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.

flying babies

The week started with a proper Sunday dinner at the rectory next door with my dear neighbours and this was the first real meal since I became ill the previous Saturday. Most delicious. Yesterday, I was properly back at work, and getting meals for other people including a Quaker speaker who came down from London, who I discovered was married to the poet, Carole Satyamurti, known to Julia and me Today I having been catching up on admin stuff on my computer after my enforced week of idleness. I don`t feel a hundred percent, am on a second batch of antibiotics, also I still have a leg like an elephant, I shall be so glad to get back on my bike and go swimming again.
Great plans for the weekend for the twins`fiftieth birthday. I must start the ritual quiche making. Baby Arthur, my great grandson is flying from Newcastle (in an aeroplane I must add)

once more dressed and in my right mind

Thought I had better write again to say that the crisis is past (as in Victorian novels with deathbed scenes.) I am feeling perfectly well today and though my leg is not a pretty sight, it is much reduced in size and not quite so lurid in appearance. I have had a constant stream of kind visitors bearing; yellow tulips, soup, exotic fruit juices, grapes, chocolate, plants, and I have simply lain back on my pillows wallowing in all this attention. I had thought I would get some reading done during this week (almost) of enforced idleness, but, no, the days have been taken up with conversation, and has seemed like one long party.
Jackie Kay,the novelist and poet who had come to do a reading in Winchester came to visit. She was a great friend of daughter Julia`s so we talked a lot together of her yesterday afternoon, and today she went to look at the Jane Austen house in College St where Julia was born. So I treasure that time together though I was sorry to miss the reading.
If you look up my illness, erysepalis, on Wikkopoedia you get a list of people who have died of the disease (also some horrid pictures of people with it on their faces) Included in the list are: Charles Lamb, John Dryden,St John of the Cross, Pope Gregory xvi, John Stewart Mill,John Brown (Quenn Victoria`s friend) and Kelkpa,a Nordic whale who died in the Thames in 1996.

in bed with the doctor

It has been a long gap. The reason for this is that I am ill. I am lying in bed, having trays carried up by kind residents and friends who arrive up the two long flights , gasping for breath as they deposit a tasty snack. Sadly. I have little appetite, so I know I am not well as I do love my food. I have a red, hot, swollen leg. The doctor has just been to look at it. he did not come at first, but sent a prescription but we got him here today. and he will decide tomorrow if I have to go to hospital, I do not want this as hospitals are unhealthy places at the best of times.
The good thing is that now my temperature is more or less normal, I can read, watch TV, listen to the radio ,and struggle with the cryptic crossword in the Guardian. Also I have a succession of lovely visitors, so apart from worrying about the crumbs on the Aga downstairs I am as `well as can be expected`
Today, they are interviewing applicants for my job. Two have been up and put their heads round the bedroom door to say hallo. It is all interesting but quite stressful. I shall be glad when it is settled. I suppose I feel as if I am abandoning ship. Then there is the leaving do to cope with. A speech? Perhaps it can be in verse? Several friends have told me that they have put their foot in it in their retirement speeches, and upset people. I must be very careful.

Last week there was nothing, but today there are clumps of blooming snowdrops by the gate where they come up cheerfully year after year. It has been sunny and springlike today and I went up to London for the second week running. I met friend K and we had a delicious lunch at the Quaker HQ Friends House in Euston Road, then wandered about a bit to the British Library, then the Foundling Museum in Coram Fields.
Last night I went to see the film Precious, which is unutterably tragic. Very difficult to hear the words, and this was not just my wonky hearing as M couldn`t catch much of it either, though she heard more than I did so put me right on the plot afterwards. It is a good film and I am glad I saw it, but oh so sad. The main character had no acting experience, she had just worked in a call centre. It was like the film Slumdog Millionaire, using real people not actors.
The first of the candidates for my job is being interviewed tomorrow, so I must have a special tidy round tonight, especially my flat. It feels very odd. I shall just be so glad if someone gets the job who loves it as much as I have done.