Beginnings, Broken Hearts and Building part 1

So having been unable to sell my car, at 7am on Sunday the 28th February I got into my car and said good-bye to Blandberra forever. I put an 8 hour MP3 CD on the stereo and the pedal to the metal. I had considered buying adult diapers so I didn't have to stop - but given I could only get 150 miles to a tank of petrol stopping was inevitable. 9 1/2 hours later I pulled up out the front of my beloved home and I can't remember ever feeling so relieved, comfortable and totally, blissfully happy.
I had made some good friends in Blandberra, and it had served a valuable purpose - time with my child. But overall I had been out of place, lonely and miserable. We had lived in a small, overcrowded and uncomfortable house that was such a dust bowl my asthma and allergies had been in overdrive the whole three years I was there. My joy at finally being home again was overwhelming. I love this house. Since 1993 it has been my home and my sanctuary. And where I live I have easy access to all the things I love - food, live music, shopping, theatre and park lands. Home, sweet home. I never want to live anywhere else (except maybe Edinburgh).
My step son answered the door wearing rubber gloves, holding a dish cloth and looking stressed. Apparently three months warning of our move had not been enough. He had been living there the past six months. I wasn't worried about the house being a mess, I was 20 once and did the student lifestyle with all it's cliches. What I wasn't prepared for was a trashed house. The restumpers had been through and the floor boards were ruined, which I had half expected. But there was rubbish in every room, piled in the hallway and in my bedroom. Door handles, light fittings, power points and cupboard doors were broken (and also, I discovered later, was the dishwasher and stove), locks on the wardrobe were smashed, the place was filthy. The backyard no longer existed, it had been replaced by an overgrown rubbish tip.
Now I lived in some dodgy places when I was in my twenties but I had never seen anything like this. Seriously, I had been to squats lived in by drug addicts that were cleaner. I did the only thing I could think of - I ran away to my neighbours place to give the step son a chance to clean.



When my dear friend S showed up I went back home and we helped to clean my room so I would at least have somewhere to sleep. I moped the floor several times to get rid of the dirt and rehung the curtains while S helped the step son get rid of the boxes and stuff that was in the wardrobe. Finally I was able to put down the camp bed that S had brought for me to use and we sat down to drink some champagne. By this stage my enthusiasm for celebrating my return had waned slightly but I remained optimistic. My daughter would be returned to me the next day and I had a week before the dog arrived and another few days after that before the truck full of stuff arrived. After that I had three days to unpack before starting work. There was a lot to do but I was confident that with the stepson's help I could get through it all. I hadn't brought anything other than personal items with me - I assumed that since the step son had been living here for six months then things like televisions, cutlery and cooking utensils would be here. But he had packed all that stuff up and I had nothing. I borrowed a spoon and a bowl from the neighbours so I could eat my cereal in the morning. I wasn't worried - if step son chose to remove his stuff from the house that was his prerogative and my mistake for assuming otherwise.
The girl and I lived on our neighbours generosity and take-away food and everyday I cleaned. But somewhere along the way I had picked up a cold and with each day I got sicker and sicker.
A few months earlier the stepson had woken to find someone rummaging through his things - the lock on the back gate had been broken by the restumpers and the back door had been left open. He complained to me about it, quite rightly, and I set about making the house secure as a priority. One night after the girl and I had gone to bed I heard the step son out the back and got up to see if all was OK. He had gone but had left the backdoor wide open and the back gate also. I was outraged. So security is only an issue when he's home? Obviously he didn't consider a woman and small child subject to the same risks he was. I locked up then went back to bed and played on my phone - had a look at facebook. There was a post from the step son "First round of bleach in my hair". That did it. My hair was a mess, my nails were a mess, but I didn't have time to get them fixed because I was getting the house in order before the truck arrived. I had spent days - alone - cleaning his rubbish up, dealing with the mountains of crap he had left in the house, the months of filth that had accumulated, fixing all the broken stuff and he was out getting his hair done???
The next day I left a list of things he needed to do taped to his bedroom door while I went out to do some shopping. When I returned he and his friends were there loading stuff into a car. As soon as I saw him my anger and hurt boiled up and I started yelling: why hadn't he picked up his rubbish? Why hadn't he made arrangements to get rid of the bags of clothes in the hallway and the mountains of rubbish in the yard? Why had he let the house get into such a state? He yelled back: he didn't have any money since he was only getting 20 hours a week work and he didn't have time to clean. It wasn't his fault. I was gobsmacked. Not only did he take my offer of a house for six months - rent free in a neighbourhood where rental was well over $450 a week - and treat it with such disrespect it amounted to vandalism but he had the audacity to throw it back in my face! Later I rang him and left a message saying he had three days to get his stuff out or I'd throw it all into the street.
That weekend my husband flew down as we were attending the Golden Plains music festival. I was quite sick by then and the weather was awful. We were determined to go regardless. We have our little caravan so knew we would at least be warm and dry.

So I spent two days, on a banana lounge in the rain, drinking red wine from a plastic glass, listening to great music. The only time I was less than happy was during the 45 minute wait for coffee in the morning.
Back in the city the husband did a mammoth effort of cleaning up his son's rubbish before heading back to Blandberra for the last time. Before I moved we had done 18 months of commuting back and forth so the trip to the airport was poignantly familiar and we were both elated that it would be for the very last time. I decided to give the step son a chance at redemption and left his stuff in his room and left more messages on his phone asking that he help me take care of all his crap. The only time we saw him that weekend was when we coincidentally got on the same tram one evening, he acted uncomfortable, exchanged pleasantries with his father then jumped off the tram as soon as he could. He made no attempt to communicate and wouldn't answer our calls. He put a post on Twitter saying "would someone please drop a house on the wicked witch of the west?" I tried to arrange meeting with him to discuss the situation but even when he agreed to talk he didn't show up.

A few days later Bela arrived. He suffers from motion sickness and since work was paying for the move we had decided to be extravagant and pay to have him flown down and delivered to the house. He didn't cope well. He had been vomiting, was stressed and wouldn't eat. It took days for his stomach to settle.


But I felt better having a rotty around the home, even a sick one, a dog always makes me feel secure and I was still nervous about the previous break-in.

The day before the truck was due to arrive a note was put in the letterbox telling us the street would be closed the next day due to the construction at the end of the street. I went berserk, rang the council and ascertained it was seven days notice required not several hours and the council would prevent the closure. My stress levels were through the roof by this stage and I was so sick I could barely get out of bed but we do what we must. The street did get blocked, in spite of council assurances, but was miraculously clear 15 minutes before the truck arrived at the end of the day. The removalists had spent the day putting 50m3 of stuff into storage then unloaded another 30m3 at the house. They were lovely guys and worked their bollocks off lugging all our crap around so I decided to forgive them days later when I started discovering the amount of boxes at the house marked "storage" and realising how much stuff was missing - presumably put into storage. I struggled to unpack and get things in order. I really just needed to go to bed and rest but the house wasn't going to set itself up.

To be continued....



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