The Final Countdown

So, we enter the last few days of drama. The last chance to make decisions that we may have to live with for many years to come. The first crunch day came and went with failure; the second crunch day came and went with failure. What of the third? Would there even be a third?

No, I'm not talking about politics.

I'm talking about the imminent completion of our building works. Because, yay verily, and forsooth, the windows and doors were delivered at the third time of asking.

And since they arrived on site, a mere six days ago, we've moved from having a non-weather-tight, cold, dark, concrete-floored cave, to a place that is almost a complete room, needing only a coat or two of paint and the final fit of the electrical sockets. There's even carpet. It's almost unimaginable. BigBear was away for most of this final process, only arriving home yesterday to a transformed home.

The only thing was, we spent a huge amount of time several months ago debating colour schemes, and then (when the windows were delayed) we rather shelved all thoughts of finishing details. The process of reaching any kind of consensus had been sufficiently painful, we had no desire to revisit it. Actually, this is sounding more like Brexit all the time.

The process had gone something like this...

I would become wedded to an idea, and announce it eagerly to BigBear, who wouldn't like it. So I would abandon my idea in a huff, and start planning another idea. Meanwhile, BigBear would give careful thought to my idea, and adapt it to something he liked. By that time I was about three ideas further on, and would dismiss his idea, despite it indubitably bearing a striking resemblance to something that only days before had been the one thing in the world I absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, wanted more than anything else at all. Yes, I am a nightmare to live with. He's a very patient man.

Despite my capricious whims, and BigBear's rather more measured approach, we did eventually converge on a colour scheme we were happy with. And then all we had to do was find the paints that actually satisfied that scheme. And the fabrics for lampshades and cushions. I acquired quite a lot of samples.

 

 

How many shades of grey and pinkish grey are there?

You can probably see where this colour scheme is going now

Before BigBear went away, we painted patches of our final colours on the walls as testers, and waited for daylight to finally be shed upon them.

But... oh dear... the shedding of daylight revealed that I utterly hated one of our chosen colours. Frantic email consultation across the Atlantic revealed that BigBear "trusted my judgement". Brave man. (Though it did lead me to ponder, mostly in jest, to a friend that if BigBear trusted my judgement, couldn't I have just chosen the colour scheme without him all along?)

However, within a day of my change of heart, these arrived...

Calamine and Dimpse it is

And then I got busy with my sewing machine and converted a pillowcase I'd found in John Lewis, with the help of some lengths of linen I'd bought, into two cushions, to go with the ready-made cushion I'd also bought.

Cushion fronts

Cushion backs

The custom-made Etsy lampshades also arrived, and my house is now full of even more boxes and piles of "stuff" until any of this can actually be inserted into the finished room.

My house is even more full of dust than it is full of boxes, as the diligent weekend builders have spent all weekend working furiously and have, amongst many things, completed all the plastering. It was sufficiently riveting that I got a good twenty minutes sat peacefully with a cup of coffee on Sunday morning while this happened:

Plastering as spectator sport. In pyjamas

.

I was going to add a picture of the room as it is now, but given it's only a matter of a couple of days until it's really, actually properly finished, I shall wait for the final denouement.

Bollocks to Brexit

Today I did something I've never done before. I did something that scared and daunted me. I did something that exhausted me and pushed me to my limits of physical and emotional strength.

I, with over a million of my fellow citizens, marched in London to protest against Brexit. And thus I had to explain to my innocent LittleBear what "bollocks" were, and why there were some occasions when it was OK to shout "bollocks to Brexit" in the street, but there were other occasions, such as at school, where the use of the word but would be less acceptable. I confess that I was a little more vague on the meaning of "bugger". And when I say vague, I completely bottled it and claimed I couldn't quite think of a good way of explaining it at the moment.

I think I've explained previously why I think leaving the EU is a bad idea, and how I think the negotiations should have gone (and I bet my suggestions are better than Trump's "advice").  My views have only become stronger since then, and my views of the current government continue to sink, as they alternate between revealing their collective gross ignorance*, arrogance and incompetence, and attempting to blackmail Parliament with "my deal or catastrophe". So instead of a political polemic, I'll tell you about our day.

I had made a double-sided placard at work, with the assistance and blessing of my right-thinking colleagues. When LittleBear had seen said placard, he put in a bid to add his own addendum, so we completed our three-part placard and were out of the house at 8am.

A bonus prize if you can spot which part of the EU is outside the red line

Perfectly designed for a LittleBear to carry

Ready to go.

We were fortunate enough to be able to get places on a coach leaving HomeTown with the local branch of the Liberal Democrats. This meant that we had stress-free travel to the centre of London, and were conveniently deposited at Marble Arch shortly after 10:30**.

Waiting for the LibDem coach

We then convened with other regional LibDem contingents outside the Dorchester Hotel, including those who'd come down by coach from Aberdeen. They'd set off 10 hours before we had. There were a good smattering of wealthy people with strangely plastic faces and large luggage who seemed unimpressed that the hoi polloi were cluttering up the view from their hotel.

However, the crowd was friendly, chatty, welcoming and kind. LittleBear was made friends with by a great many middle-aged women who thought he was both lovely, but also patient and well-behaved. I glowed with pride. And this patience was required. We waited at the Dorchester from 10:45. 11am passed relatively quickly. But then came 11:30. And 12:00. Not to mention 12:30, and indeed 1:00. At shortly after 1:30 we began to take tiny shuffling paces forwards. Our feet were already tired and we hadn't even started.

Hanging with the LibDems

The march was a very good natured affair, with people hanging from scaffolding and cheering, people leaning out of windows and starting chants, a general camaraderie of strangers getting to know each other. The chants were largely inoffensive, being along the lines of "What do we want? A People's Vote! When do we want it? Now!" There seemed a certain lack of charity in standing behind the "Labour for Remain" contingent and chanting "Wher-ere's Jer-e-my Corrrrbyn?" but I think any protest where the worst is a slight dig at a politician is going OK.

On the other hand, once we set off, and LittleBear and I slipped ahead of the LibDems, past Labour, through the Greens and into a more general area of unaffiliated marchers, I was forced to confront the meaning of a wider variety of chants, as mentioned. Fortunately LittleBear didn't read all the placards being waved, or I'd have had a lot more explaining to do. As I had a rucksack, a placard and a small boy to keep hold of, I didn't manage to get shots of many placards, but here are a few that caught my attention, one for its wild incongruity. I'll leave you to spot the odd one out.

After being on our feet for several hours, my LittleBear began to seriously flag, despite my efforts to keep tanking him up with food, so the time came when I had to start carrying him for short spells. I tried piggy-backing and I tried simply carrying. Neither were much fun. My ribs hurt. My back hurts. My hips hurt. He is no longer a LittleBear in quite the way he used to be. Nonetheless, by 4:30 we'd made it to Trafalgar Square. We'd passed the massive sign thanking us for taking part, and we only had half an hour till our coach left from Temple Place. So we didn't continue to Parliament Square. I have minor regrets about that, but it was clear that by that time the crowds were generally reaching Trafalgar Square and then dissipating so we didn't exactly miss anything.

Exhausted, we stumbled down the Strand, and finally found our way to our coach, on the dot of 5pm. The miracle was that we were then home by 7:15 and I managed to get LittleBear bathed, fed him pizza, brushed his teeth, read him a bedtime story and got his light off at 8pm. I may be more proud of that than of marching...

Having been awake since 5:15am worrying about losing my LittleBear in the crowds, I think I may sleep well tonight. Goodnight all.


* A Northern Ireland secretary who admitted, "I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa.”; A Brexit secretary who admitted "I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

** Yes, this had meant leaving the house at 8am, earlier than a school day. We managed surprisingly well, considering.

Tumbleweed

I have been sorely neglecting this blog lately. Not intentionally and not through malice. Mostly it's been through tiredness, boredom, and a sense that I don't really have anything worth sharing with the world.

The highlights of my LittleBear's splendidness seem a bit nauseating to write about - I'm the first to grumble about the ubiquity of Facebragging about one's progeny, so I'm reluctant to dedicate an entire blogpost to my LittleBear's parents' evening, or his starring role in a school dance show, or his fascination with maths, or his dedication to his swimming lessons, or his general adorableness and loving behaviour. See? You're sick of it already.

Meanwhile, there haven't been many moments of delightful whimsy to write about, nor any periods of foolishness on my part which I can harness in self-deprecating fashion. There have been moments of Serious Parenting Failure, such as the point when at 3am I threatened LittleBear that if he didn't go back to sleep he wouldn't be taken to the zoo, which (unsurprisingly) then resulted in a sobbing small boy and a guilty-feeling mother at 3:02am. We cuddled, it was fine, we went to the zoo.

Nor has there been any progress on the building site, though we do now have rumours of a date for the windows to arrive, but I'm pretending to myself it isn't real, to avoid being disappointed when something else bizarre and unpredictable occurs to prevent the windows from arriving.

Work has been so deeply tedious, it's not even worth ranting about.

After a cardboard box was inadvertently left blocking the cat flap, IdiotCat obligingly relieved himself in the building site, and not in the living room. Which is probably good, but still involved having to clear up cat poo. Again.

I've become ensnared in attempting to help run LittleBear's football team, and am now in possession of the glorified title of "Assistant Coach", though in truth it's more "General Dogsbody Who Promises to Attend Every Training Session For Safeguarding Purposes." The downside of this position is that I'm now perceived to Know Stuff, which is sadly untrue, though I'm doing my best.

Much of my time over the past couple of weeks has been pre-occupied with fret-inducing health concerns, the details of which are mostly irrelevant. The short version is that my left eye has suffered a Posterior Vitreous Detachment*, and I have a blurry blob of dense vitreous lurking and obscuring my vision a lot of the time. My choices appear to be "live with it" or "have serious and risky surgery". I think we all can all guess which choice I'll go with. And apparently my brain should adapt and ignore the blurry blob over time. I'm still waiting for an appointment with the consultant ophthalmologist though, and can probably look forward to the same thing happening in the other eye. Though the other eye is exhibiting what may be an early sign of glaucoma - the neuroretinal rim is thinning. I'm caught between feeling, "meh, GrannyBear has glaucoma and it's perfectly manageable, plus my retina is fine, so I've got away with the PVD" and thinking, "Aaggghhhh, I'm going to go blind, this is terrifying." Mostly, the second one only happens in the middle of the night. Because, basically the first one's completely true.

So that's me.

Maybe something entertaining will happen soon, and I'll write about it.


* For those who haven't spent a lot of time reading about PVD, this is where the vitreous in the eye (the gloopy gel your eye is made of) detaches from the retina. It can lead to retinal damage, though hasn't done in my eye at the moment.