Friday 11 July 2014

Onwards and Upwards

Once again I lament the fact that you are not all telepathic. I write so much in my head as I go about my day, but by the evening I am too tired to translate that on to screen, which means you have missed out on several instalments of my Thrilling Life.  However the Sky is not working and I am totally up to date with Nashville so I had nothing else to do this evening except for talk to K, and we have had a conversation already today so there really was nothing left to do but finally come on here and talk to you. I shall endeavour to catch you up with some edited highlights.

On to why the Sky doesn't work. There has been a seismic shift in the M&O household since the half term holiday. A great occurrence has occurred. YES, we finally have the builders in situ and they are busily turning our hideous loft in to a rather spiffing bedroom and bathroom. The excitement is overwhelming (although obviously tinged with sadness by the loss of our Sky - hopefully very temporarily until we work out a suitable place for the aerial). K and I have waited nearly a decade for this to happen. When we first moved in to this house it needed entirely gutting. Stripping, plastering, electrical overhaul, plumbing, walls knocked down and put up, painting, carpeting etc etc the whole shebang. I was very confident that our HUGE budget of about £15k would be enough to turn the entire house around AND turn the loft in to a fourth bedroom. I had watched property ladder, I had overseen an overhaul of the bathroom in our old flat. I knew it all. K gave up his job to do the labouring and oversee the trades he couldn't manage like the electrics, plumbing and plastering and I sought refuge at my mother's with our little baby Bea and waited for the magic to happen.

It turns out I didn't know anything. We needed tens of thousands more than I thought (particularly as I spent quite a bit on the furniture and furnishings section) and that didn't even include the loft. It transpires that trades are expensive, it turns out that not having an income means money you do have dwindles spectacularly quickly and it also turns out that trying to remortgage whilst no one in the household is earning money, is actually almost impossible. So, we ended up in something of a financial pickle hideous black hole of near destitution. K went back to work, mum stopped us starving and then a bank of dubious accreditation finally offered us a remortgage. We were saved, and so was the house. Since then we have tried to get the loft done a few times but failed miserably. Then the rats moved in up there and to be honest I just wanted to move as quickly as possible and leave them for someone else to deal with. However, just as we are planning to up sticks and move to the country we have decided to splash out (with the help of a bank obviously, we weren't just sitting here on hoards of cash wondering what to do with it all) and have the (previously) rat infested storage hell converted. The preparation of the start of works has actually taken up quite a lot of my time, what with getting plans, agreements, building regs, quotes etc so that we could start the work and then of course the weekends spent entertaining the children so that K could empty the loft of all our rat infested possessions and past lives. But as I sit here now, the roof is off, the dormer structure is up and insulation has gone in and in a few days it will be watertight and the floor will be down. It is surreal. I never thought it would happen. I am literally finding it hard to wait for it to be completed. The builders worked throughout last weekend and on the Sunday evening when we returned home the children fully expected it to be ready to move in to and although I was telling them not to be silly, I shared their feelings. Bea (who is doing her best to fully inhabit the role as 'tweenager') is very keen to move in to the  'master suite' once it is finished, as she feels she deserves it, K and I have put our collective feet down and insisted that this luxury is to be ours and ours alone. She will have to put up with her old bedroom which K and I will helpfully vacate.  Not that she has to cope for long....

On to the moving part. Yes, we are planning to up sticks and start 'the good life' in the country. The loft is the final part of the puzzle. When it came to it, I just couldn't leave the house for someone else to do it. Also I couldn't bear the idea of not getting the most money out of the house as was humanly possible (so sue me - four bedroom places seem to be going for so much more than three beds that the cost and inconvenience of converting the loft seemed like a no brainer). Plus the delay will give the children a final term at their beloved schools and for us all to say our goodbyes and tie up all the loose ends. So once the loft is finished and the bathroom is re-tiled we are putting it on the market and finally finding 'the forever house' in the Suffolk countryside. I am scared and excited in equal measure. When I am in Suffolk and the children are all playing outside in the sunshine I can't think of a single reason to stay in London. When I am in London I can think of quite a few and worry I will make a terrible full time country dweller.  I am sure that there will be times when I think I am a fool for moving, and times when I think I was a fool for not doing it sooner. Much like I can't quite imagine the loft actually being finished, I can't quite manage to picture our final goodbyes or leaving the house never to return, but I remain convinced that it is the best thing to do for all concerned. A smaller mortgage, bigger house, huge garden, smaller schools and hopefully a nice new job for K - it all seems to me to be the best thing for everyone. If I am wrong then there is really nothing much I can do about it other than live with my mistake for the rest of my life.  We can't even afford to buy the house we currently inhabit, let alone move back should it all turn out to be a disaster.

Mother is adamantly opposed to the move. Which is odd as you would assume it would make her ridiculously happy to have me and the brood nearby. But you can never second guess what the woman is thinking. She has come up with a myriad of reasons why I will hate it, but I tend to ignore her, particularly her concern over what I will do when 'one of them needs to go to a party' (she is very concerned about the amount of time I will have to spend in the car and her party scenario was to highlight the fact that when one of them has a party, should I be alone, I will have to put all of them in the car and take them to and from the party....). Potentially she worries that I am moving purely for free childcare and that she will be forced to spend her retirement being dumped with a number of small children whilst I galavant about the place. I must admit, the idea of having her to help out on an occasional basis with childcare was definitely a bonus, but the whole point of the move was to enable us to spend more time altogether as a family. We can't wait to have a big garden that we can all spend the weekends enjoying and a house that is big enough to accommodate us both together and separately. It just seems to us that the stars have aligned and everything seems to suggest that this is our opportunity, and we intend to make the most of it.

Anyway, back to the here and now.  We are tantalisingly close to the end of term - a week and a half to go! I have watched two sports days, with one more to attend, the children are up to date with all jabs, doctors appointments and dental checks. I have even given in the registration forms for Ted so that he can start school in September. I am totally on the ball. I have also attended Bea's end of year dance show which was something I hope I will never forget.

If I could live a different life I would love to be graceful and dance. I was desperate to be Penny from Dirty Dancing and have the ability to move with rhythm and beauty (and be tall and really skinny). Sadly it was never to be. Aside from the weight issue I was not one for learning to dance, I hated ballet and I was the only child who had a written excuse to get me out of having to do 'pliés'.  I have watched elegant dancers and felt an ache that I will never be able to do anything like that. However, watching my first born prance effortlessly across the stage made me cry with an odd mix of emotions. Naturally pride, love, joy, but also an overwhelming happiness that she gets to experience something I will never know.  I am at a loss as to where she inherited it from - K is lovely but I wouldn't say he sets the dancefloor alight with his dance moves although he is arguably more rhythmic than me. My mother and I are very much the 'galumphing' sort of folk - we have big hands and feet and are naturally quite clumsy. There were definitely some dancers on stage at various times who reminded me of me. The ones that 'have it' are mesmerising for all the right reasons; those without draw attention for all the wrong reasons. But I mentally high fived them for going ahead with it anyway. I would never have had the confidence.

Sadly for me I was gifted with musicality which is all well and good if you like playing in an orchestra (I hated it) and practising for hours on end every day (I hated it) and you liked performing said instruments in front of an audience (GUESS how much I hated that). The minute I stopped having to play them, I did. Dance is something you can do all the time and I am so happy that she has it. She performed four dances in all and we were all there to watch her - a first for us - we have never before taken children who can move to any of her performances lest it annoy us distract us. We clearly had a point as Cybs attempted to join her on stage at one point. After doing quite a lot of 'twirling' in the aisle and some balletic arm moves throughout the rest of the show, for Bea's final dance Cybs decided that she would chance her luck and make a run for the stairs to the side of the stage, so that she could get up and there and take part. Luckily a woman grabbed her before she achieved her goal as I was too far away to stop her, although it was more that I was sort of interested to see what would happen if she did. It would have made a lovely family video for us.  Akin to the bit in the film Parenthood when the younger boy gets on stage to protect his sister. I love that film.

So, that is really it, apart from an INCREDIBLY exciting surprise trip to Legoland to stay in the hotel next week. Two whole naughty skive days spent blowing their tiny minds and a night in a themed room with a view of the park. K and I are beside ourselves with anticipation and the excitement of surprising them.  We have decided to act like it's a normal morning, making them get in school uniform and everything, before getting in the car and seeing how long we can last with their constant questioning about where we are going before we give in and spill the beans. We have envisaged getting all the way to the first sign post for Legoland, however I am pretty sure that half a mile down the road and we will want to rip out our ears. It is bad enough when they do know where they are going, let alone without and with seemingly deranged parents who have decided not to take them to school for some peculiar reason. Whatever happens, it is literally the most exciting thing to ever happen to us.

One of the best parts of my half term was a trip to and from London entirely on my own. The reason for the trip was rather dull - boring banking stuff to help get the money for the loft - I was only going up for a half an hour meeting so it was decided the children were best left at home with Mum. It was four and a half hours of utter bliss - just me, the car and four Nashville CDs. Awesome. Like being in a spa but without stressing about the fact that the 'one size fits all' dressing gown doesn't quite fit 'all' of you and with traffic.

And finally, I shall leave you with my favourite comment from Ted from the half term - I was lying in bed and trying to grab a few more seconds of lying down before I forced myself upright, so I asked Ted to go behind the curtain and see what the weather was like. He was quiet for a bit and I said, 'what can you see'. He replied, 'I can't see anything'. I asked if he was looking from behind the curtain or in front of it. He said 'I'm behind the curtain, but I can't see any weather through all this rain. I think it's a bit windy'. That amused me for a long time.

So, yet again I shall make hollow promises about getting in touch shortly and not leaving it nearly two months, but we both know the truth. I may come on briefly to brag about my new snazzy room, but I may be too busy sitting in it watching tv in my new comfy bed to come down the two flights of stairs in order to retrieve the laptop. But, with the shiny long stretch of holidays ahead of us, anything is possible.

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