Visiting and being visited

Lola Towers, January 2026

It's been very cold indeed. Lola II and I forgot that she really shouldn't visit Lola Towers during the winter, so she enjoyed my new heated blanket while also serving as encouragement to my ongoing efforts at shedding surplus stuff. With her help I took down quite a few items from the loft, but the most excellent service she provided was to thread the lace back into the cuff of my Wellington boot, which took a very long time. She also modelled various items that I was offering to particular people, sang songs in the car with me when we were held up on the motorway for an hour, made tea, and was generally in charge of Morale.

I continued to attempt to give away my huge bookcase, with several enquiries leading to nothing, but finally someone who was serious took it away. I was expecting its removal to reveal horrors in the wall behind it but nothing horrific emerged, so that's one bullet dodged. I imagine that many people are not looking to spend much money in January, so I'll be trying to sell the few items of value that I have in February or March.

Trips I have made - one to the north where we ate pizza and congratulated one another on progress made in various aspects of life; one to mum where I feel I was helpful by way of Organising; one to Oxford with Sister D which was quite cold, drizzly, then rainy but the Weston Library was as good as ever and we had lots of time to talk. A more local trip took me to badminton at the height of the snowfall. "This is crazy," I was thinking as I drove at 15mph, slowing down for junctions, trying not to use the brakes and turning corners very carefully. But I needed to play badminton after more than two weeks off, and there wasn't anything like the amount of snow that was forecast, and by the end of the evening it was already sleet and slush.

Cousin M and her son visited from Seattle en route to Spain, and we all met at Maternal Manor and caught up with family history and current goings on, followed by an excellent trip to the Royal Academy of Music in London for a student performance of Trial by Jury. My enlightened music teacher at junior school was quite a character, completely indifferent to the musical limitations of under-11's. He encouraged composition, percussion and harp players (as well as your traditional instruments) and we even had a school orchestra. Together with one of the other teachers he also staged productions of Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. I still remember them - Pirates of Penzance was one, and Trial by Jury was another, where I was chosen as understudy for the part of the Usher. It's now FIFTY years later but some of it was spookily familiar. Anyway, I enjoyed it a great deal.

The official process of moving on from Lola Towers has started with a visit from a representative of an Estate Agent. She found the property bigger than she expected, called the garden 'generous' (which it has never been to me), and showed me comparisons with other local properties that she could find. We agreed on the ballpark figure that might be asked, and the next stage will be a similar visit from a second Estate Agent representative.

Fiddling on the roof

Kyre Park Garden, October 2024

Before my solitary retreat I went on a weekend retreat with the Buddhists from Birmingham, for which I was designated Organiser. There wasn't a whole lot of organising to do, and as well as the scheduled sessions I had a chance to catch up with some of the people I'd got to know while I was volunteering at the retreat centre. I went straight from there to my week's solitary in an annexe to a cottage which had been designed for the purpose. The woman who owned it lived in the cottage, and we had a coffee and a lovely conversation at the end of the week.

I took off my watch when I arrived and didn't put it back on until the final morning, just keeping track of the days and letting everything else happen when it wanted to. I meditated, read a lot, wrote a little, went out for walks and did a lot of thinking. I took all my meals with me ready-prepared so I didn't have to do any shopping or cooking, and it was lovely. Next time I'll see if I can manage to extend it to ten days.

I returned to an empty house; UJ has gone back to Ukraine for a holiday. Next day I'd arranged for Hlf to come and do the pointing of the chimney stacks. Hlf's Sidekick and a young lad arrived quite late, and the Sidekick kept dashing off to look after other jobs, leaving the lad to do the work. I had a few conversations with him; he wasn't very happy - the roof was too steep to be safe and he was expected to work off ladders and sitting across the ridge. In the end he couldn't safely reach all the parts of the chimney that he was supposed to, and it was nearly dark by the time he'd finished what he could do.

The next day I went out to have a look, and wasn't happy with the half done job. I let Hlf know that I was concerned about the safety of his employee as well as the fact that I wasn't going to be paying the full amount because of the parts that hadn't been pointed. Then I looked online to see who might be able to get involved on the safety side of things - Trading Standards for Warwickshire direct you to the Citizen's Advice Bureau, so that's where I'm heading as soon as I get enough time to phone during office hours.

Next I was in London for two days thanks to a visit from Cousin M from Seattle. Mr M took us both on a tour of the area around the Barbican before handing us over to Lola II for afternoon tea at a Very Posh Hotel. It was very good, but the verdict was that the previous tea I'd had with Lola II had been slightly better. We went on to a performance of the musical Guys and Dolls which was slightly unusual because we took up the option of being part of the action. The stage was in the round and we stood alongside the actors and other members of the audience while different parts of the stage rose up so everyone could see what was going on. It was a terrific idea and was executed well, but standing up for the performance after walking around London for the day left me pretty tired.

I've filled my diary a little too much despite my resolution to try and leave space, but it's all been things I've enjoyed - visiting mum, going to the cinema (twice), my U3A walk, badminton, training with Muscles, cooking, and today I went to an event organised by LeamLETS, which is the trading system that works by its members offering services using a barter system. The event was mainly social and there were some lovely people there, but you could also bring things to trade. An opportunity for GRUHI! And what's more, people took some of my junk, and I talked to the woman who organises the trading table at the local Repair Café, so I'll be there next weekend in the hope of similar results.