A retirement blog about retirement being a wonderful thing. So much time to do so many things. In my case time for a bit of nostalgia and, given that Spring is here, (in February are you crazy?) a bit of DIY and spring rearranging. We don’t really buy any new stuff, we don’t need to, it’s more like moving stuff around. We generally like a bit of shabby, even at this time of year when the light shows up all the dents, bangs and chips. We might do a bit of painting, ‘a lick of paint’ to quote the Oreilly men, but nothing drastic. Usually pictures placed in a different room or different wall in same room, that kind of thing.
I do myself a disservice, I’ve fixed the Mortise lock on the front door after months of locking it with only the Yale lock. Good for breaking in if you’ve forgotten your keys but otherwise useless as a security measure. This ‘repair’ was my kind of job. I bashed the plate with a hammer and stone chisel until the bolt thingy went in. True, this was prompted (every cloud etc) by an attempted break-in. Some person, may their nuts drop off in May, tried to smash their way in through the French window / patio door at the back of the house.
They succeeded in shattering the safety glass but not the whole thing. Spoiler alert, don’t hit the glass in the middle it just bounces off but hit it near the frame. I would have hit it in the middle, this person, may his nuts etc, knew where to hit the glass. I’m guessing he’d done it before. Could he have stolen my guitars about the only valuable items in the house? If Mr robber, you’re reading this, they’re in the garage (they’re not really).
The dogs were out with Mrs Summerhouse or they would have barked. I was in and took no notice of the thump I heard while I was upstairs. Not only did I not bark, I didn’t move at least, until Mrs SH returned and, somewhat emotionally, enquired what had happened to the ——- door? We call the police (a proper one not a community whatsit), glazier and insurance people.
End result, estimate from glazier – £200+, excess on insurance, £200 with an increase in premiums. Laugh? I nearly went to Bradford. Anyway we gave up on the insurance, as you do, asked the glazier to come anyway. Job done, well no, because he can’t match the double-glazing unit. Can we contact the guy who built it? Err, no, but we will contact our son in OZ to give us the contact details of his mate who did the job. If it can be complicated it will be, and it is.
But that wasn’t what I was going to tell you about. The pictures above with this mini blog are probably 50 years and two people apart. One is a fairly recent piece of art from Mrs SH and the other is a painting (it’s Dylan Thomas by the way) created at art-college, 50 years ago. Hence the nostalgia. Can you guess which artist goes with which art work? I came across the Dylan image (taken as a slide, remember those?) liked it, and, as chance would have it, sent it to a company that send me at least one email a week about getting your images put on to canvas.
It’s the second one I’ve sent them in recent weeks. They’re not very expensive, they have special offers that last all year. True the image didn’t quite fit their size templates but what the heck. I persuaded myself that the original concept, whatever it may have been, didn’t really matter so long as it looked nice. My younger, art student, self would have been appalled at this betrayal of my cultural principles.
So, so far, the usual curate’s egg of a week. We like our ‘new’ art and I’ve fixed the lock so the front of the house is a bit more secure. There’s an additional question about letter box or post box but that will have to keep. My chum who walks his dogs in the park has offered to buy and fit a security camera for the back of the house. He told me he’d ordered it, so that should happen. Stuff we should have done years ago I suppose.
This was meant to be a blog about nostalgia and it somehow has turned into a ‘writing blog as therapy’ exercise. And to think the policeman offered us victim support. When we said we didn’t think that was necessary, he said, I thought that’s what you’d say. Now what exactly did he mean by that, I wonder?
OK not the usual 1000 words, more like the recommended 700 (800+ now). And also, bear in mind, when I started out with this Friday blog it was only going to be a couple of sentences to explain the art work above but somehow it’s grown like Topsy. That’s what happens when you’re retired, time just expands infinitesimally.