Moving

So: after almost twenty months, more Estate Agents than I ever hope to encounter again in the rest of my life, an architect, a team of builders and a deep immersion in the auction houses of London, I am moving into my new house this weekend.

The children have already seen it and given it their unconditional approval, which is heartening, as I chose it largely with them in mind – as you would, of course. When I saw it, I wasn’t completely convinced – in fact, I was quite anti: but the endorsements of Sister, Parents, Old Friend at Work and Best Friend all brought me round and now I am enamoured with it. This is probably due, in no small part, to the fact that it no longer has mahogany floorboards, a black quartz kitchen floor and blue and white tiles in the bathrooms (one of the reasons I have spent so long not living in a house that I have owned for six months is that I decided to bite the bullet, do ALL the work – and spend ALL the money, rather than do it in drips and drabs, which would be disruptive – and I think everyone’s had enough disruption to be getting on with…), and is now exactly as I would want it.

It’s also the first time that I’ve lived in a house of this style: very modern and open-plan, rather than old and self-contained rooms. Again, I am now delighted with this way of living, and it’s also quite therapeutic to be living a new life in a new kind of space, rather than in a version of the houses that I shared with Ex Wife.

So: good times ahead. The children are excited, and I’m excited. If I can put up with the navy blue front door until the Spring, when I shall re-paint it (and there’s more than enough woodwork to be painting in the meantime), then all shall be rosy in the garden. Assuming some cunt hasn’t planted bamboo in there…

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I Make Peace With The Bamboo

You wouldn’t fucking BELIEVE it, would you?

After the lengths that I went to to cleanse our garden of the horrors of Bamboo (including digging a trench so deep and wide that Wife actually accused me of having joined a Somme re-enactment society), the shitting stuff has returned! Much like that other plant that we seem to be nurturing throughout our garden (Convulvulus), it seems to resist everything known to man. I wouldn’t be surprised to learnt that the four survivors of nuclear holocaust would be germs, cockroaches, Convulvulus and Bamboo…

Anyway, I have decided to make my peace with it. I am channelling a new, more peaceful, “roll with it” strain of my personality – and it’s making me much happier over all, and so I see the return of the Bamboo as God’s final test of this determination to be a better man – and I shall rise to the challenge, by tipping the Bamboo a cheery wink, as I prune it down to the ground, but fall short of tearing it out of the accursed ground with my hands and then setting fire to it…

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An Oath Before God and Blog

Sunday, 27th May 2007

On the plus side, there is a retail experience involved. Not that we have been short on those recently – I half expect to see my bankcard cowering in my wallet like someone out of an NSPCC ad.

On the minus side, that retail experience shall take place in a B&Q, will involve a lawnmower, some poison and a lot of earth.

Yes: today is garden day. The day when, a week in, I finally move all the stuff out of the garden and restore it to its former glory – not a minute too soon. 

So, this will involve a trip to the tip to get rid of the bamboo and various border plants that have revealed themselves to be of a sickly magenta hue, as well as the celebrated, much-advertised bamboo poisoning.

It’s worth writing down here (for me, that is – it’s probably boring as hell to read for you) to ensure that I do it. I shall write again this evening and shall make it honest, decent and truthful – as the industry I toil in claims itself to be…

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Ha

Sunday, 27th May 2007

The bamboo is no more. It has been taken to the communal tip, where it can spread its misery before being incinerated and turned into compost (which is apparently what they do: which is pleasingly green). 

My WWII trench remains, however. I couldn’t be arsed to go to that haven of middle-aged men in tracksuits that is B&Q to buy the poison necessary to stamp out the evil root before filling the trench, re-shaping the lawn and adding the Royal Worcester tree. That is tomorrow’s rain-blighted treat.

After the tip, I made a detour to my parents’ home to TRY and pick up Eldest Son. He decided he was having none of it and has negotiated himself another night chez Granma and Grandpa: not that they’d have it any other way.

So, now Wife and I and Daughter and Youngest Son have just finished making biscuits. Daughter made Angels and Teapots (which sounds like a gift shop in somewhere chi-chi like Harrowgate), and Youngest Son made Sharks: sharks being what he would ideally populate the world with, paint his bedroom with and spend all his time looking at. He’ll either be a Marine Biologist or a cold-hearted, cold-eyed killer…

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The Bamboo Returns

Tuesday, 29th May 2007

So, Wife went to our local garden centre this morning (three overweight lesbians, all in Lincoln Green polo-shirts, all treating their customers as if they were something of an impediment to actually getting the work done), to enquire about how to kill the bamboo root.

 You can’t.

Essentially, Sneery 1 told Wife, trying to use a horticultural poison in a house populated by three children, was akin to smearing cyanide on their tongues, opening the door to the gas oven and having a Sylvia Plath homage party.

Sneery 2 continued, in more excited tones, that even if one left “the smallest trace” of bamboo in the ground, it would grow back.

The final nail in the coffin came from Sneery 3: “Besides, it would take at least a year for the poison to work.”

Their job done (i.e: Wife leaving their premises without having bought anything, and feeling lower than when she walked in), she left and took all three children to play in Ravenscourt Park (recently dubbed “Best Playground EVER” by Eldest Son, with trademark Adman’s hyperbole) and ‘phoned me to pass on the good news.

Needless to say, I am delighted and have sworn the sort of oaths normally only attributed to dramatis personae of plays by Euripides and Sophocles, about the sort of revenge I intend to exact on the nefarious, Asian tuber.

I will keep you updated as to this other-worldly struggle between Man and Nature.

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That Cunting Turf

Sunday, 9th September 2007

I can’t really write about this: I am too shitting shitted off.

Half the stuff is dead, the other half is a pigeon magnet: this is preventing me from convincing myself that I am the Capability Brown of W4 – which is a bit of a shitter, as this is one of my alternative careers (as well as Criminal Psychologist, Film Director, Q.C. and Paediatric Surgeon). But maybe if I was today’s Capability Brown, I wouldn’t be buying my turf from a Garden Centre, where I suspect the majority of the income comes from the jam they sell by the till.

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