February Blues

Well, it’s February. And we’re back on the rollercoaster of another year. How is it going so far for you? January did that weird time slip thing in that the month itself went by like a gazelle on speed, but Christmas feels like a hundred years ago. Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? If you did, have you broken them yet? I made a few.

Continue with the diet: Well, I didn’t gain weight over Christmas, which is a win. I did plateau for four weeks, which was discouraging. I kept at it though and was pleased to get on the scales this morning to find I lost 3lbs last week. I’ve lost a total of 21lbs since mid-September. This is a lot slower than the last time I did this diet, but that was 12 years ago. I was running about after an eight-year-old. I was walking her to school and then walking all the way to work and back again. We were out for walks and running about all the time. I was more active. Plus, I was younger and not menopausal and didn’t have an underactive thyroid gland. It is going to be a lot harder to shift it now. But I’m determined and every pound I shed makes me even more determined to keep going. It’s getting easier as well. The more I diet, the less hungry I am and the less tempted I am to eat bad things on a diet day.

Write more: I am one chapter away from completing book sixteen. Every day off I have tried to sit down and write at least one chapter. Yes, I could probably have pushed myself to write more each day, but another resolution was to be kinder to myself, to learn to rest and not feel guilty about it.

Be more sensible with money and savings: I bought one of those sealed ceramic money jars from Amazon for £5. There is a slot at the top to put money in, but you can’t get it out unless you smash the pot to pieces. I plan to put £50 at the end of every month into the jar. By the time I smash it in December, there will be £550 in the jar which will pay for a large chunk of Christmas, if not all of it. I think I’ll be able to stick to this resolution. After all, £50 a month is not much. If I take it from the bank each payday and put it in the jar, then it’s done and inaccessible to me.

Do more live book events: So far, I have booked ten fairs and comic cons this year, with more in the pipeline. The only downside is having to pay for all the pitch fees so close to Christmas. Perhaps I should take the pitch fee back out of the money I make at each event this year, and then put it in my sealed piggy bank ready to pay for the 2025 pitch fees. That could work.

Scale back Christmas and be more sensible about it: Next Christmas, I will only send cards to people who sent me cards this Christmas. I have saved every card I received and will use them next Christmas when I write out my cards. I keep sending cards to people who stopped sending me cards in return years ago. They don’t give a hoot about me, so why should I spend money on buying and posting them a card? Especially if it’s going abroad. What with the ruinous cost of postage it’s an expense I can do without. I will also try to be more sensible about food and only buy as and when we need it. I was eating cheese and biscuits for the whole of January because I’d bought too much.

Okay, so, what has happened in the fortnight since we last chatted? Not a lot. I assisted at my first toenail surgery last week. Which was disappointing for its lack of blood, gore, and screaming. I was what is called a dirty nurse. Go on. Get all the sniggering and comments out of the way. I’ll wait. What a bunch of twelve-year-olds you are.

I am doing three days of overtime during February, which will be a big help money-wise at the end of the month. I must buy a new resident permit for my car this month, and possibly one for the new lodger as well, so the overtime will pay for them.

What is the lodger situation, I hear you ask. Well, she’s still here. She only has eight more days before she must be out. So far, I haven’t seen or heard any evidence of her packing up the mountains of stuff she has. It is a shame that the relationship between us has deteriorated to the point it has. I honestly don’t know what to say about it. I was not the one who changed. I am still the same person I was when she moved in. The rules about living here didn’t change either. They are as they were before she moved in. Rules she agreed to. Give the bathroom and kitchen a quick clean every other week, and don’t come home so drunk that you wake me up. Not unreasonable rules, I think, but it’s immaterial whether they are unreasonable or not. They are the rules. They were explained to her when she came to view the room before she signed the contract or paid the rent. To suddenly decide eight months down the line that you no longer agree with them is, quite frankly, tough.

I think one of my biggest issues is that she won’t communicate with me like an adult, but instead will only talk to me via text. Now, text is all well and good for dashing off a quick message to someone, but to use it to conduct important, grown-up conversations is not on. Without facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, it is easy for miscommunication to occur. I don’t care how many emojis you use, intent is lost in translation. It’s also so childish. I am 56, she’s 47. To insist on corresponding only by text … well, it feels like we’re a pair of 14-year-olds having a disagreement via our phones in double lesson maths. It’s immature and achieves nothing.

The texts I have received from her have been very unpleasant. Accusing me of everything under the sun, she has crossed so many lines that even if she were to beg me to let her stay, the answer would be no. I do not wish to have this woman in my home a second longer than necessary.

It’s not the biggest house in the world, yet we are managing to avoid each other, and I haven’t seen her since December. Try to imagine that. Being forced to creep about your own home because somebody is living in it who hates you. Who sends you insulting and slanderous texts whilst you are in the next room. She informed me that my cooking myself a quick evening meal each day is inconvenient for her and forces her to eat ready meals. Honey, you moved in with a bag full of ready meals so please don’t try to blame me for your poor eating habits. Besides, this is my house. I am allowed to cook myself dinner. Most evenings she is not even here when I’m making dinner. Besides, I’m not exactly cooking a five-course banquet each evening. I’m cooking for one person, so it doesn’t take long. I tidy up after myself. Every other evening I’m only warming through a bowl of soup. I’m not hogging the kitchen for long and there is plenty of space for two people to cook in there. Most evenings, I have finished my meal and cleared away long before she gets back from wherever she’s been. The kitchen then stands empty until later when I hear her piercing the film on a ready meal.

She repeatedly tells me to “get a life” — when I say tells me, of course I mean, she texts me. Sometimes randomly, with no context, I will receive a text from her ordering me to “get a life”! For a start, I do have a life. A mostly very nice life. Yes, because I have a mortgage and bills to pay and don’t exactly earn a lot, I can’t afford to go out every single night on the drink or eat out. But, do you know what, at 56, I don’t want to. I did all that back when I was young and didn’t have the financial commitments I now have.

She tells me it’s not normal for someone my age to stay home most evenings. Well, all my friends who are the same age as me, and the ones who are quite a bit younger, mostly stay home because they all have mortgages and bills to pay, and kids to support or help put through university. Also, we don’t want to be out every night. Not when we have lovely, warm, comfortable homes to be in.

I think instead of throwing stones at me she needs to examine her own life. To be renting a room in someone else’s house at 47 is not the life I would choose or boast about. But that is her choice. And good luck to her, if that is what she wants, but how dare she judge my life choices when they are none of her business. I honestly believe she thinks on my days off I simply sit in the house and stare at the wall. I cannot imagine how she thinks fifteen books were written and published. It all takes a lot of time. Days, weeks, months, of sitting at the computer wringing my brain out and writing.

She is now obsessed with who gave who notice first when it honestly doesn’t matter. Franki has been on at me since the summer to get rid of her. For various reasons I won’t go into here, my daughter is possibly a better judge of character than me and warned me that this woman was bad news. I think something was said or something happened between them that caused Franki to give this warning. But I am soft-hearted and chose not to listen. By December though, I had had enough. The drunken late nights and the ensuing hostile texting were becoming more common. The rental period runs from the 12^th of each month, and I wanted to give her a month’s notice on the 12^th of December.

What stopped me? My stupid soft heart again. I simply could not give someone a month’s notice two weeks before Christmas. It seemed very unkind and unfair, and I couldn’t do it. I decided to wait until the 12^th of January when it would be easier for her to find somewhere else. It is true what they say though. No good deed goes unpunished. I wish I had given her notice then because she would be gone by now and I would not have suffered this past month of hell. Her behaviour over the festive period was appalling and her attempts to ruin both my Christmas and New Year with my family were unfair. Still, I held my nerve and planned to give her formal notice on the 12^th of January.

She sent various texts saying she was looking for elsewhere but expected to carry on living in my home until it suited her to leave. Oh, and forget her doing any more cleaning. That wasn’t going to happen. And indeed, she hasn’t. Since Christmas, I have done it all. She claims she doesn’t use the facilities but of course, she does. She baths, takes showers, uses the microwave, the fridge, the freezer, the sinks and the toilet. She empties the water dispenser in the fridge but never refills it. She uses the tumble dryer but never cleans out the fluff filter or empties the water reservoir. Instead, I must clean up after her. Is this fair? No, of course, it’s not. Is it worth making a fuss over? No, not when she is leaving so soon.

Things came to a head on the 11^th of January. I had a carefully worded letter officially giving her notice already prepared ready to leave outside her door on the 12^th. On the evening of the 11^th, she texted me that she would be staying out all night and that she’d found somewhere else and would be moving out within the month. I replied that I had already prepared her official letter of notice and that I would leave it outside her door. Since then, I have received long hysterical rants calling me a liar and that SHE was the one who decided to leave BEFORE I gave her notice. It’s so ridiculous. It made no difference whether she had given me her notice or not. That letter was printed and ready to give to her. She was getting her notice on the 12^th of January whether she’d found anywhere else or not. It was only because of Christmas that she was even still living in my home. Like I said, no good deed goes unpunished.

I’m sorry for writing rather a lot about the situation when I didn’t intend to say anything. And, for all I know, someone who knows her may read this and report back to her, or she may read it herself. But to be honest, I don’t care. I am heartily sick of the whole situation. I have done nothing wrong. I have been verbally attacked and harassed. I have been accused of some horrendous things. I have been made to feel unhappy and uncomfortable in my own home and have been forced to have someone living here who refuses to do their share of the cleaning. This is a situation I’ve never had to endure before. Every other lodger, and over eighteen years there have been a few, has been happy with the cleaning rota and has seen the sense of it. It means no arguing about whose turn it is and the kitchen and bathroom — the shared areas — stay clean and fresh. It’s not like I ask for much. Clean the sinks, and the surfaces, and sweep the floor. It takes twenty minutes max. It’s not a big ask.

Anyway. By the time we next chat she will be gone, and this can be relegated to the past never to be thought of again. Who knows, I might even have found a nice new lodger by then. I will keep you posted.

What else has happened? I’ve been out a couple of times with friends. On one occasion I just popped out to meet my author group at the local pub and have a swift half of fruit cider with them. Before I knew it, I was out out drinking wine. And then suddenly I was proper out out out having a Chinese meal with them. I wobbled home at ten a tiny bit the worse for wear and frozen to the core. Well, I had met them in the pub garden at one and been outside ever since. In January. We must be mad.

Last week, I attended an author talk at the local library, and then went for coffee and a cheese scone the size of my head at a nearby café. After that, we went for a bracing walk about town before I went home for dinner.

See, I do have a life and I do sometimes leave the house, lol.

And now it’s Saturday afternoon. It’s an eating day and I am looking forward to a dinner of homemade breaded chicken strips and chilli fries. With maybe some leftover Christmas gin and tonic to wash it down with — these leftovers I don’t mind finishing up.

Finally, if you are local to Bury St Edmunds and find yourself in town next weekend, there is a fabulous book sale happening in the Constitutional Club on Guildhall Street. Why not come along and treat yourself to a new book or even buy one as a Valentine’s gift for your loved one?

Take care of yourselves and I look forward to chatting next time.

Julia Blake