Not a lot to Say

Hello everyone. Isn’t it amazing that we’re almost at the end of April? It’s supposed to be spring here and the days are getting longer and there are pretty flowers and blossoms out, but the weather is not great. It’s like April has an identity crisis and can’t decide whether to be spring, winter, or somewhere in between. It’s cold and wet and windy. Perhaps April is in league with the energy companies and staying bitterly cold to ensure we put the heating on. Mine goes on for an hour and a half in the morning to warm the bathroom up for showers and then goes off until five, then on until nine. That’s okay when I’m at work. When I’m not I’m layered up and trying to keep warm.

As for the lodger, well, he’s out most of the time and I have told him if he’s ever cold in the house he’s to switch the heating on. So far, he’s assured me he’s warm enough and will say if he’s ever not, so that’s good. He went away on Thursday to York for a few days, so I have switched the heating off completely and will light a fire each evening. If there’s just me in the house, then there’s no point heating it all. A nice fire in the evening in the lounge is ample. That and my electric blanket to warm the icy sheets up.

The new lodger has settled in very nicely. He’s quiet, polite, and considerate. He eats at work most days so apart from breakfast leaves no carbon footprint in the house at all. Best of all, he’s completely drama-free so far, which is such a relief after the train wreck that was my last lodger. He talks to me, like a civilised grown-up, instead of insisting all communication be by text. He quietly goes about his business and is not the type to be out drinking until the small hours then wakes me up trying to get into the house. It is all so stress-free and it’s wonderful.

I don’t think I’d realised how mentally and emotionally drained I was by the whole unpleasant situation with the last lodger. She made me feel like an intruder in my own home. She complained if I used the bathroom or cooked dinner in the kitchen. It did seem like she was renting one room in the house and use of the shared facilities but felt this entitled her to the whole house. Creeping about my home for fear of upsetting her and being almost scared to go to the loo in case she chose that exact moment to want a bath was wearing me down and I am so relieved it’s over.

What have I been doing since we last spoke? Writing, writing, and then some more writing. Once I got the girls safely back to university, I sat down the next day and began writing book seventeen. I’m almost 20,000 words in and am pleased with how it’s going. It’s going to be a sci-fi story and it’s one that’s been in my head for ages. I’m quite excited about it because I’ve been wanting to write a proper sci-fi for ages. I know Lifesong is considered sci-fi, but it’s not set in space and there are no spaceships so it’s not proper sci-fi if you know what I mean. This story is shaping up to be a cross between Dune, Star Wars, and Games of Thrones, so it’s going to be an epic space opera read.

Speaking of Lifesong, I am running a sale on it right now. The eBook is only 99p and there’s even £1.50 off the paperback. The link is on my books page. The sale lasts from today until midnight on Friday the 3^rd of May so hurry and get your copy. I will be running one sale a week on all my books in the order in which they were published. Next week there will be a sale on Becoming Lili so if you don’t yet have a copy, then mark it in your diary.

I don’t have a live event this weekend, so it’s earmarked for writing and resting. I’m still trying to shake off that nasty cough and sore throat I had the last time we spoke. It seems to go away for a day or so, then come back. They’re calling it the 100-day cough, but I hope mine doesn’t last that long. Thank heavens I’m not coughing up a lung at night anymore. It annoyed me so it must have annoyed my poor neighbour. My throat would go into spasm, and I would cough and cough and cough. I haven’t coughed this much since I had Covid back in November 2021.

My next live event will be the Indie Author Fair in Huntingdon on Saturday the 4^th of May. It looks set to be an amazing day, so if you’re in the area why not call in and say hello? It would be lovely to see you.

This year is all about trying out lots of different events and seeing which ones are worth doing and which are not worth the time and money. Sometimes, it can feel like I’m doing one live event merely to make enough money to pay for the next. But it is all about getting my books out there and getting my name known to as many readers as possible. The books for Huntingdon were delivered last week so I’m good to go.

The house does seem quiet and empty without the girls, but it’s not long until they are home again for the summer and then we’ll have three whole months to get heartily sick of the sight of each other. While they were home, I don’t think the cat knew quite what to do with herself she got so much fuss and attention. We had a few issues with her getting up on the oven but then had a couple of nights when she slept on the sofa in the dining room, so I hoped she had settled down now that the upsetting presence of the previous lodger and all the tension she had caused were removed.

The girls went back to university on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday nights were fine. There was fluff and dirt on the oven, but not much and it was easily wiped off. I came down on Saturday morning though to find the cat had had some kind of rave on the white porcelain draining board and in the sink. It had rained overnight and there was mud EVERYWHERE. Paw prints and smears of mud, together with black fur and smears of blood where she had scratched herself and then rolled. It was disgusting and took ages to clean up.

I never catch her doing it, you see. I never catch her up on the surfaces, on the oven or in the sink, so I can’t shoo her down or try to discourage her.

At my wit’s end, I even talked about it on an Instagram post and a friend suggested that I smear Vicks Vaporub on the places I didn’t want the cat to go. I wasn’t sure about that — the cat seemed pretty determined — but I was desperate to try anything, so, when I went shopping later that day, I picked up a jar of Vicks and that night before I went to bed, I smeared it liberally over the draining board, the sink, and even on the oven. It smelled horrible and it wasn’t very nice having a white greasy smear everywhere.

Still, when I came down on Sunday morning, apart from a few tufts of black fur on the edges, everywhere was clean and she was asleep on the rocking chair in the dining room. I pointed it out to the lodger, and he said she had been there when he got up. Then he mentioned how every time he sits down in the chair to have a cup of tea, she gets up onto his lap for a cuddle and a nap.

I left the Vicks in place for a couple more days. She continued to sleep in the dining room. No fresh fluff or paw prints appeared, and I dared to hope that we’d cracked it. On Wednesday I cleaned all the rub off and bleached. On Thursday I went downstairs wondering if once the smelly barrier was removed, she had taken the opportunity to get back up there. But no, everywhere was sparkling clean and she was fast asleep in the rocking chair. It looks like her antisocial sleeping behaviour has been cured.

Maybe, who knows, all she needed was someone to sit in the chair and make a fuss of her. Or perhaps the stinky Vicks offended her nose so much that she now avoids the kitchen altogether. Whatever the reason, I am happy she is settled once more into her old sleeping spot, and I am no longer having to bleach down the kitchen several times a day.

She seems more settled as well. Since the last lodger moved out, she has become friendlier and is spending more time in the house. Always up for cuddles and love, if I sit down, she’s in my lap and gets quite offended if I move too soon. It’s nice to have my sweet and well-behaved cat back, although, I could quite cheerfully have turned her into a pair of gloves yesterday!

I was sitting in the lounge drinking my early morning tea and the cat was sitting in a patch of sunlight going about her morning ablutions. Suddenly, she started heaving in the way that strikes terror in the heart of any cat owner. Dumping down my tea, I leapt to my feet, quickly opened the front door, and pushed her towards it. She was almost out when she turned, and, as quick as lightning, shot between my legs and up the stairs. I charged after her crying out “Down, get down, you fecking manky animal.” She ran back downstairs and upchucked all over the final three steps, in the hall, and halfway across the new dining room carpet, before legging it at speed out the cat flap.

Now, cat puke is not something you can leave. You can’t think to yourself — hmm, the cat’s puked, I’ll deal with that later — it is something that must be dealt with there and then. So, I had to find the tin of carpet cleaner, scrape it up and try to clean the stains off before they set, the whole time muttering dire threats against the cat. To add insult to injury, when I finally got back to my cup of tea, it was cold.

Remind me again why we have pets.

To be brutally honest, when this cat goes, I will not be replacing her. I’ve had cats most of my adult life and the time was when I couldn’t imagine my home with a kitty in it. But lately, the sheer expense and fuss of having an animal is beginning to be a bit much. I worked out that I must work one whole day a month to afford the average expense of having a cat. I only work part-time so you can imagine how expensive it is. Adding up the cost of pet insurance, vet bills not covered by the insurance (of which there are many), food, flea, and worm treatment, it’s more than I can afford. Of course, I wouldn’t get rid of her — for a start, my daughter would never forgive me — but when she goes, then I have decided that will be enough.

Life is so expensive now and I don’t think it’s going to get any cheaper. I had to pay a visit to the hygienist and the dentist on Wednesday. My appointment was at 2pm. I was walking home by 2.30pm having parted with a whole day’s wages. Think about that. It’s obscene. A full day of work — and I work long days — just to be able to pay for someone to scrape the plaque off my teeth and spend two minutes peering into my mouth and saying that my teeth are fine.

I used to visit the hygienist regularly, but when I became a single parent and had to make tough choices as to what expenses were necessary or not, having someone scrape my teeth twice a year wasn’t as important as paying for food and clothing for my daughter. The only reason I have started going again is because my dentist put the fear of God into me and said that if I didn’t start seeing the hygienist, my teeth would all fall out. And that really would be expensive.

There isn’t much more to tell you. I’ve had a haircut, more expense, and spent time finding a storage unit locally for all the girls’ belongings to go into over the summer. They have a lot of stuff. I mean, seriously, a lot of stuff. There is nowhere to store it at home, it’s going to be crowded enough as it is having both here all summer, plus me, plus the lodger. That’s four adults in a not-so-large Victorian terraced house with only one bathroom. Certainly, there is nowhere to store a van full of boxes. Being a terraced town house I don’t have a garage. I only have a tiny sentry shed that is full, and there is no access to the loft space. So, it will have to be a storage unit. I phoned around and I think I’ve found a good one on the other side of town. It’s going to cost £240 for the whole summer, but that does include full insurance and VAT and we have no other choice. It will sit there until they go up to Reading University in September. I suppose at least they won’t have to buy anything for their new flat on the campus, they already have everything they could possibly need including a slow cooker, an air fryer, a blender, and a rice cooker.

Being so close, if they find during the summer that there is something they need at least it’s only up the road so can be retrieved. As well, I’m thinking that towards the end of the summer, we will get all their bedding out of storage — including the duvet, pillows, and topper — and take them to the local launderette to launder and then repack them. They will be all fresh and ready for them to take then.

The only thing not going into storage is their mattress. It’s a four-foot wide one so won’t fit the bed in the flat which is a double so is four foot six inches wide. The mattress is going to come here, and we will try and sell it. If you or anyone you know, would like to buy a two-year-old pocket sprung and memory foam small double mattress, please let me know. It has always had a thick mattress topper protector on it so is clean and in very good condition. I’m guessing we’ll want about £50 for it and we’ll even include the topper. It will be available from the 28^th of June onwards.

It’s now almost four o’clock on Saturday. It’s getting very cold so I have given in and lit the fire a little earlier than I normally would. My hands were so cold I could barely type, my nose was running, and the chill was making me cough.

It’s an eating day so there’s a nice dinner planned with a glass, or two, of wine. The diet is still going well if slowly. I put two pounds on when the girls were home but thankfully lost that last week. It’s very slow going, but I keep plodding away. I only have a little more to lose before I reach my target weight. Maybe by the summer then I can buy new summer clothing.

Sorry, this is such a short and rather boring blog but it has been a rather noneventful couple of weeks. Anyway, take care, and we will chat again soon.

Julia Blake