines, just in case.

joella

*This isn't a Brexity thing, it's a rainforest thing

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 3. House move real time evaluation and learning points

What went well?

1. We sold the house. Ultimately, mission accomplished.

2. We sold the house to People A Bit Like Us. This is advisable, because (after the sale is agreed, at any rate) it means you can talk to them directly rather than do everything via estate agents, thus avoiding things becoming unnecessarily formal and oppositional. I'm not sure how you engineer this, except by leaving your art on the walls and your books on the bookshelves. This will put off quite a lot of people who are Not Much Like You. We felt our buyers were people we could trust, so much so that we gave them keys and let them knock a wall down before the sale was completed. Don't tell my dad, he'll have kittens.

3. We chose estate agents we could talk to. This was an unscientific process, led by me and based on gut instinct and gut prejudice (and not on cost). They're never going to be your mates, but you need not to hate them.

4. We chose a solicitor we could talk to, and our estate agents could talk to. This was based on a personal recommendation from a friend who is also a solicitor. Not the cheapest in town, but this is not an area where you want to focus on saving £100. Trust me. Even my dad liked her, and he's very hard to impress.

5. We gave quite a lot of stuff away to family and friends, and we gave even more stuff to Oxfam. We were reasonably organised about this and I look forward to learning how much our stuff sold for, thanks to the Tag Your Bag scheme.

6. Our timing was fortuitous and our friendships strong: the bungalow previously occupied by ex-housemate S, her Young Man, Tungsten and Particle was in a limbo state, and they cleaned the carpet, got the painters in and agreed to let us live in it in exchange for very modest rent, a bit of babysitting and some random gardening. Up north, fellow co-housers D and P offered us a part-time sublet of Halton Mansions, so we go from one-home city dwellers to two-home villagers at a stroke. Amazing. But maybe also karma - back in OX4, there were many people who lodged with us for a few weeks, a few months, a year because they needed a place for a while. We always felt good about being able to do that, but it's as important to be able to accept kindness as to offer it, and sometimes harder. However you look at it though, we feel pretty lucky.

7. We used a professional removals company. Those guys can shift stuff. I have moved myself, I have moved with man-with-van, and this was in a whole different league. This is the way to move house, people. We did our own packing, but if I could have afforded it I might have got them to do that part as well.

8. When it came to it, we were ready. I don't mean prepared, we weren't prepared (see What didn't go well). But in our waters, we were ready. It was time -- though I didn't realise that until afterwards.

What didn't go well?

1. I went to the Co-op last thing the night before the move to get cash to tip the removal men. The cash machine wasn't working so I bought a bottle of wine so I could get cash back. Then we drank the bottle of wine.

2. Partly as a consequence, the day of the move itself was 12 hours of hell. This was also because we were in no sense prepared: we'd been packing for weeks, but there was still stuff lying around in every single room in the house. The more we frantically threw things in boxes, the more stuff there still seemed to be lying on the floor.

3. Virgin Media cut our land line off a week early. Then they said they hadn't, but you know what, they had. Here's the short (and slightly redacted) version, written to the @virginmedia team when we finally got some joined up attention via Twitter -- surely the best thing EVER to happen to customer service.

The account is actually in the name of my partner M____. We are due to move house next week and had booked for all our Virgin services and our landline number to be transferred to our new address. This was originally booked for Monday 26 Sep then changed it to Friday 30 Sep when our move date changed. Our landline stopped working on Friday 23 Sep. Over several hours I spoke to several people in several teams who all told me something different. I eventually spoke to someone in the move team who said it would be reinstated by 7pm (this was about 4pm), and that she had done this by cancelling the move, but would rebook it. The phone was not working by 7pm and has never worked since. Another person told me it would require a technician visit and this was not possible for a week. By cancelling our move date we lost the ability to transfer our landline number as this requires five working days, we need the broadband working before then as my partner works from home, and we were told that it was not possible to have two visits, one to install the broadband and one to install the phone, even if we paid extra. We were not advised of this at the time our move was cancelled. We have rebooked our move, but we now have to tell everyone we know that we have a new phone number, having previously told them we would be keeping the same one. All the phonecalls I have made about this have been on my mobile, so I have had to pay a premium to call the 08457 number. Your teams have generally called me back when I've asked but I've often been in a queue for many minutes before this is possible. Additionally, there are dozens of essential calls I have had to make as these are the last few days before we move, to insurance companies, solicitors, utility companies etc. These have been a mixture of 0800 and 08457 numbers, which would have been free or local rate on my landline, but I have had to make on my mobile instead, thus incurring significant extra cost. This is why we are so unhappy with the service we have had from Virgin Media over the last week. Thank you for the opportunity to explain it and I look forward to your response.

A genuine real person called Billy sorted out most of this, and it turned out we *could* get our landline number transferred, but unfortunately we didn't have an unpacked handset at the time so we couldn't check that we could, you know, call people. And it turns out we can't. So that one's still going on *sigh*.

4. The removal men were due to arrive at 7.30 am. At 8.30 am the manager called and said 'we can't get our van anywhere near your house'. There was a long pause. I said 'well, I don't really know what to say'. In the end, they parked the big van where they were, and someone else arrived in a small van. There was a degree of relay shuttling of boxes. It was a bit like getting a chicken and a fox across a river. Let's just say a) I'm glad it wasn't my problem, b) I wonder why they sent the big van, given that they did come and look at the house, and they do do this for a living, and c) East Oxford student parking is not something I will miss. Not even a little bit.

5. Boxes. Back in, like, February, I bought some boxes on eBay. We filled those up. Then my colleague L moved house and brought us round a car full of boxes. We filled those up too. *Then* we started to panic, because we clearly needed loads more boxes. You can get them free from your removal company, once you have booked your removal. But we hadn't, because our solicitor said we shouldn't commit to a moving date until we'd exchanged contracts. This was wise advice as things were indeed delayed. But it meant that we had to pay £150 deposit for the boxes from our preferred removal company, on the understanding that this would be deducted from the final invoice. The very same day they delivered them we did exchange, rang up to book our move and they were fully booked for the whole week. So we had to use a different company, who were already £150 more expensive. So that added £300 to the whole experience. What joy.

6. Cleaning. Oh my god the cleaning. D, our buyer, came round at lunchtime the day we moved to get some keys. He said 'you will be cleaning everything, won't you?'. I said 'well... you *are* about to knock a wall down'. But he is new to the home improvements game, and he seemed to think that wouldn't impinge on the rest of the house, and -- reasonably enough -- he wanted to move into a house with a clean kitchen and clean bathrooms. So I cleaned them. For about four hours I moved through the house at top speed, dealing with dust and limescale and grease with an increasingly toxic range of chemicals. It seemed like the right thing to do, even though a) it nearly killed me and b) there'll be about an inch of brick dust on everything by now, and he will be weeping gently and wondering why he unpacked his crockery. But it wasn't for me to tell him.

7. While I was moving rapidly along the Ecover > Cillit Bang spectrum, M was shuttling backwards and forwards in a Comonwheels car, which he'd originally, and with characteristic optimism, booked until 3pm. Halfway through the afternoon we extended it until 6pm, but it became clear that we needed at least another hour. Unfortunately, by this point the people on the phone had gone home for the day, and we didn't have good enough internet on my phone to renew online. It's ok, said M, we can do it from the on-board computer in the car. So we filled the car with the final load, solemnly said our goodbyes to the house, locked the door for the last time and prepared to set off. At which point we discovered that we couldn't extend the booking. So we had to unload it all, open the house again, and unceremonially pile it all back in. Then M cycled over to the Interim Bungalow. My bike had gone in the van, so I had to get a cab. I sat in the back and had a little cry. But only a little one.

What will I do differently next time?

1. Clear!

Why was M baking bread two days before we moved? Why were we still using every single room till the very last minute? We should have decommissioned the kitchen, all but one toilet and all but one bedroom at least three days before we moved. There should have been nothing but boxes in these rooms and they should already have been cleaned. We were in denial. Maybe that's inevitable, but it would have been so much easier if we'd mentally extracted ourselves well before the removal vans arrived.

2. Trust my instincts more.

D was very anxious, as least as anxious as me, to do everything properly. He's clearly a person you can trust. But the system isn't designed to let you trust people, basically because until you have exchanged contracts either side can walk away at any time. And people do. But he wouldn't have. So we could have, for example, and said 'look, if we can't move on X day because your funding isn't in place, will you pay the removals penalty?' He was the one wanting us out quickly, and he was upset that we couldn't move the day after we exchanged, which is the date we'd originally agreed. But if we'd been able to book the removal date knowing we wouldn't be out of pocket if we had to reschedule, we would have done. It just made everyone's life a bit harder than it needed to, given that we were all in fact decent human beings. If you are one, and you meet another one, you can usually tell.

3. Start earlier.

As in months earlier. We knew we were going to move as soon as we put the house on the market. In fact we knew we were going to move the best part of a year before that. We boxed up the easy stuff -- the books, the records, the CDs -- thinking we were being organised, but any fule can do that. The hard stuff is the space under the stairs, the boxes in the loft, the shelves in the shed. We should have sorted this carefully and methodically, and got rid of most of it six months ago. Instead, we threw it into boxes which are now looming at us from corners saying 'This is your life, and you haven't got room for it anymore'.

But we have a little hiatus. A winter in the Interim Bungalow (of which more anon) where we will deal with this issue. We will.

And meantime, the main thing is, we're both SO MUCH HAPPIER now we've sold the house. It was no fun, but now it's done. Hooray for us.

joella

Leaving Oxford in 100 blog posts: 1. Curtains

We may have sold our house. I say 'may' because we have accepted a low offer from our potential buyers, and they are doing a full structural survey. Who knows what further wranglings may result, even if I believe (as I do) that the faults of the house are as visible as its glories.

But we're far enough down the track to have instructed a solicitor. She was recommended by a friend who is also a solicitor. You may never be able to get an electrician if you're middle class, but you can source good conveyancing within minutes. And now we have forms to fill in, many many forms.

One of them is about fixtures and fittings. What is included in the sale? We get to tick and cross boxes (including putting prices on things we are prepare to leave but only if they are prepared to pay for them), and then if the buyers disagree (or want to haggle over a price) we negotiate via our instructed third parties. This seems potentially confrontational to me, and I'm not in the mood. And who'd take *light fittings* with them anyway?

So basically, my first thought was that I'd just tick everything. But then I got to the curtains.

We only have three pairs of curtains. Two of them I could happily never see again. But the ones in the living room are different. We bought them at Seasons Furnishings in Delhi in January 2003, a shop recommended by Plumbing S which was the devil to get to, not because it's hard to find, but because it's hard to find a rickshaw driver who will take you to a curtain shop that isn't owned by his cousin.

When we got there, M realised he'd forgotten to bring the window dimensions. So we used their phone to call the UK, woke up then-housemate S at 7 am, and made her get up and measure the window. She was really pleased about that.

It took us about 30 seconds to agree on the fabric, a deep red raw silk that we both loved on sight, and the deal was done. On the way back to our hotel we stopped in a market to buy shawls and eat momos from a street seller. It was chilly, we were happy, and the curtains were delivered to us two days later as promised, just before we were due to leave for the airport to fly home.

The red curtains have not been an unqualified success. They came with the cheapest, flimsiest possible curtain hooks, which we a) had to insert ourselves, and we did a bad job and b) have never got round to replacing. They fall out regularly and the curtains droop off the rail. They aren't very warm in the winter. And most pertinently, raw silk is a terrible choice of fabric for south-facing windows. The edges of both curtains have faded and shredded. We swap them round every couple of years (while still not replacing the hooks) to try and mitigate the worst of it, but they are basically now shabby chic, without that much of the chic.

But I love those curtains. And they're coming with us.

joella

NB The photo above was taken in 2004. That coffee table is no more (M put his foot through it one New Year's Eve), but the curtains look much the same on a sunny Sunday morning.

Middle room finds fame

M's band's first YouTube video - shot by M himself (he asked me to do it, but I was too embarrassed: I am possibly fleetingly visible making soup in the kitchen) in our middle room.

Advisory: mostly work-safe, but does contain the clearly discernible word "wanking".

joella

Under Sink Cupboard

Under Sink Cupboard
Originally uploaded by joellaflickr.

We plumber-sociologists can tell a lot about a person by the state of the cupboard under their kitchen sink. I've seen a lot of these cupboards, not because I've worked on a lot of kitchen sinks (although I have worked on a few) but because that is usually where you find the mains stop tap -- and even if it's not there, it's the first place you look.

They are often pretty disgusting places. This is for two main reasons:

1. Hardly anyone ever cleans them out. A clean bathroom is no indicator of a clean under-sink-cupboard (USC) -- in fact a clean bathroom often means that the person who lives there pays someone else to clean it. You deal with your USC yourself, you do, and it separates the men from the boys.

2. They are wet and/or greasy. New kitchens are often put in in a tearing hurry, no corner left uncut, and the traps leak or the seal round the sink doesn't work properly, or, as in the case of our cheap kitchen sink and every other cheap kitchen sink like it, the pop up waste is a load of leaky old shit and the water gets in round the edges and drips straight down onto the Brillo pads underneath, creating a big lump of smelly sticky rust. (There are not words for how much I hate pop up wastes. They should be banned. But that's another story).

Sometimes you find that USC is empty. This is either because the customer has thought ahead and cleared it out -- that's only happened to me once -- or because they don't own any cleaning products. These people will also not have any milk. They are squatters in their own homes. They will probably have a big leather sofa though, and their new sanitaryware will be oversized and cheap. I do not often warm to these people.

Other times, you will find that it is so absolutely rammed with random crap that it takes about 20 minutes to empty it. This is especially frustrating when it turns out that the stop tap is not actually in there after all, but you don't find that out until you've decanted years and multiples of methylated spirit, J-cloths, picnic paraphernalia, tea lights, shoe polish, light bulbs, hoover bags, paint brushes, pet food etc. These people will also have a fridge full of random crap, some of it also not excavated for years. Their bathroom will be painted in an unexpected colour, which they'll have done themselves and never quite finished. It will be impossible to work in without knocking over an MFI shelving unit that contains 47 bottles of random toiletries, and it will feature lots of cobwebs. These people buy TOO MUCH STUFF, all of it cheap. They watch lifestyle programmes on TV but never manage to change their lifestyles. They are forthcoming with cups of tea, though, and nearly always have biscuits in.

Other times again, it will just be a bit manky and contain brushes, cloths, rubber gloves, cleaning products, washing powder, dishwasher tablets and the household carrier bag collection. If they're in, these people will apologise profusely for the mess it's in and insist on emptying it themselves. You might not even need to go there, because these are the people who also know where their stop tap is, and turn that off themselves as well. They clean their toilets regularly, including the walls and floor around it, and they also often have real coffee. They generally find a plumber first and then decide what to do, rather than spending a fortune in Bathstore on stuff that will never look right in their house or work right with their plumbing. These are the slightly anxious people and I like them best.

Possibly because I've had so many of them inflicted on me, cleaning out my own USC has been on my to do list for about two years, even though the only person who I'm likely to inflict it on is myself. Last weekend, I did it. Check it out.

I probably don't need to add that I am very pleased with myself. In the process I discovered a bottle of descaler, so I descaled the kettle (satisfying); I discovered an ancient bottle of Lemon Ajax and a Spontex scourer, so I cleaned the outside of the kettle (*very* satisfying); and I discovered a packet of silver dip cleaner, so I cleaned all the silver plated cutlery that used to be M's mother's and had been slowly turning black (*incredibly* satisfying).

Rainy Sunday afternoons aren't all bad. They allow one's hidden domestic goddess a brief moment in the sun.

joella

So there it was, merry Christmas

At the age of 37, I have of course realised that I'll never drive through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair. But there are consolations. I've also finally, *finally*, realised that the secret to the perfect Christmas Day lies in escaping expectations, and striking the right balance between sociability and misanthropy. You do not have to leave the country. You barely have to leave the house. Thanks are due to Jeremy for some sound and timely advice on this.

It goes a little something like this:

1. Wake up in the bed of a teenage girl.
(She wasn't there, but I like to think some of her cool rubbed off)

2. Put last night's clothes back on, eat Plumbing S's maple syrup crepes while little T freaks everyone, including herself, out with Real Scorpion Toffee.

3. Come home and open presents. Top gifts this year included a radio-cum-iPod-dock for the kitchen, so I can now boil an egg to the Ace of Spades if I want to, and, following weeks of big fat hints, the complete Morse on DVD. I don't understand you, said M, you don't like box sets and you don't believe in owning DVDs, so why on earth would you want this? I can't really explain.

4. Receive guests while still feeling sparkly-yet-manky. Drink posh wine.

5. Decide not to eat dinner till *after* sunset walk in Shotover.

6. Go for sunset walk in Shotover with the kind of friends who think to bring mince pies and sloe gin.

7. Have a big nap.

8. Eat cheese fondue and a big salad.

9. Watch a good film (well, we watched Love Actually, which I don't think counts, but the intention was good).

10. Dance away the clearing up, helped along by little sambucas in new little sambuca glasses. Go to bed.

It was great. We rose on Boxing Day ready to cook up a Claudia Roden storm. Our 'Open House' from 2-6 degenerated into fire, music and mayhem till midnight. All the major world religions were represented, and it seems everything now smells of woodsmoke and fish.

joella

Entente not very cordiale

Our new student neighbours moved in while we were away in the Peak District. Their landlords, who had spent most of the summer turning a dilapidated semi-wreck into a seriously nice house, told us they were postgraduates and would be well behaved. We figured they would need to be fairly rich postgraduates to be able to afford the rent that a house like that would be commanding, and we also figured that postgraduate status would not necessarily be sufficient to guarantee good behaviour.

Depressingly, we were right on both counts. They'd been in less than a week when they brought home a horde of pissed, braying idiots. It was 11.30 on a Thursday night, and we wanted to go to bed. I went out the back to try and get them to close their windows and back door, and there was a fully fledged drinks party going on. I got their attention by chucking pebbles over the wall, and a girl came flying out the back door saying 'what the fuck?'

'Hi,' I said, 'we're your neighbours'. God, she said, I'm, like, so sorry. They were all supposed to be gone by 11. Fine, I said, could you try and keep it down and close the windows? 'We're Masters students, she said, we're not Freshers or anything'. Fine, I said, could you try and keep it down and close the windows?

Ten minutes later, there were another bunch of them roaring in the garden. M went out this time. They couldn't go inside, because, like, it wasn't their house. Super posh boy emerged the third time we went out, by which point one of his charming friends was pulling branches off one of our trees. 'Yah, he said, I'm so sorry, we'll keep the noise down, I hope you can trust me on that.' I've no idea if I can trust you or not, said M, you're not doing too well so far. I'll set the hose on the next person to touch that tree, I added, you can trust me on *that*.

We went to bed, and heard them bringing people in from the garden several more times, so I guess the message sunk in at some level. They came round to apologise the next day, and assured us that they were postgraduates so would be working far too hard to make that kind of noise ever again.

We'll see. But I don't have a great feeling about it. They also don't have a bike between the four of them, so I suspect they are contributing more than their fair share to the predictable-yet-still-oppressive termtime parking chaos. Still, on the bright side, in nine months they'll be gone forever.

joella

Oh yeah, *and*...

The leak from the shower onto the stairs was Not Fixed by my optimistic efforts with the silicone sealant gun. So it's probably leaking from the waste pipework rather than the shower tray (as my efforts with the silicone sealant gun were fairly robust). So we might as well move house. It's that or take a claw hammer to the ceiling above the stairs. Either way, it's going to be grievous. Arse.

joella

Possibly not quite as underachieving as previously thought

Back in February, I wrote a To-Do list, hoping it would help. A mere six months later, here's the status update:

1. Sew button back onto orange pyjama top
   Done! Did almost straight away in fact.
   
2. Tighten button hole on third button down on other pyjama top (so it doesn't come undone in the night)
   Done! As above.
   
3. Put Christmas decorations back in the mini loft space
   Done! Took till April.
   
4. Ideally, take everything else out of the mini loft space first and tip / freecycle things that have not been used for the last five years (eg electric blanket, third spare duvet)
   Done! Serious teamwork and a whole Sunday required. Local Freecycle day failed to get rid of electric blanket and duvet, so took them to the tip.
   
5. Change the other bust spotlight bulb in the kitchen
   Done! Have done it several times since, beginning to think that Tesco Value spotlight bulbs aren't up to much.
   
6. Flatten ground for compost bin #2 and get it started
   Done! Actually, M did this one.
   
7. Write to the council about the retrospective planning permission we haven't got yet for the hole we knocked in the wall four years ago
   Done! Took till June. And they wrote back! Straight away! We are compliant!
   
8. Order the tools that I didn't order before my birthday, didn't get for my birthday, and still need
   Done! Did almost straight away before money ran out. The backnut spanner is a life-saver. The basin wrench likewise. The baby pump pliers are gorgeous. The multi-head electric screwdriver was perhaps surplus to requirements. I haven't used the circlip pliers but I will have them when I need them. I'm still not quite sure how to use the multimeter but I will work it out one day. The tape measure with built in laser level was a stupid waste of money.
   
9. Drill holes in the wall for the clip frames full of gig tickets currently gathering dust
   Done! Took seconds, cheered me up for days.
   
10. Fit the Ikea toilet roll holder that mocks me from its box every time I get caught short
    Rethought. Decided a free-standing toilet roll holder is required. But haven't got one yet. Anyone need an Ikea toilet roll holder?
    
11. Find out which bit of the shower tray is leaking through onto the stairs and sort that out somehow
    Might have done! Resealed it today, won't know if it leaks until tomorrow. Should probably wait till tomorrow to write this but too excited!
    
12. Put the Zambian beer bottle top chairs on Ebay
    Freecycled them instead, but they are gone, so it's Done!
    
13. Research new fridge options (current fridge is 25 years old so this is environmentally advisable rather than rampantly consumerist)
    Researched! My mother (from whom I inherited current fridge) told me how to dismantle the back and clean out the drainage tube, which was full of mould. Current fridge therefore no longer leaks, and popular opinion has it that it's environmentally better to hold on to perfectly good built-to-last fridge which also has a certain degree of retro chic. Have chosen to believe popular opinion.
    
14. Buy four (four!) tiles for the shower cubicle so I can take off the plastic bag that has been taped over the shower unit for the last six months
    Done! Took till August. They were hard to find, but not *that* hard.
    
15. Develop tiling skills or find tiler who can genuinely say 'no job too small'.
    Done! Also required serious teamwork, and at least one of us has bleeding feet from walking on tile shards. Can report that grouting is harder than it looks.
    

I have of course done other things in the last six months, this is not the sum total of my activity... nontheless I did find that having the list gave the things on it a certain status, a certain priority, a certain je ne sais quoi. So I ought to make a new list really.

I'll do that tomorrow.

joella

Rediscovering...

1. Cheese
2. Wine
3. Dylan
4. Radio 4
5. Ribena
6. Loo roll
7. Olive oil
8. Duvet
9. Shameless
10. Blundstones

Also discovered that we left the turntable going round for a month.

joella