Decluttering and Catching Up.

March 13, 2023

The house sale seems to be going through but it’s all gone very quiet, both in France and with the solicitors here. I’m hoping that lots of work is going on in the background, but you never know. It is difficult to be excited about it, I’ll just have to settle for cautiously optimistic.

Decluttering has started in earnest. This month is the last month that I shall do the accounts for SLB Building Services Ltd—the end of an era. Files that were emptied and put into the skip were soon snapped up. In fact, the skip is being scavenged as quickly as we can fill it.

I have cleared the loft space, opened all the boxes, checked what’s in them and closed them up again. There are some things that will just have to be carried with me, wherever I go.

The first of the small items to be sold have been taken to Willingham Auctions and the furniture that’s not going to France, will be going next month. Then, as soon as a date is set, the real packing will begin. I plan to start with the manageable things first: the doll's house furniture and all my miniature cups and saucers—much more enjoyable than life size items.

The garden looked rather neglected when I got back after three months in France. Not that I would have done an awful lot in those three months had I been here but it looks a lot happier for having all the dead stuff removed. The bulbs are coming up through the earth, the allium, narcissi, crocus... It's all starting to come back to life.

It was True Stories Told Live at the NCI Club, Cambridge on Wednesday. I stood up in front of what was a surprisingly large audience— considering the appalling weather outside— and told a story from my time as a GP in Sheffield. It went down well and, as my story was on first, I was able to sit and enjoy all the other stories, which were, as ever, varied, fascinating and entertaining. It certainly beats a night in front of Netflix.

A walk was arranged with three of my fellow pilgrims from the Camino last year. This time we were heading towards a village pub instead of the magnificent cathedral of Santiago de Compostela but it was lovely to be in step again with people who had walked with me on the Camino.

What had been planned as an early spring walk, turned into a midwinter ramble and after a snowy drive along the A10, the forecast for the day varied between drizzle and heavy rain. But nothing daunted and appropriately attired, we met in Pearce's farm shop at Puckeridge, for the start of the walk.

A walk past daffodils, that were bravely trying to stand up and look cheerful, through a muddy field—the site of a Roman settlement—took us to Braughing, where we paused to look around the church and glance at Matthew Wall's grave. A sobering story: his first funeral had been interrupted when the pall bearers slipped on leaves, dropped his coffin and he woke up! He went on to live another 24 years...

We stopped for lunch at The Star in Standon and, it being National Pie Week, it would have been rude not to eat a pie.

Leaving the pub we went across the road to the church, and admired Ralph Sadler's tomb. He featured heavily in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall series, books that I feel I ought to read.

It was just a short hop in the pouring rain back to Puckeridge pausing for tea and chocolate cake in the tea shop. A day of exercise, information and sustenance, perfect.

The week ended with lunch in The Red Lion at Evenley with Janice and Nick, my wonderful sister and brother-in-law. It was the last place that we had lunch together before I left for France last November. I do like symmetry and it made the perfect place to eat and catch up.

My reading over the last couple of weeks has been books off my shelf from my past about the past. I have indulged myself in Taverner's Place and Parson Harding's Daughter, written in the 1980's by Joanna Trollope under the pseudonym of Caroline Harvey.