New Day Unique Experience!

So, this is it! My first words as a blogger. Let it flow!

As someone once said, "You should try everything once, except for incest and Morris Dancing." Sage advice. And today was one of those times when I was able to add another new and wonderful moment to my life
(Photo not of me, but a statue in Terrassa park)

experience.

Let me explain.

I am waiting to sell my house. Waiting and waiting. Quite apart from the frustration of not getting my paws onto the money that my house has to make to allow me to live some sort of reasonable life in Castelldefels (just outside Barcelona Airport) there is also the horror of having to keep the house presentable for the possible future buyers.

The future buyers are not showing up, but the house has to be kept up to standard (the standard which is far above the usual levels which ordinary life asks for) I have been hoovering, cleaning, polishing and tidying - for no one! It's like some sort of strange religious observance, tidying the shrine of domesticity for the gods who never turn up. But, you can't relax because if you do, that will be the time when the real potential buyer will arrive and notice the specs of dust, the misaligned newspapers and the sale will be off.

So, what I have done which is above and beyond the normal round of house care?

I have ironed the carpet.

Now, before you stop reading, assuming that you are perusing the outpourings of a demented, sad and other worldly being, I should explain.

Before the decision to move to Catalonia was decided upon, my house was a true shrine. Not to false gods, but to my overriding interest: reading. Every available space was filled with bookcases and overflowing volumes. Although (with my possessions in storage) I now live in a conventional three bedroom semi, I used to live in a one bedroom semi with a study and library. As you may have guessed, the semis in both cases are the same, it's just the books and the bookcases that have gone.

Gone, maybe - but the evidence of their previous existence is still to be seen. The outlines of all the bookcases are clear in the grooves in the carpet, which is now clear to see because of the lack of furniture in my house. Clear for the future purchasers as well. So, what to do?

Advice was forthcoming: using a steam iron and a cloth, iron the creases in the carpet, hoover and hey presto! the evidence of bookcases will be gone. Well, not quite, but its getting there. I think.

The one thing which haunts me is that this could be just the start. As my eagle eye roves around my house, trying to see familiar places with a stranger's eye, what else might I decided to 'improve'. Wasn't there a film with Tom Hanks (how in the name of God did he get two {count them, two!} Oscars for acting?) called "The Money Pit" about the renovating of a house? I am not trying to renovate, but even in 'presenting' a house and 'dressing' it for others there is no logical limit to what you can do. The threat is obvious. Someone needs to buy the house soon to save me from myself.

I might add that the Ewbank (name names, confound the guilty) carpet shampooer is one of the most ineptly designed household helps that I have used in many years. Damn it to the pits of hell. And the bottles of shampoo had slightly opened and leaked. And the handle of the machine kept unloosening. And it leaked. And . . . Need I go on.

I really think that my ideas for BBC Radio 4 ideas need to be taken up by the Corporation so that working on them will keep me from obsessing about housework. Please. What will the next days throw in my way? Something more intellectual please!




This is what the outside looks like. The garden is easier to tend than the carpets!