Calmer Days

The last few weeks (if not months) have been a bit chaotic here in Alcoholic Daze Towers. My organised routine has been somewhat overturned by events, resulting in disorganised chaos. I have tried to keep my head above water, but it has not been easy, but calmer waters are on the horizon.

My daughter Kay changed jobs in August. She is still a doctor, but has moved to the London region from Surrey. As a registrar doctor,  she has at least a four or five-year climb to get to consultant level. It involves working in a different hospital every year to gain experience of different regions and different types of hospital, such as a big teaching hospital or a small district general.  If she had stayed in Surrey, it is part of the Kent, Surrey, Sussex deanery and would have involved changing EACH YEAR to anywhere in that region - perhaps Brighton one year, Guildford the next, Dover another, Dartford another and so on. That makes commuting from home a challenge and impossible to buy property if you are not rooted in one place. So she decided to move to the London region instead, where commuting is much easier to and from most hospitals in that region, be they North, South , East or West London. 

Fortunately her first posting in London was to a district general not far from me, so she has been living with me during the week to help her commute and spending weekends at her rented flat in Surrey. Her boyfriend Darcy has also been living with us during the week over the last five weeks, as his work has brought him to London too. They are in the process of buying a house close to me but the purchase has dragged on longer than anticipated, as the solicitors (ours and the vendors) thrash it out between themselves. Kay and Darcy are first time buyers and the house they are buying belongs to an old lady now in a care home, so you would think the transaction would have been relatively easy, but, oh no.

As if that was not bad enough, some painter/decorators whom I had hired last November to  plaster Kay's bedroom ceiling and walls, paint them and also paint the top landing and sheer drop down the stairs, have been slow to get to me (it was originally planned for April) and could only start at the beginning of October.  The timing could not have been worse. It has meant Kay and Darcy have had to decamp from Kay's bedroom to a tiny box bedroom, hardly big enough for the bed, let alone anything else. Because my crazy 6-storey house has so many stairs, it has involved moving the rest of the bedroom furniture down a flight of stairs and storing in the study/bedroom. Nothing is where it should be and we have been very cramped. Add to that the fact that Kay was on nightshifts last week so the painters could not work while she was sleeping during the day and that has added to the timescale. Finally at the end of October we moved everything back into the newly decorated bedroom and Kay and Darcy had more room to spread out. Additionally I gained back my study! Just in time for them to move out altogether. Completion was on Tuesday and moving day is today!

Kay and I spent the last few days in her new house, trying to clean it. More of that later......