Moving On

There has been a long silence on the blog, over a week of saying nothing I wasn't able to talk about something that was happening, hence the reason for my silence but at last I can speak again. Robbie made the difficult decision that after almost fifteen years it was time to leave the company that he works for and set his sights on pastures new. It has been a very big decision and it has occupied our thoughts for months, but it was very important to do things properly and I couldn't mention it on the blog until everything was agreed with his employer and his departure had been announced. He is still technically with the company for a few weeks longer, but he is now using up leave, his last working day was last Friday.

In the weeks leading up to his departure there were several important jobs to be done including emptying his cupboard and his desk. It sounds simple enough doesn't it, but this is Robbie that we are talking about! It took a huge amount of effort but thanks to the effort of two wonderful 'helpers' his cupboard was emptied - it is just as well that my Ford Galaxy has the rear seats removed because the contents of his cupboard filled the car. I thought that was the end of it but more bags and boxes followed as he emptied his desk - even a tardis couldn't hold that much 'stuff' so we now have a a lifetime of timetables that were taking up house room. It seems that he has several copies of every leaflet ever published by a train company, he also has the largest mug collection known to man and other sundry 'junk' that will fill at least 20 archive boxes!! By junk I mean old tickets, reservation slips and assorted stuff that 'normal' people would throw away. I have tried to be understanding but it is difficult, I feel as if I am drowning in clutter. I am ashamed to admit that you can't actually see our garage any more, the utility room has become a store room and all things railway related have invaded the bedroom!! Just occasionally I crave a a bit of 'normality'. When I told Robbie how I felt he told me that in 100 years time it will be an important historical archive. I wasn't as reassured by that as he expected, after all in 100 years (or even 50 years) I will not be around.

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

For the last few days I have been creating extra pages that in due course will be linked to the blog. I have been looking back at old posts in order to select some favourites. It was a surprisingly emotional experience looking back through time to the start of the blog, I wrote the first post on this blog in November 2006. A lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges since then. 

Reading those old posts has made me realise a few important things. Perhaps the clearest theme running through the posts is that Robbie gets away with murder at times, especially when it comes to abandoning me in favour of his beloved trains. That is mostly my fault for being too accepting of his odd little ways for too long. Reading those old posts has prompted me to make a big decision about my life and Robbie is not going to like it. It is time to take control, we have to de-clutter!! We have too much junk and it is taking up so much room that it will soon be standing room only! I can live with his obsession with the railway, but 'standing room only' is taking things too far.


We are both 'blessed' with the hoarding gene, but in my case it tends to relate mostly to books and to things that hold special memories for me such a as letters, old birthday cards and things that the children made as they grew up. Robbie just hoards, shoes, ties, books, magazines, pens, notebooks, model trains, vinyl records, cds, Lego minifigures .......... The list is endless, but you get the idea. It is time for both of us to bite the bullet and get rid of a lot of the clutter in our lives. It will take time, but it will make things so much easier and it will give us much more space when it is done. So this weekend we will take the first step, two black sacks each sounds like a reasonable start.

10 Ways to be Wicked

I am used to all sorts of weird and not so wonderful suggestions finding their way to the junk folder of my email account. Several emails each week invite me to part with obscene amounts of money in order to enlarge my 'manhood'. They obviously know nothing about me! My mum made absolutely sure that I understood that a woman can do anything better than a man, because we take time to read the instructions! She is now a sprightly and determined 81 year old who can run rings around people half her age. Only a couple of weeks ago she announced that she has always been able to touch her toes with her hands flat on the floor and she would not going to give up doing so now, then just for good measure she gave a demonstration!


Today I received an email addressed to Robbie claiming to be from a regular blog reader suggesting that an article s/he had just written would dovetail well with the interests of those who read the blog. One look at the title, something along the lines of  '10 Ways to be Wicked' showed me that it certainly was not something I wished to publicise. In any case 10 ways seems rather limiting, I am sure Robbie could think of 110 ways!!


Robbie provoked an interesting discussion on facebook   with his appreciative comments about Shameless, one of his favourite television programmes. He referred to it as 'class', I don't watch it but I couldn't resist challenging him on that point, surely it is the very opposite of 'class'. I was pleased to find that there were one or two people who agreed with me. I know it is not real but I don't want to watch a fictional portrayal of the dregs of society failing as parents and most importantly of all failing as parents. I am not one for unnecessary rules and rituals but it troubles me that standards in this country seem to be eroding faster than our coastline. How hard is it for people to say please and thank you, to eat quietly with their mouth closed and to be aware that their behaviour can impact adversely on other people. It must be obvious that playing music through a mobile phone without headphones drives other people mad (especially on the bus or train). It must be obvious that holding a phone conversation while going through the supermarket checkout is downright rude and irritating to others in the queue who are being held up. So I must assume that people know that their actions are thoughtless, but they just don't care and that troubles me greatly. When I was little my grandma would occasionally tell me not to do something such as 'don't sit on the radiator or you will get piles' or 'don't pull faces, if the wind changes you will stay like that'. Once in a while I would dare to tell her that I didn't care and her response was always the same 'don't care brings care'. She may have been wrong about the piles but I think she was right that not caring has consequences.

Acceptance of prevailing standards often means we have no standards of our own. (Jean Toomer)

'You either get Norfolk, with its wild roughness and uncultivated oddities, or you don't. It's not all soft and lovely. It doesn't ask to be loved.' Stephen Fry

We woke up to a lovely quiet and sunny morning, I felt much better after a long sleep and after a refreshing shower and one of Robbie’s legendary bacon sandwiches I was ready to face the day. I finished off the unpacking while listening to the Archers and Robbie had a shave and shower, then we were ready to go to the local car boot sale. I love car boot sales, but we only go when we are on holiday because we already have far too much junk in our house.



Robbie had very bad cramp in the night and it had left him with a very painful leg, but he managed to walk around the reasonably well. He didn’t want to buy much, just a couple of music cassettes and a book of railway postcards, but he enjoyed searching through boxes looking at old die cast vehicles and various model trains. I bought several cds including Summoned by Bells, the verse biography of John Betjeman, we enjoyed listening to the first part of it when we got back to the bungalow.


It was mid afternoon when we got back from the car boot sale. It was nice to have time to just sit and look out across the sea and enjoy the calm that time away from reality brings. There was plenty to see first of all we saw a life boat travelling at speed along the coast, Robbie went out to take a photo, but his blackberry was not powerful enough so he dashed back for his camera. Then there were two lifeboats and a little dinghy type lifeboat and then he said that there was a fourth boat. I wonder what was going on.

Robbie had only just settled down again when another boat came past, it was fairly close and Robbie rushed out again for a better look. He said he thought it was a customs boat and he came back in to look on the site he uses to identify the shipping in the area. It was a nice relaxing evening, we watched DVDs, and enjoyed the unusual feeling of having nothing pressing to do – I could get used to this!

Just Looking

Friday

We had to get up earlier this morning because we wanted to go and have a look at the car boot sale and it started at 11am. It wasn't such a difficult target when you consider what time we get up on weekdays when we are at home, but still we had a last minute rush, in fact it looked as if Robbie would be attending the car boot sale in his lounge wear!

It was a sunny and very warm morning and we enjoyed walking around looking at all the stalls, it was fun. In the end we didn't buy anything, I think we both know that we have more than enough junk in our house and we need to be getting rid of things not buying more!

After the boot sale we went to Mundsley for the afternoon we enjoyed the beach and we had a lovely meal. I am so sorry that we are going home on Sunday, it has been such a wonderful holiday that I would like to pause time for a while and just enjoy being together - but I have missed the children and I am longing to see them again.

Robbie's Piles!

Usually, I don't see much of Robbie during the week, by the time he gets home from work I have already left, so it is about 10.40pm before I see him. Yesterday was different, he had been to a meeting in Cambridge and he arrived home half an hour or so before I left. I was worried about him because his leg had been misbehaving and I would have liked to stay at home with him, but we can't always do what we want. By the time I left, Robbie was busy reorganizing his bookcase and making the case for yet another bookcase because he cant fit all his railway books on the one he has – one day there will be no room for me because of his books! He told me that he was going to sort out the collection of books and magazines that he had amassed at the side of his bed, so I was hopeful that I would come home to find a little more space in the bedroom.

When I returned later that evening, I was tired and hungry and I had forgotten all about Robbie's books, his bookcase looked much the same and I didn't go up to the bedroom until it was time for bed. I was late heading up to bed and when I came out of the bathroom I was looking forward to a few hours sleep, but that was to prove difficult. Robbie had piled all sorts of junk on the bed – it was his junk (except for a pile of my books that had been displaced by his railway books and were now homeless). I love my bed and taking liberties like that was not a wise move by Robbie. I rescued my books and piled the rest of the junk on Robbie's side of the bed, then I got in and settled down to sleep. I vaguely remember him waking me up to apologise for the mess on the bed and he must have moved it because when the alarm went off this morning Robbie was in bed and the junk was gone.

A Brief Glimpse into the Future 16.09.2007

I have had a brief glimpse into the future and I don't like what I see, in fact it makes me want to run as hard as I can in the other direction. The thing that caused such terror was a blog entry by the wife of a newly retired MD of a train operating company. I had never seriously thought about retirement before and at 35 Robbie has a while to go, but I really don't think I could tolerate it.

She spoke of her husband driving home on the day before his retirement with his car crammed with his accumulated possessions, hoarded over many years. She wondered if they should open a museum or create a railway room. She described such delights as a locomotive nameplate, DMU heating panel, various pictures and models. I think we are already well past using just one room, in fact the only room with no significant railway presence is the bathroom! Having a house stuffed with railway related 'junk' causes unexpected problems. When the most recent BT man came at the end of last week he spotted some of Robbie's model trains displayed in the hall, it turned out that he was also a railway crank and he chatted happily about trains for an 'eternity' while he mended our phone line.

She went on to describe the most pressing problem on the first day of her husband's retirement - NO PAGER! She wondered if he would have withdrawal symptoms and how she would cope. Her desperation was such that she asked is there a pager users anonymous? There certainly should be. Robbie is intolerable without his, he has been known to check it at the most intimate of moments, and if he ever misplaces it you would think it was a national emergency!

Role reversal was mentioned and my heart sank. I love Robbie dearly but when he tries to supervise what I am doing or even worse tell me how to do it, it makes me want to harm him! He is obsessive enough about minor things as it is, I couldn't cope with it all day, every day! She also spoke of the luxury of structuring their own days and her husband's need to know the exact agenda for the whole day - a withdrawal symptom from having a detailed diary. Robbie already times everything in intricate detail, I couldn't face having him timetable my entire retirement. There again, according to him he is married to an 'old woman' so I will probably have turned up my toes by the time he retires! Back to the present day. Robbie dragged me out of bed early this morning to take him to the station, he is going to a railway open day near Manchester. Having had a disturbed night I decided to sneak back to bed for half an hour, however Robbie didn't think I deserved t sleep. His first phone call was to tell me that the replacement bus was running 8 minutes late. The next call was equally essential, he was disgusted by the slack standard of journalism in his railway magazine, apparently they had started a sentence with the word 'and'. Hopefully he will meet up with some of his railway buddies, I really don't need an update every half hour

The saga of Sam's school shoes continues. For some inexplicable reason he leaves school with no laces in his shoes, and varying quantities of mud all over them. He always has the laces in his blazer pocket, but I cannot get a sensible explanation out of him. He keeps saying that they just fall out - I find that unlikely! Then there are the impossibly full pockets, stuffed with the most incredible selection 'essential' junk. Hopefully there will be some magical transformation in the next year or so otherwise I think I have found the next Compo!

Never Underestimate a 12 Year Old Boy! 06.03.07

At the weekend Sam’s laptop spluttered, produced a few last words in what appeared to be Japanese and then turned up its toes. Between us Robbie and I tried everything we knew restore or reset it, but ‘the computer said no’ and the hours of tlc proved fruitless. As a last resort Robbie posted on one of the computer magazine websites to ask for advice. The replies he got made us even more convinced that it was serious and we were thankful we had appropriate cover (we hadn’t bought it from those well known high street cowboy’s!). It was only 2 months old. The next day Robbie decided to have one last try, and to everyone’s astonishment the thing booted up, it was incredibly slow but it did it. I suggested we should try to delete all the temporary files, recycle bin, cookies etc before attempting a full scan. The recycle bin was empty and he couldn’t download anything because he didn’t have administrator rights. However he had more than half a gb of temporary files – quite an achievement in two months! It sprang to life after we dumped that little lot, we then did the usual adwear and spy sweeps as well as a full virus scan. Finally I got to do my favourite bit, a full defrag, there is something especially satisfying about that. Normal service has now been resumed and more frequent ‘housekeeping’ has been scheduled to avoid any further problems. The moral – never underestimate the capacity of a 12 year old boy to accumulate junk! There again I know an almost 35year old who does a pretty good job of hoarding junk too!!

The Cossack Dance 14.02.07

Valentine cards for Robbie? You will be making him big headed! To be honest if you had told me that this morning I would have paid whoever sent the cards to come and take him off my hands - but more of that later! If he does have a harem of women (well I assume they are women, with that gay walk you can never be sure!) sending him valentine cards I better put him on a course of vitamins to keep his energy levels up!

Bad Walsall Woman, you have him completely freaked out, he doesn't know who you are! Kempoian, Robbie says you are just trying to get him into trouble, surely you realise he can (and often does) do that all by himself!! Sheffield rocks, I used to work there (in Nether Edge) in the dim distant past, lovely accent, a few nice men and a really nice area. I had worked in Dundee just before that and when my mum heard how that odd combination had influenced my accent she nearly had a fit. She said she hadn't paid good money all those years for me to end up speaking like that. I moved to Plymouth next and hated it, so despite marrying a Cornishman my accent gradually reverted to something that passes for normal.

Now to explain this morning's upset. We got up in good time and Robbie had as long as he needed in the bathroom, so things were going well. Considering they only have fractionally more to wash than women, I can't understand why men need to take so long in the bathroom!

The trouble started when we got to the station, Robbie went to get the parking ticket. I realised that he had brought his rucksack, I attempted to lift it and found that it contained a hundredweight of work documents as well as, diary, i pod, magazines, snacks and all the 'essentials' to deal with any conceivable railway emergency! Samuel has an unhealthy attachment to his rucksack too, he hates to be parted from it, but he has Asperger's Syndrome, Robbie is allegedly normal!

I took his i pod, pager and sweets out of his rucksack and put them in my handbag. When he returned I refused to let him take his rucksack. He would look ridiculous with a suit and a rucksack, I didn't want him to look like a Sherpa! Robbie went mad and had a full scale tantrum in the car park. I won the first round and he thundered off with what I can only describe as a cross between a stomp and a shuffle - if it had been speeded up it would have looked like a Cossack dance! He was impossible and he continued the argument on the train, I was tempted to tip my hot chocolate over him, but it was too expensive to waste. It took him until almost lunchtime to recover his temper - so much for Valentine's Day!

The university visit went well, I would be happy for Emily to go to Leicester, but she will make her own decision in due course.