Aw Diddums

One of my biggest pieces of news is something I keep forgetting to mention – there are tenants in my house.

They’ve been there quite a while already. So far things are going smoothly, except that my washing machine chose to break down the first time they used it. I felt like walking over there especially to kick it. I said to Mum I had visions of them pulling the washing machine out to change it and discovering crumbs and rotting food under it or down the side… the usual places you can’t clean. She said “but we washed the floor when we pulled the machine out to straighten the lino.”

Oh… we did? Well that was lucky, then. I hope it wasn’t us straightening the lino that busted it, but I suppose it doesn’t make a lot of difference, as it was me that paid for the new one anyway.

I think it’s much more likely it was failing already; sitting unused for several months may have caused something inside to dry up, shrink, crack, and give up completely. Or maybe it couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing me again, and committed hari kiri.

At one point we drove past the street my house is in… if you crane to see down to the far end, you can see it as you flash past. I felt nervous and didn’t even know why; it was that ‘gearing myself up for disagreement/rejection’ feeling; the knowledge they would want to arrange things differently. And why not? I wanted everything different from the way the previous occupant had it, and I don’t think it worried her that we planned, in her hearing, to install a new kitchen and a Ramsay ladder – she just grinned and nodded encouragingly.

All I was doing was obtaining a quick glimpse of my house in the distance, and my stomach was churning.

The blinds were pulled up out of sight, windows welcoming in the sunshine. When I lived there, I had the blinds down and slanted, partly to keep myself from being dazzled, and partly so people couldn’t see me quite so readily. It’s a quiet street, but not that quiet.

“They don’t like the colour of my blinds,” I moaned, and drooped.
Mum said, “don’t look. I never looked when we rented out the house in Aberdeen. Grandpa said once when we were in the area, “let’s drive past your house!” but I said no. He couldn’t understand why not; I said it was because I didn’t want to see it.”

“It’s not our home right now,” I nodded – “it’s other people’s.”
“Exactly.”

Much better not to look… I get paranoid enough about ridiculous things without also fretting about whether or not they like my blinds.

Before they even moved in, they asked if they could install a satellite dish. I had been expecting the question and promptly said yes. I didn’t want one on the house (it’s so small that a dish would probably cause it to keel over), but my elderly neighbour recently died, and the very next thing that happened was someone clapping a dish on her house. I knew then that my own house was a marked building. If tenant after tenant asked that question till I cracked, I might just as well allow the first tenants to have it. Maybe they’ll stay longer…

If they can afford Sky, I’m guessing they’ll have their own TV with them. They won’t want Mum’s ancient analogue TV with the tiny Pace Freeview box connected to it with a piece of sticking plaster. (No, it isn’t really, and I’m not saying it’s dangerous; we’ve just had a safety inspector checking everything… my meaning is that the TV was old enough not to have a Scart socket. No, I mean, it was so old it didn’t have a Scart socket. Sorry, it’s late and I’m rambling).

Anyway, I don’t blame them for a minute; I would be squeezing it into a cupboard too if I had my own TV with me.

It’s midnight, Mum’s gone to bed and there was a loud clatter… I jumped and turned my head, and there was Samson the kitten, sitting with his paw on the TV’s remote control. He had apparently knocked it off its perch and was staring at it intently, ears pricked.

“Ah,” I said, “you gave me a fright! Why do you always make loud noises at this time of night?”

Samson gave me a disappointed look and I couldn’t help smiling.
He squawked.
“Of course I love you,” I said.
He squawked again and then scratched his chin defiantly, as though to say “well OK, but sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

Maybe he didn’t say any of that…. it could be that he wants Sky TV too.

Life has changed recently for the following two reasons:

Sharky has CRF (chronic renal failure) and is very sick. It’s generally only recognized in cats when their kidney function is down to nearly 25%.

He’s been on the drip twice… when he went on the drip the second time, they said it looked really bad for him. My heart was thundering in my ears.

He seems to have rallied slightly and is eating more. It’s still not as much as he needs. I’ve tried him with:

• renal kibble from the vet, on its own or soaked in boiled water to release the flavours – he just goes ‘bleugh’.
• tuna – not a good idea, I know, but normally he loves it. Now he sniffs at it.
• milk – turned his head away.
• sardines – wouldn’t even look at it.
• Hi-Life Junior for kittens – Sharky ate a quarter of a pouch’s worth during the night then vomited it back up.
• Gourmet Solitaire, normally a treat – but now he licks the jelly and rejects the shrimp.
• Gourmet paté – that’s one of his favourite cat foods and he will still take a couple of teaspoonfuls of the beef or turkey flavours. The ocean fish flavour nearly stopped him considering it… your heart is constantly in your mouth in case you take a wrong turning and put him off.
• Sheba – normally likes it, but now just licks the gravy.
• Iams Select Bites in gravy for kittens – ditto.
• the cats’ usual cocktail of dry kibble – he accepted three tiny asterisk-shaped ones (the most expensive) and ignored the rest.
• boiled chicken, chopped in tiny bits. It’s the most successful so far, but I had to feed some of it by hand! I tried to get him to take the water it was boiled in, but he blew bubbles in it then turned away.

He is sitting downstairs with us now, which is very nice – for too long recently he was preferring to sleep on his own in the silence of the upstairs rooms. He has moved into my place on the sofa and I’ve been bumped down one seat. He has a dish of water on the table beside him, which makes a big difference, along with a few choice bowls of food (mostly ignored).

When I was having supper tonight, I got myself a bowl of fresh blueberries with cream. While I was settling down, Sharky got up and and slurped all the cream off the blueberries. I washed the blueberries and ate them anyway – they tasted very good.

He’s looking quite bright today – he’s been running about a little, and there’s a bleary smile on his face.

I said to Mum I wondered if he got as much of a fright as the rest of us did. When the vet nurse was saying that it was looking very bad for him, I stared right through the cat in a glazed way, simply trying to cope, then realized he was looking at my face with anxiety, as though to say “I’m here…. look, it’s me, Sharky! You can see me, can’t you?” Maybe he’s had enough sense to realize if he doesn’t eat and drink more, he’ll be leaving this world quicker than he meant to.

I emailed the vets asking for a copy of his bloodwork so that I can see what to avoid feeding him, saying that I was interested in doing what I could to balance his bloods, and the vet nurse replied to say that she’s prepared two new sets of pills for him (a phosphate binder and an appetite stimulant). We rushed off to get those as soon as I found the email. He’s got a respectable pile of medication now – three different things a day. He’s taking after Mum.

My house is signed up with a letting and management agent. Finally! The agents took a look round it yesterday and seemed to like it. Mum said the boss was wandering round saying “this is a very good little flat!” It’s not a flat, it’s a bungalow, but I suppose it has that bright, compact, self-contained atmosphere. Before he even left, he said he had a couple in mind for it, with a baby. I’m not sure they’ll find it roomy enough for a cot (the single bed can’t be folded up and put away), but maybe they’ll make do.

I said the tenants can use the loft for storage, and can keep one or two cats (but no dogs – the garden isn’t enclosed).

All that is quite exciting. I’ve been looking out the instructions for oven, dishwasher, washing machine etc. I took the laptop downstairs and polished off my inventory, feeding Sharky by hand at odd moments. Last night I was typing a long email to a friend and jumped up twice in the middle of it to attend to him. I can remember a time when I would have allowed nothing to interrupt my chain of thought…

Going downstairs to give him his medication now.

In a bid to appease the Twelfth Night tree spirits, we dismantled our Christmas tree and decorations last night (though, looking at this page, we were probably 24 hours too late).

Sorting through a box of Christmassy stuff, I found a mound of gift tags collected from previous years. Most of them were addressed to me from Mum (and in excellent condition) so I gave them back to her for reuse.

I kept a few she won’t be able to reuse:

• To Diddums, love from Fusspot (Siamese cat who died)
• … purrs from Lucky (another dead cat)
• … from Joker (a deceased Rex cat of Mum’s)
• To Diddumsville from Mumsville (our houses exchanging gifts, as they do…)

I removed my blog’s Christmas theme while I was at it. It was too pale for me, so it was a relief to take it down. I know I’ve said I don’t like grey sites normally, but I like this new theme, which has colour in it as well. Mostly because it’s easier on the eye than a largely white blog would be.

The font is also more interesting – something about the one in the Christmas theme made me yawn…

While ditching a cardboard box used for storing tinsel, I realized it affected my inventory. I’d described something as a ’standard lamp’ (which came out of this box) but apparently it’s a ‘twin floor spotlight’. Ah.

My house is not the only one in the process of changing occupants – one of my elderly neighbours died a few months ago, so her house has been receiving new tenants. Yesterday we spotted something new on it – a black satellite dish! I was a little horrified but shouldn’t have been surprised – a large number of houses in this area have similar dishes. I don’t notice any on the houses in Mum’s area – she suggests the dishes are ‘invisible’ because the houses are bigger.

I hope my own new tenants won’t be clamouring for a dish.

Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed to see such sport
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

I suddenly had this thought that if I’d sold my house, it would have a dish too by now. Why should it worry me? It wouldn’t be my house any more. Must satellite dishes be black? They stick out like a sore thumb on these houses. Talking of spoons, I must look out a serving spoon – one of the more important kitchen utensils…

Inventories cost money, so I’ve been ‘inventorizing’ my house myself. It’s trickier than it sounds.

It’s amazing how many things I think of in general terms, such as ‘the small black knife’. What kind of knife is it? A fruit knife? How did I know it was a fruit knife? I’m not even sure I’m right. I just used it for everything, including hacking bits off neeps if the big knives caused too much trouble and my knuckles started bleeding with the strain.

Mum said they don’t want us to list all the cutlery and kitchen utensils in exhaustive detail, but I’m doing one for myself, just so I know what’s there and what might still be needed. (Should I provide an ice cream scoop? There’s a plastic one in Woolworth for 69p. And what’s the name of that cake bowl scraper-outer? I don’t have an apple corer either… but I never used one. Forget it).

What kind of glasses are these? Whisky glasses, tumblers, drinking glasses, hi-ball glasses? What ARE hi-ball glasses? Can you get tumblers in different sizes? I thought tumblers were tall. Should I provide wine glasses, or at least sherry glasses? What about a beer glass?

(Oh, an ash tray! Not sure where that came from as I’ve never smoked. I don’t want to encourage smoking by tenants or their guests, so I’m taking it away).

Then there’s the thing I’ve got hanging on the wall inside a cupboard. It has little plastic drawers in it for tacks, screws, fuses, hooks and anything else tiny but useful that you don’t want rolling around who-knows-where. What’s that called? It’s not a toolbox, exactly. And ’storage box’ is rather general. Surely it has the sort of name that would let people know immediately what you’re talking about? A picture-hook storage cabinet??

I notice that someone else put ‘pillowcase protectors’ on her inventory. Shouldn’t it be ‘pillow protectors’? We have ‘mattress protectors’, so ‘pillowcase protectors’ sounds a bit odd. Next time I’m in a shop I’ll look and see what was written on the packet. I’m going for ‘pillow protectors’ meanwhile. I should buy more while I’m at it; I only have two.

Then there’s the whirligig in the garden – should be listed as being stored in the Garden Shed. It’s not officially known as a whirligig, though I’ve called it that for years. It’s a …. rotary dryer! Oh wait a minute, I’ll just check on the Argos site. Nope, it’s a rotary airer. Perhaps a rotary dryer is something else… on the other hand there’s a rotary dryer on Amazon for £120.99.

There’s also a rotary washing line… for £163. Geeee – I must get on with this inventory and stop wasting time.

Do I list the hot water tank in the cupboard?? It sounds a bit strange – “I have one hot water tank – please just check in there to make sure nobody packed it in their suitcase, or left two by accident.” I suppose stranger things have happened, but it would be like saying “there’s a bath in the bathroom and a radiator in the bedroom”… I should just miss it out. But what about the Ramsay ladder into the loft; do we list that…? It wasn’t there when I bought the house. The previous occupiers probably used that dreadful wooden ladder, and tried to avoid going up there as much as possible. It’s my Ramsay ladder and I’m proud of it.

Mum keeps saying the loft is not for the use of the tenants, which I find strange. I took everything out of the loft anyway. Why shouldn’t they store stuff up there? I bet they will, whether or not they’re supposed to. I wouldn’t cry about it (unless they fell through the ceiling).

What’s the difference between this rake and that rake? One is a garden rake and the other (the one resembling Death’s bony hand) is a ‘lawn rake’, according to Mum. Oh… And what do I put under Cat House? There’s nothing in it – no cats, no nothing.

I’ve not finished this inventory yet… or perhaps it’s not finished with me.

Mum frequently emails asking, “anything for the charity shops?” and I rush around hastily, looking for things and yet more things as sacrifices to keep the mother goddess happy. Gave away three mugs I use every day (clean, of course). Well, the mug collection will have to shrink, and those were D-list mugs. I still feel as though I betrayed them, and even while I’m berating myself for that, I’m choosing yet more mugs to abandon. There’s a cream one with pale yellow flowers. That one’s being marched out, blindfolded, the next time the mother goddess beckons.

There’s also a tin with old-fashioned teddy bear pictures on it – nice enough, but I’m not a tin collector. It sat for years on the top of the wall cupboards in the kitchen because I didn’t know what else to do with it. There are always things around the house we can give away without a second thought (or not too much of one).

Though why is it that, when I feel like listening to a particular song, it turns out to be one of the ones already gone across to Mum’s? I’m in the mood for Straight from the Heart by Bryan Adams.

Have to pick another CD. Dido’s Life for Rent already had a spin earlier this afternoon. I found it was on the plaintive side for a listener who’s about to move out of her house, maybe forever…. there was just something lonely in the sound of it, and there are songs with titles like Don’t Leave Home. I suppose that’s a good reason to play it! Or is that flawed logic?

Definitely no Bryan Adams in the house. Dido it is, then.

Edit March 2008: Comments to this entry when it was on the old site:

1. Pacian wrote at Mar 10, 2007 at 20:23:
Better check under the sofa and behind the curtains. He is a sneaky fellow, I think.
o_O

2. Diddums wrote at Mar 10, 2007 at 22:38:
He’s not there – but Robert Palmer is.

I have to sell my house or let it. The current intention is to rent it out – hopefully it would cover the mortgage and give me a little income over and above that and other expenses. I’ve never let out a house before, so am not sure what to expect.

Meanwhile I will move in with Mum (a few streets away). This is why she has been decluttering and redecorating as much as I have been – probably more, as hers is a bigger house anyway. I already have my own bedroom waiting there, with a new blue carpet, and a lot of my bears and books have moved in.

I said in an earlier post that I feel instinctively this is the right thing to do. I love the thought that somebody else will be paying the mortgage! I will be escaping from the horrible hospital they’re about to build next door – they’ve already pulled the fence down and parked some heavy machinery on the land. I wouldn’t have to send all my furniture to the saleroom, and I would be living right around the corner from the dog I walk five days out of seven.

Goodness knows what all the pitfalls are, though.

It should be a help for both of us: Mum delights in telling me she’s getting no younger, whereas I always have problems with strangers on the doorstep (trying to figure out who they are and what they want), and often wish someone was there to ‘translate’.

Now the skylines reach my eyes
The ridge stands out in highland skies
I just can’t believe I’m going home

Going home…

[Lyrics by Runrig]