OR, HARD GRAFT WITH HOME REPAIRS BEFORE MY NEXT TRIP.
ALERT: The flat is now finished and all is well for this old bird! I wrote this a couple of weeks back when I was very boohoo baby. I painted anything in my way that didn’t actually move refreshed everything and threw away most of my possessions. in a couple of weeks I should be back to telling you about the latest on actual travel rather than snivelling. As they say it’s all character forming……or just plain bad Karma!
Yes I’ve been AWOL, I’ve managed to fall off grid totally by accident or rather by despair. This is why.
Lack of funds, government applications to save my sorry arse and delayed building works forced my hand to stay here. The shocking fact of my allowance being cut off by the ex last year, on the same birthday as my retirement year so had been bought to earth with a resounding crash by trying to live on the minimum state pension. I was suddenly a pensioner and it was very cold and I was trapped with no studio and hence no way of making my art and thus money. My darling ex had encouraged me to spend all my own money while travelling and then quite suddenly completely dump me without explanation. I’m still punch drunk from the shock.
The last months have been tortuous. Clipped wing syndrome, while ironically my windows are ripped out, and my meagre possessions in disarray. scaffolding stealing what little light that is still available to us, and decorating my ever decreasing butt off, I’m silently seething that I, a freedom loving old bird, have been caught in this hellish trap. I feel like I should have seen it coming but how could I while star struck by the old garden and house wreck that was going to be my paradise. I was blind and a fool for not noticing .
However, as you know me my old birds, I refuse to be crushed for much time. I now am regrouping, sitting in the reference library after a lunchtime concert here and getting my positive energy back despite all the crap.
Don’ let the bastards get you down gals. Keep on going and things will be fine. I’m here to prove that to you, I WILL get out of this pickle and I WILL inspire you if you too are feeling low and beaten, it’s all in the attitude.
I’ve nearly finished the painting project, I was just going to make good around the windows but then I thought ‘That landing by the French doors could do with a lick of paint, so I’d better do the hallway too’ It proved less enjoyable than I remembered. Why was I even bothering? I realised it was because I always decorated in summer when you could see properly and having all the windows open was to be desired. Also much wine had been drunk on those heady carefree days, and no dewdrop was hanging off your nose in the unseasonably long cold winter. I grimly carried on just doing extra bits that looked shabby and as sad as me.
Greasy pawprints and unidentifiable muck was to be found on every surface. King sized fur balls under beds and cupboards. A disproportionate amount of hair appeared all over and then I understood my old sofa needed reupholstering, it didn’t look chic and Bohemian, just dirty and smelly and made the whole house a shit hole.
My weight had gone down dramatically and I found myself by the end of the month consuming just from my dry cupboard as I’d run out of funds for food. This in turn, along with the cold made my energy horribly depleted. The decorating and sewing and cleaning was suddenly becoming a mountain too high to climb.
Like many things in life you can actually do the things you thought you couldn’t, you can rise up like a phoenix from the ashes, maybe clumsily and with a lot of moaning but you can always find a way. I will now need to share my pad in Soho but I’ve done it before. This will free me to travel again, sadly not to my dream smallholding in Turkiye but maybe to go to work on a ranch or farm of some kind and grow my veg and make my art again. This I feel will be in Mexico as my preferred plan, on the Yucatan peninsula preferably.
OVER AND OUT FROM A TRAPPED OLD BIRD.
Old Bird Travels Solo! 