Saturday, October 4 08
Mrs Bennet shot out of her noisy, cluttered house into the plush, immaculate courtesy car on the drive and sank into its luxurious leather seat. She rested her head on the steering wheel and resisted the urge to press the horn very loudly. This was not good. She knew it was going to be tough, but living in a lounge with six other bodies for hours on end, was doing her head in. The Sat Nav didn't work so she couldn't programme it to take her off to some exotic place, so instead she sat motionless, allowing the silence to wash over her in calming waves. It took at least 10 minutes for it to have any effect. She was so worked up. Never in her life had she felt so stressed. She stared straight ahead at the empty garage. Change was afoot, she knew that, but it didn't take away the immediate problem. There was just nowhere to get a minute's peace. She so related to Jill Murphy's Large Family stories where Mother Elephant couldn't even have a bath without her children following her.
She'd just returned from doing the weekly shop. But she'd bought too many frozen items and had forgotten the garage's chest freezer was now sitting on the front lawn waiting to be collected. The garage was being pulled down within days. The tiny kitchen freezer desperately needed defrosting and wouldn't let Mrs Bennet give it any more offerings. Instead it gave her an offering - several shards of ice which fell on the floor and formed a puddle around the unpacked shopping. Meanwhile, one by one little Bennets appeared, expecting her to respond immediately to their requests.
Miss Naomi Bennet wanted her mother to find oil pastels for an important picture she intended to draw; Miss Emily Bennet needed Mrs Bennet to find two pairs of baby socks for her dolls the twins no longer used and Miss Megan suddenly announced that she had to have a blanket for her doll because it needed a nap. And only Mummy was allowed to fetch it. Miss Kezia Bennet was shaking the milk out of its bottle to create a white mottled effect on the lounge carpet and Miss Rosie Bennet was pulling anything and everything she could out of every drawer she could find. She had also perfected her throwing technique and was particularly good at hurling playdough at her poor mother.
Mrs Bennet was also struggling under a mound of washing, work commissions which had tight deadlines and sleepless nights due to wakeful twins. She didn't have enough arms, hours or space. But for now, this plush brand new car, which she knew would have to go back in a couple of days, was her life saver. She listened to a track which included the lyric, "I'm gonna fly, no one knows where, I'm gonna fly, soaring through the air...."
She looked up through the sun roof and watched an aeroplane overhead leave its vapour trail behind. "One day I'll fly," she thought. Just another six months and she'd have a house to spread her wings in and a shed to fly to when she needed it.
"I just might need something stronger than Mr Latte to help me get there," she decided, "mmmm I think Mr Champagne would do very well."
Showing posts with label building Pemberley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label building Pemberley. Show all posts
Monday, 6 October 2008
Sunday, 14 September 2008
The Clothes Sculpture
Friday, September 12 08
A domino effect took place when anything moved in the Bennet household. It brought frustrations similar to those caught up in a long complicated house chain, who were desperate to move and fed up with the hold-ups along the way. As the eldest Bennet daughter was only eight, potential Darcys, even if they were high pocket money earners, weren’t in a financial position to provide a mansion for her. So it fell on the shoulders of Mr and Mrs Bennet.
As the conservatory was being dismantled in the coming week or two, it therefore had to be emptied. In order to do that, room had to be made in the lounge. But in order to do that, key furniture items needed to be moved into storage. And in order to do that, they first had to be relieved from their current job as coat, toy and stuff hider.
Mrs Bennet had been informed on the Tuesday by her husband that these said objects were being moved out of the house on Saturday the 13th. As she was preparing herself for her daughter's first day at school, her mind wasn't on the job. It hadn't helped her nerves or those of Miss Megan Bennet that Mr Bennet flew off to Madrid directly after Miss Bennet had made her sobbing entry into the education system.
"You're really not going out there for work at all are you Mr Bennet? You're going to buy us a house in Spain so we can get some sun or perhaps you're making a drastic escape from the hormones?" she'd asked her husband, who smiled in reply.
So here she was, two days later, awaiting his return, with the lounge literally pulled inside out. The sofa chair hid a multitude of sins - namely 34 coats, four fleece jackets, seven jumpers, three knitted cardigans, a few books, a family of dead spiders, a shoe belonging to a twin and a liquorice sweet which had leaked its black tar over any arms and hoods within its reach.
As Mrs Bennet pulled the chair away, she was expecting the coats to avalanche on top of her. They didn't. Instead they were so moulded into the wall, they formed an impressive clothes sculpture, worthy of the Tate Gallery. Mr Bennet walked in fresh from the land of El Greco and Diego Velázquez to find Mrs Bennet taking a photo of the wall.
"Hello my dear Mr B, lovely to see you. Now what you see in front of you is a masterpiece you'll find nowhere else in the world," she informed him.
"No, you're quite right. There's the jacket I haven't seen for months!" remarked Mr Bennet.
"As it obviously doesn't need the chair to keep it up, I thought it could stay where it is."
"Or failing that, I could always put it on EBay and see how much we get for it!"
With a family of spiders included in the price, Mrs Bennet thought it would prove quite a bargain.
A domino effect took place when anything moved in the Bennet household. It brought frustrations similar to those caught up in a long complicated house chain, who were desperate to move and fed up with the hold-ups along the way. As the eldest Bennet daughter was only eight, potential Darcys, even if they were high pocket money earners, weren’t in a financial position to provide a mansion for her. So it fell on the shoulders of Mr and Mrs Bennet.
As the conservatory was being dismantled in the coming week or two, it therefore had to be emptied. In order to do that, room had to be made in the lounge. But in order to do that, key furniture items needed to be moved into storage. And in order to do that, they first had to be relieved from their current job as coat, toy and stuff hider.
Mrs Bennet had been informed on the Tuesday by her husband that these said objects were being moved out of the house on Saturday the 13th. As she was preparing herself for her daughter's first day at school, her mind wasn't on the job. It hadn't helped her nerves or those of Miss Megan Bennet that Mr Bennet flew off to Madrid directly after Miss Bennet had made her sobbing entry into the education system.
"You're really not going out there for work at all are you Mr Bennet? You're going to buy us a house in Spain so we can get some sun or perhaps you're making a drastic escape from the hormones?" she'd asked her husband, who smiled in reply.
So here she was, two days later, awaiting his return, with the lounge literally pulled inside out. The sofa chair hid a multitude of sins - namely 34 coats, four fleece jackets, seven jumpers, three knitted cardigans, a few books, a family of dead spiders, a shoe belonging to a twin and a liquorice sweet which had leaked its black tar over any arms and hoods within its reach.
As Mrs Bennet pulled the chair away, she was expecting the coats to avalanche on top of her. They didn't. Instead they were so moulded into the wall, they formed an impressive clothes sculpture, worthy of the Tate Gallery. Mr Bennet walked in fresh from the land of El Greco and Diego Velázquez to find Mrs Bennet taking a photo of the wall.
"Hello my dear Mr B, lovely to see you. Now what you see in front of you is a masterpiece you'll find nowhere else in the world," she informed him.
"No, you're quite right. There's the jacket I haven't seen for months!" remarked Mr Bennet.
"As it obviously doesn't need the chair to keep it up, I thought it could stay where it is."
"Or failing that, I could always put it on EBay and see how much we get for it!"
With a family of spiders included in the price, Mrs Bennet thought it would prove quite a bargain.
Saturday, 13 September 2008
Building Pemberley - the preamble
Building Pemberley
Setting the scene.......
“My dear Mr Bennet, if you think I’m going to live through major building work with five small children you’re going to have to think again. It’s all right for you, you’ll be off to work and I’ll have to cope with builders, babies, lots of mess and no space," Mrs Bennet, with her cheeks burning, paused for breath.
“Do you want a wife at the end of it? Because the only way I’m going to live through the building of Pemberley is by moving out!”
And that was that. Mrs Bennet wasn’t going to budge. She had sat cross-legged on the lounge sofa and glared at her husband, daring him to argue back. Mr Bennet, unaccustomed to such an outburst from the mother of his children, was stunned and realised he had said the wrong thing.
Mrs Bennet hadn’t intended to come out with such a torrent of words, but she had been so fed up with living in limbo, and trying to sell the house for 15 months on a non-selling market, the vision of babies eating dust, had caused her emotional kettle to boil. This outburst had taken place in April, a week after plans to change and convert their three bedroom home into a bite-size Pemberley (probably the size of Mr Darcy’s shed), had been approved.
The wife’s stubbornness (or was it sense?) had put plan A into place. The Bennets would move out and rent for six months. Co-incidentally a couple, who lived on the school doorstep, were off exploring the world for half the year, and needed tenants. But at the final hour, as the builders’ quotes came in, the Bennets were debating in the lounge, facing up to the reality that the credit crunch meant building materials and costs were far higher than originally hoped. Although Mrs Bennet was sitting cross-legged in the same spot as her April word shower, she realised with Plan B now in place, her sanity wasn’t going to be saved after all and she silently relented. How she would live through it, she didn’t know, but if she could carry twins against the odds, she decided she could and would survive this next obstacle.
“Look, if it comes to a choice of doing the work or not doing the work, then I’m prepared to stay,” Mrs Bennet whispered reluctantly, her heart sinking as she did so.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to put up with it,” Mr Bennet replied. “I didn’t want you to have to go through that, but it looks as if we don’t have much choice,” he replied, looking intently at his wad of paperwork.
In her mind’s eye, Mrs Bennet pictured two dust-covered headed one-year-olds toddling precariously gazing longingly at a feast of builder’s tools. She was thinking the worse. Despite this, her fighting spirit kicked in and if she had to cope with five children and a building site, then she would.
“This is not life-threatening. This is life-challenging,” she told herself. It would prove to be an interesting one, but she vowed to make it an adventure.
What she would gain would be her own Pemberley. In the meantime seven of them would be living in a lounge and two bedrooms, minus its conservatory, kitchen, garage, garden and third bedroom.
She made a vow – to get out as much as possible and to live in a café for six months with an escape novel and Mr Latte.
Setting the scene.......
“My dear Mr Bennet, if you think I’m going to live through major building work with five small children you’re going to have to think again. It’s all right for you, you’ll be off to work and I’ll have to cope with builders, babies, lots of mess and no space," Mrs Bennet, with her cheeks burning, paused for breath.
“Do you want a wife at the end of it? Because the only way I’m going to live through the building of Pemberley is by moving out!”
And that was that. Mrs Bennet wasn’t going to budge. She had sat cross-legged on the lounge sofa and glared at her husband, daring him to argue back. Mr Bennet, unaccustomed to such an outburst from the mother of his children, was stunned and realised he had said the wrong thing.
Mrs Bennet hadn’t intended to come out with such a torrent of words, but she had been so fed up with living in limbo, and trying to sell the house for 15 months on a non-selling market, the vision of babies eating dust, had caused her emotional kettle to boil. This outburst had taken place in April, a week after plans to change and convert their three bedroom home into a bite-size Pemberley (probably the size of Mr Darcy’s shed), had been approved.
The wife’s stubbornness (or was it sense?) had put plan A into place. The Bennets would move out and rent for six months. Co-incidentally a couple, who lived on the school doorstep, were off exploring the world for half the year, and needed tenants. But at the final hour, as the builders’ quotes came in, the Bennets were debating in the lounge, facing up to the reality that the credit crunch meant building materials and costs were far higher than originally hoped. Although Mrs Bennet was sitting cross-legged in the same spot as her April word shower, she realised with Plan B now in place, her sanity wasn’t going to be saved after all and she silently relented. How she would live through it, she didn’t know, but if she could carry twins against the odds, she decided she could and would survive this next obstacle.
“Look, if it comes to a choice of doing the work or not doing the work, then I’m prepared to stay,” Mrs Bennet whispered reluctantly, her heart sinking as she did so.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to put up with it,” Mr Bennet replied. “I didn’t want you to have to go through that, but it looks as if we don’t have much choice,” he replied, looking intently at his wad of paperwork.
In her mind’s eye, Mrs Bennet pictured two dust-covered headed one-year-olds toddling precariously gazing longingly at a feast of builder’s tools. She was thinking the worse. Despite this, her fighting spirit kicked in and if she had to cope with five children and a building site, then she would.
“This is not life-threatening. This is life-challenging,” she told herself. It would prove to be an interesting one, but she vowed to make it an adventure.
What she would gain would be her own Pemberley. In the meantime seven of them would be living in a lounge and two bedrooms, minus its conservatory, kitchen, garage, garden and third bedroom.
She made a vow – to get out as much as possible and to live in a café for six months with an escape novel and Mr Latte.
Sunday, 31 August 2008
Look great, feel great - as long as you're not a mouse!
Sunday, August 31 08
“Have you got a minute? I want to show you something,” shouted Mr Bennet from the vicinity of the marital bed.
Mrs Bennet, not being used to such offers in the middle of the day, ran back upstairs. Over the sea of boxes, dust and clothes, she could just make out her husband’s outline, bent over something.
“You know you’ve been complaining about a smell on your side of the bed?"
"Mmm," she mumbled, not sure where the conversation was going.
"Well it isn’t gone off milk.”
“Do I want to know what’s coming next?” she asked.
“Probably not but I’m going to tell you anyway. It’s a dead mouse.”
Her stomach turned. There lying next to a romantic novel and a book called “Look Great, Feel Great,” was the source of the offending aroma. It didn’t look great, feel great and it certainly didn’t smell great either. It obviously hadn’t managed to read any tips on love either. It had no sexual companion, died alone and thankfully hadn’t followed the Bennet's example on the production front.
“At least it hasn’t got any babies,” remarked Mr Bennet, reading his wife's mind, as he fished the mouse out of the box.
This was not a good start to the preamble of building Pemberley. If Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy could have an impressive country estate, the modern Miss Bennets could at least have a slice of it. With six women in the house, Mr Bennet did agree that perhaps another bathroom might be a sensible idea. The builders were moving in within five weeks, so Mr and Mrs Bennet were on the move. They couldn’t afford to move out as first promised (it had been the only condition Mrs Bennet had set in stone) so there was no alternative but to move out of the bedroom into the lounge. Without a third bedroom, a garage, conservatory, probably a kitchen and a safe garden, the already cramped house was about to get smaller, commonly known as short-term pain for long-term gain. Mrs Bennet wasn’t complaining, well not outwardly anyway. It was just that there was a huge list to tick off before the builder had a chance of even starting work.
“Come on, think of it as a chance to dejunk and declutter. Everyone tells me how liberating that is. I’ll see whether they’re telling the truth,” Mrs Bennet told herself.
One mouse and one awful smell less, she could almost believe them.
“Have you got a minute? I want to show you something,” shouted Mr Bennet from the vicinity of the marital bed.
Mrs Bennet, not being used to such offers in the middle of the day, ran back upstairs. Over the sea of boxes, dust and clothes, she could just make out her husband’s outline, bent over something.
“You know you’ve been complaining about a smell on your side of the bed?"
"Mmm," she mumbled, not sure where the conversation was going.
"Well it isn’t gone off milk.”
“Do I want to know what’s coming next?” she asked.
“Probably not but I’m going to tell you anyway. It’s a dead mouse.”
Her stomach turned. There lying next to a romantic novel and a book called “Look Great, Feel Great,” was the source of the offending aroma. It didn’t look great, feel great and it certainly didn’t smell great either. It obviously hadn’t managed to read any tips on love either. It had no sexual companion, died alone and thankfully hadn’t followed the Bennet's example on the production front.
“At least it hasn’t got any babies,” remarked Mr Bennet, reading his wife's mind, as he fished the mouse out of the box.
This was not a good start to the preamble of building Pemberley. If Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy could have an impressive country estate, the modern Miss Bennets could at least have a slice of it. With six women in the house, Mr Bennet did agree that perhaps another bathroom might be a sensible idea. The builders were moving in within five weeks, so Mr and Mrs Bennet were on the move. They couldn’t afford to move out as first promised (it had been the only condition Mrs Bennet had set in stone) so there was no alternative but to move out of the bedroom into the lounge. Without a third bedroom, a garage, conservatory, probably a kitchen and a safe garden, the already cramped house was about to get smaller, commonly known as short-term pain for long-term gain. Mrs Bennet wasn’t complaining, well not outwardly anyway. It was just that there was a huge list to tick off before the builder had a chance of even starting work.
“Come on, think of it as a chance to dejunk and declutter. Everyone tells me how liberating that is. I’ll see whether they’re telling the truth,” Mrs Bennet told herself.
One mouse and one awful smell less, she could almost believe them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
