Autumn - What A Pants Time

My summer was pretty good, recovering from the hip operation and realising that I will be able to walk properly again. Better still, I got a date in October for the second hip to be done, and that gave a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Work has been buoyant and I'm grateful for that too.

The autumn months, however, started off badly and kept on going downhill. First, Poor old Tom died, then someone I had called 'friend' turned and started behaving unacceptably. I coped with that. Then my mum went into hospital after a fall and my sister and I were told that it wouldn't be that likely that she would come out again. Then someone hit the back of my car while I was stationary at a junction and I was reminded that I needed to do the company accounts and corporation tax stuff, which is about as much fun as pushing hot needles into one's own eyeballs.

Five weeks ago, our house descended into utter chaos as we emptied the scullery and tool shed into the dining room so that we could renovate, put in a new central heating boiler and oil tank and take out the rayburn. The tool shed, which had originally been a downstairs toilet, was capped off by the previous owners and used for storage and we are trying to turn it back into a downstairs cloakroom. The scullery needed dry-lining and the ceiling replaced, new wiring and a radiator. We bought lovely new cast iron radiators styled on an original French design for the bedroom and sitting room and the electricians came in to wire up.

All in all, the house is a bomb site. My cleaning lady has been ill - not that she could have done much anyway - and I have felt like running away, only I can't drive for more than 15 minutes without being in excruciating pain because the hire car is so uncomfortable. I can't get out of the house and take a nice walk to get away from the banging and screeching drills and other power tools and my remaining 'real' hip is just bone-on-bone now, and too painful to go any distance.

Three weeks after it started, most of the pipe-work was in, the radiators connected but the boiler wasn't yet commissioned. The dry-lining, that must have upset our neighbours over the weekend installation, fell off the walls and was a total waste of money and materials. Now, five weeks on, we have heating, thank goodness, the scullery is plastered and the electricians finished and long gone. The plumber still has to come back to take the tanks from the roof-space and finish off the downstairs cloakroom; finding the sewage pipe has turned into a bit of an epic and this was all supposed to have finished weeks ago.

On the 27th September my mother died after five weeks in hospital. We had had an interesting relationship, sometimes getting on well and at other times not speaking at all. It was my mother's wont to behave badly and she did not include 'sorry' in her vocabulary. Our last encounter had been soon after my father died; it was a difficult time and my mother had never taken care of the bank accounts or household bills, and she really didn't have a clue. My sister and I were to become joint Attorneys but the logistics of managing her affairs, while I lived in Somerset and my sister lived in Paris became a nightmare, so I offered to do it all. But it seems that my sister didn't trust me. I offered to let my sister be sole Attorney, but she didn't want the responsibility; she the said that I should be sole Attorney after all, but that she wanted power of veto (not a problem) and she insisted that I travel from Somerset to Lincolnshire every week, which I didn't feel was realistic. Eventually my mother settled things by acting up and when she didn't get the desired reaction from me, announced "Well, you don't think I'm going to let you look after my affairs!" It seemed to have escaped her notice that I hadn't been offering to look after her for the fun of it and so I decided she could have her own way. I'm now totally disinherited, not that there was much to inherit, but my father had wanted me to have half of the estate. My sister, the sole beneficiary has now declared "Trust me!" (note the irony) and said that she'd do the decent thing, after she has recouped all her outgoings for the past two years.

So, with all this going on, I haven't felt much like blogging, or doing much else for that matter! I'm desperate for some quiet time, some privacy and a bit of a break before I go into hospital on Monday - so much so that I turned down the opportunity to meet two lovely people for shopping and coffee today. Still, on Tuesday I shall be under general anaesthetic and that should give me some quiet time! Perhaps this time, I won't be so eager to get out of hospital, and stay as long as I can to rest, read and generally not be surrounded by noise and dust... Then again, last time there was lots of noise with old ladies hallucinating on morphine! Perhaps coming home to Kim and my two gorgeous kitties will be the best thing after all...

Thank goodness or cats is all I can say!