Eyrie……

So the leaves on the lawn have created a damp carpet of bronze.
Jim and I have been changing the cottage round, and have trodden thousands of wet leaves into the soft lawn. Apparently it’s been the wettest year since 1766. I have managed not to slip on the beech leaves. Walking gingerly with bags and boxes and piles of stuff. My broken toe still sore.
Intense work.
Intense pleasure.
Intensely unsettling.
Jim has gone into the studio ‘Le Shed’, and I have moved into the attic,
The attic was B’s home for years but since she now only visits I was told to reclaim the room.

So I have reclaimed the room but not after buckets of tears and letting go.
Boxes and boxes and boxes of books have gone to the library and every charity shop in Kent.
Bags and bags and bags of CD’s have gone to every outlet possible.
Clothes and shoes. Junk and crystal are now resplendent in the windows of the charity stores of East Sussex.
As I write I am up in the air. My eyrie. Jim has moved the bookshelves from the studio into here, although only a few handpicked books remain. We hired two men, Bob and his mate, and paid them to carry the table from the end of the garden up two flights of stairs.
It has taken three weeks to get some sort of order in the house.
I bought two chairs, for a lot of money, that are soft and the perfect height to slide under the table. Soft under my butt, but just the right height for me to type as I am doing now. I can hit them keys with just the right amount of bounce.
Pictures have been stored. Photographs put away. Clothes recycled.
There is space. There is air. The movement in the cottage is palpable. Still cannot believe I have got rid of so many books, but I am told not to define myself by orange Penguin paperbacks from the 60’s.
Even the plants have been moved to different places. I have my mother’s money plant on a little table in the eyrie. Jim has kept the mother-in-laws tongue on his window sill in Le Shed.
His space looks like a blokes – all metal and technological with guitars and mixing desks and boxes of instruments. Not to mention his computers.
My room is soft and wooden with mirrors and cushions.
All this is the result of a space clearance we had with Davina Mackail. She came, she saw and she conquered my fears. Out with the old and in with the future. Reclaim your life she said as she squealed with delight when she saw the sun shining in through the attic windows.
Clear and get rid of old knowledge she said, make room for the quantum shift that is bound to take place.
So after nearly a month of upheaval we are starting to get back to a new normal.
Yesterday I spread the last of my mothers ashes on three plants that were bought for her.
A ‘magic dragon’ from us, a rosebush from a dear friend and Rosemary, for remembrance, from a family that loved her.
Today I interviewed Joanne Harris, a delightful woman, whose writing is as rich as a fruit cake; Then I went to see ‘Loserville’ at the Garrick Theatre.
I finally arrived home by 11.00 o’clock.
Ate left over shepherds pie, called my girlfriend in New York to talk about Obama’s victory, and the weather they are now in the middle of a snowstorm.
I am in the middle of a storm of my own so you’ll forgive me if I go down stairs and slide into bed next to my patient husband.
I’ll be back……