I cannot get my head around the fact that, at the weekend, it will be April. Maybe it’s just me getting older but the years seem to fly in at an ever-increasing rate. So, this being the last blog post of mine in March, it’s a monthly round-up post.
House Sale
Last week we finally, finally got the main bathroom (which we ordered at the beginning of August last year) fitted! It was the last renovation that needed to be done before we put the house on sale. It does look amazing – I only wish we had had the funds to do it years ago! So, now we only have two rooms left to paint (my daughter’s room and the corridors (upstairs and downstairs) and the garden to tidy up (which I have been told is my job, even though I balk at slugs and worms!) and then we are good to go. After providing the workmen with banana loaf and cupcakes along with their tea and coffee during our main bathroom refit, they have agreed to do any renovations for us in our next property. They were a very good team of workers and just got on with the job to a very high standard.
We are, however, going to view a property in the city on Saturday morning. It’s in one of my two favourite areas of the city and I am really hoping the house goes down well with my husband. I cannot stop thinking of the place! It’s a much older property than that in which we currently live (ours was built in 1999 – 2000) but it is my ‘favourite’ age of house. I know the area really well too as I was brought up in that area of town until we moved to another part of the city when I was 10 years old. So, the area holds a lot of very happy memories for me. My piano teacher used to live around the corner from where this house is situated and I have fond memories of my Mum walking my brother and I to piano lessons after picking me up from infant school (I started piano lessons at the age of four). I am praying so hard that nobody puts an offer in on the house before we get to see it on Saturday – I am literally obsessed with it! It would involve sacrificing a few things from our ‘wish list’ but beggars can’t be choosers, and I can see so many ways in which we can make our own alterations and improvements on the property……. I better not get too excited in case it doesn’t happen. Watch out for next month’s round-up for the outcome.
My late mother-in-law’s flat in the city is also on sale now. In just a week four viewers have been scheduled and we are hoping that it sells quickly. It is a beautiful bright flat; if it hadn’t been mother-in-law’s old property and if we didn’t have dogs, then we may have considered it for ourselves (even though my husband says it is completely the wrong side of town for him to get to work).
PhD
This has been progressing very slowly due to works in the house and general clearing of things into storage. I now have a clear direction for my last chapter and am shortly going to be submitting some work to my Supervisor. Life appears to throw things at me during this degree: a pandemic, bereavements, and now moving home! I’m getting there, though. I’m beginning to love researching again.
Books I have read
This month I have had an Ireland-heavy personal reading theme (well, it was St Patrick’s Day this month). On talking with one of my tutees who was going on a trip to Dublin, I had the (mad) idea of reading Finnegan’s Wake as a bit of a challenge to myself. I downloaded it on my Kindle and have got to page 75……and then kinda got stuck there. I will take it up again, it won’t defeat me. It’s a bit bonkers though. To offset the mental obstacle course of deciphering Joyce’s language in that novel, I am also about halfway through Edward Rutherfurd’s Dublin, a mammoth book, but one which I am really enjoying. I previously read his novel Sarum (about the history of Stonehenge and Salisbury) and have the rest of his novels (New York, London, Russka, The New Forest, and China) in my bookcase still to read. Life, however, often gets in the way – I need to set aside guilt-free time to read for pleasure more (see last Thursday’s blog!).
I’ve also read Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women this month. I try to read a Pym a month, or every other month. I like her characters and it is a bit of easy escapism.
TV/Netflix/DVD
This month, I haven’t watched anything on the TV – the programming seems to get worse. Instead, we have been enjoying the 1967 version of The Forsyte Saga on DVD which I got as a birthday present last year. We are still only at the beginning of the series but we are really enjoying it so far. This was quite a popular series back in its day – apparently 18 million people tuned into the final episode of the re-run in 1969!
Other than that, re-runs of Neighbours on FreeVee have helped pass the time during insomniac nights (when I can’t sleep for thinking of the house we are going to view!).
Choir
This month, we have been working on Christopher Tin’s amazing song Baba Yetu (the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili and also the theme music for the video game ‘Civilisation IV’ – have I told you how much I love the Civ games?). Our submission date for our parts is this weekend, so I am just finishing rehearsing my soprano part and then will send my offering in. Hopefully, within the next couple of months or so, it will go live on YouTube. It’s been a great song to sing – mastering Swahili has been a lot of fun. [Our projects all feature on the Stay At Home Choir Youtube site].
Other events
My Dad celebrated his 90th birthday a couple of weeks ago. He is doing well, despite all that he has been through over the past few years in watching my Mum deteriorate and then adapt to life without her. He sadly caught a virus (thankfully not Covid!) and so we had to cancel his birthday meal, but we will hold this very soon.
Today is also Furboy’s first birthday. We bought him a toy cactus to chew on, which he absolutely loves. And a replacement blue ball (see last week’s blog). Dogs are so easy to buy for!
This week also sees the end of my ‘formal’ tutorials for my S1-3, N5, Higher, and Advanced Higher English tutees. Over the next six weeks, I offer tutorials for exam candidates on a request basis so that they can easier schedule and prioritise their revision. I have also taken the decision to take a year out of tutoring next year (in saying that, I am keeping two students on: one is the daughter of one of my best friends, and the other is a young lad who has never missed one of my tutorials and who, I think, has bags of potential to do extremely well). I have been tutoring for seven years now and, although it is rewarding, it is hugely demanding of my time. I tailor every student’s work to their texts and abilities and when I have ten students, like I have this year, that takes up a lot of time (and which becomes increasingly frustrating when the tutees don’t turn up for their tutorials without letting me know – an all-too-frequent occupational hazard). Also taking into account reading and providing feedback on essays, sourcing articles to adapt for RUAE practise etc., it all eats into my own PhD time. It has been a great wee money-spinner for me, but I think a year or two out once we have moved, will allow me to get my thesis finished and basically get involved in church evening activities more, or community/volunteering events. I so desperately want to go to dress-making classes and potentially some of the University’s language classes too. And to take up tennis again. So many things which are impossible to do when I’m tutoring every evening!
So, that is more or less March in a nutshell. Busy as usual but much nearer the start of the next chapter than we were a couple of weeks ago. The daffodils and crocuses are blooming here, the buds on the trees are preparing to burst open, and there is a sense of new life and optimism in the air. These are some of the reasons I love Spring and which are very apt for the stage we are at in our lives just now. New opportunities aren’t far off.
June's Jottings 