Alison May's Blog, page 2

Today

 

A house full of broken glass. An Anthropologie tumbler destroyed by little hands. A glass lamp shattered across the living room. A lantern flung across the garden by the wind and smashed in to tiny pieces. But then they do say bad luck comes in threes don’t they?

A weekend abundant in boyish masculine energy. Finley, Stevie, Gabriel and Clarry. A parade of scooters round the garden. Feet, big and little charging up the stairs. Chocolate stuffed in to their pockets, though they think I cannot see it.

Clarry. Blonde and pure. Two nights sleeping next to him in our bed.  Ste evicted to make way for this little darling. His steady breathing a kind of meditation. Remembering the heat of a little one’s body. The weight of him as he drifts off to sleep. Remembering what it was to Mother so intensely. To see wonder at everything. A bath red with bubbles he shrieks with joy about because Alison has strawberry water! Irrational delight because afterwards I wrap him up in London Tower Pyjamas still warm from the dryer, and he declares them a hug and ask to stay for another ten days because he love my house and he loves my Finley and my bath is the best bath in the world.

Today though I need strawberry bath all of my own. In fact hiding in the bath all day long might just be the answer because last week I bit in to a piece of toasted pitta bread and my back tooth crumbled. So today I have to have it filled and while the rest of the world attends the dentist without palava, I hate it with a vengeance and have worked myself up into something of a frenzy.

On days like this I feel like the little girl I am not. On days like this I want my Mum. Because Dad has taken the boys home, and Ste has sensibly refused to take the day off to accompany me to the dentist and has assured me that fear isn’t real and that the dentist will be kind and yes, I will of course manage the big new car and I will soon get used to pressing a button instead of pulling a handbrake and won’t I be downright thrilled with myself when I arrive home in the big car with a tooth filled having survived both ordeals? And I say yes and consider smothering him or keeping Finn off school so that there will be someone to hold my hand.

But of course I don’t. Because I am preposterous but I am not that preposterous. And so I get out of bed and tidy the weekend away. I  carry my latest vice – empty, teeny cans of Fevertree Mediterranean Tonic Water – to the recycling bin and tut at the length of the grass because the lawnmower has died and we cannot find a gardener for love nor money to manage that which we don’t seem to be able to find time for. Then head back into the house to stand stock still to try to work out where the music is coming from until I decide it must be in my own head.

A busy week ahead. Work piling up and digging me between the ribs. A house that needs a hug. A lamp to be shopped for to replace that which was my Mums and that I will miss for always. Early nights much needed to shake off a headache above my right eye resisting the repeated administration of lavender. The delivery of a dishwasher we have been losing our marbles without. A book making me gasp with so many truths. The gluten free diet my bizarrely sweaty endocrinologist is now insisting upon because my gluten antibodies are raging and my thyroid apparently eating itself.  A night in a Brazillian restaurant planned for Friday with my bestest ladies and the weekend at a beer festival with my Barbie.

Would it be terribly ungrateful to say that sometime I long to step off the hamster wheel that is own, lovely life? 

But now the dentist. A couple of Kalms popped and my own pep-talk on a loop in my brain.

All shall be well and all shall be well and all shall be well. Won’t it? 

The Penna Keyboard

 

There are things in this life that I decide without which, life will not be worth living. This is partly because I am a spoilt little (big) Madam, and partly because I am a Drama Queen. Not for me the “wouldn’t it be nice to haves…”  of this world.

No Siree, I am right there deciding that if something is wonderful I have to have it or else everyone I know will have to suffer the slings and arrows of my outrageous mis-fortune.

(These kind of ludicrous dramatics are why you love me right??)

 

 

So anyways I was losing an hour or six to wandering around Facebook when I happened across the Penna Keyboard and within an instant I was suffering from a bout of the got to have its so bad that I developed an earache.

It is a retro inspired, wireless, bluetooth keyboard for your iPad. It comes in beautiful colors, with old-fashioned chrome key caps. And better than that it makes typewriter noises when you type! For isn’t the world a lesser place now modern keyboards are so sulkily silent? Isn’t writing that much harder with the tap, tap, ding to give form to our words? And wouldn’t it be downright fabulous to have a keyboard that didn’t look so terribly modern in our scrumptiously vintage houses?

So yes. I want one and I want one NOW. Never mind that I don’t actually own an iPad.

Yes. Never mind that particular, very minor detail. 

The Five Ways We Transformed Our Finances.

 

Money. Ouch. Yep that’s all. Ouch.

I envy those people who can stretch a tenner out for a week and started saving when they were six. But it just isn’t me. I can’t quite manage frugal, because frugal seems so darn dull. But I am now a fully-fledged grown-up and there is just no getting round it: one cannot avoid making sensible financial choices all ones life. So there comes a point when frankly becoming sensible overnight, despite drama, death and all the other things that are sent to try us, is simply not something we can afford to dither about it.

And so Ste and I decided to get sensible.

It wasn’t pretty. There was much argument about what sensible looks like and it turns out we have vastly different opinions about what constitutes essential, but we are mostly on the same page when it comes to how we want our future to look and we are both committed (after a season of dilly-dallying, job loss, moving house and worry) to securing that future for ourselves and our boys.

Six months later we are in a much, much better place. Six months later we are taking money very seriously indeed (beyond the wine bill!) and though it takes more commitment and daily attention to detail than I had visualized. month on month our situation is improving.

We began by learning about money. We read and read and read. (My favorite – Kate Northrup’s Money: A Love Story and Ste’s -Tony Robbin’s Money: Master the Game). Ste took out a subscription to The Investors Chronicle and did a crash course in stocks and shares and is now having a fine old time cautiously dabbling with his pension pot, and I took a long, hard look at the potential of BrocanteHome and had terribly grown-up conversations with accountants and book-keepers and bank managers.

Because we are grown-ups. And this isn’t about managing our pocket money but about making sure we can eat when we are stoop-backed and wrinkly. Because money is energy and it shouldn’t be the thing standing between us and true contentment.

The other five things we did…

We Became Slaves to YNAB.

I know. You have heard me rave about YNAB before. And that is because it is FABULOUS. I have been using it on and off for a few years now, but never quite with the same commitment that Ste and I are now using it. We check in daily, have created a month’s spending grace (through sheer hard work!), have pots in which to save for everything from a holiday to our wedding, update the app’s on our phone whenever we buy anything at all, and reconcile all bank accounts each and every evening so we don’t miss a thing…

We Agreed to Share Everything (Almost).

This is I’m sure the cause of much debate at the beginning of the financial relationship of every new (middle-aged!) couple. Whether to have joint accounts or maintain our independence. In the end we decided to have a bit of both. Because we like to have our cake and eat it. A joint account was necessary to make YNAB work smoothly and to be able to track exactly what this life of ours costs, but we both saw the necessity to have our own money too. The kind that  doesn’t need to be explained, but is also available should it be needed for the greater good.

We Joined The Utility Warehouse.

I wasn’t happy about this at first. I was in fact deeply skeptical about hanging all our hats on the one hatstand, but The Utility Warehouse has simplified EVERYTHING to such a degree that I cannot help but rave about it. Not only have we saved significant money by having phone, broadband, gas and electricity on one bill, we have now added our mobile phone contracts and home insurance to the same bill and the joy of monitoring only ONE BILL is unsurpassed. Not to mention the free light-bulbs throughout the house, the cashback card, the Gourmet Society Card and much more besides.

Sometimes somethings really are so good, they are true.

We Made Big Lists

This is something Ste and I have done almost since we met: once monthly we sit down with our BIG LIST and focus on exactly what we want out of life. We add anything and everything from a new car to finding a gardener and then we close our pink book and put it away until the next month. And here’s the thing: somehow we manifest our little dreams.

This has been astonishing to both of us. But each month as we tick through the things we have created together as a couple we kind of sit and stare at each other in amazement. It is I suppose the Law of Attraction at work, but even if you don’t believe in matters of an airy-fairy nature, making a Big List helps you focus as a couple on what you both want out of this life.

And We Stopped Playing Small.

If you have experienced financial trauma of any kind you will know that thereafter there is the potential to play it safe for always thereafter. To imagine that somehow you do not deserve better. That better is scary so better the devil you know and all that jazz, right?

But Ste and I have been playing small all our lives and it was time to swap up the goldfish bowl. To believe that we could be more, do more and have more. To believe in ourselves and to stop harboring the frankly ludicrous notion that a stint in debtors jail was just around the corner if we so much as dared to dream…

So we gave each other a good talking to. We made plans. We stopped leaving money to chance and good fortune and decided to believe that we too, were finally grown-up enough to create the life we want.

*

And the upshot of all this? Today we are picking up a new, straight off the forecourt, car. A shiny, white object of loveliness that was one of the first things we wrote on our Big List when we were both chugging around in sheds on wheels.  We dreamed  it up and we made it happen.

I am so proud of us.

Fit to burst with excitement in fact.  Mostly because this new car has got massaging seats and frankly I may just  spend the rest of my days just driving around the vicinity for the sheer pleasure of it…

The Gin Barberdoo

 

All of a sudden I’m a social elephant. Known for laughing too loudly and falling asleep on the sofa when the taxi takes an age to arrive and I am up way past my usually preposterously early bedtime. Not only are we attending parties past ourselves but we are also, spurred on by the success of our last effort, in the midst of organizing another.

Oh yes. Not content with nearly sending myself to an early grave throwing the last “NOT AN ENGAGEMENT PARTY”, I am here to tell you that Ste and I have agreed to throw another. The conversation went thus:

Ste: Lets have a do for my birthday.

Me: Maybe a barbecue? 

Ste: A BARBERDOO!

Rachael: Lets make it a Gin Barberdoo!

And so it was that the Gin Barberdoo was born and I went into an organisational flurry and it was declared that each participating couple would attend carrying a different bottle of gin and we would have a little tasting session and thus find ourselves throwing our very own Gin Festival in our own back garden!

I swear too much fun is going to kill me. And frankly I don’t know what I did to deserve such a busy social life.

But anyways, I decided that if I was going to do it I was going to it properly and so I opened up a board in my very own copy of Trello for Housekeepers and set about planning with aplomb.

First up the invitations. While word of mouth is my usual modus operandi, this time I worked in conjunction with Paperless Post to fashion the perfect Gin Barberdoo email invitation, to be issued in a timely fashion to all those we are inviting. A rather darling way of issuing invitations because one does not have to remember to buy stamps and troll to the post office nor engage in long phone conversations merely to invite your favorite peoples. (I’m social, but honestly? I’m just not that social.) Win win right?

Oh so much more than that actually. For not only can you customize card designs from everybody from Oscar De La Renta to Kate Spade, you can also add pretty backdrops, choose your envelope and line and address your card to your chosen recipient. And so I played with all manner of designs, for in among all the many cards for everything from garden partys to weddings, to baby showers and birthdays there was quite a collection for those of us throwing barbeques!

But I am Alison and I am nothing if not floral and so it was that I settled on a happy, summery, floral design and customized it to feature the words Gin Barberdoo and lo and behold I was issuing invitations for our very own gin festival!

Next up, came the gin. For here’s the thing: we cannot have the world and his wife turning up with the same bottle of Bombay Sapphire when there is a world of beautiful gins to be tasted: and so a kind of gin themed Secret Santa was organised and our invitees chose a number and got a corresponding gin match and thus we can be sure that there will be a range of gins to taste alongside the fabulous collection of mixers I am currently in hot pursuit of (Aromatic Fevertree y’all?)…

All this and the food. For people who plan on tasting a multitude of gins need something hefty with which to line their stomachs and while most barbecues are a feast of burgers and sausages, this is a Barberdoo and thus things have to be done a little differently and so grilled mackerel, chill king prawns, panzanella and grilled halloumi  it is…

Now if only I could invite you all…

This post was brought to you in co-operation with Paperless Post.

Trello For Housekeeper’s Is Here For All!

 

Eeeekkkk! Seriously, I could crush a grape, I’m that excited to be able to announce the launch of my lovely (if I do say so myself!) Trello for Housekeeper’s System.

You see I want you to get the muddle that is keeping house out of your head and in to the devices I know you are using daily: your blessed, beloved mobile phone, your iPad and your laptop. I want you to be able to switch on whichever is closest to hand and know in a heartbeat what you should be cooking for dinner, what ingredients you need to buy, whether it’s non-uniform day at your little one’s school tomorrow, which yoga routine helps you sleep the drowsiest, loveliest sleep, and which housekeeping routine you have allocated to any given day of the week.

There is nothing quite like this on the internet!

I want you to be able to switch meal plans at the hint of an invitation to eat out instead, to know exactly when the kids are breaking up for the Summer holidays (and how the heckity pie you are going to entertain them!), to have portable reminders to practice extreme self-care with you at all times, to know who bought what for Christmas so you never find yourself re-gifting that little something right back to the original recipient (the shame), to carry all the Brocante downloads you own in your pocket and to know your account number for your insurance policy the very second that you need it.

All In One App!

Not fifty-three apps for this, that and the other, but one beautifully designed app to slay them all!

With Trello for Housekeepers you run your entire domestic life from inside one easy to use app and you will be utterly blown away by its potential to organize every, last aspect of your daily routines, rituals and celebrations…

Want to learn more?

Then allow me to show your around. (But do forgive the Liverpool accent and the rather abrupt ending to this video won’t you? Technology and I are yet to become the best of buddies…)

http://www.brocantehome.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Trello-for-Housekeepers.mp4

What happens when I sign up?

Good question! When you sign up you will find yourself in my lovely School of Life and immediately after purchase you will be taken straight over to your very own School of Life Library, where you will discover access to the Trello for Housekeepers System.

The system starts with an introduction to Trello itself so you can get to grips with using this easy-peasy app. Then you will find the first four “boards” including “Housekeepers Central” – a routines and rituals board (including description of MY routines and rituals that YOU can use for inspiration), then the Meal Planning Board, so you can plan a months worth of evening meals, a Recipe Board to be used in conjunction with the Meal Planning Board, and finally a Shopping List Board with lists for every type of shopping from the Farmers Market, to the chemist, the shoe shop, the book shop and every shop inbetween.

Thereafter you will get automatic access to one new board each and every week until the system is complete. I have structured it this way so that you have time to adapt to the app itself, work out your own routines and rituals and then slowly but surely work through organizing each and every aspect of your domestic life without getting overwhelmed…

The best part?

Trello for Housekeepers is GORGEOUS. I have worked hard to make it as pretty as possible because if you are anything like me, the pretty MATTERS and I am so very shallow that I am much more likely to commit to an app if it is both aesthetically pleasing AND reflects my lifestyle. And Trello for Housekeepers really does reflect every aspect of my lifestyle: from the puttery treats I love, to the Miracle Morning Routine I adore, and while you are welcome to use my lists as inspiration, the very best part of my system is that it is completely customizeable for your own way of life…

Ready to get organised?

Click here to buy Trello for Housekeepers today, then prepare a little tray of nibbles, sit down with your iPad, laptop and phone and get busy changing your life! 

P.S: Don’t forget that if you are a member of the Salon, Trello for Housekeepers is completely FREE and if you are a member of the Living Room, you are entitled to an instant 25% off the full price with your discount code!x 

A FREE Hygge Print…

 

There are somethings I just cannot help but want to share with you when I happen upon them and today that little something is a free downloadable print from Design by Claire celebrating the now ubiquitous feeling that is Hygge.

Available in  five colour ways, (You could change your framed print according to the season!) I do believe you should warm up your printer right now and remember to leave a little note of gratitude on Claire’s blog thereafter…

Off you go.

Today

 

Sitting in the front window admiring the ruby red geraniums in the hanging basket across the road. Wondering how to deal with the astonishing mess two pigeons have left all over the conservatory roof without the hiring of some scaffolding. Hoping for a downpour of Noah’s Ark proportions.

Today then. Magic to be worked with a make up bag because my face is sporting the impact of too much food and not enough sleep. Tootling into Liverpool in the newly fixed car to collect Mark’s Mum. To spend the day with her. To take her away from all this. To take her for coffee and then to visit her son Simon, who is terribly ill in hospital: sorrow swimming in his veins after his Father’s sudden death. Ignoring Mark, who said “Don’t go. You don’t need to see this” because this isn’t about me. Nor what I can bear. I am, at least, stronger than that.

A fistful of vitamins. More nonsense to be taken to the tip. An odd-job man calling at four to do the odd-jobs. Two dreams about affairs with men I don’t know, so raw I open my eyes and confess them to Ste like so much adultery and he laughs because I am silly. And I am allowed my own head. Always. Tonight my first session of Buddhist meditation because that same head needs hushing. Worrying about entering a room full of strangers by myself. Daring myself to be brave regardless.

The detritus of a busy weekend still scattered around the house. Gold foil H’s sprinkled over the carpet as though my Helen has been leaving a whisper of herself all around the house. Bewilderingly, a 20p piece sitting at the bottom of the toilet and refusing to be flushed. Money down the drain. Two new pairs of flip-flops in the middle of the living room. The ironing board still standing in the kitchen as if waiting for the charlady to arrive. Soup we will eat tonight burnt at the bottom of the slow cooker.

A new ethic to be employed if we are to live this life. A course to be taken in September. A new direction. And willingness to learn. A new, astonishing commitment to each other. A stack of virtual books to be read in my Kindle, if I ever find time to read in anything other than the piecemeal way I have been managing lately. A child’s room so tidy I thought I had woken up in the wrong house. His explanation “I couldn’t stand the mess anymore” a singular source of ludicrous pride.

Olive bread to be baked. (Though it won’t be as good as Kath’s).  Simple lunchbox cakes to be fashioned from cornflakes and dark chocolate. Fingers mildly swollen and hay-fever tickling my nose. A new car soon, thank heavens – because we can’t go on like this. Next week, a half-term that has arrived way to fast. This week, preparations for the disruption to routine that must be allowed for. Another party to attend at the weekend. Though this reluctant social butterfly knows not whether she is coming or going. A strong cup of Rocket Fuel instant coffee to tip me over the edge.

Rushing now. Hopping barefoot across the gravel to fetch the milk. Muttering to myself about getting out into the front to deal with the weeds appearing through the cracks. Planning a vegetable patch. And pots full of color. Blowing out my morning candles so the house doesn’t go on fire. A phone-call that divides loyalties. A new, preposterous, obsession with badly written ghost stories found on the internet. A leak in the fridge. A tiny pot of rich dark chocolate mousse that must be resisted. The lovely hum of the washing machine. The racket of the NutriBullet. A smoothie full of goodness to cast away my sins.

Sudden enormous waves of gratitude. A hard won life that feels charmed now. (Quell the fear, Lady.)

The Hashimotos Funk

 

One of the things I have never sought to hide here at BrocanteHome is that both my mood and energy ebb and flow. That sometimes I can. And sometimes I can’t.

It is hard to pinpoint why I can sometimes veer off course. Indeed early this morning, as Ste sat up in bed with his headphones jammed firmly in his ears, committed to his morning meditation practise, I lay next to him throbbing with tiredness after a night of waking nightmares. Knowing that today could be lost to exhaustion. To a fuzzy brain. To Hashimoto’s (Read this for an exact description of how it feels to live with this debilitating condition).

Flow is not possible. The fug, the fog, the pain, the…disconnect and hyperawareness makes it impossible. “Normally, absorption in a task – an immersive flow – can lead you to forget that you feel sick, but my fatigue made such a state impossible. “ Again, running through quicksand…it renders effortlessness forever tantalisingly out of reach. You never get traction. You’re always reaching. Just trying to get to stable ground from which you can take a certain, solid step forward.

Sarah Wilson.

Sometimes the pills work. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I am lazer focused. Sometimes I can barely remember how to boil the kettle. Always somewhere I will be aching. It is more physical than depression. More emotional than exhaustion. As Sarah Wilson so eloquently says “Contact with people hurts. Humans really are too much for me when I’m not good. Why? I don’t know. It’s the accountability, I think. I don’t want to explain myself. I can’t. How can I?”. 

Above all else it is a terrible bore. I bore myself with it and I know I bore those who cannot understand why life, work and commitment to almost everything is so very hard. How much my willingness to commit is so frequently compromised by my sheer inability to function. How utterly frustrating it is to not always be you. To be a lesser version of yourself than those around you imagine you should be. To so frequently disappoint.

As of today, and yesterday, one of the worst symptoms I experience is daytime sleepiness. I can spit out two hours of decent work and then my eyes will be closing, Drooping as if I haven’t slept for a week. So I will get on the floor and do my yoga, walk around the block or drink something energizing. But it doesn’t work. I will still need to close my eyes or risk life and limb handling domestic machinery or driving the car. Then come four o’clock I am wide awake and ready to work. And I can work and work and work until I am TOLD to stop. In-between creating meals, tidying around, organizing homework, taking a bath and watching Coronation Street.

In the evening I am as awake as I can only imagine normal people are the moment they open their eyes. So awake that when it comes to bedtime I begin my usual struggle – a series of rather dramatic sleep rituals I remain deeply suspicious about altering – in an effort to switch my mind off again.

Much of the problem with chronic illness is always about accepting it and teaching ourselves to manoeuvre around it. To accept that if we do more than our bodies can cope with in a flurry of lovely days, we will pay for it with the flare of forgotten symptoms. That in my case restless legs will drive me crackers (but the medication for them: a drug for Parkinsons Disease will make me even sleepier), I will sporadically forget to breathe, my gums will bleed, the sides of my face will swell, my whole body will throb and I will not be able to pull a decent sentence together without describing every object as a “dooberry bit“. As in “Pass me the dooberry bit please. “ (Could be the remote control, my phone, a hairbrush or a salt cellar!) or “Did you remember to pick up my dooberry bit?” (Ummm… milk? My prescription? My son??!!). It is woeful. In fact at times like these I AM woeful. Bless my stupid heart.

I am telling you this so you understood why I come and go. Why my work here at BrocanteHome happens in fits and starts. Why there can be silence after a weekend of family activity that so thoroughly wipes me out I need a day or two to recover.

Today I am trying. I am sitting here wrapped in a blanket because the shivering so familiar to those of us with Hashimoto’s has set in and I cannot shake it off. I have drank a gorgeous Packd Energy smoothie and dosed myself up to the eyeballs with vitamins and pre-biotics and pro-biotics and I am waiting it out, laptop on my knee, hopefully working through everything on my to-do list and hopefully allowing my body enough time to banish the worst of it…

Now do be a dear and pass me my dooberry bit won’t you?

Housekeeper’s NoticeBoard

 

Good Morning Gorgeous Ones! Allow me to begin my little list of weekly notices, with a warm welcome to all my new Salon Subscribers this week – I’m giddy with excitement about welcoming you to The School of Life and all the delights to be found within, and I truly hope you will join us in our lovely Facebook community too…

Shall we get going? It’s been a busy week and I have some lovely newness to share…

Okey Dokey, then allow me to introduce…

BrocanteHome on Medium.Com

I have been blogging here for more years than I care to count now and I love it because it feels like home, but the time has come, now that I am practically geriatric, to expand my horizons a little bit and  spread my message a little bit further afield. And so in the past day or so I have opened a Medium.Com Publication called BrocanteHome (duh!) and I will be re-publishing and creating original content there to further coach those looking to live a life less ordinary.

My work on Medium will be specifically about coaching women to live lives that reflect their most authentic selves and will collate all my existing work on the same subject before I begin to create new posts, so much of the writing will be familiar to you in the first instance, but will over time feature new and original work and will differ there from here as I focus on posts specifically geared towards lifestyle design, self-motivation and nurturing your souls…

You can follow my work there by creating a Medium account, and following me or sharing my writing (the same as you would on Bloglovin). And then you will receive a weekly (or daily if your prefer) digest of my writing and any others you follow on Medium, as well as getting the once monthly Medium only “Love Letters” I will be sending out to those looking to create a life less ordinary of their own.

Click here to read BrocanteHome on Medium.Com here…

This Weeks Bujo Layout!

 

This week’s Life Less Ordinary Bujo sheet is a Daily Journal utilizing some of the original Bullet Journal symbols and a couple of my own Brocante devising…

It is available in the Bujo store for the lowly sum of just $1.00 or you will as always find it in the Salon if you are a member.

Trello For Housekeepers!

 

Oooh are you ready for this?? If you are a Salon member you have already got exclusive early access to my ingenious, innovative online planner for eventually managing everything from your daily, monthly and annual routines, your meal plans, recipes, favorite blogs, calendar dates, shopping lists, decorating notebooks and soooo much more.

 

 

Designed to be as beautiful and functional as everything else in BrocanteHome, Trello For Housekeepers, takes all the effort out of creating systems, routines and rituals for you, and means you can jump right in and customise the system to your hearts content.

Currently available only inside the Salon, ( but coming soon to the store), videos explaining the system are available in the Salon Library and each time a new board is added I will add another video describing how the boards interact with each other and how you can customize them to reflect your own domestic life.

There is nothing like this on the internet and I KNOW you are going to adore it.

Join the Salon form just $20.00 per month me darlings here… 

And Finally An Invitation…

If you aren’t on my mailing list you won’t receive notification of my new posts, the special offers I reserve for my lovely subscribers or my lovely weekly digests, so do sign up here won’t you?

In the meantime go have a lovely week, cook up a scrumptious storm and above all else remember to be kind to yourself.

Monday Morning

 

The sweet sigh of relief when the house is yours again and silences becomes it.

The first cup of coffee you sit down to sip in a room that needs a hug. The stain of a red wine glass marking the coffee table and a pair of abandoned socks lurking on the blanket box. Why oh why oh why?

A list in your hand. Things that must be done. (Though without a car you will struggle – The clutch must be replaced). The child met on foot on his way home from school. Something financial to be arranged on the internet. A Father checked upon after a day gadding about at Lords.

A week’s menu planned from the myriad of leftovers in the fridges. Tonight a salami and feta affair with veg roasted in smoky paprika. Tomorrow a sausage casserole.

All the usual suspects trotting up and down the lane. He who drinks already passing by with a blue plastic bag full of cans. Cars pulling up outside to gawp at the house that will not sell in what was once your back garden.

A kitchen fragranced by basil. Lavender at the back door. A pot full of rosemary for remembering. A fortune teller at the weekend. A woman who knew your Mums name as soon as you sat down. Do Sue and May mean anything to you? Dis-belief suspended because she gives you no choice.

Concern for your boy. Because he spends too much time scooting around in circles. Three hours in the garden just going round and round. The need to crawl inside his mind and invade his privacy so prevalent because you cannot help but want his truth. Pink bunting fluttering along the fence. Pots of greenery to fill up the deep bed that must be planted soon. Lovely pictures growing damp in the little brick shed.

A yard brush and a new watering can on your shopping list. Peri-menopausal black hair growing spiky on your chin.

A slice of burnt toast topped with cucumber and black pepper. A windowsill a dragonfly has chosen for his grave. A black candle burning on the sideboard. A pot full of dying succulents though you had assured yourself it was barely possible to murder them. A busy, lovely weekend that has taken too much out of you.

Sometimes, on a Monday morning, when the house is yours again, you think about going back to bed. Crawling under sheets cooled by the open window.  But sleeping wouldn’t get the kitchen floor mopped. Nor let you enjoy the bliss of standing in the morning sunshine pegging out the first load of wet washing. Sleeping is the enemy of getting things done. And things do have to be done. There is no avoiding it.

And so you will do them. For you cannot start the week with an over-flowing laundry basket. And you must collect the bottle of milk the naughty milkman now hides down the side of the conservatory for he has convinced himself, contrary to all evidence that points otherwise, that the milk mafia are trying to ruin his round by stealing every pint he delivers. There are beds to be refreshed and re-made. Windows to be flung open everywhere. The washing line tied back up after you took it down in fear of your scooting child garroting himself. A wasp to be chased out of the farway room. Clarry’s lost snuggly dog to be hunted down.

So much to do. Though you would rather be watching Odd Mom Out. Or reading The Housekeeper. You would like to be drinking coffee with Kath. Or baking pretty cakes no-one will eat, just for the photo opportunity. You would like to be travelling down to Oxford and spending the day with your family. Visiting a gallery or sitting on a grassy hill just staring at the whole world.

There is so much you would like to be doing. And so very much that must be done. Carry on Housekeeper. Carry on.