We have occupied another day in cyber house-hunting
Mark helped me, because the weather is still too bad in the North Sea for him to be at work.
It is jolly good, this oil rig work. I worked in a cafe once, and if there were no customers the lady in charge used to make us polish the mirrors and clean the shelves and empty out the cupboards to make sure that they were only full of useful cafe things and not of mouse droppings and spider webs.
The boat upon which Mark is currently based does not make idle welders and platers come upstairs and scrub the decks and hoist the topsail, or whatever mariners do when they are not busy doing other marinery things. They are allowed to find somewhere warm and comfortable where they can sit in peace and read the newspaper and play Candy Crush on their telephones.
I do not know if Candy Crush is still a thing. I said it because it is the only telephone game that I know. Mark does not play it anyway.
Instead, today he sat on the other end of the telephone and we looked at pictures of French houses and tried to find them on maps.
I had poor, round Guffy to keep me company. She has become very purringly affectionate since her descent into sin, and appears, without fail, every time she hears me lower myself into a chair, in order to stretch herself out on my knee. Her purrs rumble like a chainsaw, and for some reason that I can’t quite fathom, preferably she likes to lie with all four feet pressed into my hand. I do not know why she likes to do this, but she does.
She has not bitten me for absolutely ages. Well, not hard enough to draw blood, anyway.
She is going to be very surprised indeed in a few weeks time.
I ought to call the vet and tell her but have put it off, in case she suggests doing something horrible. I think if a cat is not healthy enough to carry kittens to term then probably they won’t be able to get in the family way in the first place, so I do not want to listen to any worrying things the vet might have to say. Guffy will have to take her chances.
If The Deed happened when I think it did, then the kittens will be due on the day we are going to come back from France. I hope they don’t come any sooner than that. I do not know how Oliver will feel about midwifery whilst we are away. He is already going to have to take care of the dogs and prepare the house for anybody to look at who might want to purchase it. All of this will be quite enough trouble, I think, although I am not expecting him to do the whole house-selling thing of making fresh coffee and putting bread in the oven to bake so that everywhere smells nice.
Actually I will be pleased if he could manage to empty the cat litter so that it doesn’t smell revolting. That will be a good start.
Now that it is all moving forward I find I am absolutely terrified. I am not at all sure that I want to abandon our lovely house. I have always thought of it as being backstage in the Lake District theatre, just tucked out of the way of the main attractions, all of which are brightly illuminated just around the corner.
It will be very odd not to belong here.
I do not always like belonging here, but it is very unsettling to think that very soon we might not any more.
Our beloved leaders have started to make nasty threats about taxing holiday houses, so it could well be that it doesn’t sell quite so easily after all.
I suppose nothing much is going to happen in a hurry.
We will just have to wait and see what happens next.
