Leaving my beautiful home…or rather my once beautiful home

The process of leaving is made easier by the weasels that inhabit my home. I know I should see it as their home, but instead I hold on to the image of serene living pre infestation. 

I had an L shaped cream sofa huge oak framed wall mirror, stripy stair carpets, expensive bed linen, all the trappings of designer control and order. 

There was a time when I badgered my then lodger Paul about dropping fragments of pistachio husk on the floor. He raised an eyebrow and said dryly just wait until you have kids. I thought ‘what do you mean..? I won’t feed them pistachios and if i do I sure as heck won’t let them drop the dusty surrounds on the floor.’ Gosh that was before the veil dropped. 

I didn’t realise he meant…you will allow cascades of cheap toys and their many looseable parts in, to cover every surface and hide in every corner spoiling any loosely held aesthetic. Have smears of excrement here, dribbles there, discover mysterious hieroglyphics on the walls and eventually give up using any good China or glass in place of easy wipe non breakable crap. And indeed I too will eventually become an easy wipe cheap version of myself without makeup or style or any effort bar the absolute minimum, ideally wearing yesterday’s clothes.

But I love my home. My home of 15 years. It evolved with me and held so much warmth and celebration. A cosy hearth with colour, cheer, chickens and endless cakes. 

We are bang in the middle of our street so at the heart of community events and I have a window on to a whirl of passing life. We have used that window to celebrate advent, easter, birthdays, Halloween or post message to NHS, Ukraine. It gave us a voice. I also love my neighbours. The best of people. All generous, unjudging and full of life.  I had a habit of letting my emotions spill onto the streets. Bursting forth with a complaint or idea but they always embraced them, however unexpected or unnecessary.

Anyway back to the weasels. They did eventually fray the edges and make it easier to leave. They grew and the walls seem to shrink. The ducks and chickens and cat didn’t help with the sense that we were bursting at the seams. In fact it felt as though the collective life was generating so much methane that one day the house might just lift off like a large hot air balloon and drift somewhere else where we could tumble out with space to run, scream, feel without constraint. 

Despite the love of my neighbours I couldn’t bear the feeling that every exuberant outburst was heard, monitored, pondered. The time Laurie fired a nerf gun at Rossy hitting her in the eye and I in fury picked up said nerf gun and hurdled it across the room. It rickershayed off the wall and thwacked laurie on the leg. His eruption of hysteria no doubt sounded as though I had clouted him about the head. The frenchdoors onto the garden allowed all manner of excitable incidents to float the few feet over the garden fence to people trying to enjoy a peaceful life.

Do you know the weasels even chalked the front of the house? A seemingly innocent act but it turned out the porous old brick sucked up the chalk. Try as I may I couldn’t remove their rainbows, meandering lines and the word pizza! Simon Stubbings one of the wonderful neighbours said ‘ah you have remnants of the old Osney dialect and cave paintings.’ Yes indeed the one act the Weasels did that raised the house’s value…