Small Journal #4: Weekend Tea Share

We’re back in London now, both of us with colds, wrapped up in duvets, familiarity, drinking lots of tea, and the attentions of Coco, chatty as ever. The virus season is on us now, and I always expect something when we travel, unfortunately, despite masking. I’ve always joked that if anyone so much as looks at me with a cold, I’ll catch it.

I hadn’t realised the link between being neurodivergent and being immunocompromised until recently, but having PCOS (classed as a chronic illness/syndrome), definitely makes my immune system play up too. And travelling – with the stress, earlier mornings and later nights, and the difference in what we’re eating – makes things so much harder when it comes to taking care of myself.

We’ve had a good trip though. It was lovely to see family, especially all our nephews, Dan’s Dad, and to catch up with Dan’s sister and brother. It was reassuring to see where Dan is going to work, and that he’ll see more of his family whilst he’s there.

It’s not always going to be easy having him go away for about a week each month, but we’ve had long periods in the past when we didn’t see each other – we had a long distance relationship for around 7 years before he moved to London. Technology makes things a lot easier now – I remember sending and receiving long texts, letters, and emails before we had Skype, FaceTime or Zoom!

The long saga of moving house and selling up has a few surprises for us still – we got the EPC back from the bungalow we’re meant to be moving to and there are some inconsistencies with the building materials so we’re waiting until tomorrow for a call from the estate agent to find out if a mistake has been made.

My parents aren’t so sure about it now and there’s another bungalow in the same town so basically we may be taking a look at that one this week. It has more room which is a great thing with four adults – but it’s less accessible in terms of steps at the front and at the back of the property. So we will see! There’s been interest in it so we’d have to move quickly with an offer.

Everything seems changeable right now, despite feeling more fixed last week. We have our buyer’s house survey coming up too so anything that needs sorting needs checking and attending to this coming week. Understandably my parents are nervous – this is an Edwardian property and there are some historical quirks but as far as we know nothing that needs expensive work doing (for example, some historical cracks near a heavy fireplace hearth).

It does feel as though this year has been exceptionally fast, and I’m not ready for the holiday season. It seems strange this year because it’ll probably (hopefully!) be our last one in this house. So either there’s a lot of pressure to make it memorable or we’ll have a lot going on with packing up and decluttering.

We’re hoping to just get most of our (Dan’s and mine) packing done before the middle of December so that we can help with the rest of the house, but it does seem daunting, especially with the amount of books, DVDs and media things we have. We’ll rent storage to move some of our stuff out of the way to ease moving on the actual day we move out. It’s just making a plan to make it easier rather than stressful.

I’m not sure about this format of writing ‘journal’ entries on this blog, but sometimes it’s easier to write something like this than to try and write a poem, or about a specific subject, or to share something interesting. Especially when a cold gives you cotton wool brain and creative faculties feel more inaccessible.

I’ve missed a lot of days so far, and I’m not sure if I can catch up – I might try but there’s just over a week left to go and I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. After all, Nano Poblano should be about what we can manage, not being too hard on ourselves when we can’t do things perfectly. It’s about the community of writers and bloggers, and a monthly burst of creativity and communication. That is what makes it feel like magic.

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