Sleepover

Last night J went on a sleepover round Tim's house. P was reluctant for him to go as what children don't tend to do on a sleepover is sleep and he might be tired when we go away tomorrow. But I'd had a really bad night on Sunday with J having nightmares and the thought of a decent night's sleep for me was just too tempting so we said we'd let him go. They were going to sleep outside in a tent and he was just so excited, he immediately rushed and packed his sleeping bag and pyjamas into a rucksack. Hope he's not too tired and grumpy when he gets home.

Anyway I need to stop this and get into getting ready to go away mode. Weather still very hot but forecast to be a bit changeable this week, hope it doesn't rain at Faith Camp.

Let's see what happens!

Off to Faith Camp

The reason we're going to Peterborough is because we're going to something called 'Faith Camp'. This is a big Christian conference run by Kingdom Faith Ministries which is based at Horsham (www.kingdomfaith.com).

It runs every year and when we heard about it on PremierRradio last year it sounded so good we decided to go this year. For various reasons all three of us have an aversion to camping - one of us doesn't like the prospect of being kept awake by other campers, one doesn't want to get wet and one has had enough of roughing it and if the one who doesn't want to get wet did get wet he could make it one of the most miserable weeks of her life so we're staying in a hotel and we'll have lovely breakfasts and baths or showers! Luxury!

I don't really know what to expect at Faith Camp, apparently sometimes people have awesome experiences with God there and I'd really like that to happen to all of us. Over the last couple of years God has done some amazing things in my life. He actually healed me of some of my symptoms, the most notable being my food allergies. I'd been sensitive to potatoes, rye, oats, barley and corn and also to mould (including if I breathed in mould spores). And they just went! Just like that! And then He healed me of the really bad pain that used to run up my right leg from my ankle to my hip. That just completely went too. 

That was two years ago and He's done an awful lot in my life since then but there hasn't been any more physical healing and I'm still ill and in pain. But I still keep thinking He is going to heal me, I just don't know when and I have to keep trusting Him.

It's really hard when I tell people about the healing I've had so far they look at me strangely and I can see they're thinking why would God only half heal me? But I think perhaps healing is sometimes a long process and God isn't just interested in our physical well-being he's interested in every aspect of our lives and I've got a lot of 'aspects'.

I have to trust Him whatever happens.

It is hot. Very, very hot. Yesterday I took J swimming along with his friend Tim and his little sister and Mum, Becky. There's a lady at church who lets us use her swimming pool which is wonderful and very useful for me as it means it's only a short distance from the car to the water. Sadly she's not very well now and I get a bit nervous about the children making too much noise but yesterday they were fine. J's swimming is really coming on which is very good especially as he's never had a swimming lesson. They don't do them at his school and I've never managed the practicalities of getting him to lessons and P is sensitive to chlorine. So J has taught himself to swim and has done incredibly well. While we were there P was tiling the bathroom floor which isn't a fun job at all but he's getting on well with it. After we got home we had to go to Topps tiles to get some more tile cement. While we there we were looking at wall tiles. They've got some really nice ones these days , we especially liked the glass ones and you can get tiles with cut-outs in them that you can fill with a glass tile. In fact there's lots of really good effects you can achieve. Plenty to think about.

What's really good about it being so hot is I'm getting the washing dry. I still haven't got used to the sheer luxury of having a washing machine again. It was six long years without one and it was really difficult at times. Dragging heavy bags of washing to the laundrette would set me back for days and I would sometimes have to hang around the car park for ages waiting for a space immediately outside the door. Sometimes people from church helped out especially over the last year or so someone regularly did the washing for me which was wonderful. But having my own machine is infinitely better, I can just do it whenever I want. When J gets back from swimming I can just bung it in the machine to rinse. Bliss!
Anyway the reason why I'm trying to get all the washing done at the moment is because we're going away. We're not going to Ibiza or Majorca like everyone else. We're going to Peterborough!
If you know Peterborough it might not immediately strike you as being a holiday destination but there's a reason for us going there. More in a moment.

On Thursday we went on a 'first day of the holidays' outing to Hastings. Surprisingly we managed to leave home by 7.30 am & stopped on the way at a garden centre cafe so J could have some breakfast which ended up being a giant piece of lemon meringue pie. In a moment of weakness I had a piece of Victoria sponge which was really very nice & I thought it would be ok as I wouldn't have any dessert after dinner.
There is loads for kids to do in Hastings & we had a very good time even though it was swelteringly hot. We tried to walk to the castle but discovered it meant P pushing me up a very steep hill & he was turning redder & redder so we went to the aquarium ( where they had a giant octopus) & the shipwreck museum before driving up to the castle. There was a very interesting film called 'The 1066 story' & then we wandered round the castle. There isn't much of it left as it has been eroded away.
Then we discovered that I couldn't get to the 'Smuggler's Adventure' but I suppose it isn't easy to make a cave half way up a cliff wheelchair-accessible. So I sat in the car & had a nice rest looking out to sea. Anyway J really enjoyed it. Then we headed up to Rye & went past the hotel where P & I stayed 25 years ago (happy days!) & found a family-friendly Italian restaurant where they really did do pasta sauce just like my Mum used to make & J ate a giant pizza & when the owner said we really had to try their home-made squidgy chocolate cake I thought it would be rude to refuse.
Then we travelled home by rather a long way round. If you know where we live going home via East Grinstead simply isn't the best route but it was very scenic & a good day was had by all.

After several weeks of being very busy & tired sorting out Dorothy's affairs we found ourselves in end of term mode. This year J was in the school play as this is put on by year 5 & 6. The play was 'The Keymaster' & was a play about a supply teacher who has the ability to travel through time & show kids that history isn't really boring. It was really, really good & there was some brilliant acting & singing. The only problem was the the part J wanted was King Harold or failing that William the Conqueror. The part he got was as an extra child in the World War 2 evacuee scene & he didn't like his costume (well you can't really blame him for wanting a sword & shield rather than a sleeveless jumper & shorts). His performance came a little bit close to sulking on stage I thought & won't necessarily guarantee him a better part next year. He says the parts are just handed out randomly but I'm not so sure.
After that we had Open Day which was very nice. In the morning they had various activities including scenes from the play. Then there was a picnic at which the parents all sat exactly where their children told them to. Then we looked at the children's work. J had produced some very good work although I did discover why he so often 'couldn't remember' what mark he got for his spelling tests.
Next was Sports Day which is always a bit traumatic if your child doesn't excel at sport. J said it was my fault he didn't do better in the obstacle race but when I insisted he wear his hat to avoid sunstroke I really meant him to take it off when he was racing. The problem was that it's his special hat that he got at the Spying Exhibition & when it became dislodged when he was tunnelling under the parachute he stopped to put it back on. Serious tactical error.
Then on Wednesday term finished. They do this sort of ceremony where they make a 'bus' out of chairs & the Year 6's sit on it & they sing a song & then march out (some of them in tears) & the Year 5's sit on the bus to take over as top of the school. So J's officially a Year 6 now. Can't believe it. What happened to my little baby? I'm not going to start writing about all the trauma of applying for senior school now, save it for another time.

Bit of a sad time

Sadly J doesn't have a grandma, my Mum died suddenly in 1994 and never knew any of her grandchildren. P's mum died when J was three so he only just remembers her. When we moved here our neighbour Dorothy became very much a Grandma to him and was very generous, so much so that we became concerned she might spoil him as she gave him so many toys.

Last year she was diagnosed as having breast cancer but she had always been one of those people who sail through life hardly troubled by anything and it was the same with this. She said she'd had a good innings and had been given tablets to slow it down and never mentioned it again. Then at the beginning of May she began to get short of breath and one Tuesday when I returned from the church house group she'd left a message on our phone to say she'd got worse and had called the doctor and he was sending her to hospital. I phoned P and we rushed in to see her. She was on oxygen but otherwise was her normal self and was very concerned at having to miss a birthday party the next day. Due to the birthday we couldn't manage to get in to see her the following day. As we went into the ward on the Thursday I realised I'd forgotten her bit of birthday cake. Then we saw a group of very concerned staff gathered round a very sick patient and I knew she wouldn't be needing the cake.

When we went in the next day one of the staff saw us and whispered to the staff nurse who asked us to come into the side room. And I knew I should stop her talking because it was really obvious what had happened but somehow I couldn't open my mouth and I let her carry on talking about Dorothy who was always so kind, so generous, so helpful, so cheerful. I let her carry on until she said that Dorothy had been on her way down for a scan when she'd taken a turn for the worse and before they could get her back to bed she had gone.

As she had no family we had to organise the funeral which turned into quite a grand affair. She had worked for the fire service & they had a guard of honour for her at the crematorium. She had a lot of friends so there was a good crowd there and also at the church service afterwards.

It's still hard to believe she's gone, I still find myself looking out for her head at the kitchen window as I pass her house.

Shortly afterwards I heard that one of my uncles in Ireland had died. Sadly his funeral had happened before they got hold of me because my other uncle had got my phone number wrong. But at the time we were all so ill I don't know if we could have made it.

It's been a bit of a sad time really.

Attendance Figures!

J's school holidays are a bit strange now because the spring holiday doesn't necessarily include Easter weekend. So he had Good Friday off then Easter Monday then back to school for the rest of the week then off for two weeks. Quite a lot of the holiday he and I spent being ill. For the last couple of years he has been getting recurring episodes of the same symptoms: sore throat, tummy ache, pains in his legs and feet and dizziness. I have taken him to the doctor several times but the response is always 'it's just a virus' or 'perhaps he's unhappy at school'. I keep hoping it'll get better but over the holiday he was really quite unwell. 

Then I woke up one morning with flashing lights in front of my eyes like a migraine and when I got out of bed I felt really dizzy and ill. I made it to the doctor who said it was 'labyrinthitis', perhaps I'd picked up J's virus and it had affected my inner ear. The dizziness carried on for over a month during which time J was ill again. Then we all got really bad colds one after another. Then J and I seemed to get another virusy sort of thing. Really most of the time I still feel rotten, just feel really awful inside my head but I can't explain to anyone how I feel. I hardly ever even tell people I'm feeling ill because I just can't explain it.
Anyway the situation with J has been getting quite desperate because sometimes it's so hard to know what to do, whether to send him into school or not and sometimes P's saying make him go in and I'm feeling he should stay at home and at the same time I'm feeling so ill and it's hard to think clearly enough to make a rational decision and sometimes I just want him to go in so I can get some rest.

One day I felt so bad I just felt I had to get him to go to school and he went in and went straight to the office and said he was sick. They weren't very pleased and after they phoned I just sat and cried because I felt too ill to cope with someone being cross with me but they managed to persuade him to stay for the rest of the day.

Then the headmaster said that the Attendance Officer had been into school and was asking about J's absences and I thought: 'I can't win, if I send him in and he says he's sick I'm in trouble and if I don't send him in it's messing up their attendance figures'.

When he was ill again on Friday I took him in to the doctor and got him to agree to refer him to a specialist so we'll just have to wait and see. I also said to the doctor that there are some aspects of his development that I'm concerned about such as he's 10 years old and still can't ride a bike, his co-ordination is poor, he finds it hard to catch a ball and still struggles a bit with writing. The doctor was a bit strange when J said he found it hard to think of what to write when writing about the Victorian day they'd had at school the day before. 'How can you not be able to write about what's happened yesterday?' he said almost like he was telling him off. But that's the whole point, he should be able to and yet he can't.  It's not like he's not intelligent, he's top of the class in maths.

My house is going to blow up!

Shortly after Easter it finally happened - we were able to turn on the kitchen tap and water came out! We actually have a really swish tap with a shower head on a flexible hose so it's really easy to clean the sink and there's a sort of colander thing which fits into the sink so you can just put vegetables into it and spray them with the shower. In fact I just love washing vegetables! (Sometimes I wonder just where my life is going.)

Then even something better happened. They came and connected up the solar heating and we had hot water coming through the kitchen tap! Well we did for 2 days until it went wrong. The water just stopped heating even though it was nice and sunny outside. I phoned them up and they said they'd send an engineer but they didn't, they just sent a customer satisfaction survey which isn't quite the same somehow.

Then one hot day the tank started making really loud hissing noises and there was what seemed to be smoke coming out of the control panel. At this point I really thought the house was about to blow up. You know that ice-breaker thing they sometimes do in discussion groups : 'if your house was on fire and you could only take 1 thing what would it be?' They're trying to assess your character by seeing if you'd take your BlackBerry and leave the hamster to burn? Well suddenly it was really happening to me and I tried to decide what was my most precious possession and decided it was the framed photo of J at 6 months in his Peter Rabbit top and little blue tartan trousers. The problem was it was in the loft and I wasn't sure I could make it up there and is the loft the best place to be when your house is about to explode? 

I stood in the French doors dithering and then I thought of phoning up the company.

The man said 'It's not smoke. It's venting steam and ethylene glycol. It's what it's meant to do when it overheats.' and I said 'Through the control panel?' and he said 'Yeah.' 

Then a few days later the engineer came and I said 'It's venting steam and ethylene glycol through the control panel' and he said 'Through the control panel?' and I said 'Yeah.' 

Then he said 'You see that valve, I got a text this morning saying 'whatever you do don't fit any more of those valves'. 

So anyway it works now but 'm still a bit suspicious of it really.

We still don't have a bathroom, well not one that works anyway and we have to go back to the caravan to go to the loo which is a bit of a disadvantage really, especially in the middle of the night when it's raining. 

I really, really would like to have a bathroom.

Snowy Easter

We woke up on Easter morning to be greeted by snow!

J was ecstatic especially after having endured a snow-free winter. We went off early to church for a communion service followed by breakfast. The children ate theirs very quickly then rushed outside to hurl snowballs at each other. Then we had the regular 10.30 service at which Dorothy joined us. Every heater seemed to be covered with a damp item of child's clothing. I had a lazy sort of day eating a lot of chocolate while J built a snowman called 'Freezy' outside. Then we had a turkey dinner in the evening with P's Dad and Dorothy. By the end of the meal I felt totally exhausted and had to go and lie down on the sofa.

Toxic psychosis and plumbing

We live on what is meant to be a smallholding but is currently a wilderness. At the top of our drive is the  bungalow where P's dad lives. Part of the reason for moving here and building the house was to keep an eye on him. A few weeks after Christmas he gave us something of a scare. P went over to put him to bed one night and found the house in disarray. The back door was hanging off its hinges and the kitchen had a general air of having been partly dismantled. P's dad was in the toilet taking the seat off. He was behaving in a bizarre fashion and seemed to have an obsession with fixing things. P called the emergency doctor who asked if any of us had any medicine with a sedative effect which we could give him. Deciding not to follow this advice P called an ambulance and his dad was persuaded to get in by telling him it needed fixing. We were really worried that he'd had a stroke or something but it turned out it was his leg infection getting bad again and the toxins were affecting his brain. After some very strong antibiotic treatment and a few weeks in hospital he was back to his old self which was a relief although it wasn't long before he was back in hospital with a chest infection. He celebrated his 89th birthday in May and is doing well although his mobility isn't as good as he'd like. He has stopped using the powered hedge-cutter (leaning on his walking frame with the other hand) which is a relief to me. I really, really wouldn't want to deal with the blood.
The run-up to Easter was largely taken up with getting the plumbing done and getting the water connected to the house. Our plumber (who is also Akela for J's cubs) did a very good job but it has to be said that the behaviour of the Water Board was at times appalling and for this appalling behaviour we got charged a great deal of money. And they expected tea.

My husband is something of a pathological optimist, especially when it comes to housebuilding. Whenever anyone asked when the house would be finished he would reply 'We'll be in by Christmas.' He never actually said which Christmas and five of them came and went.

Then...

... there we were in by Christmas 2007!

It had to be just about the most chaotic Christmas we've ever had. P was assembling the kitchen around us, my brother was painting the dining room the day before Christmas Eve, there was stuff everywhere and we had hardly any furniture. Thankfully my friend Louise had a spare table and chairs. P's Dad came out of hospital just in time so we managed to have him and our neighbour 'Dorothy' for a proper family Christmas dinner in our own home, for the first time in 5 years. As things were to turn out I'm really, really glad that we managed it.

On Boxing Day my brother and his family came over (I've 2 nieces aged 9 and 12) and it was lovely, it really was.

The previous Christmas had been a bit overshadowed by a family falling-out but we had gone to an Italian restaurant (looking like a disabled person's outing: P's Dad with his walking frame, Dorothy with her stick and me in the wheelchair) and I had what was think the nicest chocolate cake I've ever eaten.

The previous three Christmases we were at P's Dad's. The only problem I had with this was that none of the men in their family seem to feel the cold and P's Dad always lit his fire at 4pm and he didn't see why it should be any different just because it was Christmas Day. When I say 'lit his fire' that was the only form of heating in the house.When I finally said please could I have some heating seeing as it was December after all P, his Dad and J all shook their heads and looked at me like I was mad : 'She needs heating?'

Anyway this year it was definitely, definitely better.

This is how the escape happened. In November the house was progressing and I was spending quite a lot of time there during the day. Then we decided to buy a bed so I could rest in the daytime. We had already bought a bunk bed for J (son) some time before as we saw it advertised in the village shop and it was a bargain and just what he wanted. Then the weather turned bitterly cold and I suggested we try sleeping a night in the house and we did.

The next morning one third of family ( mentioning no names) said 'Ok we sleep in the caravan tonight.' The other two thirds of family had experienced sleeping in a comfortable bed without being chilled to the bone and getting out of bed without crashing into the wall. They stated that they had no intention of ever sleeping in a caravan again for the entire duration of their lives. So despite repeated mutterings from one third of family that he could never see what was so bad about the caravan we moved in. Things weren't ideal as it was still very much a building site and there was no running water. It was pretty chaotic especially as it was the run-up to Christmas and things didn't improve when father in law went into hospital two weeks before Christmas with a leg infection. But we had space and something approaching warmth.

No more chilblains!

No more pink fluffy bedsocks!

Bliss!