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Yes...this is ALL about me, and mine. Marvellously self indulgent, feel free to tell me how splendid I am, leave comments, nice ones please, I have little kids and teenagers who can do the rude stuff. I am a grandma, to the glorious Joshua, I'm allowed to look frazzled and weary, I earned it. The older I get, the more I see that hanging on and being patient is worth it! They ( whoever 'they' are) are so right when they say you never know what is around the corner, it isn't always an articulated truck! It is vital to make the time for making memories, friends are the greatest treasure, I love mine. I am rich!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Home is where the ......

Since I was 15 and I had my own first home, a tiny, rented cottage in a small Cornish town, I have loved making my home wherever I happen to be.
I have had a room in a nurses home, shared a flat, lived in Army accommodation in Germany and various towns in England. I have rented council houses, grand converted barns, town houses and a stinking evil spirited hovel.
I have always been able to make wherever we are home, people like coming to my home, we love to have people come, so that works out well.
I love the house I am in now. I do, it's a lovely house it has enormous potential and often I sit and imagine what I would do if this were my home. I have become jaded and wary of spending money on rented houses because landlords ( and ladies) love to have tenants improve and make beautiful and then they sell or make you move. So I don't do that anymore, beyond doing what I can do that can come with us should we have to move. I will make curtains and buy rugs, find beautiful furniture in back street thrift stores. I will make and mend and rearrange, I love it, it makes me heart happy.
When I was growing up we moved a lot, it never seems to matter because my mum has always been able to make wherever she lives a place where people love to be.
I go to my mums house and more and more I want to live there.
I am so tired. I am bone weary of trying, of trying and trying and trying to make this home a place where I want to be.
It is warm and we feel safe.
It is big enough for all of us and the clutter that a family of 6 collects and makes precious.
The neighbourhood is OK, it is incredibly handy for schools, town, parks, everything we want and need. Jordan, Mel and Joshua live in the street down from us. It is ideal in so many ways.
It has been one long struggle after another since we have lived here, the hot water, the damp and the rats. Oh the rats that keep going on vacation until we sigh with relief and believe we have done it and sent them packing and then they come back, with their relatives and  common new friends they picked up in Costa del filth.
We have been hearing them again for a few weeks, we have trapped and caught some, then the traps stayed empty and the pitter patter of worryingly loud feet running across the ceiling ceased. Exhale, relax.
The night before last I was woken every 40 minutes or so by the loudest crunching I have ever heard in my life, crunch, crunch, I would sit bolt upright and shine my ever handy torch in the direction of the wood crunching monster. Nothing. Zilch. Zero.
Nod off, CRUNCH, sit up, shine torch, hold breath, see nothing, lie down, drift off, CRUNCH, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Last evening I sat outside the bathroom reading a book while Eli had a bath, Crunch....SHUT THE HELL UP! Crunch.
Watching TV at 10pm I said to H " Listen..hear it?  Can you HEAR IT? Listen, above my head in that corner....HEAR IT????" He smiled and said " Do you hear voices sometimes or is it just the crunching?" Git.
This morning, as I was getting dressed I threw my PJs into the corner by the door and then I froze because what in the name of all that's freaky is THAT? I'll have to post a picture because it needs to be seen to be believed....here, look....

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That wasn't there last night, that is some bloody great MONSTER RAT trying to (this is the bit that gives me the eebie jeebies) GET OUT OF OUR BEDROOM! Which means, if you are a little slow on the uptake, it was trapped IN our room while we were sleeping.
Which naturally made me feel the need to discover where that thing was coming in and it didn't take long at all.
I leave my towel, my lovely oversized bath sheet, that I can wrap around my bigger every day body on the radiator, so that it is always warm and toasty when I need it. It is a HUGE towel, big and thick and not fluffy because FLUFFY TOWELS are a BAD BAD thing, I hate fluffy towels they don't dry properly but I digress, this huge towel drapes rather prettily onto the floor and I was drawn to it, I whipped that thing of the radiator and there it was, a big old hole, eaten from beneath, through the floorboards and the carpet and TADA rat access to my bedroom.

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Right there, can you see it? Black hole. Revolting carpet and who cares? I would if it was my house but it isn't so it stays until the landlord thinks we deserve new carpet, which will be never. Wait, that means it stays until never, work that one out when you're bored, you're welcome, can we concentrate on the RATS please, forget about the ugly carpet, keep up please.
Let me tell you, H came back from town and I caught him by the hand and I took him upstairs and I said " Hear THIS voice....that's most definitely NOT my imagination" which pretty much showed him who's crazy.

*sigh*
So that's where we are. Here, with the rats.
I hate it and I won't lie, I had a panic attack of splendidly impressive proportions, cried into my T shirt ( for greatest effect it ought to be an apron but darned if I ever got 'round to wearing one) looked online at beautiful and unobtainable homes to rent ( 5 bed, 2 bath, no rats and a garden) imagined packing and went out for the day in the sunshine that appeared today.
There you have it.
We have shoved wire wool in the rat hole and H has set more traps, if I get woken up by a SNAP sound in the night I can't say for sure what I will do.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Sara P. said...

Oh Helen... No one deserves to have to live like this, especially you. Could another well crafted letter help? Especially while you already have them on alert? Surely THIS does not warrant a rent increase either!?

2:12 pm  
Blogger Julie Q said...

Such a nightmare Helen. :(

5:36 pm  

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