It’s amazing how quickly you can adapt to your
surroundings.
We moved into our new house four days ago.
When the last van full of belongings had been
unloaded I looked round and thought, right, I am going to nail this. I’m going
to make this house look immense.
How hard can it be to give a place a lick of
paint, pull up the carpets and sand the floorboards?
Surely it’s just a matter of replacing the old-woman-style
chandeliers with posh Habitat lampshades?
I was a runner on Carol Vorderman’s Better Homes about ten years ago.
We transformed two next-door-neighbours’ houses
in a week. We knocked down walls, wallpapered, landscaped the garden. The
works. When the women saw their new homes they ugly-cried for absolutely ages.
Marion, the 72-year-old who'd fostered over 40 children, had Carol Vorderman in
such a tight bear hug that it took two producers to loosen her grip.
So I have the experience. You could say I'm
a house-transforming-veteran.
The two major differences this time are:
1. I am not trying to make a lasting
impression on a humourless producer in the hope that I might get a job in telly
instead of the actual reality of lugging round wheelbarrows full of
rubble for a week for zero pay.
2. I have a baby stuck to me 24/7 who is
suffering from a major case of separation anxiety.
Every time I put my son down he cries
himself purple.
Or pulls himself up on my trousers and
clings on whilst sobbing.
There is very little you can get done in a
house full of boxes when you've got a nine-month-old permanently attached to
your hip.
No one else can placate him.
On one hand, it's amazing to be that loved
by a little person that they'd prefer to be dangled upside down in a sling
while I hoover than be cuddled up with anyone else.
At the same time it can be so massively claustrophobic
that I would trade anything for an hour alone in a dark room.
In fact it doesn't have to be dark.
Or even a room.
I have, in four days, managed to unpack the grand total of half a box of t-shirts and as a consequence have been wearing the same
clothes for several days now.
So I've had to have a rethink on the house
front for the foreseeable future.
I realise now that the painting and sanding
might have been a tad ambitious.
I'm now going for a kind of industrial
inspired theme mainly consisting of half filled cardboard boxes everywhere.
It looks more ‘packing area in Lidl’ than ‘Grand
Designs.’
Just as I thought we'd outgrown the clingy stage, My little girl has a plaster cast on her leg this week and so needs me to carry her everywhere and I've had visions of hiding myself in the garage for a moments break. Just enjoy the cuddles - houses can wait. x
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