Saturday 24 September 2011

She's leaving home

 26 hours ago I squeezed my daughter into the car alongside as many of her possessions as she could shoehorn into the space available.  We then headed West to Lancaster where she was about to move into her first house, even if it is only a student let, it is still her first house.  She was the first of the three girls sharing, to move in.  As student houses go it isn't bad, it is quite spacious, maybe a little cold at first but she soon got the heating blasting out until it was too hot to bear - we then found that someone had left the thermostat on at 30 degrees.  What it was however is filthy, we soon got that sorted with a twenty four hour blitz of cleaning, I have never before had to sweep dust off the walls of a house with a broom, not only the walls but also the ceiling.  I had to scrape years of accumulated grease and grime from the tops of the kitchen wall cabinets, clean out the insides of drawers and cupboards and clean out the fridge.  Surprisingly the one area which didn't need cleaning was the oven.  By the time the other girls turned up today the place had been thoroughly fettled as the old Yorkshire expression has it.  Swept, dusted, vacuumed, kitchen and bathroom cleaned, windows cleaned, nasty, dirty curtains taken down and replaced by fresh clean ones. Some of the grime was a bit too ingrained for the normal domestic equipment we had to hand but on the whole it was a totally different house from the one we entered at 6.30 yesterday evening.
When Elizabeth moved out of her university flat last year we scrubbed it out and left it spotless - that doesn't seem to have happened for a few years in this house - what was there was not just the detritus of one year.
Not surprisingly Elizabeth and I were both pretty shattered by the end of it all but I know she will keep going on adrenaline until she drops into bed this evening - whenever that might be!  I on the other hand had a long drive home alone and am now typing this in an effort to stay awake.


She is now happily living in her new house with two friends and enjoying what I am sure will become a hectic social life in the couple of weeks before lectures begin again, we on the other hand will have to live with a quiet hole which is usually filled with a noisy, boisterous young woman who alternately delights us and drives us mad.   Still it will be Christmas before we know it!


(Hands up those who got the Beatles reference in the title!)

Friday 2 September 2011

Grr

I am cross, I am more than cross - I am enraged and what's more I am outraged.


My husband and I got our full driving licences in the same year.  We have the same driving history and the same no claims discount.  Everything about us and driving is the same.  I am 2 years older than he is but we are at an age where that doesn't really make a difference, but when we obtained quotes today in both our names for the same car his was significantly lower than mine.  That makes me cross, what makes me really angry is that the insurance company won't tell me why that is the case.


The only real difference between us is that I am female and he is male.  The fact that they cannot/will not tell me why my premiums are higher than his leads me to the conclusion that there is sexism at work here and that takes me to the top of the anger scale.  


Anger is not of itself a bad thing, it is only when the anger takes control of a person that it is bad and I am not about to let that happen but just occasionally there is a crumb of transient comfort in letting the imagination run free.  (Be assured though that that last statement does not have anything to do with violence)