Home Sweet, Scruffy, Home

Heck!

That's it, then.

M helped me choose lovely fabric for the curtains in both bedrooms. She went on to help me choose paint colours too.

A post lunch stop into Exclusive Tiles on the way home tipped up a suitable number of tumbled travertine tiles at a bargain rate. Archifriend approves of the purchase.

I've negotiated a fixed price contract for the decorating of the upper part of the house and I have a date for it to start.

I've been measured for carpet and lino and colours have been chosen.

Curtain measurement will be done on Friday

This thing's really happening, then...


Would appear so


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A Reason for Staying in Bed until 9am

Non working day today and I've been trying, in vain, to get up earlier.

This morning I had vowed to get up at 8.30. I failed, and heard the Today programme to the bitter end.

I'm glad I did because I learned that my favourite bit of architecture/engineering may become a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Neither words nor pictures can do justice to this feat of engineering. A sturdy cast-iron trough with lead, sugar and Welsh flannel joints sits atop a series of elegant archways made of stone and ox-blood mortar.


If you don't like heights then travelling over it by boat or on foot will be a scary experience. On one side there's a railed towpath but on the other side, just a 3" (ish) turn of cast iron.

Then there's a a drop to the valley floor over 100' beneath.

I loved it. Other travelling companions were less enthusiastic, I seem to remember.

Straying back to an earlier thread in this blog, it's probably not very feminine to get quite so excited about an aqueduct, nor about the engineer that designed and built it (Thos Telford) but if I tell you I squealed like a girl when I heard the news...would that make it any better?

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What is happiness?

M had a bit of a moment, yesterday. Everything she's going through at the momemt clearly piled on top of her and for a moment it became unbearable.

We played hooky for a bit and went and had a cup of tea.

We chatted about emotional things, about practical things, about personal things and about how things might turn out for her, for me, for her kids, for others...

Then she asked a question that stopped me dead in my tracks.

"but are you able to feel happy, these days?".

She probably wanted reassurance that, at some point, she would again be happy, and maybe my past and present would give her some reassurance about her future. That and fulfilling her role for the last couple of years as great friend and monitor of my mental health.

I'm not a great one for platitudes and I think M knows that...so I assume she was after some measure of honesty.

Not wholly content, I concede. My life ran away and changed and I have probably been trying to track it down again. At some point, I'll sort myself out a replacement life, until then I'm kinda stumbling around trying things for size...

But happy in moments. Coffee and a natter on my back step; tea and sympathy in Starbucks; photography in a park with a friend; photography at an event on my own; dinner and an episode of the Sopranos with the neighbours; trips to Scotland in planning; having new reading glasses and the prospect I might be able to start reading in bed again; being greeted by an enthusiastic border collie; being taught something I don't already know; the list is virtually endless.

At these times the old sadness takes a back seat, stops being in control. Then I realise that these moments are not once a week moments, but several times each day.

How could I not be happy with this much to be happy about.

So, M, I know you read this from time to time. The actual answer to the question you asked me is "Yes" but just not 100% of the time. Then again, I never was happy 100% of the time.

...you will be happy again.


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Slippery Slope

A little while back I decided to try and play with some black and white film.

It was following a conversation that started innocently enough with a question "have you ever used a rangefinder?".

We went on to discuss the nature of film vs digi.

The question asker gently encouraged me when I suggested that I might try film in a familiar format (SLR) before I looked at other types of camera.

I have other filmy friends and they continued the encouragement. Told me I'd love it.

It would appear they're not 100% wrong.

There's something about the range of tones in B&W film that's intoxicating.

Even though this picture has been scanned which will probably have reduced some of the subtleties, the light in the sky would have been wholly blown out to whiteness by my D300 - even though the D300 has a better dynamic range than most DSLRs.

There are disadvantages, however: cost, time, lack of immediate feedback. These will dictate against it being my exclusive type of photography...but I can see me using it more, and more.

So...the next question is, do I try and source a rangefinder?


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The more different, the more the same?

"I don't know what your father and I had in common", Ma muses during my visit to her last week.

She then proceeds to list all the things that she and my father didn't agree on, or didn't have in common. She was right, it was a fair old list.

Nevertheless their marriage lasted for well over 50 years and ran the full "till death us do part" course, as it had set out to do.

Despite all differences, ours was a happy family and my sister, brother and I were brought up in an atmosphere of mostly unspoken love and utmost security.

My own relationship of 20 some years was founded on a mutual love of geekery - but outside of that, were I to examine it, there wasn't all that much that we shared - at least not obviously.

Musical taste was very different - when we got together the only two LPs we had in common were a very obscure album of Bach music transcribed for a Belgian guitarist, and Bronski Beat "Age of consent". He liked Glass, Anderson, Gabriel, Byrne. I liked Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Bach, more Bach.

Literature - he: Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Arthur C Clarke. Me: Christopher Brookmyre, Michael Crichton, Jasper Fforde.

He: Indian. Me: Chinese.

Me: Blue. Him: Green.

The more I think about it, the more difference I can find. And yet...and yet...we meshed.

I've been musing about the differences between my close friends and I - those people I spend most time with, those I email and Twitter to. About all the things that separate us: age, background, profession, musical taste, style of photography, political leanings, film preferences, play preferences, whether hills are good or evil, well you get the gist.

Then I spent a chunk of my weekend taking pictures at some events for Refugee Week. This put difference in some context, and witnessing an unfortunate incident on the bus did so still more.

I realised that I like being introduced to new things, I love being shown the world through someone else's eyes - I like that I don't always agree with my friends. It gives us something to debate.

OK, I miss my friends getting my slightly obscure references to science fiction films ('ah, he wears it desert-style') and programmes but it's really a small thing.

I try and explain to one friend how I've been feeling. He wisely points out that core values are the important thing.

Today another friend, who is going through a fair bit of soul searching herself says the self same thing.

My life is better for being introduced to new things. It always was (25 years ago I had no idea how to solder things) and I should remember that.

Difference is far less important in friendships that the things that bind us.


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I love it when a plan comes together

I'm having some building work done.

I think I'm finally at peace with my decision, having realised just how stressed I've been about it.

A fair bit of my blog has been devoted to how I'm coping as a single woman again after the death of my long-term partner a couple of years ago.

Aside from all the obvious things there have been a raft of things that maybe most people (me included) wouldn't have expected to cause so much heartache.

The building work has been one of those things.

It started with a glass roof that has needed replacement since we moved in the house about 11 years ago.

It was a bit of a bone of contention, truth be told, in that I wanted to fix it when we had the kitchen done but the more cautious man-of-the-house wasn't keen on the additional change that it would have introduced.

Some heavy rain over the winter reminded me again that the roof needed to be sorted.

Problem was, I had no idea how one went about getting such odd structures replaced. It's not part of the original fabric of the house and was probably done in the 1970's...you can imagine how badly it fits in with a nicely proportioned, Bath stone-fronted, mid victorian house.

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, an architectural tech friend became available to help me out in working out how the roof could be replaced.

Then scope creep set in. The project killer.

The problem is the whole of the basement has "issues" and it seemed stupid to spend money on one bit and not sort out the other problems too.

The upshot is the remodelling of a utility room; tanking; moving a drain; making a decent downstairs loo and making a special place in the coal cellar (rechristened 'Monsters' in view of the number of creepy crawlies of which I was hitherto unaware) wherein I can roast coffee. Then there's the rest of the house almost all of which is sorely in need of redecoration.

OK - so maybe with the extent of this work perhaps it's not surprising I'm a little stressed.

But there's been more to it than that, I just hadn't recognised it until this week.

We've gone from the abstract phase of the project where I think "wouldn't it be nice to" through the agreeing more or less what's needed. Onto the getting of quotes and now it's down to choosing fittings. Toilet, flooring, lights, radiators...

So with a blank canvas, the cash to get the job done and no one with whom to negotiate on getting exactly what I want, why aren't I feeling like a kid in a sweetshop?

Precisely because part of the joy of projects like this are their shared nature.

My architectural/design/ideas friend has a fair bit of skin in the project simply because that's his nature - he takes a professional and personal pride in things being right and he's going far beyond the usual parameters of this sort of job. Nevertheless, as he says, he won't have to live with the result so he's expecting me to make decisions - he's my friend and he wants me to be happy with the result.

I have to live with the result.

And that's it, really.

This is my house. Mine.

It seemed to take Idiot Boy's best friend removing some promised power tools to make me realise it.

So...meeting with the builder and archifriend planned for Tuesday with the promise that I'll have a rough date for the work to start.

Promised drawings of cloakrooms with potential candidates for radiators tomorrow.

A quote for the decorating expected in the next week.

A trip out with my soft-furnishings adviser (M, another friend) planned later this month.

I'm fairly certain this won't be the last time I have a wobble...but it's another reminder that wobbles come, we learn from them and we move on.

Bring on the Farrow and Ball paint cards...

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