POTATOES

The other night I dreamt of Jeremy Clarkson.  Not in some perverted (phwoar! Get your kit off)  kind of way though I have to admit there’d be a certain allure about him after 10 pints of Rekorderlig and a large dose of ketamine but nope, this dream was strangely about potatoes.

“Jezza” I said as we strolled side by side along a leafy country lane near Crow-On-The-Bog Water, a fictitious town I’ve invented somewhere in the Cotswolds close to JC’s agricultural pile, “you’re a big fool, mate.  Fancy letting 38 tons of perfectly good spuds go to waste.”

“You could have used all those tatties to brew moonshine or employed a Tefal-headed nerd to invent LPF (liquid potato fuel).  Extinction Rebellion would have undoubtedly hailed you as the second Messiah and kissed your feet (ugh!) a million times over".  

Using my surplus crop to brew up some jam

Blackcurrant jam too sticky for fuel

"Or better still, you could have turned the spud mountain into a new brand of smoky diesel flavoured artisan crisps, perfect for that trackside snack and scoffed by petrol heads across the globe.  Walkers would have snapped up the recipe faster than a stegosaurus on a skateboard.  Think of the money that could have been made - such a wasted opportunity (head shake)”. 

And so the dream ended with me skipping off into the barley leaving a very confused Clarkson scratching his head and wondering what all that was about.  It’s amazing what gets lodged in the subconscious.

Back in world of reality, the next small tentative step in the process of property selling has been taken.  Our house has been photographed from top to bottom and a man in a mask turned up on the doorstep today to carry out an ‘EPC’ (energy performance certificate) inspection.  It appears every property for sale must have one of these certificates in the same way as most women at some point in their lives will have had to have had a red pair of stiletto shoes.  

Now that all our particulars have been taken, we just sit back and wait to be sent an electronic advert to approve then bam!  Show time!

SPOTLESS!

The ‘loan’ cats have returned to their family home and we’ve both been left with a kitty shaped hole in our hearts. 

Kitties all packed and ready to go back home

It’s only been one day but I already miss having a fat tabby sprawled across the bed with me as I read my kindle or Dusty unexpectedly pouncing on my knees when I’m on the PC.  Fatty’s empty basket is a reminder that sooner or later you always end up losing the ones you love.  That’s life.

Fatty's empty bed

Bereft of cats I may be but not of elbow grease.  This weekend has been a ‘cleanathon’ of epic proportions and I definitely deserve a gold medal.  Ugh!  I’ve never seen so much filth and that’s just from looking closely at my toothbrush, the rest of the house was grubbier than a barrow load of freshly dug tatties.  Two bottles of anti-bac, a can of furniture polish, umpteen pairs of blue gloves and several hundred cups of tea later and the house is looking spit spot.  It’s cleaner than when it was built!

Last minute DIY fixes (tick), sweeping front driveway (tick), re-arranging patio pots (tick), al fresco pasta lunch in back garden with son (tick) and scrubbing the kitchen sink till in gleams like newly minted silver (tick).  I’m exhausted!

Shelby helping with last minute DIY jobs

Miss House you are now ready for tomorrow’s curtain call with the estate agency photographer.  Check it out on this property blog tour before it all gets dirty and messy again.

Entrance hallway

Stairs and ground floor hallway

Lounge

Dining Room

Downstairs Shower Room

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

Second Double Bedroom

Upstairs bathroom

Third Bedroom

Home Office/Fourth Bedroom

INSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN

It’s done!  I finally pressed the ‘INSTRUCT NOW’ button last night.  There was no shilly shally, dilly dally, cold feet, turning back, second thoughts or final reprieves as my finger hovered nervously over the mouse button.  Just one swift click and whoooosh – a shiny new ‘for sale’ board has mysteriously appeared tethered to our front railings quicker than Boris's antibody testing.

It's finally happened!

And so this little piggy is at last going to market (the Covid piggy is staying at home).  As Edith Piaf once said ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ and let’s hope that I’m not 'regretting rien' later on.  Regretting this decision to wave goodbye to my lovely home, a home that’s seen many good times (and bad) but that’s never let us down in the past twenty years.   

Who'll buy this lovely house?

We’ve decided to be all modern and hi-tech and use Purple Bricks as our agent to avoid the ‘commisseria’ that according to their marketing campaign is what everyone else experiences when going through a traditional estate agent.  Agency fees are generally 1-1.5% of a property’s final sale price and on our valuation that would amount to an eye-watering £3,700 doing it the old fashioned way.  Ouch!  I can feel the moths in my purse already getting agitated at the thought of parting with that kind of wonga. 

There are no prizes for guessing how I’m going to be spending my bank holiday weekend.  Who is that whirling Dervish with a cleaning rag in one hand and polish in the other, spinning, scrubbing and dusting until every surface gleams like gold?  Moi, of course.

A pair of kitty bookends to decorate the bedroom

FURLOUGH FINISHED

It’s week 5 of furlough.  I’ve been on high alert since Sunday.  What for is anyone’s guess but either we’re about to be hit by a world shortage of sardines or a top secret satellite that nobody knew about is going to drop into the back garden (again?).  Boris says ‘Stay Alert’ so I’m ordering a high powered telescope and CCTV to keep a close eye on things.

I’ve finally been recalled back to active duty so my ‘sticky buns’ staycation is over.  No more afternoons of lazy sunbathing or sauntering round the house half naked as from tomorrow its back to the grind. 

Our garden is blooming

Fatty looking for butterflies to chase

Kitties enjoy their daily exercise

Our organisation claims to have drawn up a Recovery Plan although the contents of said plan are as unknown as the final resting place of Margaret Thatcher’s infamous handbag.  (Yeah, what did happen to it?)  It follows that staff will be the last to find out what safety measures are being put in place.  Not sure what is of more concern to me right now, whether I’ll find my desk surrounded in plastic screening to prevent breathing in co-worker germs or whether we’ll all end up on the dole due to lack of funds.

‘R’ comes after ‘P’ in the alphabet and it’ll be no surprise that following this economic turmoil the tabloids are sure to be full of redundancy headlines in the coming months.  It may be easy to switch off the sausage machine but turning it back on to pre-pandemic levels isn’t going to be quite so simple for some companies. 

In Dorset, pandemic fallout has already begun with Sunseeker, provider of luxury yachts, waving goodbye to over 450 employees.  Since our office is only up the road from their premises, I wonder if the lay-off liner will be cruising our way too at some point in time? 

Still, I have managed to put the finishing touches to the lounge makeover just in the nick of time thus restoring our beautiful Deco themed room to its former glory.  

Fresh white ceiling and scrubbed up walls

'P' IS FOR PANDEMIC

‘Can I have a ‘P’ please, Bob?’  I’m sure everyone that hasn’t got their eyes glued to a smartphone will be smirking in remembrance of that immortal line as contestants battled to make their way across a lettered Blockbusters quiz screen. These days, P is for pandemic or party. 

Although we’re in a lockdown situation, social distancing restrictions clearly apply only to UK citizens and not Serbians.  When Boris said ‘Stay at home, save the NHS’ he forgot to repeat that in a Balkan dialect as whilst everyone else has understood they’ve got to stay in their own homes, our Serbian neighbours have taken this to mean that you must invite all your relatives round for a big party.   At least a dozen guests turned up last Wednesday, not a shred of PPE in sight!   P is also for peasant. 

Social distancing - kitty style

Week 4 of furlough has slipped by unnoticed like the piece of popcorn I found yesterday buried in fluff under the sofa.  Carbon dating showed it to have been there since 2008 along with the theatre listings from Poole Lighthouse of the same year.  (I wondered where that had got to).

DIY efforts are now being concentrated on the lounge, a room that was last decorated almost 20 years ago.  In its heyday, this room paid homage to all things Art Deco.  The beautiful Deco motifs that I painstakingly stencilled into each corner of the room have withstood the rigours of daily life well but not so the Egyptian sand coloured paint which is now dirtier than a pair of wellies after milking time.  Scrubbing the walls down with sugar soap has done little to reduce the pockmarks and splatters of the last two decades.

Our lovely Art Deco lounge needs a spruce up

Stencilled corner motifs

The decorative scheme in this room is unlikely to be to everyone’s taste but it kills me to think someone is going to come along and paint over the lovely stencilled motifs to turn the lounge into some bland, gruel-coloured, porridge palace.  I guess I’ll leave that to the new owners because I don’t have the heart to cover them.

In the meantime, I've freshened up the ceiling with a couple of coats of brilliant white emulsion and painted over the dark yellow plaster coving/picture rail to give the room a partial makeover.

White emulsion to cover picture rail and coving

Plainer look to appeal to prospective buyers

Fan design wallpaper now painted in white