how to move house and stay sane

I have no idea. If any of you know the secret, do tell. Look you may as well stop reading now, because this is basically Rachael-drinks-too-much-coffee-and-writes-instead-of-doing-stuff.

Things I have done this week:
Dreamt about packing.
Woken up at 5am with a start, thinking about packing.
Painted walls (returning house with cream walls to original state: I imagine that snot and fingerprints aren’t really a look letting agents go for).
Eaten cornflakes in the bath at 11pm whilst reading Facebook (first break of the day, and pretty good multi-tasking if you ask me).
Told Jeremy Vine I want to poke him with a fork. He liked it.

Been featured as one of Mumsnet’s favourite blogs

Drove to Southport and back in one day with a car load of boxes and stuff. Lay with R in our new garden and looked at the sky through the branches of the apple tree.

Met some really lovely new Southport people via my twitter thingy and ooh, exciting garden news which I’ll reveal later once we move.

Chatted to our new neighbours who are awfully nice and proper gardeners (and eyed up quite a lot of their garden with that ‘I’ll be having a cutting of that, and that, and definitely THAT’ sort of look that fellow gardeners give each other).

Discovered the LEA had no record of the children’s school transfer applications with three days until the end of term. Decided the universe would sort it out (have you seen the Notes from the Universe? They’re lovely).

Marvelled as the universe sorted it out yesterday with two hours to spare. Hooray.

And took a photo of this rainbow which made me exclaim with happiness on the way home the other day.

Everything’s going to be okay.

See you after moving day. If you want updates meantime (ranting, grumbling, photographs) come and join the Tales from the Village Facebook page.

parenting (not) teenagers

Oh, thanks for the slightly barbed response, Google.

Posting this on Facebook this morning having googled for help, my friends (most now with children of the same age or older) were amused. And full of helpful advice like run for the hills and take the wine with you like ‘let them rant, it’s what they do’ and ‘take it on the chin – the concepts of fairness, debate and meeting halfway are way beyond teenagers’. It calmed me down, which calmed her down, which meant we made friends and our day was much nicer than it would otherwise have been.

We’ve worked out that at one point we’re going to have six teenagers in the house. I’m thinking there might be an opening for this blog to be sponsored by a wine company. No1 isn’t even there yet and already we’re living in a storm of hormones and ranting. They’ve had a tough year though, and lots of change. Which brings me to my next point (this blog is brought to you by the twin spurs of procrastination and insomnia).

You know the friends you don’t see for ages? The ones who send a Christmas card with a scribbled note about what they’ve been up to? Well. I sort of forgot to write cards this year. And I realised I need change of address cards. I was discussing it this morning on twitter with my old friend The NDM.

Hurrah for the ubiquitous someecards.com. Who needs Hallmark divorce cards?

I made my own. I think I might get some printed.

Meanwhile, back to the parenting (not) teenagers thing. This post by my friend English Mum helps. And this one by Laura about unconventional families is well worth a read. And it’s okay, because Vix has written the diary of a life-ruiner so I know I’m not alone. Gulp.

our new house (sneak preview)

On a flying pick-up-the-keys-and-sign-the-contracts visit to the seaside. Fancy a sneaky look at the house through my eyes?

The fireplace in our sitting room, the one with no television, heaps of books, Radio 4, and a pile of cats.

The fireplace in the playroom. Television, Xbox, trains, chemistry sets, Warhammer games, Australian soaps, muddle.

The Bramley apple tree in the garden. Apple pie, apple jam, apple cake. And yes, I’ve already unpacked the KitchenAid. (R’s response: ‘You paid WHAT? For a food mixer? Are you insane?’)

Sedums! Walled garden! Garden blog heaven.

Toadflax! My favourite plant as a child (yes, I was an odd cookie).

A stable door in the kitchen! This is especially for my friend Pip, who writes at A Mother’s Ramblings and requested a photo. You’ll note I also said Let There Be Light and there was an awful lot of the stuff. That’s iPhone snaps for you.

The funny thing is I realised as I was writing the photos pretty much sum up what new Tales from the Seaside will be all about: gardening, writing, life as a blended family of eight (eek), and cake. Sounds good to me.

look what I got!

I can’t tell you how happy I am. I can see again. I’ve been camera-less since December last year. No more iPhone snaps. Oh, oh, oh.

Ready for more photographs?

I am.

(yippee)

beside the seaside

Well, I’m on a roll now (or you could say I’m procrastinating and should be packing and you’d be right).

So here’s one of those what-I-did-on-my-holidays (or for the last year since I didn’t go to Canada and decided to be a single parent instead) posts.

Well. I got divorced. By internet. Isn’t that clever? And I wrote about it on the Huffington Post (because anything’s fair game if you’re a writer).

And I moved from the village and into town, where we discovered that actually being able to go to the corner shop for wine and chocolate biscuits milk when you run out is rather splendid.

And then I fell in love with a man who lives by the sea.
This is Southport. It’s a beautiful Victorian seaside resort, and it’s where we’re going to live. Two of us, my four children, and his two. And there’s a shop selling wine at the end of the road. I suspect this may be A Good Thing.

Anyway. This is Crosby beach. It’s not far from Southport and it’s where Anthony Gormley’s Another Place installation can be found. It’s breathtakingly beautiful.

If you’re twelve and ten, however, it’s just awfully funny because there are loads of naked male statues with bottoms.

.

Look look, this is going to be our house.

Southport has loads of stuff that I’m going to take photos of.

Mainly the house. When the owner showed us round, I was so excited that I may have cried and hugged her. The carved wooden fireplace and the huge Victorian skirting boards and stripped wooden floorboards and kitchen with a stable door and walled garden and OH I am going to take loads of photos. I think my year long blogging block might be over.

Isn’t it beautiful? Someone said to me recently that as island dwellers we all dream of living by the sea. I’m a lucky girl.

(photo taken by my dear friend Jessica at Pink Magnolia Photography, Peachtree City, Georgia, USA)

Tales from the Seaside will be coming soon. More of the same, but a little bit different. I can’t wait.