Hills and Valleys

Life is an up and down affair isn’t it? All hills and valleys and bogs and summits.
Last week was one of those weeks. For a while I reminded myself of the old me. She who would/could sit at her computer and exhaust herself until the works she had decided MUST be done RIGHT NOW was done and done it was and both The School of Life and The Kitchen Table were completed and she who had completed them was proud as punch and fit for nothing, for sure as eggs are eggs these days a fit of intensive work will wipe me out and see me lying down and requiring the services of men in togas to feed me grapes and waft me with a fan. Tis no fun at all being at the beck and call of an autoimmune haridan like Hashimoto’s.
Truth be told I was already halfway to bonkers before I worked myself into exhaustion. The house was just not selling. Each and every viewer came in and said the same things…. Oooh its like a Tardis in here! Swiftly followed by “Just a courtyard? No garden?”.
You see it is a truth universally acknowledged that potential buyers will read instructions that firmly state, just a courtyard, no garden, and imagine that somewhere between reading those details and driving to view the house, that the universe would be kind enough to transform said courtyard into the garden of their dreams. Yesarooney: they are eternal optimists these professional viewers, apparently absolutely determined to disappoint themselves by visiting properties without features they seemingly consider essential.
I was at the end of my tether. Ready to smack the next Just a Courtyard type viewer and rather sick of the very lovely, very determined estate agent who assured me I was worrying for nothing and all would be well in the end for if it was not well, it was not the end. Despite the fact that I was ready to tell him that MY end was nigh if he didn’t sell it before I completely and utterly lost my mind.
And then just as I lay cooped under blankets in the midst of a shivery bout of “wiped herself out“, the phone rang and negotiations were opened with a little man called Lawrence, and lo and behold, by the end of the day the house was declared SOLD! and this Doubting Thomasina was quaffing Prosecco and feeling the three thousand emotions one feels when she has given up a house she has loved for a many a year in favor of the much yearned for great unknown.
Never let it be said I am anything other than utterly dramatic. In fact the excitement nearly sent me over the edge and this here puffy, cold, crazy lady was now ever so slightly tipsy and rather terrified of what feels like giving up her security and so I wandered about the bungalow twitching with worry and relief that the whole matter was almost at a close and completely failing to pack my bags for the timeliest of little jaunts around the peaks and valleys of Wales, courtesy of my gorgeous friend Kath who had booked a surprise weekend away for my birthday.
Was there ever a woman more indulged than I? Before I knew it, the Thelma to my Louise had delivered me to a five star decompression chamber: a lovely room at Bodnant WelshFood complete with a private living room and a darling little kitchen. She had brought rose and violet cremes, wine, magazines, wasabi peas, and a beauty treatment that actually worked and left our hands looking frankly like other peoples, so smooth and perfect they became after half-an hour in glove like masks.
That night we nibbled at celeriac gnocchi and drank a rather exquisite Rioja and slowly but surely I became my giggly relaxed self again. We talked until four o’clock in the morning in our twin beds, faces scrubbed and copious amounts of moisturizer applied like a pair of old spinsters without the carpet slippers or head full of rollers, admiring the palest of soothing green paint on the walls, setting both our worlds to rights and trying in our haze to fathom whether or not the UK should be in or out of the EU.
Breakfast was a heavenly combination of parma ham, blue cheese and Eggs Benedict: in short the food they serve in heaven, and I was a woman restored to my own version of normality. So very grateful to Kath. So glad to feel like my body was my own again, and ready to return to my very own bungalow full of boys and the relentless madness of Motherhood. And womanhood. And partnerhood. And bloggerhood. And all the other hoods I haunt.
Though not from now on, my old hood. For that there hood is SOLD! Heavens to Betsey, my house is sold.

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