Sunday 7 June 2015

Staying put!

I have switched off the heating.....this is far more momentous than it sounds! Having had a struggle last year when the weather turned cold to get the system working again I have quite simply left the whole system alone ever since! I left it on over Christmas whilst I was away so it's the first time I've used the Off switch since!

This then is the moment to get it all serviced......in theory....but I am strangely ambivalent about that too!

"Let's just leave well alone " is the way my brain is thinking right now!

This reluctance to act is typical of much of my feeling right now....too many things have gone wrong over the last couple of years for me to have any confidence that all will be well.....

This ancient farmhouse has many strange features....nothing is straight forward as I'm learning.

This summer I am having it painted....all of it. It's one of those stark white blobs visible on the Cornish landscape which David decreed had to be repainted every third year. This is the year!

Keeping the house and garden ticking over has become an important part of my life right now...and it all has its inconsistencies and quirks...

The no go area is in the roof space where the bats live! Nothing would persuade me to go up the ladder kindly provided to do so! I attribute any sounds from up there to the bat and bird population....I prefer not to contemplate anything else!

Yesterday drinking coffee after church I was asked yet again when I would be moving....this question has been asked so often in the last year that I don't bother to think about it.....

This house was our home, mine and Davids...we put it together and I've changed very little since his death...but nothing inside me wants to go...the one spare bedroom is outnumbered by having two offices. One for him and one for me...

I've kept them all warm and safe and hopefully will continue to do so...I love every idiosyncratic bit of it...so when asked if I am still "rattling around it" I just smile and nod...for me it's home sweet home....

3 comments:

Ray Barnes said...

Strange isn't it that the first thing people want to know when you have lost your partner is where will you go now? Not, "do you want to move", just "when"?
Perhaps in some corner of their minds is the idea that by moving you will be leaving your grief behind.
My answer was always I'll never move unless forced to. All the good memories as well as the sad ones are here, why would I want to move to somewhere where I know no-one and no-one knows me.
My house is small but warm and comfortable and blanket-like I wrap it around me when the need arises.

Revjeanrolt said...

Exactly!

UKViewer said...

Down sizing is the modern trend. We'd ike to do so, but have to consider that currently we have a garden, which our cats adore. In addition, we have feral cats living outdoors - moving would mean abandoning them to their fate. Not an option. So, we'll continue, doing the house up over the next couple of years for retirement and continuing as we are. We're near services, doctors etc and in a community which we feel part off. Our grand children are nearby, why would we give that up too move somewhere where we know no one and be isolated. We're stuck now until death us do part and probably further as well.