Fleas, dust, time and the river...

Quite apart from dealing with broken hearts, I am in a tailspin. My lovely in-laws are coming to stay on Thursday. Suddenly I am seeing the house in a whole new – deeply unflattering – light.  Ye gods, what the feck am I going to do?  Their house is pristine. Everything is in its place; everything matches.  Yeah, sure, that’s just a taste thing – and I like the mismatched Bohemian mess of this place.  But, for pity’s sake, their house gleams.  And for sure, I couldn’t ever aspire to gleaming.  But…clean?  Clean would be good, right?  I’d even settle for not filthy at a pinch. 

Seriously, I don’t know where to start. Adrian is away at another beer festival, James is surfing at the beach. I am walking round the house with wild staring eyes wondering how it ever got quite this bad.  There isn’t just dust, there are dust armies. Dust sculptures. Dust installations. I suppose I could apply to the Arts Council for a grant? There are festoons of cobwebs punctuated by dead things. More to the point there are fleas.

Yes, the house has fleas.  The dogs have fleas. I have fecking fleas.  Everything scratches. The dogs scratch. James and I scratch.  The dust probably scratches too. Weirdly Adrian doesn’t scratch but then he just sneezes instead. 

‘Bloody hay fever,’ he says. Bless him.

Yes, I’ve doused the dogs with Frontline. It doesn’t work.  

The last time they came to stay (the inlaws, not the fleas) was over ten years ago.  The house we lived in then was relatively normal (just stuck on a hill in the middle of Deliverance country – honestly, families round there were seriously…familiar). I had a cleaner; I had a gardener. The sheets were new, things were polished.  I was still functioning in a vaguely acceptable way and cooked vaguely edible food. I was house proud. I subscribed to interiors magazines, for pity’s sake. 

This is the first time they will see the house. It’s high summer, the sun is shining fit to burst and yet the mould is still playing at a series of variations on the Turin shroud on the bathroom walls. I have given up on the Loo of Doom, Cellar of Despond etc – and just shut the door firmly and put up a sign saying ‘Danger – Beyond Here Lie the Kind of Life Forms that Dr House Says Lead to Definite Death’. 

The spare bedroom is now in what was my erstwhile office, hence packed floor to ceiling with books with titles like ‘Demonology’, ‘Psychic Self-Defence’, ‘The Sin Eater’s Last Confessions’, The Demon Lover’ and ‘How to Turn your Ex-Boyfriend into a Toad’. It is also the repository for all furniture which will not fit anywhere else so – apart from my mother’s old bed (antique, with suitably antique squeaking springs), it also contains a large sofa, a small weird wardrobe, a kitchen table and six chairs, a homeopathic medicine cabinet, a few occasional tables and an unconnected wood burning stove.  Frankly, it’s a mess. 

But hey. What can I do?  Unless a small army fancies popping over and blitzing the place – or someone sends over a crack troupe of industrial cleaners, there’s no way I can get it fixed. So I may as well not bother.  It is what it is. There are worse things in life than dust and fleas, right?  In the scheme of things, who gives a shit?

I have friends, good friends, the best, who are going through real shit right now. Nothing I can do about it and yeah, that sucks out loud.

So, yes, I could clean like a skivvy on speed.  Then again, I could sit at my PC and try a bit harder to get myself out of the total utter mess I’ve got myself into. But hey…who knows eh?

Who knows how long any of us have got?  That interstellar highway could be coming through any second now. The Grim Reaper, bless him, could be readying his pointy finger just millimetres away from your or my shoulder.  Soooo... I take me a bag of cherries and me dawg and I go…

…down to the river…

Watch Spot Die

This manifestation malarkey is working a treat.   Okay, so there’s the small question of the lottery but, hey, I won didn’t I?  And I bought another ticket as I figure today’s result was just a dry run.

In the meantime, I’m being sent exactly what I need.  Like the deep meditation track from Jackie Stewart. It’s sending me to such deep places – so way back into the past that I’m skipping millennia.  And then, this morning, a copy of The Psychic Way by Barbara Ford-Hammond.  I love it.  She’s so damn down-to-earth about airy-fairy stuff. I’ll tell you more about it when I’m done reading. 

But summer finally arrived on Exmoor today and it was too nice to stay in reading.  Adrian took James and Beth (his cousin, who’s here for the weekend) off to the mid-Devon show. I opted out.  I wanted some reflective time up at the hillfort. 

So the SP and I set off, with our lottery-won trawl, and climbed up the Cauldron (aka The Chimney, now renamed by James).  We stopped by Lulu’s tree – the one where we’d sat and she’d done her usual magic on me and absolved me of all my guilt (and, by heck, can I do guilt!) 

This tree had been bothering me for a while – the way it had a strand of ivy snaking round it.  It wasn’t an old oak tree – not like Hen’s Old Bert.  It was still straight and true.  It didn’t need strangling; it didn’t need pulling down by ivy.  So, a few days back, in the depths of my witchiness, I’d tried to pull it off.  But – ho hum – it wouldn’t detach.  Well, the middle bit did but it stayed grounded firmly at the root and stuck like superglue to the top.  Even swinging on it – like some demented Tarzan – wouldn’t dislodge the sucker.  It annoyed me.  But today I figured – whatever.  Maybe it’s okay like that.  Maybe it doesn’t mind.

And we went deeper into the woodland, away from the path, away from the possibility of people.  Following deer tracks until we found another oak – older, wiser, also straight and true, also embraced by ivy.  And I lay me down.

I had planned to do some yoga.  To stand tall in Tadasana.  To emulate the trees in Vrksasana.  To see the world sideways in Trikonasana.  To get a bit strong and centred with Virabhadrasana.  But instead I just stretched out – no, not even in Savasana, the corpse pose.  Just lay, felt myself supported by the soft ground, and gazed up at blue sky through green leaves.  I had a bit of a love-in with the Earth.  Felt the dappled sun on my face; felt the soft wind on my bare arms. 

The SP was busy – vanishing through bracken but coming back every so often to check in on me and plant a gentle lick on my face or touch a paw to my hand.

Then I turned and watched the world from the viewpoint of moss. 

I lost track of time.  I’m not sure how many hours I spent up there, clutching the earth.  Then a leaf landed on my hand – an oak leaf.  And I sat up and found an ivy leaf on my lap.  So I tucked them in my notebook, one at the front, one at the back, and walked away.

Walked slowly, meditatively, not my usual half-jog. 

Came back to find the house still empty.  So I sat in the garden and read a bit more of Barbara’s book and was pleasantly otherworldly for a little longer.  Then, all of a sudden, James was there, exuding eau de feral boy.  He plonked down next to me and handed me a sweet.  ‘Hey,’ he said.  ‘What’s a line you won’t find in an Enid Blyton book?’

I shook my head and frowned.  He started laughing, that infectious childish laughter. Could barely get the words out. ‘And so they put Timmy in a sack, threw him in the canal and said, ‘Right, we’re the Famous Four now.’
‘What?’ Started laughing myself.
‘I got this book from the fete. Did I tell you we went to the church fete as well?’
No, but never mind.

‘It’s brilliant,' he went on.  'Listen to this.  Things You Wouldn’t Read in a Children’s Book.  ‘With ten seconds to go in the Quidditch final, Hermione hid the snitch in her snatch.’ 

What the...? 

‘It gets better.  What about this? You remember Spot, right?'  I nodded weakly. God, did I remember bloody Spot.  He started grinning.  ‘Watch Spot Die!  See Spot turn malignant!’’ He convulsed with laughter.  ‘What about this one?  'As Prince Charming leant over Sleeping Beauty, he realised the Rohypnol had worked better than he’d hoped.’” He paused. ‘What’s Rohypnol?’

‘Er, what is that book?’  I snatched it from his sticky paw and rolled my eyes.  Mock the Week.   

From the church fete??

'And..Mum?  What's dogging?'

Ye gods. Where exactly in my three days of hard-working manifestation did I request that my child become exceedingly well-acquainted with filth?