Lists and mysteries

January has passed in a flurry of lists - things-to-do, things to buy, people to contact, things to dispose of, things to have valued. In fact, January seemed to go on much too long and I'm glad February has come at last - might we now get rid of the wet weather and flooding worries?

Ebay has come up trumps - we have now got stairs without a stairlift, a completely empty room where an adjustable bed once sat, and H has said good-bye to a pair of chairs and replaced them with a rather smart chesterfield club chair in his study - self-interest here, if his study is more inviting he might actually use it instead of having piles of books on every surface in the sitting-room.  Floor tiles have been bought for the hall and hopefully a builder will come and put them down in a week or so, and we might have come to some agreement about re-fitting the bathroom that was M's and sorting out the shower that leaks intermittently onto the hall ceiling.


Everything to do with Probate seems to be circular - you fill in a form and they send you another form and you fill in all the same info again (they being banks, building societies, HMRC etc)  Valuations seem to take forever and again require lots of pointless information, most of which can't be provided - who knows what the purchase price of something bought in 1941 might have been and is it really a great deal of help to know when it will stand no relation to today's prices?
 Then there are the little mysteries - whose is the gold signet ring found in M's jewellery box?  H is certain his father never possessed one, but thinks it might have been his uncle's.  And the biggest mystery of all; who wrote the novel obviously typed by M and kept in typescript but equally obviously not written by her. The corrections are in a totally different hand (not that M would have brooked corrections in anything she'd written), the style so far from anything M might have conceived, and the characters exist in a world that M would have had no knowledge of.  Apart from the fact that it's called 'Play the Echo' must have been typed before electric typewriters on flimsy typing paper but is held together with plastic treasury tags, and is set in the twenties and thirties, and was more probably written by a woman, there's nothing to say who might have written it.

Miss F is walking and has acquired her first shoes - bright cerise pink with pink gingham bows, size 2G. She is very pleased with them.  She can actually say quite a lot of words including Grandpa, but prefers to point and nod and make approving or disapproving mms.  Talking is obviously unnecessary when everyone completely understands what one means, and I completely understand what's being said.

Hiding is great fun, especially when everyone pretends they don't know where you are!
We've seen rather a lot of her lately as Mummy has been very busy and there have been car problems as well so it's been easier to spend time at Granny and Grandpa's. In consequence, Granny and Grandpa have been kept busy too!

So, now we're in February and hoping to have some more exciting days which don't involve endless pouring over lists and spending time on the phone or the computer but more time out and about.  I don't think we're going to solve any of the mysteries though, there's no one left to ask.

Just been listening to the radio adaptation of Barchester Towers (Radio Four).  I don't think it will surpass the excellent television adaptation of the 1980's starring Nigel Hawthorn, Alan Rickman and Donald Pleasance and an excellent supporting cast - well worth tracking down on DVD.  We still have a VHS version which is just about watchable.  H is a Trollope fan so it's had very frequent use - we'll have to upgrade before it falls apart or fades away!

Hope you all had a good start to the year.