Going live

Maternal Manor, May 2026

My estate agent's representative, whom I'm going to call Mr Celery (because he's tall, thin, and very Seller-y) told me that he appreciates that I am not in a tearing hurry, that I now need a solicitor, and that I won't regret placing the sale with his company. The sales board is up outside the house and we went through the brochure together to eliminate the spelling mistakes, so we were ready for going live on Friday. People keep asking how I feel. At the moment it's still just a project I'm working on, and I'm not looking forward to the time when it sinks in and I become very sad indeed to be leaving.

One issue that still needs addressing is a broken electrical socket in the bedroom. "I can deal with this," I thought, as I identified the fuse in the fuse box, turned off the power to the sockets, unscrewed the wires from the front plate and took the broken back box off the wall. After trips to B&Q, Wickes and the wonderful Action 21 I could only find replacement boxes that had screws in a different place, and I hate it when I experience this sort of helpless incompetence. Luckily, Nameless Man is happy to help out, although our combined busy timetables mean he can't get started until later this week.

My last session with the Diabetes Prevention Programme coach has taken place, although she says I can ask my GP to be re-referred if I think it will help. I may just do that. Due to some relaxation of my willpower during the volunteering in the retreat kitchen I now have to take my eating habits a bit more seriously, and have laid down a couple of new intentions for the next few weeks. I can safely say that this will be No Fun At All.

Mr Celery has already found me two people who want an early viewing before the date that we had set for the main house viewing event. I finished all the weeding, mowed the lawn again, and the main thing remaining is to clean a few windows to make it look that bit more attractive. That was the last day before the massive heatwave that we're experiencing arrived, so I'm glad I managed to get nearly everything done before we all melted.

Then I headed south to see mum and to supervise the transition from copper wire internet and POTS (plain old telephone system) to fibre broadband. There was an engineer who came into the house and another who climbed the telephone pole and strung the new wire to the house. But my suspicions were raised when the engineer said he couldn't set up two wired phones on the new router. He left an extra telephone box and advised me to contact the company to activate the second phone, and told me many things that turned out not to be true. So I had a very difficult conversation with the company which has left me regretting my choice of supplier despite the very competitive price, because we can't have two wired phones on the new system after all, despite having been assured that we could.

Mum has been very flexible and adaptable, and has accepted stoically the loss of her usual phone number for about two weeks (I really hope that the company hasn't misled me about this too). She has one landline phone with a new (hopefully temporary) number and is carrying her mobile phone around with her. Lola II and I are working on getting her a couple of digital cordless phones that are relatively easy to use, and we'll see how things go.

Nearly there

April 2026

So I am living two parallel lives at the moment, volunteering at my favourite retreat centre at the same time as negotiating with the Estate Agent over the brochure that they're putting together. They agreed with my comments about the pictures in the draft brochure and Sister D kindly helped me to re-write the whole thing. The next draft I received still had significant problems, so I'll be meeting the estate agent in person to try and get it all sorted out ready for the date we've agreed to go live. I really need to find a suitable name for this very keen salesman who seems to pay very little attention to detail (Mr M may be able to come up with something...) This does worry me, but at least I'm aware of it before we start.

At the retreat centre I'm working in the kitchen on the menus for people with food allergies and intolerances. It's nice to be back and I've been made very welcome. One person has such a restricted diet that, in combination with other people's restrictions, they're all getting no veg beyond carrot, broccoli, peppers, spring greens and kale, which doesn't sound too bad until you've cooked carrot, potato and ginger soup and steamed or roasted broccoli, carrot and peppers for their two meals a day and then have to do much the same again next day. Roasted veg, steamed veg, soups - I even decided to sculpt decorative carrots just to try and make it look more interesting, even though the taste was the same.

I had two days off when I had to come home to do what's needed there, not least because the phone signal at the retreat centre is a bit poor and I needed to make some heavy duty calls. One of these was to try and find a broadband and landline deal for mum, because her current provider is removing the landline option that she needs. Running the phones via WiFi should be as straightforward as plugging them into the router with an adapter, until you consider that the phones she uses are not in the same room as the router. I think we have a solution; we will only find out for sure when installation commences next week.

In GRUHI news, the bricks are gone! The remainder were collected by a lovely woman who's going to make some sort of platform for the water butt on her allotment. She even volunteered to take the ones she didn't want to the tip for me. The clean up operation on the garden is nearly complete, inside is looking good too with just a couple more things that I can get on top of when I get back from the retreat centre.

More tales of travel, admin and water

Just before my year's entry ticket expired I managed to visit Hill Close Gardens in Warwick. It was the week when snowdrops are at their best, and it was really, really cold. Not much else was blooming so I didn't hang around, but I should go again when there's more to see and the wind is less biting. They are proud of their collections - not only snowdrops but chrysanthemums, sempervivums and 63 varieties of apple trees.

It's an interesting historical site too - in the 1840's when people living in towns didn't have gardens this site provided 'detached' gardens divided up into plots. Unlike allotments, people used them for pleasure, with lawns and summer houses as well as lots of fruit trees and flowers (although a few kept pigs too). Some of the plots were sold for housing in the 20th century, but just as all but one had fallen into dereliction and the diggers were on their way, local residents managed to get the site listed and it was saved for posterity. They then cleared it all up, and did lots of research into who had owned the plots and what they had looked like, restored some of the summer houses and then began opening for visitors.

My next outing was the annual Mr M & Lola II Film Festival, which I completely missed last year because I was ill. Not so this year, and the stand-out discovery was the French film "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe", a slapstick comedy that had us all laughing. 

While I was in London I continued my efforts to link my Senior Railcard to my Oyster account. Mr M drew my attention to this possibility, but when I looked it up I found it needed to be done by a member of TfL staff in person, using an actual Oyster card - I've been simply using my contactless bank card for a long time. So I dug out my old Oyster card, but found I couldn't register it to the account unless it had been used in the last 8 weeks. So on this trip I used the card, after which I managed to register it to my online account. At West Ealing station they didn't have the right staff, but at Marylebone they were up for it - except that the card didn't show up as having been linked to the account. The saga continues.

The LTRP also continues, as it always will with such an old house, with a visit from Luke from Severn Trent Water to investigate the stain that has appeared in my front room. He confirmed that the meter is showing a small leak - he estimated 1 litre per hour, which doesn't seem particularly small to me. He's going to call in a team that will dig up the pavement around the meter and I'm hoping they will find the source of the leak, otherwise it will be another of those long-winded and potentially costly investigations.

Then my newest tradesman came to touch up the evidence of water staining and condensation in the porch, hall and kitchen. It was the same day that my new phone arrived, so I spent most of the day either entering passwords into apps or chatting to him about jobs he's done and the state of the world. The new phone keeps challenging me with passwords and connectivity and making unexpected noises and not having a 'back' button, but I'm sure it will all be sorted within a few weeks...

Water trouble again

Maternal Manor, December 2025

The situation in mum's kitchen at the Maternal Manor is not good. There has been evidence of damp rising in the walls for years, which we started by covering up, then more recently we invited a reliable plumber to have a look. It wasn't serious, he said, and he recommended continuing to cover it up, despite the skirting coming away from the wall and tiles lifting. But the meter showed water consumption was increasing, and it was time to act.

Lola II made enquiries with the insurer and Thames Water and identified a WaterSafe approved firm, which turned out to be Lee. After fixing an unrelated issue with the upstairs toilet cistern he poked about under floorboards and in cupboards trying to guess where the water was coming from. On the second visit he pointed out that the unplastered wall under the sink was also showing evidence of damp, and measured the loss of pressure in various parts of the pipework to try and narrow down the possibilities of where a leak might be. Results were sadly inconclusive, so in the end we had to agree that he would dig up the kitchen floor following the pipework from the stopcock to the sink, as this seems the most likely source. The layer beneath the floor is clearly saturated, but so far no actual break in the pipes has been found.

The plumber mentioned that once the leak is fixed it will be necessary to remedy the damp using a dehumidifier. I started casting around via some of the different trading arenas I'm part of, but the one that seems to be the most reliable is my U3A walking group. I was relating the story of the kitchen leak to the person I was walking, who then revealed that she had an unwanted dehumidifier and would be happy to pass it on. [Update also from the walking group: sadly the surgeon who had volunteered to go to the West Bank had a very unpleasant interrogation at the border and was refused entry by the Israeli authorities.]

Meanwhile at Lola Towers I have finished cleaning and arranging UJ's room and have moved back in, trying to take only what I need in an attempt to lose a bit more stuff.  It is taking longer than I anticipated. I advertised a glass-topped coffee table on Freegle, Nextdoor, Olio and eBay (in that order). Olio was the successful channel, and the lucky recipient also took away my corner table (but didn't want the tennis racquet or the large bookcase). I have reconfigured the bedroom I've been using for three years and it's now ready to accept single guests, which is more convenient (and warmer) than making up the sofabed in the Auditorium. That will continue to be used for double guests, however.

Conveniently I did have a single guest staying on Saturday night - Mr M was passing through, and he was able to provide a very valuable service: that of photographer. For I discovered that my passport, although not expiring until April 2026, will not permit me to travel to Europe for skiing at the end of January. It is quite straightforward to apply for a new one online, except that a passport photograph conforming to strict standards is needed, which I am unable to provide without assistance.

Mr M provided a second valuable service in that he told me how to find out what my PIN is on a new credit card that I've received. For these services and because it is only humane I turned the central heating on for the duration of his visit (and a little bit longer). For my experiment in heating myself instead of the house is fine in the Office (fan heater), Auditorium (heated blanket) and bedroom (hot water bottle) but the kitchen floor is icy. My latest idea is to buy slippers with a more insulating sole.

Positive news

Worcestershire, October 2024

I hardly need report that I've been away on retreat again, this time just for a long weekend during Easter. Four of us from the Warwick group went together, including someone who hadn't been on one of our retreats before. It turned out that he had plenty of experience of meditation and Buddhism and retreats within other Buddhist traditions, and he meditates a great deal more than I do. It was very interesting getting to know him anyway, and he wasn't put off by any of it, which is a bonus.

Another way that I've been stretching myself involves something called a 'kula'. This is a group of people who are both Order Members and my friends, and who commit themselves to meeting occasionally in order to support me in my journey towards ordination. It's by no means compulsory to have a kula, and not necessary at the start of the journey, but I've been steeling myself because I find the idea quite challenging. I've now got as far as asking three people, who thankfully have all said yes, so that's done for now. Now I just have to find a way to get them to meet, which is likely to be a considerable challenge.

Our Warwick group is going from strength to strength, and we have started to find ourselves supported by two regular Order Members, one from Birmingham and the other from Milton Keynes. I've been trying to arrange a team meeting between five of us, and out of 60 different time slots there were only two that were suitable and even then only four out of five of us could make it.

I spent a day with mum taking her to the local hospital to have a lump on her leg cut out. I actually found it quite enjoyable spending time with her, although it probably wasn't her idea of a great day out with her daughter. It was almost impossible to park at the hospital - I left the car in a slightly illegal place in the renal unit with her Blue Badge displayed and got away with it; they also double booked the appointment slot before ours so we got into the clinic room at 4.30pm for an appointment that was scheduled at 2.45pm. Once inside the procedure seemed very straightforward and hopefully her recovery will also run smoothly.

My news blackout continues and I'm getting quite used to not knowing much about what's going on. Have I Got News For You informed me about some female celebrities who went up in a rocket, squealed a lot, talked a lot of rubbish about love, sang a song and imagined they were astronauts - you might as well say that turning a light switch on and off makes you an electrician. And the Pope has died and everyone is watching the film Conclave again. I have to say that even this level of news seems wholly unnecessary.

I am managing various financial admin projects on mum's behalf associated with dad's estate and other investments, and for a change things seem to be moving in the right direction. There's also been admin in respect of UJ and the Homes for Ukraine scheme, also going well, and I tried to give blood but they turned me away because of my imminent periodontal work and the risk of levels of infection in the blood. Swings and roundabouts, people, swings and roundabouts.

A very ordinary week

Dovecote, Kyre Hall Park, October 2024

There's been nothing special to report for the whole week, in which I did all the things that I regularly do, and a few optional extras, and it was all fine.

• the weekly shop
• the U3A board games group
• a candlelit vigil in town to commemorate three years of the war in Ukraine
• Monday evening badminton
• a GRUHI trip to the tip and to Action 21 with all the electrical junk
• watched a film at home
• Tuesday evening Buddhists
• visit to mum
• a session with Muscles (my personal trainer)
• a bonus massage (because I'm worth it)
• Thursday evening badminton
• the U3A ramble
• a Buddhist team meeting via Zoom
• the Repair Café LETS trading table to try and get rid of more stuff (nobody wanted anything)
• my music group (I have been given a big solo this term)
• watched another film at home
• did nearly all the necessary routine admin
• a film at the cinema to end the week.

I do try to find interesting content for this blog, but there really isn't any this week. I'm looking forward to warmer weather - I find February the cruellest month. Daffodils are appearing in the garden and the paving is invisible under its blanket of weeds. So, much the same as every year.

A different blog

Adhisthana, April 2024

One of the main things I'm doing in my volunteering job is blogging, for which I do feel well qualified. It's a relatively new development for the retreat centre, having started a monthly blog just this year. So I can start my week by wandering around the site taking pictures of the spring flowers on a morning when the sunshine makes everything look its best. Or when the mist adds atmosphere to the burial mound.

The text content of the blog is more challenging, given that I'm not there all the time and not integrated into the community well enough to know what exactly is going on that's blogworthy. But there are people to ask, and my first attempt seems good enough. After it was published on the website I posted links on Facebook and another online site, which is quite complicated and has the potential for mishap, but again I think I managed it without incident (57 'likes' and counting).

This month behind the scenes there's been a lot of new technology, updating cabling from the 1980's that links all the buildings and should make it possible to maintain and manage the heating system in a 21st century way. And there's a big project to install rooftop solar panels - when I arrived this week the scaffolding was going up.

I discovered I had a flat tyre just at the point when I'd offered to give someone a lift from the retreat centre to the station at the end of the week. Luckily someone else was on hand to provide them with a lift, they caught their train, and it wasn't too late for me to get to a garage after I'd changed to the spare tyre.

Back home, my music group went ahead on Saturday and despite knowing how tricky the sax pieces are I still didn't bother to practise. But it will be fine. I did two sessions in the garden, weeding the paving and cutting back shrubs in the fine weather, but there's more to be done there. On Bank Holiday Monday I drove to see friends in Nottingham for the day, and on Tuesday I had another appointment at the orthodontist and a blood donation, which was unexpectedly dramatic when my donation continued at the squash-and-biscuits table. I was fine but my trousers and fleece were liberally spattered and I think some blood ended up on the biscuits too. It was spectacular, but it's the first time this has happened in more than 50 donations so probably unlikely to recur.

Second and third weeks in the office

Adhisthana, March 2024

There's a completely different atmosphere in the Adhisthana office compared with the office work I used to do long ago. For a start, I have colleagues who care about my welfare and happiness more than they care about getting the job done. I'm also aware that I'm a stand-in doing a job that I'm not altogether suited to, so it won't always be done well. But that's OK, whatever I do will probably be better than nothing being done at all. Unless I completely destroy their website. When I half-jokingly mentioned this to one of the IT guys, he said they'd seriously considered the possibility, but don't worry because there's a backup.

One of my first tasks was to start contacting people using an email distribution package that was new to me. Most (but not all) of the fairly complicated emails that need sending are ready and waiting, with only slight tweaks and checking to do - inserting links to a video, for example. With hindsight I think I was more nervous about this than I needed to be, but clicking the button to send emails automatically to 145 people felt quite significant. The next one I sent this way had over a thousand recipients...

Another similar job is to use mail merge to contact people who might be interested in attending particular retreats. I haven't used mail merge for decades, so I was deliberately slow and careful while I was working out how to do it with a version of Microsoft Office that is probably four or five upgrades on from when I last tried. Identifying people, extracting their details, constructing the mail merge, excluding various categories (e.g. those who had not ticket the box saying they were happy to be contacted in this way) and clicking 'Send' took about two days.

Back at home I was asked to look after a trainee guide dog, and for the first time in nearly a year I was able to say yes - I'd kept the weekend deliberately clear and even cancelled a trip because of trying to keep my commitments within an achievable range. This particular dog needed supervising whenever she did a poo, and my instructions were not to take her out until she had performed, so I spent most of Saturday periodically letting her out into the garden (it was freezing) and watching her resolutely fail to oblige. When it started to get dark I decided to take a chance because I needed to post my vote, and got away with it. Next day I had the offer of a walk with a friend, so took a chance again and got away with it once more - it was either that or stay indoors all day. At least it was a little warmer. Apart from the poo thing she was good company.

After I took her back to the Guide Dog Centre on Monday I headed down to London to take part in another demonstration outside Parliament along with Lola II. Assisted Dying made it into the news again thanks to Esther Rantzen going on TV to tell her story of having terminal lung cancer and joining Dignitas, which prompted another online petition calling for a parliamentary debate (but no vote). The petition had gathered enough signatures to make that happen, and significantly more signatures than the last time two years ago. Speakers who addressed the small crowd included Jonathan Dimbleby, some MPs including Caroline Lucas (who's about to stand down from her role as head of the Green Party), human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain. There was a counter-demonstration which was considerably smaller than ours, and a separate crowd from Humanists UK.

The next day was a celebration of Dad's 91st birthday, when Lola II and Sister D and I all descended on the family seat and had lunch and cake, and in my case, a haircut from the Random Cuts salon. And then I had the journey from hell back home because the M40 had a blockage and I unwisely decided to follow Google's directions around it along with all the other cars following similar directions through tiny villages and I definitely should have just stayed on the motorway because it couldn't possibly have held me up the extra hour and half that it took on my misguided route.

Just like old times

Kew Gardens, October 2022

It's been a week like it was in the old days, when I optimistically used to fill my diary on the basis that I don't have to go to work so I must have lots of time, and then I find that I don't. All the things I've done have been fun or helpful or both, but I need to remember to keep some days free of commitments because I was too tired for badminton and that will not do.

Since the last post I've played in a badminton match, went for a walk with the U3A, and did some work for Mr MXF which consisted of chatting to a young man in the television department of Currys to find out what his knowledge and experience is of HDR, one of the standards used in media and TV. Then with a clear conscience I journeyed south for the Mr MXF Christmas party, which involved playing board games, receiving party bags containing chocolate and toys, dinner, speeches (short ones), Secret Santa, and then back to the MXF/BL2 house to watch Barbie on his new super-TV and sound system.

On my way back north I dropped in on Lola II and Mr M for lunch and a film, next day I went for a dog walk with a friend, board games with U3A, gave blood, fitted in a meeting for coffee with my friend from Brazil who has come home to try and sort out some financial stuff, drove to mum and dad for lunch and admin (ongoing communication with Thames Water in particular) and home in time for a Blues gig at my favourite Temperance bar.

Next day I met Lola II in Oxford, a bit later than planned because she had an senior moment which led to her finding herself at Heathrow airport by mistake. But we had a lovely lunch in a friendly pub and went to the Weston Library again - they have really interesting exhibitions, this time about Chaucer, the Alphabet and John Playford ('The Dancing Master').

Then I was back with the U3A walkers before being visited by Sister D and her husband, who treated me to a poinsettia and a curry and I treated them to an episode of Taskmaster (an old episode) and a bed for the night. They carried on to their destination while I had my Christmas concert. Due to the absence of a few key players I ended up sight reading the 4th clarinet parts which had a few unexpected solos, but I managed not to let the side down.

UJ returned from her trip to Kyiv two weeks ago, but Saturday was the first evening that we were both at home, so we caught up with a couple of the latest Taskmaster episodes. She's off again in about a week and I'm not sure we'll have any other evenings together before she goes. Then there was a coffee morning social with the Buddhists on Sunday morning, two Buddhist-related Zoom meetings as well as the usual Tuesday evening meetings. Thankfully, next week is due to be much quieter.

How I spend my time nowadays

Self portrait with skipping rope, 1969

I've still got a collection of old school books, certificates and pictures that I drew when I was very young. I'm not sure how I feel about the dilemma of keeping vs throwing away, but while I can rest easy with getting rid of university notes, these documents are much more interesting. I spent a weekend working out which pictures I might frame, including repurposing frames I already had, ordering new ones for delivery (one of which arrived with the glass completely smashed but was replaced without quibble), and shopping in person. There's still more to do with all this, but I'll come back to it when I have another surge in interest.

It's been a while since I reduced my paid work to the dribble that I do for Mr MXF, and although my evenings and weekends are fully committed to the Buddhists, badminton and family, I have a fair amount of time during the day that I'd like to spend more usefully. So I joined the University of the Third Age (U3A)! So far I've joined a walking group and a board games group, and the people I've met so far are interesting and friendly and quite a lot older than me. We'll see how it goes.

Then I was invited to go back to Adhisthana, the retreat centre where I previously volunteered in the kitchen for a month. They were hosting a weekend for 150 people and thought they could do with a bit of extra support in the catering department. I had a great time again, especially as all meals were planned so that it was entirely coeliac friendly and there were only a handful of special dietary requirements to worry about.

Helping mum and dad recently has been heavy on the admin. Mum has engaged a new company that supplies carers, and they have sent a barrage of forms to be read and signed. The Home Improvement Team has taken the referral from the Occupational Therapist Team and sent a contractor to scope out work to convert the downstairs shower into a wet room, while we applied for an Independent Living Grant to cover the cost. They sent the wrong forms twice, but once I'd got the right forms and phoned the team to check how to fill them in, the grant was approved the same day that I submitted them.

There's always more news in the dental department. Having been given my sets of aligners on the basis that I would be having the 'slenderising' treatment that I declined, the aligners don't fit very well any more. When I pointed this out I was invited to an in-person appointment so they could have a look, and it's possible that the whole treatment will end before Christmas. In the meantime more 'buttons' have been glued to my teeth so that another elastic band can be used. It's been just over a year since I started the treatment and it will be lovely when it's all over, but I'm now starting to become just a little apprehensive about what the aftercare will be like.

Scoot

Taraloka, November 2021

I sit surrounded by junk. If only I could just throw it all out, but some of it is important and some of it is useful and I need to go through what has been accumulating for many months and make sense of it all. It has been delightful to unearth a replacement phone charger for the one I lost, and to find the lights I was going to use for my tent over the summer, but all the pension administration is much less attractive and no less necessary.

In the meantime, mum and I have been having adventures with mobility scooters. We went together to try out a second hand one at someone's house, and then to the local shop to have a go on a new one. Mum was slightly nervous but I whizzed about on the pavement. We have learned much - the top speed of different models, how they can be dismantled, the insurance and servicing requirements - but the main barrier to immediate acquisition is storage. The garage would be perfect but the door isn't all that easy to open and close and there is a half-brick lip which is too high for the scooter to drive over. Mum is thinking about a motorised door and a ramp or knocking out the brick lip, and further thinking about making this the accessible route into the house that is needed.

Apart from this I have been enjoying the freedom from volunteering and other responsibilities, meeting Buddhists for walks and meals and films, and badminton is back on the agenda at last. But now I must knuckle down and try to make some impact on the junk that surrounds me.

October 2021