Catch Up time

Great is my joy at being able to sit down and blog, huge is my fear that all those thoughts that have been flying around my head for the past few weeks like swallows preparing for the long flight south will have done just that, disappeared south out of my head. However, here goes.

It is now approaching the six month mark since Mum passed on; what a six months rollercoaster. I can now calmly write that previous sentence without causing the local council to come, buckets in hand and spades ready to open the local drains to cope with the floods, floods of tears that is. Regarding floods of the flashflooding type, well, heavens above, the council really did do well, they sacrificed themselves by staying warm and cosy in their offices, manning the 'phones for a couple of hours while neighbours in every area in the town bagged sand, and tried to help those whose hall floor had disappeared under a mini-Ganges. A Ganges in full flood at that.

One neighbour sat on her kitchen counter in the new kitchen - installed in May - as she watched the table float by on its way into the new garden room. Punting was even considered, but the broom handle wasn't close enough to hand so she had to sit, cowering with fear at what else would befall her and her family. It is at times like these that good neighbours are more than just a blessing, they are a God send. We got lucky, the sand bags held and judicious raising of the drain lid lowered the depth of water swirling around the back door. YD was on her own, she wins my gold medal for quick thinking on how to stop the flood waters from coming into our kitchen. She tells me that the tales I told herself and ED over the years of the '82 calamity and how I coped bore fruit. Blueprint for survival.

We have a new family joke, usually it's the kids who leave the nest, in our case it's Mom and Pop, OH and I who have left. Work continues apace either indoors or outdoors depending on clement or inclement weather on our new/old home and we are deeply content, second honeymoon and all that, don't you know.

We are having funny happenings, such as my Andrea Bocelli disc which disappeared somewhere in the two milimetres between disc cover and cd player. Vanished, gone, house pulled asunder, searches high and low, private detectives being employed contemplated and...nada! Mother is moving things on me, it seems. I put a pair of scissors down on the dining room table the other day, answered the phone in the hall, went back into the dining room, no scissors, it turned up in the study, which was the dining room and exactly in place where the table used to be. I could, of course, be getting absent minded, in my dotage, or something, but funnily enough I don't feel like that, I feel more crystal clear in things than I have for a long time.

It has been one long challenge after another. The walls of the bedroom where the plaster vanished in a puff exposing the lathes; the hole in the ceiling of the same room where Marvin the Mighty Electrician decided he knew best, took his screwdriver and made a hole that an elephant could fall through. The discovery that we needed two new slates while the water cascaded down the dining room wall, the damp that suddenly appeared in the plaster over the dining room window, the plaster that was put in six months ago when I got new windows installed...turns out that an incey wincey hole in the gluey stuff was sufficient for the wind driven rain to find and use for an entry portal. The wood worm in the bedroom floor, all of whom died screaming at us as we cut, drenched and replaced.

There are the joys, plump wood pigeon ponderously patrolling the front garden in search of whatever tasty morsel might be found in the grass, the sight of the Merlin as she hovers over the gorse, the rich, ripe plump blackberries, the best of which grow out of hands reach - and the taming of them with the aid of Mum's walking stick. Cox's Pippin windfalls. The lack of wasps...I am not a wasp fan, the drone of bee's working overtime on sunny days. I am contemplating the invention of bee umbrella's - we need our bee's, wasps I can live without Thank You, even if they devour pests. Ladybirds do the job just as good. The arrival of the Badger and the Fox late at night seeking tidbits left out for them, the arrival of that one eyed nasty bad tempered black cat as well. Overfed mangy moggy!

It will all come together, I have faith in this, more faith than I had six months ago when I looked around me and realised that Mum had been doing cosmetic jobs on the house, and I, typically, had concentrated on her and our gossips rather than looking closely at the funny pattern on the wallpaper in the corner of her living room, the funny pattern turned out to be mildrew arising from a damaged downpipe outside at that corner. The wallpaper is gone, the mildew is gone and the downpipe is repaired. No doubt the old house will throw a few more wobblies at me before she gets much older, but we will wobble together, and I look forward to the day when the whole family will sit around the dining table, eat our turkey and remember Mam with love, affection and much gratitude and wipe a soft tear from our eyes knowing that we have survived as she would want us to and we face a future without her laughing presence but filled with the most wonderful memories of a spectacular woman.

As soon as I get my computer installed normal views from the kitchen window will resume, my fingers are getting itchy and the swallows are flying skittishly at the thought.