On gloves, houses and the Universe

Oh dear.  AWOL again – an absolutely unconscionable length of time between posts. And  I can’t even claim to have been missing in action because I’ve been back in Sniddney these past two weeks, plunging up and down in the jetlag and stress pool.  Up and down, up and down.

But anyway, I am back.  Or, for the sake of truth in advertising, bits of me are.  Health has decided to stay on in London; Brain is wandering, lonely as a cloud somewhere over the Indian Ocean.  And Heart… well who knows where Heart is.  Enigmatic thingses, these Heartses, as has been discussed previously, and will be again no doubt. In the radio silence, between the last post and this there was London, which was too heart-filling and heart-wrenching to do justice to in my current state of nervejangle.  And there was Venice.  Which was deliciously, shockingly, shout-out-in-sheer-surprisely-COLD.

It was helpful but reserved people, it was indifferent food. It was that sort of everywhere-allover-beauty which causes your eye to not know where to alight, but to flit instead from this thing to that, as if with ADHD. It was a fantastico exhibition on Japanese tinted photography from the 1890s.

And it was this shop, which Miss Pimperlicious and I discovered while meandering one day, she with her jet lag, me with my streaming cold.

It was a glove shop – an orgy of Glove, the Whole Glove and Nothing but the Glove.  They had them in shades of marigold, sunflower, primrose, turmeric and saffron.  They had marron, cerise, blush, marshmallow and  rose geranium.  I was in utter agony choosing. I wanted yellow.  No, I wanted pink.  Oh, but I had to have green. What about one of each?  In the end I got these

Miss P was able to wrestle me out of the door only when we discovered they did mail order.  And they were cheap!  Soft and buttery and tight-fitting and cheap.  Quite where I am to wear them, living in sub-tropicana as I do, is a little beyond me, but I Had To Have Them.  You understand don’t you?  It was simply impossible to leave without them.

But enough of such fripperies – to serious matters.  By which I mean houses.  You know, that being the (putative) point of this blog after all. Because we have arrived at a watershed.  Today, as it ‘appens.  And I am totes out of my little box with the stress of it all.

To give you the gist, we have had some builders’ quotes for the work on the Regency Wreck.  The additional work we wanted on top of the statutory repairs – you know, the Juliet balconies, the glass roof on the Jungle Lav, and a few holes in walls here and there –   will cost us over half as much again as the Quantity Surveyor’s report.  And that’s the cheapest builder.

And at the same time, our present house is up for auction.  At 6.30 this very evening!  I know!  I shall have to go drunk, or drugged, or gagged.  Mr Pimp will have to shove me under the chairs at the back of the room to keep me from gibbering and shrieking. And that’s not all.  It seems that while we were away we missed an Official Edict wherein all potential house purchasers were promised fire-sale bargains.  So we are hearing a lot of ‘oooh lovely house, quite gorgeous, love the thises and thatses and would really love to buy it and, bee tee dubs, we’d like to pay you one and sixpence because that’s, uh, where the market’s at these days’.  Why, I ask you, could the universe not have organised things the other way around, with the RW coming in cheaper than estimated and the current, much beloved house, selling for way beyond?

Honestly, I think I prefer fanning around foreign climes, buying gloves.

But if you have a second, spare us a thought at 6.30 this evening?  I’ll be the one in the straightjacket.