On Tuesday morning I ran a little late for work. Not entirely unusual for me as I’m usually just trying to fit a few hundred jobs in between the boys leaving the house to catch the bus and getting myself ready to get in the car for work. I have just under an hour. Bath, make sandwiches, pack work kit, ‘mug scoop’ from teenagers’ bedrooms, load dishwasher, ‘clothes scoop’ from teenagers’ bedrooms, then put on washing machine, sort a couple of bills and write birthday card perhaps….maybe dash off a few quick emails and take a fleeting glance at my last blog post to see if there are any comments. Good thing my hair dries OK naturally. I certainly don’t have time for the hair dryer.
Anyway, you get the picture. And on Tuesday I had already made the sandwiches, put my work kit by the door, remembered to pack my recharged work mobile, and felt pretty much on top of things, when I realised I hadn’t wiped down the kitchen or swept the floor.
A thought dashed through my head.
“I bet T comes today.”
I have been waiting for a little while for a builder to come and do a few small jobs. As a trusted friend and regular attendee over the years he has a key, lets himself in and just gets on with it. Marvellous. I had been on the point of ringing him up about a finer detail, but had instead decided to leave a note in the garage where I knew he’d see it. A phone call may have looked as though I was hassling, or nagging. Never a good idea. .
Work was pretty busy in the morning, but unusually by 3:30pm I had finished my allocated visits and came home to do some paperwork. T’s van was in the driveway.
“I knew it,” I thought, “The kitchen’s a tip and I get visitors!”
At the same time I was of course completely delighted that he had come to sort out the roof tiles and a small leak.
Whilst he was there he also fixed a light fitting that I’d had been planning to phone an electrician about – and put up my swift nest boxes.
“Anything else I can do, while I’m here?”
I couldn’t think of any more jobs so we had time to have a cup of tea outside in the sun, reminiscing with T’s labourer about the time he fell through my ceiling. But that’s another story.
I am delighted to have the swift boxes up. They are cumbersome items, quite heavy and large, made from white recycled plastic and they need to be sited high up on the house in a roughly northerly direction… that is out of direct sunlight and in a place that has a free area of airspace in front of it. (This place turns out to be on my right as I type, on a wall I can view from the office window, which is great: if I ever have nesting swifts, I may actually be able to see them, flitting in and out!) You can see the ones I chose here: called ‘Fulcris’
http://www.londons-swifts.org.uk/Shopping!.htm
I had contemplated going up the ladder myself, but thought better of it. Cyclomaniac has a very understandable reluctance to go up a ladder since he fell from one about 14 years ago, and is reluctant to let me go up one as he can’t really bear to watch.
As you may know swifts are in danger, with (excuse the pun) swiftly declining numbers, largely due they think to loss of habitat. They like to nest in small crevices in old buildings, and as old buildings are gentrified and insulated and modernised all these crevices are lost. I knew that there are already swifts in our village: some in old buildings with old crevices and some in nest boxes. A new ideal way to encourage them is this: when you have building work done install an internal next box, with a small opening such as this: Ibstock Brick: and Schweler bricks.
http://www.londons-swifts.org.uk/Shopping!.htm
Once the nest boxes are installed attracting the birds is the next thing. Apparently the fledglings from the nests this year investigate for future nesting sites for their return from foreign parts the following year – and to attract them it is advisable to play swift song from a CD with a mike hanging out of the nearest window. I have probably missed this year’s fledglings, but this is what I hope to do next year. Once a nest site is found the birds return year after year.
If you are interested here another link: http://www.swift-conservation.org/
Boadicea's Chariot 
There are generations of them returning annually to a ferry which plies between two of the big Danish islands. Amazing, eh?
Fascinating Pseu. In my house in Cyprus I have a Swallows’ nest under the eaves and the swallows come back every year, fix it up and raise a brood 🙂
I don’t have swallows nests, though my neighbour does in her stables… but I do have house martins. They are all pretty fascinating.
So the birds nest on a moving target, Janus? Incredible!
Why on earth are you doing all these jobs by yourself?
Get the lazy little swine organised, can’t they stack and run a dishwasher or a washing machine?
All males should be taught the housewifely arts as a defence from marrying useless women. The boy always used to complain bitterly at the inability of girls he knew to cook, wash, iron and have sex satisfactorily. He reckoned it was cheaper to go to a brothel than take up with them, actually he was rather funny on the subject being a cynical little bastard just like his old ma.
Put it like this he had white carpets wall to wall with oriental rugs in his flat and refused to allow most people of either sex in the door, said they were dirty!
He was the best cleaner I ever had, I used to pay him to service my holiday cottages in Wales.
Teach yours now whilst they are young, especially how to iron a formal cotton shirt and make them help out. You’ll be an old woman before your time otherwise, worn out and with very little thanks!
What a good idea, Nym. I hope the swifts find these; these birds are wonderful to watch.
Hi, Pseu.
A lovely post and a superb snapshot of your life which I thank you for sharing with us.
I suppose that CO could be right and that you’re doing it all wrong but I personally don’t think you are. You seem to be enjoying it all and you are, in my opinion, building memories that will last for the rest of your life, just as CO’s memories of the Boy will always last for her. I am absolutely certain that your brood will always treasure their memories of you.
The important thing in life, of course, is to never get your knickers in a twist about anything at all and to do what you want to do, without paying too much attention to what other people say you should be doing instead.
I could, of course, be wrong.
JM it is not a matter of doing it all wrong at all. In fact it is a matter of being far too good a mother and doing it all, to their detriment as functioning adults.
Too many men get married just to be looked after with ‘benefits’, the worst reason in the world to get married. One’s own generation were beyond redemption, which is again the best reason to make sure one’s sons are not equally crippled.
When I worked I always had a cleaner/housekeeper as a matter of principle, otherwise it is a matter of keeping a dog and barking oneself hoarse, no way! I never paid pocket money, you want money you work, mine did, from the age of ten. It is all a matter of self respect, self reliance and competency.
So many children get to University and are incapable of looking after themselves because they cannot function in the domestic sphere. Many become grievously unstuck because of it.
CO, is there a Nobel Prize for Uncompromising Matriarchy?
Bring back National Service. It used to make men out of little girls. 🙂
Good luck with the swifts – we don’t have too many up here in the frozen north. When I do see them it is a real pleasure.
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Apparently swifts leave as soon as they have bred… in August maybe, though Northern Sifts arrive later so they leave later too