The end is nigh!

I am doing things `for the last time`now. Today was the last House Management Meeting and I look back over sixteen years of reporting the leaks in showers, kitchens, blocked up pipes, recalcitrant residents, minor and major disasters of every description. In the meantime I am trying to pack up books, and the idea was to take half of them at least to the Oxfam bookshop, but I find it is so hard to get rid of them, especially the poetry books. My dear friend I is going to take an entire cupboard full of music, which has been sitting on the landing being a Fire Risk for years.
My friend M is busily painting the Ditchling cottage. We decided to remove all the fake old beams in the sitting room and now there are great gaping holes and an urgent need for a plasterer. I suppose that the last owner was the one who stuck them on,. Still it all makes work for the working man to do. I am spending a fortune buying things like a broom and a dustpan, a rubbish bin and a Hoover. It is like setting up home for the first time as all my stuff has been absorbed into the Meeting House. I have warned the residents that I will be taking the Scrabble, the dictionary, and the electric hand mixer. They will also miss my Guardian and the quick crossword every day.

I have just disovered that beds from Ikea are six inches longer than English ones, Swedes are taller I suppose. So the super comfortable new bed I bought a few months ago and have been luxuriating in ever since, will not fit into my teeny tiny bedroom at Ditchling. One more worry. I am dementedly making lists and measuring things, also trying to give my possessions away. Every time I go to Ditchling, the house looks smaller.
It is a bit like death, this moving business, speculating as to whether there is an After Life and what form it will take. J gave me a notebook for Mothering Sunday with a list of things I can do if I wake up in the morning, it is raining and I have nothing planned, (this never happens in the Meeting House) Ideas range from writing a novel, making half a dozen quiches for some unnamed recipient, or simply lying on the sofa and reading a book.

kippers and quiche

Another long gap, and after two more lots of penicillin for the ghastly elephantine leg, I then got a face like the elephant man too. I suddenly developed an allergy to penicillin and woke up on Thursday morning with a great swollen face and red weals, it was most alarming. Daughter J took charge and got me seen at the Brighton hospital by a very kind helpful doctor, who said no more penicillin ever and then the leg miraculously recovered. I think my body is saying to me, no, you can`t move to Ditchling, you have to stay here and work at the Meeting House for ever.
Yesterday we had the great Fabulous Fairtrade breakfast. A dozen of us scuttled round the kitchen, serving and cooking the Full English and also strange combinations such as kippers with a poached egg on top or kedgeree with scrambled eggs plus one slice of white bread and butter. Oh so capricious the punters were. Still it made about £750 for Emmaus and generated a lot of goodwill.
It is a beautiful Spring morning, the garden is full of snowdrops, crocuses and the daphne is flowering. Lots of Quakes are staying for lunch after Meeting, but it is is laid up ready, (quiches of course!) and it is time for me to put the jacket potatoes in the Aga.