Hello All
Before I start, I need to say something. I don't have big ambitions. At this point in my life (our lives) I (we) feel we deserve a warm and comfy nest, within which I (we) can work, relax, and be ourselves, surrounded by the activities and belongings we appreciate and enjoy. We've worked hard. Maybe we hanker after a special house in a special location, with a bit of land. Maybe we'd love to express ourselves being self-sufficient, frugal and grounded, raising vegetables and caring for chickens rescued from a terrible fate. But that's not going to happen just yet.
We're headed towards that land called retirement. Our series of temporary homes, rented and unlovely, had to end. Our resources were drained. We have but a few working years left. We needed a better base from which to function. We didn't want grand. Or expensive. Or fashionable. Our style is friendly, coloured by necessity. Our last chance to fix things popped up. We jumped and grabbed.
Well, it's been tough. I dare say it's been fun in parts. The main difficulty is in getting over the disappointment of things not being straightforward. We really needed a quick move, get settled in, down to work. This house started as a bargain purchase, sale completed in TWO weeks! needing JUST a quick tidy-up and move-in planned within another two weeks, and now? The wiring was deadly. Completely re-done. Completely redone means floorboards up, walls and bricks and plaster down. Complete mayhem. An earthquake. Disaster. We've found ourselves on a merry-go-round of re-doing, re-placing, re-newing almost everything.
Now I'm looking at twelve, no, twenty pots of paint, rolls and rolls of lining paper, brushes, rollers, skirting boards, beading, tiles, ............ and that's before I start on curtains and carpets. Oh, and we need a bathroom, and the hob, oven and extractor fan have been condemned and, beyond redemption sadly, have been taken to the tip. The window frames are rotten. And we have no central heating or hot water. The boiler was condemned too. The quotes are laughable. A rocket to the moon is more achievable.
I'm managing to stay focussed on the end result (I do the decorating and so can visualise our finished 'home') , it's finding the energy that I have a big problem with. I get tired very quickly. The last two weeks have been really difficult for me having to be sitting in a cold dark house unable to do a great deal whilst electricians, plasterers et al made a big noisy mess everywhere. Then left me to clear it up every night! Not. happy. me.
Meanwhile, in Haiti they no longer even have tents. They. have. Earthquake. Cholera. Hurricane. Disaster.
Get real pamela. Count your blessings. Do something to help.
And put your back into the flippin' wallpaper-stripping. Winter's coming.
Thanks for listening folks x
HAITI the facts
Impact of the 12 January earthquake
- Two million people living in the most affected area
- 220,000 dead
- Over 180,000 homes damaged or destroyed, 1.5m homeless
- There are now 19 million cubic metres of rubble and debris in PaP – enough to fill a line of shipping containers stretching end to end from London to Beirut.
- One and a half million people living in camps including over 100,000 at critical risk from storms and flooding
- There are over 1,100 camps and 54 of these are home to 5,000 people or more
- Over 600,000 people have left their home area in Port-au-Prince and mostly are staying with host families
- Nearly 5,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed
