May 18, 2020 | A House In Italy
1. Start Searching Online
Search houses for sale online for about five years, dreaming of a ‘maybe someday’ possibility. Villas with pools and frescoed ceilings to caves which once housed three families during harder times. Castles to crumbling trulli, anything is game.
Decide to make the move to Italy, life is too short to wait around. Or like us, when your country’s economy crashes and you loose your income and have your home repossessed by the bank, decide to move to a country you can actually afford to have a nice life in, our No.1 choice was Italy. Rent for a couple of years and then consider buying when you are back on your feet.
2. Filter Your Choices to Suit Your Budget
Become realistic and filter your search by the area you want. Try not to cry when you see that a modest three bedroom house in the town you love will cost about €420k. Try a different approach and filter your house search by price. You’re left with the caves and crumbling messes. Maybe with a lick of paint, they would be okay? … Go back to looking at the pretty ones in the area you want with a pool… or at least some windows.
3. Arrange Viewings
Take a leap and arrange some viewings. Just for the fun of it. Sure why not, it’s okay to dream and you have to start somewhere. Don’t disregard the houses the estate agent tries to talk you out of… ‘on the market for 10 years … ALOT of work to be done… I will send you photos of the interior… you still want to view it?? … Did you receive the photos?’
Remain open minded and visit the ones with pools and the one with cobwebs worthy of a starring role in a black and white Tarzan movie – the type of cobwebs the baddies got caught in just before they sank into the quick sand. Broken windows, tattered furniture left behind, scenic sky views through the roof, waist high grass that moves ahead of you. You’ve progressed from Tarzan movies to Jurassic Park. Your husband walking a few metres ahead pauses and shouts back casually ‘a snake just went over my foot’. It suddenly feels like you’re walking on Madusa’s head as the ground moves beneath your feet. You laugh hysterically and run towards the electric gate that is no longer electric.
4. Be Fooled By TV Programmes
Two weeks later be captivated by a new TV show, where a couple buy a chateau in France and do it up. She’s cutting wallpaper shapes and sticking them on the wall, they’re shining up copper pans and hanging them in the kitchen. They haven’t fixed the roof but that does not seem to matter. They’re laughing, having a great time.
“We could do that”. Your mind goes back to the house of cobwebs.
He knows what you are talking about, he hesitates but says it anyway. “It is a beautiful house.”
You may have renovated before and said “never again”. You may, like us, have renovated homes twice before and said “never, ever again”. It’s sort of like childbirth, you are screaming ‘Don’t you ever come near me again’ at your husband while doing the last push, but then something happens to your brain once the baby is born, you forget the pain of your body being ripped in half and something as simple as the smell of a new born baby’s head, has you all doe eyed again and saying, “Let’s have another”. It’s how the human race has continued to go on, and how old houses manage to get renovated apparently.
Cobwebs, snakes, we’ve got this. ‘It would be an amazing house.’
“Look at them”, you point at the TV, “they never renovated before, we have, look how happy they are”.
“We could do that.” You don’t realise you are basically smelling a baby’s head and forget that this is TV. The screaming arguments of assembling furniture together, sewerage splashing in your face, the despair as a ceiling collapses and the horror of never ending bills for work that is not even visible, such events have been edited out of the TV show. You’ve renovated before, it didn’t end well, how are you seeing this through rose tinted glasses? You find yourself texting the estate agent to arrange another viewing.
5. A Second Viewing
The estate agent is surprised at your choice, “not the cute one with the pool?”. She brings the senior boss, she is young and has never handled crazies before.
While you are waiting for the estate agent, a woman in her late 70s or early 80s wanders into the garden. The viewing begins, she tags along. You try to quietly say to the estate agent that she’s not with you, you think she’s just a nosy neighbour until half way through the viewing you find out she’s one of the owners. One of eight owners in fact. You are told her name is ‘Uncle Francesca’.
You’re left to look around the interior by ourselves. The second time around the cobwebs are not noticed, the light plays through the shutters highlighting possibilities of beauty to be recreated. Built in 1923 some of the original furniture is still there, you’ve never reupholstered anything but now you have a sudden urge to do so.
You return to the courtyard where ‘Uncle’ Francesca is collecting the caca fruit into an enamel po she has taken from the house. The estate agent is helping her with the fruit from the higher branches. He’s eating one of the orange fruits, which you know is similar to trying to eat a water balloon. Between slurps he points out the features he thinks you will be amazed by, the lake view … you can’t see it because the trees that have grown in the last 10 years block it, they are on public land so you know they will never be cut down but that is okay, a lake view was not the appeal, you know you can walk two minutes and be at the lake front.
There are two wells on the land and he quotes their amazing depth…. ah yes wells… the reason for many childhood nightmares and now possible death traps to your cats, they will be the first things covered up. You like the idea of your own water source but as you are not an Italian farmer, nor someone who has experienced massive drought, the appeal seems to have been lost on you.
Planning permission for another house. While this sounds like a great investment possibility you are not a property mogul, you are looking for a potential home. There are 21 rooms in the house, there are three of you, so why would we need to build another house?
He hasn’t grabbed you on any of his big sale points but what he doesn’t realise is the house has captivated you. As soon as you walked in you felt it was home. It wrapped it’s arms around you and made you feel safe … and happy. You wanted to linger. The ceiling mould and rising damp, is more beautifully labelled in Italy as ‘humidity’ invoking tropical tones of rainforest rather than rain, floods and cold, which the word ‘damp’ conjures up back in Ireland.
6. The Offer
You are told the asking price is €240k which is down by over 100k from the previous year. They are quick to state it’s negotiable. Uncle Francesca let it slip during the viewing that only one other person has come to view it in the three years it has been with this estate agent.
You judge that there is about €150k worth of work to be done to make the house a home. It’s a non-runner. The estate agent asks what price range are you looking in. You decide that this is a good time to practice saying numbers in Italian which you have just learnt in class this week. You say for a house needing work, you can afford €120k.
’Impossible!’ he laughs ‘the site with planning for the other house is worth that alone’.
What is he talking about? You were just telling him the price range of houses you are thinking about in the far off future, when you may decide to buy. You know the house when renovated would be worth close to half a million, but you do not have €250k to buy it and renovate it.
‘They can keep the site, we’ll just take the house,” states your husband to the estate agent.
You nod… Why are you nodding? Oh yeah you are just cheering him on in this unplanned game. It’s just a bit of fun.
The estate agent goes back to Uncle Francesca who is swatting a wasp from her face and running around the tree but then is distracted by a plump caca. The estate agent’s assistant is talking and you are trying to find a gap in the conversation so you say goodbye. You’re not listening to what she is saying as you are thinking about what to have for dinner.
The estate agent returns, “They will accept €150k”.
“No we can’t do, thanks anyway”.
“Arrivederci”. You wave at the old lady.
7. Offer Acceptance
While sitting in the car on the way home, you’re both laughing about the whole experience, but also talking about how amazing the potential is, it would be a fantastic space for someone to buy to host creative group retreats in Italy.
You stop into the supermarket to buy your dinner ingredients. On the wine aisle you get a text from the estate agent. “On Tuesday come to our office at 11am to sign the sale agreement.”
You catch up with your husband at the fruit and veg section. “Do we need bananas?” he asks, holding a bunch in his hand.
“Ehhh I think we’ve just bought a house?”
“Huh?”
“I think they have accepted our offer on that house?”
“Did we put in an offer?”
“Apparently so.”
“For how much?”
“I think I said €120k? I’m not sure I tried saying it in Italian.”
‘Ohhh… For just the house or the house and the field with planning permission?”
“I have no idea, but it seems we are signing for it on Tuesday?”
It’s a great house for that price. A steal! But… what would we do with such a big house?”
“Host creative groups who want a retreat in Italy?”
“That’s really not a bad idea … Did you say, if we needed bananas?”
You go back to the wine aisle and buy a bottle of Prosecco, unsure if it is to celebrate or to block out the confusion. Have you just decided to buy massive renovation project plus start a new business, in the space of time it takes to decide if you are short of bananas?
Apparently you have. It’s exciting but there’s also a creeping fear that there is quicksand ahead and not just a puddle, but a whole lake of it.
***
And that’s how you find a house in Italy the Rosie way. It’s all about being at one with bananas.
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May 16, 2020 | The Quarantine Diary
Travel has changed. In the 80s and early 90s, we saved for our Inter-Rail tickets, we had to figure out different currencies, we had a money belt with traveller’s cheques, no credit cards, a backpack, no mobile phone, no internet, a cheap camera and a roll or two of film. We had a paragraph underlined about the destination we were heading to in bibles such as ‘Work Your Way Around the World or ‘Europe by Rail’, an address of a hostel and perhaps it’s phone number. Inspiration to visit somewhere was from a documentary or a description told to us by another traveller we met along the way. Travellers talked to each other without hesitation, automatic comradary as we didn’t have access to friends through video chat – that was only on Star Trek. We needed to be alert, we needed to plan, to stay visual and sometimes rely on our intuition.
We wrote long descriptions home on special airmail paper – extra light – and planned where we will be in a few weeks so that home could write their news to us and we would have a letter waiting – cherished letters we kept with us and reread over and over whenever we felt homesick. Phone calls happened whenever we had enough coins, found a phone box and if we weren’t too distracted.
Few photos were taken, the essence of adventure was more easily portrayed in descriptive conversation and writing.
I have had mixed feelings about how travel has changed in the last 10 years or so. Flights became so affordable that overland trips were no longer the more cost affective option, hopping on a plane to go somewhere foreign for a weekend was common, no more plotting and planning and saving for a year necessary. No one seemed to ‘look’, ‘absorb’ with their eyes anymore, always through the screen of their phone, selfies and videos.
Travel pre internet was adventure. Mobile phones, GPS and pins have eliminated the possibility of getting lost which before had it’s advantages – having to find a new route, discovering a gem along the way, having to speak to a stranger who, could be a serial killer, or more probable a new friend for life.
Yes, technology is good for parent’s nerves, I still don’t know how my parents coped when I ‘forgot’ to call for three weeks. I am grateful, and relieved, that I can be on video chat with my daughter if she is walking home alone in another country, if I needed I could find my teenager’s exact location through a phone app within seconds. Without the possibility of video calls with family this Lockdown would have been a much more difficult experience.
However, with technology has the excitement and mystery of adventure been lost? Everywhere has been photographed, blogged about, reviewed, social media-ed to death. Before, when you read a few descriptive lines in a guide book imaginations ran wild about what to expect, now no imagination is needed. Often it is the opposite – a sense of disappointment when a destination does not live up to the expectations portrayed in filtered, colour balanced and altered IG photos.
The few times I have been out since the ease of lockdown has started, I’ve noticed people looking at the scenery around them, actually looking, not though a camera on their phone. Perhaps it is because they are from around the area and not tourists, or perhaps they are actually looking with new eyes and have a new appreciation of what is in front of them.
It is most likely that flights may be more difficult to get and more expensive in the ‘new’ normal. We will have to choose more carefully where we go and how we spend our time there – museums, restaurants, beaches, everything will need to pre booked. Thought will be needed and patience practiced.
Things in uncrowded spaces will look different, perhaps we will gain a new appreciation and a new sense of wonder and awe, after patiently waiting on a list to see a masterpiece.
We will have to think about new ways of finding our way through new travel challenges that are not yet google-able. We will need to be more alert, more visual, plan differently, use our instincts. A new version of adventure is ahead of us. It won’t be easy but then again, adventure never was.
Apr 18, 2020 | Week 5
Why do I feel a bit ashamed to admit I’m actually loving life right now?
Granted, this ‘pause’ caught us all by surprise. I felt like a rabbit stuck in headlights for the first three or four weeks of lockdown here in Italy. As a destination wedding planner, I just didn’t know what direction to go, people were looking to me for answers to questions such as; When will it be over? Will there be flights in June? Will it be gone by the summer? Questions I, nor anyone one else, could answer.
Unable to function as normal, I procrastinated over my work. I felt a sense of achievement, if I managed to get through two or three emails, when normally at this time of year, I would be dealing with 60 emails on average per day, plus buzzing around meeting couples, doing venue visits, menu tastings, lots of meetings. But instead I was sitting in my own silence. Waiting. There was no end in sight, it was like falling down a dark bottomless pit.
However, now that the numbers in ICU are dropping and the number of new active cases are decreasing each day here in Italy, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Governments are talking about exit strategies. I’m no longer feeling fear, although very cautious.
Mentally I ‘manage’ the sadness and tragedy of the situation by lighting a candle at 6pm each evening for those who have died, a reminder that they are not just numbers, I then watch the news. I leave the radio and TV off during the day and I don’t read social media news. So my time of sadness or contemplation is confined to that one hour in the evening when I have the candle lighting, and then I blow it out and get on with life.
And that is what I am doing now – life. I’m enjoying having the time to do all the things I’ve been wanting time to do for years. It’s the ‘me time’ I have been craving. My daughter who has been in solitary isolation in London for the last six weeks, is the same, happy as a pig in sh*t. The only issue for her, is that friends and work colleagues, knowing that she’s alone, message her all day asking if she is okay. It’s very nice of them not to forget her, but for the first two weeks, she spent most of her day replying to people explaining she’s perfectly fine locked into her apartment with all her books, art supplies, recipe books and a Nintendo with her favourite childhood game ‘Animal Crossing’.
The author of ‘Moby Dick’, Herman Melville, once wrote a letter to a friend complaining he just could not find time to write about ‘that whale’ because, “I so am pulled hither and dither by circumstances”. Melville said he longed for a big, wide, open stretch of time to create. He called it ‘the calm, the coolness the silent grass growing mood in which a man ought always to compose’.
How many times have we all wanted some ‘Cool, calm, grass growing days’ to pursue something creative or leisurely… create art, write, compose, play music, learn a new skill. How many times have we groaned about it being Monday and wished for a longer weekend? We must all have wished really hard at the same time, and here it is people, the Universe has given us six weeks of back to back Sundays.
Over the last few years the internet has made me feel very unoriginal, I stopped writing because I felt there was nothing left to say, everything seems to have been done before. Not only had everything been done, but I stopped doing creative stuff because I had crossed that horrible line of not creating for the sake of creating, but feeling, if it wasn’t going to bring in an income then it was time wasted. Time was better spent doing the extra 10 emails to get another client. I’d forgotten how to switch off and the pleasure in doing nothing.
In the 24/7 world we’ve been living, silence is difficult to get. We now have the opportunity of silence. A time to rest and create.
We can’t control what is happening at the moment in the world, but we can control what we do with our time and bring something special into our day.
Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing again:
1. Think about what you enjoyed doing as a child… writing, drawing, painting, baking, craft – Let that part of you resurface. You don’t have to be the best at it, you don’t even have to be good at it, play with it. Enjoy it, loose yourself in it. Be kind to yourself, give yourself the same encouragement you would give a good friend.
2. Journal or blog – even short notes, we are all experiencing this unique time in history differently. My grandfather kept a diary for part of his time as a soldier in WW1. It has always been one of our families most treasured possessions. I published it some years back. There were thousands of soldiers in the war and each of their accounts was unique to them. Your thoughts and feelings will be a unique part of your family’s history, of the world’s history, so note them.
3. Read – read all the books you have never got around to reading on your book shelves or reread some of your favourites that you haven’t opened in years.
4. Set yourself goals and a routine – If you want the quarantine time to go quicker a routine will help. If you don’t want to feel you have wasted the quarantine time, then setting a goal or two will help.
5. Use all the Christmas gifts you have been saving for special occasions – light the scented candle, use the bath bombs, drink the expensive wine, wear the perfume. This is ‘me time’ we will never get again so make it special.
6. If you feel you are procrastinating and feeling frustrated at not achieving anything, then get yourself an accountability partner. Tell them your three ‘To Dos’ for the day and report back in the evening.
Whatever you do, be gentle with yourself, don’t feel you have to be constantly busy, but find something that brings you some ‘Me Time’ joy everyday.
Not being creative for the last few years had left a void in me. I could use the analogy of a jigsaw with a piece missing, but it was more like the puzzle had been made in the centre of an extendable table, then the two table leaves were pulled apart and the whole middle of the jigsaw had fallen through, just leaving the jagged frame of the edge bits.
Starting this blog gave me some focus from day one of quarantine, it has been often the only productive thing I managed to do. Sometimes I couldn’t wait to write it, other days I have had to push myself to find something light write about.
I woke this morning to find this page had reached 600 followers, I’d just like to thank everyone for liking and sharing my posts and the encouraging comments, it’s made me discover my long lost writing voice again. So thank you 
🙂
Apr 15, 2020 | The Quarantine Diary, Week 6
I’ve had a revelation. Margaret Mitchell the author of ‘Gone With the Wind’, was a prophet. The book wasn’t really about the Civil War in America, it was actually a prophecy of the Covid Virus and how we would all react.
‘Gone with the Wind’ is my all time favourite book and movie. If you haven’t seen the 1939 classic, this is a perfect time to watch it as it goes on for three hours at least so fills half a day and it is full of Covid prophecies. For anyone who has read it or seen it, let me show you why:
In her opening lines, Scarlett O Hara says what we all felt at the start of this crisis (just replace the word ‘war’ with ‘Covid’):
“Fiddle-dee-dee, War war war, it’s all people are talking about these days, it’s spoiling all the fun, I get so bored I could scream.”
Just to note, all through the movie Scarlett’s favourite term of profanity whenever she hears the news, is “Fiddlesticks or Fiddle dee dee” which is her way of saying “For F**k sake.”
She’s sent to work in an overcrowded makeshift hospital that is running out of medical supplies.
When she’s racing back home to Tara on the horse and buggy, it’s relatable to driving home from the supermarket, she also practices social distancing very well in this scene by hiding under a bridge.
And I have to admit, I have looked at my curtains several times and thought that I may make a summer dress out of them, or at least a supply of face masks.
In the movie at the end of Part 1, while doing a bit of gardening in the cotton fields, with no tools or seeds (as all the garden centres are all closed), Scarlett proclaims:
“As God is my witness, they’re are not going to lick me.”
Here, Margaret Mitchell has the character of Scarlett warn us, that letting anyone lick you at the moment is not a good idea.
Scarlett continues:
“I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk.”
So relevant… we are all putting our family folk first at the moment, and it does seem that with the amount of food people have stock piled, no one will ever go hungry again.
“There’s so many nice places to go and visit, Mexico, London, Paris”, says Rhett to a melancholy Scarlett. She’s thinking the same as us all; ‘Indeed there are Rhett, but we can’t go at the moment can we?’
Another classic line from Scarlett in the movie; “I won’t think about that now, I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
Let’s all be honest, we all have had at least one of these ‘Scarlett O Hara Days’. Here, the author predicts how we’ll all procrastination and get nothing done while under Lockdown.
When Scarlett O Hara cries:
“Where shall I go? What will I do?”, Rhett Butler responds, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”, delivering the most famous line from ‘Gone With the Wind’, as he walks away to social distance. In this scene you need to think of her as a celebrity/influence. It’s the prediction of how people will loose interest in the celebrities and influencers who no longer can go to amazing places to take selfies. You can only take so many pictures of coffee at home before you loose your followers.
“You need kissing badly, that’s what’s wrong with you, you need kissing badly and often by someone who knows how. But I’m not going to do it.”
Rhett advising that restraint and keeping your saliva to yourself at the moment is very important. Online dating is out.
“I love you, Scarlett, because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us, dear, and selfish rascals. Neither of us cares a rap if the whole world goes to pot, so long as we are safe and comfortable.”
This is probably the secret inner thoughts of most loved-up couples after two weeks of self-isolation, when they have gone past the point of showing no virus symptoms, and they settle into the everyday life of quarantine knowing that they are safe and comfortable.
Rhett (replace the word ‘war’ with ‘virus’): “It’s a curse… Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I did not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy… In other words, Scarlett, I am a coward.”
We all feel bad for Rhett when we hear this and we all want to say to him that feeling scared of the situation is not the same as being a coward, chin up, we are all wishing for the hazy days of a normal summer at this point.
If you read the book you get even more insight into Margaret Mitchell’s prophecies:
‘She was less frightened also because life had taken on the quality of a dream, a dream too terrible to be real. It wasn’t possible that she, Scarlett O’Hara, should be in such a predicament, with the danger of death about her every hour, every minute. It wasn’t possible that the quiet tenor of life could have changed so completely in so short a time.’
Yep hands up, who has stood at the sink or at a window and suddenly thought, ‘Is this really happening or just a bad dream?’
‘She saw in his eyes defeat of her wild dreams, her mad desires.’
This is in referral to our summer holidays being cancelled.
And then she predicts the feeling of resigning ourselves to the situation once we have got over the panic and fear stages:
‘The merciful adjustment which nature makes when what cannot be cured must be endured.’
And last but not least, she ends the book by giving us all hope that our ‘To Do’ list will be done at some point, and this situation will not last forever:
‘After all, tomorrow is another day.’
I rest my case.
Apr 14, 2020 | The Quarantine Diary, Week 5
Today was our weekly grocery shopping day. My third time out past our gate in nearly six weeks and I’m exhausted, it was like going on a mission to Mars.
First challenge was to find the hair dryer rather than let my hair dry naturally, Corona virus is serious but going out with wet hair is probably more risky in the eyes of Italians. Second challenge is to find a bra, I haven’t worn one since my last outing to the shop over a week ago. Third thing is get my gloves and mask, we only have gloves in one size, large so no matter how I try to make them fit I have flappy bits at the tops of my fingers. Then we get the shopping bags and get our carefully prepared shopping list.
We need our passports and our self certification forms.
Keys, wallet, phones and we’re off. Except we’re not. The car hasn’t been used in a week and has an old battery which is now flat. So it’s put on a charge. We both go back into the house and let our adrenalin subside over a cup of coffee.
We get going just before lunch. Only one person per family is allowed into the shop.
As I’m approaching the trolley bay I see another two people getting out of cars heading towards other trolley bays. It’s hot and there are already six people in the queue so I speed up. One of the other women sees me and is thinking the same, we’re now both doing fast trots to our chosen trolley bay.
I have my XXL gloves on and I get to my trolley bay first, insert the coin into the trolley release and one of my flappy bits gets stuck in the slot but I keep going wrangling the trolley out of the bay. My phone starts ringing. I see the others are gaining on me time wise, I am closer but I don’t want to be obvious and sprint to the queue so I decide… to skip. I haven’t skipped in 40 years but hey I’m skipping along into the queue, everyone is looking.
I get to the ticket dispenser just before the other woman and grab my number ’27’. Masked and sunglasses on, neither of us can read each other’s expression. My phone is buzzing again, my flappy bit is still trapped, my dust mask has moved up my face to mid way under my sunglasses and is sticking in my eye. It’s 22 degrees and I’m wearing a wool jumper, I hadn’t really thought my wardrobe choices through. I finally get my glove released without loosing a rubber finger. I pull the mask down to get some air and to save an eye. This in turn yanks my hair the elastic has entwined around on the back of my head. Phone is ringing again. I open the phone cover to see it’s my mother. I try to answer but of course with the rubber gloves on the phone won’t take my thumb print ID nor will slide to answer work. I’ve missed an earlier call from her too I notice, she’ll have to wait.
Just at the point I am thinking I am going to start melting in my jumper, my number is called.
First stop the veg aisle. They’ve great walnuts here, perfect for banana and walnut bread. Bag them, weigh them, take the label and stick on bag but now my flappy bit is stuck on the label and the bag. I automatically try to release it with the other hand and now I have flappy bits of both hands stuck on the label. I’m now standing shaking a bag of clacking nuts attached to my flappy bits, sunglasses fall back on nose, I pull my hand away to push glasses up while thinking ‘Don’t touch face’, bag rips nuts fly all over the place.
I give up we don’t need nuts that much nor any other veg that requires labelling. I grab pre packed and labelled fruit and veg and some frozen. It’s like being on Trolley Dash – concious there are 10 people waiting to come in and only five people are allowed into the shop at any one time so I’m rushing around getting everything on the list. My phone starts to ping continuously. I’m picking up more things that are not on the list than that are on the list. There’s really fast music playing, do they do that on purpose to speed us up? Ping. Ping. I’m thinking I don’t want to have to do this again next week so I’m buying double of everything. By the time I reach the wine aisle I’m loading bottles into every conceivable space left. Ping, ping. We have enough, I’ve had enough.
I’m in the pay queue. Ping. Number 28 reaches the queue just after me, she only has a few things so I wave her on in front as is customary in Italy. Ping. Well that was a wasted rush, I’m thinking she’s probably looking a bit smug under her perfectly fitted surgical mask. I’ve been using the same builder’s dust mask for all shopping trips and it’s on it’s last legs.
I check my phone, the pings are from a relative who has found pics of when we were young and has decided to send all 16 of them during my shopping trip.
My phone is ringing, I can see on the screen it’s my mother again. Anxiety is rising, something must be wrong. Ping, ping. I pay for the avalanche of shopping and exit as quickly as possible. I hear Ronan before I see him, revving the engine like it’s a getaway car, masked and gloved adds to the feeling we are doing a bank hoist rather than a grocery shop. My phone is ringing as I load the shopping bags into the back of the car. “Oh for f**k sake!” I mutter into my smelly mask.
Ronan sensing I’m distressed over something, gets out to give me a hand, not thinking about the flat battery. “NOO stay in!”, I shout slamming the door.
My flappy bit get’s caught in the door handle as I am saying “Go, go, go, keep the engine running”.
He jumps back in, starts the dying engine.. and automatically drives off?… my flappy bit still attached. It stretches about a foot and then pings off my hand. ‘Ping, ping’ goes my phone. I steer the trolley back to the bay with my elbow and my covered hand where fairy pools have now gathered at the top of my flappy bits. Husband cruises the car park and comes back for me. I’ve picked up the coin with my uncovered hand. Crap, I’ve fallen at the last hurdle.
We have hand sanitiser in the car and so I dose my hands and my phone in it. At this point I have missed six calls in the space of 30 minutes from my mother, so my shaky hands slide all over the phone trying to call her.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, skipping the greeting.
“What’s wrong?” she responds.
“What? You called me six times.”
“I called you six times ‘cause you didn’t answer so I was worried something was wrong. Nothing is wrong here, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong here either. I’m out shopping I’ll call you later.”
I’m a bit annoyed, “Honestly, I thought as an adult I wouldn’t need to tell my mother whenever I left the house, especially as I live in another country.”
Bloody hell, that was so stressful. I’m glad that we are home and have enough to eat to last probably two weeks so I won’t have to go out again. While himself unpacks, I call my 23-year-old daughter in London and wonder why she isn’t answering… so I call her a second time… and a third. “I was in the shower, why are you calling so much, what’s wrong?” … And that is when I realised I had turned into my mother.
