The last few weeks...

Before blogging, I never took the time to keep a diary. That's all this is of course, and I'm no Samuel Pepys or Anne Frank.

For the last few days I've been staying in a large, gloomy and smelly madhouse. We're housesitting for someone who has 2 budgies, a finch, a canary, a pigeon, a cat and two dogs. The dogs, fortunately are staying elsewhere. The cat is placid, but it shits and vomits all over the place. None of the animals have been trained against pissing/shitting in the house, and when we first arrived, the smell was appalling. Febreze, and the absence of the dogs has improved matters, but while I normally go barefoot when at home, here I keep my shoes on in every room except our bedroom. Last night I trod in a pile of cat vomit. The girl who normally lives here generally goes barefoot, as she finds her feet easier to clean than her socks, when she steps in something unpleasant. We will be here for a few more days, then we can leave our sampling of her lifestyle, and return to our small, bright, quiet box. When we're quiet and still, the budgies shrill. When we move, the pigeon starts up. The pigeon is an aggressive but charismatic little bugger. The budgies are just plain irritating.

We got a new car. Bren's about to become a grandparent for the first time, and by extension, I am about to become a grandparent too. Step grandparent really, but while I've never really been "dad" to my stepchildren (they were already pretty well grown when I met them) the next generation will never know me as anything other than their grandad. I'm 45. That's the sort of age when you become a grandad I suppose, but blimey! I'm about to be a grandparent. I still feel sort of like an adolescent.

Anyway, we got a new car. Bren's old Suzuki Swift somehow got through last year's MOT without anything worse than a couple of advisaries, but it was clear that to get it through another year would require a lot of money. So we shelled out on a 2004 reg Renault Scenic. A people carrier, with room enough for babies, and their accoutrements. Three days after we bought it, I took it out for the first time, and blew the turbo while accelerating onto the motorway. When you blow a turbo, it sucks all the oil out of the engine, and blows it, in billowing clouds of thick smoke, through the exhaust. I got it home, and Bren is having to kick up a stink to make the dealership we bought it from do what they should do to make things right.

Workwise, my diary continues to be more or less full, six days out of every seven. The enquiries continue to come in, and I'm more and more certain that I will soon have to take on other instructors, as much to reduce my own workload as to make money from franchising. This has not been a good month in terms of test passes and the like. I am making errors, partly because I'm working too hard.

Finally, the allotment. I'm now officially gone from the site, although I've not gone out of my way to return the keys to the gate. It's been a hugely negative thing over the last few months, but while I'm so busy, it's hardly like we need to grow our own food for economic reasons. So it's time I suppose to put it behind me, and leave it to whoever comes after.

And that's me. That's where I am. Living in squalor, and bucking the trend of recession.


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