Friday, 25 March 2011
Skirmish
Oh dear, the Rescue Remedy bottle's been out this week. On Wednesday we had to bite the bullet and hand in our notice to our Landlady of 8 years. She and her husband arrived for their annual cup of tea / small talk visit, only to find that Mr and Mrs Reliable weren't going to put up with a disintegrating, rat infested house any longer - Not a popular move! We were supposed to be stuck here by dint of socio/economic circumstances until such times as either the roof and/or walls fell down or they decided it was all too much trouble ( one cup of tea a year) and decided to sell. Meanwhile we were supposed to get estimates and arrange for builders/ plumbers and electricians to come to stick their fingers in the ever multiplying holes in the dyke holding back the tsunami of collapsing structure, dirt and plaster, whilst endeavouring as best we could to keep the place clean and looking nice. Over the last year or so we have lost the battle as the house has taken up more and more time - not to mention money and Pluto squaring my natal 4th house Sun.....
It was like this....We were happily settled into a tiny house at the end of the terrace. We'd been there for 5 years or so and recently started our business when things began to go downhill. My faraway Father died which brought a flurry of reproach from certain members of the family who expected me to drop everything and rush to his deathbed in spite of the fact that he had made it quite clear when I left home at the age of 17 that unless I went back immediately and unconditionally to his roof and total contol, I would no longer be welcome in his house (you get the drift?) I didn't go back and I was only invited to his house once or twice in the intervening years when it would have come to the notice of the distant but revered members of his clan who still thought him a warm and wonderful father, although we did keep in touch by phone - as long as we talked about him. It fell to my long-suffering sister to sort out the melee of his house and finances until it finally dawned that she would get no more than the rest of us - ie, nothing and passed the whole sorry mess to our stepmother's kids to deal with. Said Stepmother all the while languishing in the best nursing home in the area, threatening evil mischief to my small nephew and niece who she hated.
I'm sure you're getting the picture of emotional stability coming through! My always troublesome menstrual cycle took a turn for the worse with the development of fibroids which caused ever heavier and more unpredictable periods and kept me at home for a day or two every 3 weeks or so. Then our landlord gave us notice to leave the house as he needed to live in it himself - this seemed odd as he farmed 10 miles away but we had no choice but to leave. We were already renting a garage close by to store the tools of our trade - mowers,strimmers,etc and our trusty little Fiesta van, so we didn't want to go far. Fortunately someone we knew had a tiny maisonette on a big new estate about half a mile away. We were gutted. We had loved the cottage and the street and had made friends there, especially an elderly couple who had given us our first gardening work. The old lady, in her late seventies, had nursed and lost both her sister and husband in the previous year and was quietly living out her days alone, visited now and then by her daughter and granddaughter's family from 'upcountry' (a long and tedious journey).
A week before moving day our former landlord arrived with a very special offer - we could stay in the house but he would have to put the rent up! We had signed a new lease and the kitchen roof was about to fall in (it did, a week after new tenants had moved in) so we declined his kind offer.The day we moved out was utterly miserable, the help we had arranged was no help at all and drove us to distraction trying to keep things in the organised system we had devised to squeeze a houseful of stuff into what was little more than a bedsit. In depair I escaped round to have a chat with my elderly friend, only to find her suffering from a nasty pain in the chest which in time turned out to be the Lung Cancer which killed her. Subsequent weeks were awful as we tried to juggle the upheaval that life had become with stuff in different parts of the area, an increasingly sick and dying friend and a fledgeling business. I ended up in the A and E department several times with alarmingly heavy periods which just didn't stop and produced agonising cramps and weariness. Eventually I was almost housebound. I had to wait months for an ultrasound scan and consultations and had to stop going to clean my friend's house as any exertion made it much worse. The hospital put me on drugs to stop the bleeding which made me nauseous and didn't work, our friend worsened and died and I felt very isolated in this tiny place on a huge estate where nobody spoke to anyone else and I couldn't even get away to go to work. The weekly supermarket shop was the most I could manage and even that made me feel dreadful.
So when my friend's daughter offered us the lease of her Mother's house at a rent we could afford, we were over the moon! At the end of our 6 month contract we upped sticks and moved back. Apart from her few personal belongings, all my friend's furniture and 'stuff' was still in the house - nothing of any value - and we were at liberty to do what we liked with it. Some we kept to use, some we donated to a 'furniture for the homeless' charity and the rest we dumped or rather my husband dumped because I was still very poorly if less depressed. The house was filthy and mouldy from being shut up for a few weeks, but we were so glad to get back, we were happy enough to clean up. Three months later I finally got to see a surgeon who decided I needed a radical hysterectomy.After another seven months of waiting I went to my GP and wept etc,etc when it transpired that because my records had not been updated to indicate that I was now self-employed, I was still being treated as unemployed (and evidently unworthy of concern). Within three weeks I was in and out of hospital, minus my entire reproductive system and feeling better than I had for a couple of years give or take a bit of healing to do. Three months later I was back to work and pretty much back to what passes with me as 'normal'.That era, incidently was Pluto transiting my Moon!
I digress! The house was always a puzzle. It looks pretty enough but the multiple layers of wallpaper, reaching back into the 1940's hid a multitude of sins. We soon learned not to strip it off unless we were prepared to spend weeks and a small fortune patching up crumbling plaster and filling holes in lath and plaster partition walls. None of the doors close, the tiny kitchen has an undulating earth floor covered with geological strata of decaying linoleum and topped by as hard wearing a carpet as we could afford (understandably nobody would lay vinyl for us) the house only stands at all by dint of support from its neighbours which have,like the rest of the street had thousands of pounds worth of structural engineering carried out on them. The original back extention kitchen and bedroom were found to have no ties to the rest of the building and no lead on the roof joins either which has resulted in the bedroom ceiling cracking up from the ingress of years of Cornish rain. All the woodwork is original and excepting the doors you can put your finger through it anywhere - Goddess knows what the joists are like, the front bedroom window rattles when you walk round the bed in the backbedroom! And there's a ghost. Oh, and rats.
Any way enough is enough and we have told the proud owners that although we are very grateful for their kindness in keeping the rent low, we have found somewhere else to live before the ratty bathroom ceiling has to be carried through the house and the asbestos water tank (for crying out loud) has to come out as well. This was received with feigned dismay and incomprehension. Relieved the unpleasant task was over, we were then astonished an hour or so later to be told that they would return the following afternoon with an estate agent to 'See what needs to be done to rent it out again'! (We didn't have an agent). Slightly put out (tr Mars square natal Mars) to have to wait in again but glad to be getting the thing done, I was getting some laundry in off the line when they arrived. I let them in and retired back to my washing line, trying to subdue Jester the collie who wanted to scare them away by barking his wretched head off (this tactic always works on the postman who always goes away when he barks - such is dog logic). I assumed I was safe for awhile but alas, no! within a few minutes, landlady and estate agent lady came skipping and laughing out into the very narrow back yard where the washing line is. Like all West Cornwall houses our washing line is a nautical affair of ropes and pulleys designed to use in minimum space and maximum Atlantic winds. They pull up on metal poles to a fair height - 15 ft or so, and unless well secured when lowered they collapse to shoulder height. This was the state of play of the remainder of my laundry. A sundry collection of M&S knickers and bras brushed their fair cheeks as they rushed by hooting 'OOH, IT'S GOT A STREAM!!' 'Yes' I thought, 'that's where the rats live' but kept my counsel as I retreived my best purple spotty knicks with bucolic patience while firmly and unobtrusively preventing Jester from expressing his (wholly worthy) instincts and all the while wondering what Mr Landlord was doing all this time on his own upstairs in my/his house. Eventually they went back indoors where they dillied around for the best part of half an hour before calling out 'Thanks, Morvah', and left. With a sigh of relief I sank down into a chair to take a few deep breaths when I was astonished to see through the window, Mrs Landlady pulling back some sacks of the frostbitten Jasmine I had been pruning whilst waiting for their arrival, and sitting on the bench under my window with the estate agent lady where they proceded to have their discussion at normal volume, feet away from the windows of the nosiest neighbours in creation. The only person who couldn't hear what they were saying was myself, because I had left the TV on to give them some privacy from me (that worked then!). By the time they left, Jester and I had to hit the Rescue Remedy bottle and the Smirnoff looked pretty tempting but we resisted. Neither of us wanted any dinner for a while though and were glad when Mr Leo arrived home with cuddles and sympathy.Now its only a memory but I felt as if I had been in a fight. Why? Should this not be a win/win situation? I am positive that no hint of either reproach or triumph came from us so why the war zone after eight and a half years of a civil relationship? Oh well, hopefully from here on in it's a new beginning. The last rent has been paid and legal requirements observed before Mercury retrograde next week, so now we can get everything in order to move when it goes direct again in about a month. Lots to do! The cardboard box collection is growing daily, probably Mr Landlord is still in there somewhere, trying to find his way out!
It was like this....We were happily settled into a tiny house at the end of the terrace. We'd been there for 5 years or so and recently started our business when things began to go downhill. My faraway Father died which brought a flurry of reproach from certain members of the family who expected me to drop everything and rush to his deathbed in spite of the fact that he had made it quite clear when I left home at the age of 17 that unless I went back immediately and unconditionally to his roof and total contol, I would no longer be welcome in his house (you get the drift?) I didn't go back and I was only invited to his house once or twice in the intervening years when it would have come to the notice of the distant but revered members of his clan who still thought him a warm and wonderful father, although we did keep in touch by phone - as long as we talked about him. It fell to my long-suffering sister to sort out the melee of his house and finances until it finally dawned that she would get no more than the rest of us - ie, nothing and passed the whole sorry mess to our stepmother's kids to deal with. Said Stepmother all the while languishing in the best nursing home in the area, threatening evil mischief to my small nephew and niece who she hated.
I'm sure you're getting the picture of emotional stability coming through! My always troublesome menstrual cycle took a turn for the worse with the development of fibroids which caused ever heavier and more unpredictable periods and kept me at home for a day or two every 3 weeks or so. Then our landlord gave us notice to leave the house as he needed to live in it himself - this seemed odd as he farmed 10 miles away but we had no choice but to leave. We were already renting a garage close by to store the tools of our trade - mowers,strimmers,etc and our trusty little Fiesta van, so we didn't want to go far. Fortunately someone we knew had a tiny maisonette on a big new estate about half a mile away. We were gutted. We had loved the cottage and the street and had made friends there, especially an elderly couple who had given us our first gardening work. The old lady, in her late seventies, had nursed and lost both her sister and husband in the previous year and was quietly living out her days alone, visited now and then by her daughter and granddaughter's family from 'upcountry' (a long and tedious journey).
A week before moving day our former landlord arrived with a very special offer - we could stay in the house but he would have to put the rent up! We had signed a new lease and the kitchen roof was about to fall in (it did, a week after new tenants had moved in) so we declined his kind offer.The day we moved out was utterly miserable, the help we had arranged was no help at all and drove us to distraction trying to keep things in the organised system we had devised to squeeze a houseful of stuff into what was little more than a bedsit. In depair I escaped round to have a chat with my elderly friend, only to find her suffering from a nasty pain in the chest which in time turned out to be the Lung Cancer which killed her. Subsequent weeks were awful as we tried to juggle the upheaval that life had become with stuff in different parts of the area, an increasingly sick and dying friend and a fledgeling business. I ended up in the A and E department several times with alarmingly heavy periods which just didn't stop and produced agonising cramps and weariness. Eventually I was almost housebound. I had to wait months for an ultrasound scan and consultations and had to stop going to clean my friend's house as any exertion made it much worse. The hospital put me on drugs to stop the bleeding which made me nauseous and didn't work, our friend worsened and died and I felt very isolated in this tiny place on a huge estate where nobody spoke to anyone else and I couldn't even get away to go to work. The weekly supermarket shop was the most I could manage and even that made me feel dreadful.
So when my friend's daughter offered us the lease of her Mother's house at a rent we could afford, we were over the moon! At the end of our 6 month contract we upped sticks and moved back. Apart from her few personal belongings, all my friend's furniture and 'stuff' was still in the house - nothing of any value - and we were at liberty to do what we liked with it. Some we kept to use, some we donated to a 'furniture for the homeless' charity and the rest we dumped or rather my husband dumped because I was still very poorly if less depressed. The house was filthy and mouldy from being shut up for a few weeks, but we were so glad to get back, we were happy enough to clean up. Three months later I finally got to see a surgeon who decided I needed a radical hysterectomy.After another seven months of waiting I went to my GP and wept etc,etc when it transpired that because my records had not been updated to indicate that I was now self-employed, I was still being treated as unemployed (and evidently unworthy of concern). Within three weeks I was in and out of hospital, minus my entire reproductive system and feeling better than I had for a couple of years give or take a bit of healing to do. Three months later I was back to work and pretty much back to what passes with me as 'normal'.That era, incidently was Pluto transiting my Moon!
I digress! The house was always a puzzle. It looks pretty enough but the multiple layers of wallpaper, reaching back into the 1940's hid a multitude of sins. We soon learned not to strip it off unless we were prepared to spend weeks and a small fortune patching up crumbling plaster and filling holes in lath and plaster partition walls. None of the doors close, the tiny kitchen has an undulating earth floor covered with geological strata of decaying linoleum and topped by as hard wearing a carpet as we could afford (understandably nobody would lay vinyl for us) the house only stands at all by dint of support from its neighbours which have,like the rest of the street had thousands of pounds worth of structural engineering carried out on them. The original back extention kitchen and bedroom were found to have no ties to the rest of the building and no lead on the roof joins either which has resulted in the bedroom ceiling cracking up from the ingress of years of Cornish rain. All the woodwork is original and excepting the doors you can put your finger through it anywhere - Goddess knows what the joists are like, the front bedroom window rattles when you walk round the bed in the backbedroom! And there's a ghost. Oh, and rats.
Any way enough is enough and we have told the proud owners that although we are very grateful for their kindness in keeping the rent low, we have found somewhere else to live before the ratty bathroom ceiling has to be carried through the house and the asbestos water tank (for crying out loud) has to come out as well. This was received with feigned dismay and incomprehension. Relieved the unpleasant task was over, we were then astonished an hour or so later to be told that they would return the following afternoon with an estate agent to 'See what needs to be done to rent it out again'! (We didn't have an agent). Slightly put out (tr Mars square natal Mars) to have to wait in again but glad to be getting the thing done, I was getting some laundry in off the line when they arrived. I let them in and retired back to my washing line, trying to subdue Jester the collie who wanted to scare them away by barking his wretched head off (this tactic always works on the postman who always goes away when he barks - such is dog logic). I assumed I was safe for awhile but alas, no! within a few minutes, landlady and estate agent lady came skipping and laughing out into the very narrow back yard where the washing line is. Like all West Cornwall houses our washing line is a nautical affair of ropes and pulleys designed to use in minimum space and maximum Atlantic winds. They pull up on metal poles to a fair height - 15 ft or so, and unless well secured when lowered they collapse to shoulder height. This was the state of play of the remainder of my laundry. A sundry collection of M&S knickers and bras brushed their fair cheeks as they rushed by hooting 'OOH, IT'S GOT A STREAM!!' 'Yes' I thought, 'that's where the rats live' but kept my counsel as I retreived my best purple spotty knicks with bucolic patience while firmly and unobtrusively preventing Jester from expressing his (wholly worthy) instincts and all the while wondering what Mr Landlord was doing all this time on his own upstairs in my/his house. Eventually they went back indoors where they dillied around for the best part of half an hour before calling out 'Thanks, Morvah', and left. With a sigh of relief I sank down into a chair to take a few deep breaths when I was astonished to see through the window, Mrs Landlady pulling back some sacks of the frostbitten Jasmine I had been pruning whilst waiting for their arrival, and sitting on the bench under my window with the estate agent lady where they proceded to have their discussion at normal volume, feet away from the windows of the nosiest neighbours in creation. The only person who couldn't hear what they were saying was myself, because I had left the TV on to give them some privacy from me (that worked then!). By the time they left, Jester and I had to hit the Rescue Remedy bottle and the Smirnoff looked pretty tempting but we resisted. Neither of us wanted any dinner for a while though and were glad when Mr Leo arrived home with cuddles and sympathy.Now its only a memory but I felt as if I had been in a fight. Why? Should this not be a win/win situation? I am positive that no hint of either reproach or triumph came from us so why the war zone after eight and a half years of a civil relationship? Oh well, hopefully from here on in it's a new beginning. The last rent has been paid and legal requirements observed before Mercury retrograde next week, so now we can get everything in order to move when it goes direct again in about a month. Lots to do! The cardboard box collection is growing daily, probably Mr Landlord is still in there somewhere, trying to find his way out!
Monday, 21 March 2011
Vernal Equinox - Boscawen-un
May we be protected by the wise ones in these times of change.
Monday, 7 February 2011
"Oh for a trap,a trap,a trap!"
My 4th house Sun has been subject to a long term wallop from transiting Pluto forming a back and forth square aspect since the end of 2009. Relentlessly our rented cottage has seemingly rejected old and previously enduring parts of itself over this period causing at least, inconvenience and at worst, trauma ! Of course all of this is in correspondence to my emotional need for renovation and the latest developments, coming as they have with the last exact forward transit of Pluto seem positively Hadean. For a while we had heard an odd rustle in the ground floor extension bathroom roof . Jackdaws sit on this roof and scratch up the moss looking for insects, twigs blow out of the trees onto it and we have entertained the odd mouse so as it was only occasional, and falling sycamore leaves were adding to the ambient sound we thought nothing of it. The people next door ('Happiness' and 'Angel') have never been friendly and given the slightest excuse have tried, unsuccessfully, to make trouble for us. Back in the autumn my husband painted the front of the cottage one sunny weekend - an action which inexplicably precipitated a terrible row revealing deceptions, lies and manipulations of unspeakable hurtfulness by a third party going back eight years and ended in threats that our 'days were numbered'. We rather pointlessly reported them to the police and tried to forget the whole stupid incident. Just before Christmas there was a flurry of activity next door with sheds being cleared and moved and a lot of Jeyes fluid and cement in evidence over a couple of weeks. I can't now believe how we still didn't tumble to what was happening, but we soon did!
The coldest December on record; Christmas; Swine flu and the New Year brings us Pluto again. The scrabbling got worse. We had to suspect rats were getting in and sure enough a hole appeared in the half rotted fascia board. This was duly replaced. (Our absentee landlord is quite reasonable but rather ill-advisedly leaves the nuts and bolts of maintainance to us. The rent is good so we have done this for years). I still heard scrabbling on nocturnal visits to the bathroom but it was another week or two before my husband reported hearing 'thumping and galloping.' Why we didn't get the pest control people out at that point escapes me. We were shattered by flu and the cold weather, it was miserable, several of my online friends who normally keep me sane worryingly disappeared without warning, the world seemed about to disappear up its own backside and I just couldn't muster the effort required to deal with yet another house problem. My head was firmly yanked out of the sand when I came home one day to a nasty smell coming from the bathroom. By teatime it was unmistakeably dead rat. Of course this was Friday and everything closed until Monday morning. I will gloss over the horrible weekend. Our kitchen is next to the bathroom, it was freezing but we had to have doors and windows open, it was truly sickening.
Monday morning and the inevitable telephone queue to speak to someone at the council's environmental health (joke) department. If I paid them £43, they would give my name to their pest control company but as their card machine was out of order they couldn't quite manage it today . Cash on the doorstep? "Not the way we do things." In the end I had to walk across town in the pouring rain and pay cash at the council office. Next day I had a call from the company, based 40 miles away to say they'd be out the following lunchtime. The smell wasn't getting any better when the gentleman stuck his head through the minute trapdoor and declared that he didn't think the body was in the roof. This pronouncement was accompanied by a shower of rat poo over the carpet which he subsequently walked through. He had no overalls or even gloves,declared the hotwater header tank a 'severe health hazard' as it has no cover, put bags of poison down everywhere and departed. Apparently because it was 'only the hot water system' and the rats weren't actually in the bathroom itself,( though they had been under the bath on their way up throught the airing cupboard and into an old chimney which links the space between bathroom and kitchen) this does not constitute a health hazard and it is considered to be safe for habitation! Subsequent visits have established cracks in the sewer and holes leading from yes- you've guessed it - next door!
The upshot of all this is that the bathroom ceiling must come down and be replaced with a larger trapdoor, the asbestos header tank (gulp) needs to be removed and replaced along with various patching and filling, all of which will have to be carried through the entire house. None of this will guarantee that the rats will not find another way in if they're determined. Incidently, they seem to be coming in for shelter rather than food as there is nothing stored which might be attracting them. This gives me some hope. Of course it falls to me to organise all of this . For a week I have explained to the landlord and various builders what needs doing and now await estimates of the costs to submit to my landlord. Added to which I am starting a part-time course several miles away in two weeks time. Oh Goddess! Give me strength!
We are looking for somewhere else to live of course. Trouble is, our business, rented garage and allotments are all here and must be accessable. It is my dearest wish that we can be out of here before building starts, though obvously I will have to oversee the work for my landlord who has always been fair if a bit neglectful.
Chances of that?? My trump card is a transit of Jupiter - and presently Uranus to that 4th house Sun - very very soon. I am eyeing up cardboard boxes as I write!
The picture is 'The Pied Piper' by Elizabeth Forbes which is in Penlee House Museum and which I have long loved. The post title is of course from Browning's 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin ' which comes back to me from first year English classes when we had to learn it by heart!
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Imbolc
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Imbolc
At this time of year, especially after such a cold winter, little is flowering or even showing new leaves but the mosses come into their their delicate glory in these cold February days with promise of greener things to come. Imbolc and New Moon Blessings !
Friday, 15 October 2010
Blog Action Day -
http://www.change.org/petition
Pictured are (top) Madron Holy Well, (middle) Carn Euny Holy Well and (bottom) Carn Euny Original Holy Well. All Photos ©seadaughter2010.
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