My Average Holidays

February is normally a dull month unless you have the foresight to book a trip to sunnier climes, which we didn’t. Instead we prepared to knuckle down, get the last month of winter out of the way and hope spring comes early, which it has for the last few days at least. Hooray! So there’s nothing really exciting going on here and I’m struggling to write anything let alone find any interesting photos.

All our energy has been taken up with house maintenance. Despite having owned 3 houses and myself being nearly 60 years old I’m still shocked that houses need to be ‘maintained’. I don’t mean slapping on a bit of paint or putting up a shelf, I mean proper building work like replacing the roof (which we did in 2012) or in this particular case renovating box sash windows before they fall out. I can’t recall anyone telling me this sort of thing as a child. It was all birds and bees, a penny saved is a penny earned, don’t eat yellow snow, that sort of thing. At no point did anyone tell me that if you buy a house you then have to keep spending money from stopping it falling down. I believe “where do ruined castles come from” should be added to the “where do babies come from” talk.

I’ve seen and been in quite a few dilapidated houses and always thought ‘why haven’t you fixed that’. But now I see theres a certain freedom to letting a house crumble around you as you yourself crumble with it. As long as you collapse before it does, ‘winner, winner chicken dinner’ as the expression goes. This ignores any legacy of course but if you have no one or just don’t care go for it! You can’t take it with you! This post has turned into a proverb bonanza but I’ll stop now.

Steve the sashman assures me that by the time he’s finished we’ll actually be able to open the windows! Something that we’ve not been able to properly do since we moved in 17 years ago. In fact I’m guessing that most of the windows haven’t been functioning this century, if not longer. Especially as one had security pins in it, another had been screwed and glued shut and all of them seem to have the incorrect counter weights which meant even if you did manage to open it they wouldn’t have stayed open. As he slowly dismantles them and finds new horrors another saying springs to mind and that’s when you’re having building work done you should always budget for at least 50% more (I couldn’t stop).

On a lighter note I started my volunteering at Arlington Court at the National Carriage Museum this month. Lyn, happy to see me out of the house, sent me off with a packed lunch and some lactose free milk that was only 18 months out of date. Fortunately it came out in lumps so no harm done. My duties consisted of standing by the entrance to check tickets, welcoming guests and hand out torches to children so it made them less likely to touch anything. Despite the cold and having to interact with humans I’ve booked myself in for a few more shifts. If you do have any spare time they are desperate for volunteers, even if it’s just once a month. Click here for more info.

I’m afraid that has been it for February and the shortest month has produced the shortest update. There has been some other stuff that I’m excited about but that absolutely nobody else would be. For example I’ve installed a NAS (Network Attached Storage) so that we can store our 20000+ photos and not pay monthly for cloud services. I’ve also started using a new email service (Proton) that doesn’t steal my data. You know, fun stuff like that! However next month we have some good things planned. In the meantime thanks for reading, I’m glad hope won over hate in Gorton & Denton and as always… Quis Autem Reformationem, which definitely proved appropriate.