Mending holes in my home

Now it was the pens

Here I was wanting to write down details as I began to give attention to my test lab, a neglected computer test lab because of the distractions of the year past. There were three pens on my desk, and none were ready to give their ink.

On one of my visits to a bookshop in Cape Town, I bought quirky pens with different writing widths like you would have with pencils and a wooden pencil case. I looked up on the shelf and retrieved the pencil case, there was only one pen left in the pencil case. There should be at least six pens in that pencil case.

What is so irksome is over two months of reclaiming full access to my place by taking the keys off my friend and I am the one at fault for first being a poor judge of character in making acquaintances with people who I thought valued friendship beyond benefits they gained from having access to me and my place, I am still finding vestiges of his carelessness and abuses of my things without remorse.

His mittens ruin all

Each time I have had him housesit on my visits to Cape Town, I have returned to a house that is not my home through the way he has rearranged things, misplaced things, or damaged things without a second thought to fix them. The last time, he bested himself, how I restrained myself from blurting out in apoplexy even when I asked for my keys escapes me.

Soon after, when I thought a phone charging unit or a power extension tower had been damaged, I painstakingly when through assessing each element of the connections, and can you believe it was the USB C cable that was damaged? Let us not get into when he thought the USB cables, because of their colours, could be adornments like neck chains, bullet chains, or belts that he wore about his person.

The number of times he invaded my privacy was innumerable, but I just worked on the assumption, I was not the only occupant of my home. I’ll be in bed and hear scurrying about the apartment, the keenest of my hearing would register the key in the lock as he entered, and the rest was left to my imagination, what he could be up to and that might include a litany of misdeeds and mishaps. I rarely let these bother me.

The translation of a wallet

On the eve of my penultimate visit to Cape Town just after the prostate cancer diagnosis and the one occasion he was able to attend the hospital with me, so he knew the seriousness of the condition, I emptied a brown wallet of things I needed for my travel and placed the wallet on my desk.

A week into my visit, I got a message from my neighbour, they found my wallet on a windowsill in the courtyard behind the apartment block. How it got there, no one could explain, the CCTV recording saw a resident runner pick it up and place it there, it had rained some days prior, and I know I had not been in the courtyard for more than a week before my travel. There was one other logical explanation.

I should have taken back my keys on my return, however, I am wont to forgive than to show resolve. My neighbour was of the good mind of kicking him out of my apartment, it would have served me well.

He just does not care

Even though I wrote a long email to him explaining why I had to take back my keys without accusing him of anything apart from remonstrating the unnecessary rearrangement of my apartment including finding my bathroom scale in the wine rack, his response acknowledged nothing, he just did not and could not care, that is fine.

Fundamentally, he had progressively taken away my enjoyment of my home by the things he had unwittingly done whether in thinking he was cleaning up the place by rearrangement or the simple things damaged that he had grown accustomed to me not saying anything about.

I have my place back to myself, I should just enjoy it despite the fact I still find rat droppings somewhere in the house, not so literally, but signs that my friend, if he still qualifies as one has been there, a tormenting daily reminder of associations I should have long abandoned before they hurt me much.

Thought Picnic: Making a home of a house

Could not live there

Standing at the top of our street, Gbélẹ̀yí, it was called, meaning live in or on this land, I was not looking forward to living or life there. A place that was supposed to be my home, on sight brought a very sinking feeling upon me, like a bucket of cold water emptied over my head and travelling down my body uniformly but slower than gravity acting on it.

I could never understand it, in the house where I lived, I had my parents and my siblings, below was my uncle and his family, we had a friendly enough neighbourhood, in the house, I have shelter and provision, protection too, but something was still missing that did not address a deeply emotional need, I was adrift in a place where for my discomfiture, the only question was, ‘What is the matter with you?’

I lived in a house that was not a home, much as it was a home to many, yet there was nowhere else I could call home, so I endured life there and failed in other things. Things were not that equal.

Home long before home

When I lived in Amsterdam and went on my travels, there were times I could see my apartment block from miles away, sometimes from the plane, usually from a train arriving at the station, or from the taxi just before it went into a long tunnel. It was a wonderful sight to behold, for long before I got home, I felt I was at home.

The same feeling, I had when for 18 nights I yearned to return home from the hospital that when I eventually returned, I began to feel that my healing would accelerate. Even in the time of privation and penury brought on by extreme adversity, my home comforts helped the determination that I was on the mend. Opportunity did present to leap out of my 7th-floor apartment window, but I felt stronger inside my home especially when a sense of claustrophobia seemed to envelop me.

For my new home

I am at the stage of planning to build another home, I place where I want to return from the world outside and all its troubles, into the refreshing and strength that first soothes my aches and salves my sores before I am recuperated to face the world again. Into the arms of love and support, of care and concern, of companionship and friendship that transcends all and gives the assurance that we can face everything together.

Then I wonder to myself, every now and again? Am I a hopeless romantic, a fool for love and blindly falling to a place of despair? I have to tell myself, I know better now, yet a cloud of doubt seeks to shield the sunshine of beauty from giving warmth to the seeds sown for a future we can build if we allow ourselves to do amazing things. I yearn for a house made into a home.

Simplicity in the bric-a-brac house

Not exactly true

The cost of simplicity is sometimes not evident. You find yourself weighing options at the point of entry hoping that having others bear the cost would save you lots in the long run.

The lesson, hard as it might be is that one should be ready to face certain costs so as to avoid other incidental and unexpected costs.

It came fully furnished, at least that is what gave it the premium rate and the inventory looked like an easy task of view, count and note.

Things falling apart

Nothing could be further from the truth, first it was the scales that could not be reset to zero; it was broken. Bread out of the bag for toast and the toaster fell apart, the warning being don’t plug this in.

The dawn broke and the thirst for tea had Polly reaching out to put the kettle on, there was no point waiting for Sooty to put it off again, the screws holding the lid were out, the attachment broken and the handle far from handling the jug. Water in this would be the difference between the finesse of elocution and the suddenness of electrocution. Time for replacements.

Up the stairs, three steps in all, a rumpled shirt needed ironing. With the choice of one of four irons, you wondered which one was wired to blow the fuse, but before that, reach out for the ironing table and notice that it is a paraplegic, the legs broken off.

Suction lost

Looking down from that is the vacuum cleaner, parts everywhere and none fitting together, it might have gone to war, lost a limb and an eye, maybe more, but there was nothing to walk with this kit.

Welcome to the house of bric-a-brac, it has everything, yet nothing you can use and that list does not end there, but the quest for simplicity continues.

Their fault will cost you

What about a television? Let’s get one delivered in 1:45 hours, the offer says, and so an order goes in and money goes out. 12 hours later, you learn that you were on the unfortunate side of a computer error or technical problem.

No anger, no frustration, just perplexity as a new time is arranged for the delivery and an email lands in your inbox with all the details, only that it appears you are being changed an extra 60% for a service they did not deliver, in the first place.

The time for a torrent of expletives is nigh and no opprobrium should ensue, but calmly after 8 phone calls all before 10:30AM, everything seems to have been sorted out, or so it seems.

The cost of simplicity is simply the fact that many things are not as simple as they seem at first sight.

My House, My Home

Time flies

Twenty-seven months ago today, I closed the door to the home I reluctantly left after ten and a half years. Beautiful, well situated and close to the town centre in Amsterdam, everyone who visited thought it was a fine place, I had wonderful times there.

Yet, that was part of the long tail of cancer I have sometimes written of, the post-recovery reality of getting your life back on track and I know it has been one of the toughest journeys of my own life.

Since then, I have been a nomad who has enjoyed the amazing generosity of people who never allowed my experience of adversity and misfortune to become an enduring tale.

Time flew

I was offered a house for two months, free of charge, then a family took me into their home for months until just after my medical check-ups, by which time, I had decided to return to the UK.

I stayed at my cousin’s for months and it was through them that I began to regain a footing in the UK before I found myself working in North Wales and living out of hotels in Ewloe, Manchester and London.

When that job ended, I stayed with a friend, then travelled, I returned to stay in a room after which I was on the verge of going homeless before I was offered a couch for a week and then offered a stay with another of my cousins.

Time flying

I kept doing what I knew how to do, until another opportunity came up that took me out of London, then it was hotels and travel until I settled into small flat share.

This afternoon, I obtained the keys to my own place and it dawned on me, what a journey I have had that in my mind I sang songs of praise, in gratitude for the wonderful experiences I have had that brings me to a point that I have a story to tell.

None of this would have been possible without the help of friends, family and strangers, prayers, encouragement and hope, life that keeps giving reason to live and live to write a different and better story and most of all to God who for all my waywardness has constantly and unstintingly been merciful and gracious or maybe I am just realising that that is the nature of God.

A house, A home by Anna Wilson

Brick by brick, stone by stone
We build a place to call our own
Gonna fill it up with laughter
Write my happy ever after
'Cause for the first time in my life
I'm holding the key
To a brand new life waiting on me
That's what makes a house a home
That's what makes a house a home