I've just risen for the second time at 8.30am. There's one or two magazines lying around, last night's fish supper wrappers are still in the kitchen, and the dishes not yet washed. The bed is unmade, I've not put yesterday's underwear into the laundry basket yet. I've had a couple of tunnocks teacakes and some ice cream for breakfast; and it's great - I have my life back, MY life...
Perhaps I should add that my mother has been and made her visit. This was her holiday, apparently - the first time away from home in nearly three years. Now, don't get me wrong, I was pleased to be able to offer her the facility - I did say she could come and stay now and again, even before I moved. But it's the way she takes over my life that gets to me - she really never ceases to surprise me in that respect, coming up with yet more and more ways of assuming responsibility for decisions, lifestyle choices and areas of my life that I would never normally consider any particular need to protect!
We only actually fell out once during the week - and naturally enough, it was about bathroom mats - that I neither felt I needed nor particularly wanted and that we'd been trudging round most of Edinburgh looking for in a non-standard size! She's mentioned before she got here she might buy me a new shower curtain and, as the old one was a bit grubby I thought, fair enough, it won't cost mega bucks, so I'll let you; but you see, having got a nice new blue shower curtain (top of the range and from Jenners no less - all for my humble little tenement flat), we needed blue bathroom mats to match (and later, a blue handtowel, and blue flannels)...
I mean, thinking it through, perhaps I was being unreasonable. I only live here and pay the rent after all - so why should I expect the right to have any say in the matter?
So the upshot is that now - apparently - it all looks much better for 'folk' walking in and seeing. I've yet to work out who these folk will be, given that 95% of the time I'm here all alone and hardly ever have visitors, but hey - instead of my nice thick, generously piled brick red mats that did their jobs more than adequately, we can now all enjoy these little cold blue cololured stepping stones and watch the pattern of water dripping from us all over the underlying carpet - which of course I have no way of drying out. Totally impractical - but apparently, it looks nicer...
On Wednesday, my uncle came to visit. I was really pleased about this as I don't see him very often, and he'd not been before. She went to great lengths to discourage the visit, because she didn't want him here. Well, as I say, I only live here and I am only the nephew that he was brought up with who is therefore more like a brother - so why should I have any say? Yet, despite this, she was full of nothing but praise and sympathy for him afterwards...
Anyway, I went to meet him at the station, which gave us a chance for a chat - well, a moan actually. He agrees with me about her habit of taking over your life, and not for the first time, told me how much he hates his fortnightly Sunday afternoon visits to her as she seems to actually think she has a right to this portion of his life - and a right to spend the entire time moaning to him about other people he also has a relationship with, just as she does with me! "It just doesn't seem to occur to her at all", he says, "that other people might actually have a life of their own, that doesn't revolve around her."
For me, the best illustration of this, of the week and possibly of the year - is that the night after she'd received the (admittedly very upsetting) news that her neighbour had died - she had only two hours of very interrupted sleep - while even his widow managed four hours! As I told my very unsurprised uncle, it seemed that after that, she was just itching to get home so she could muscle in on that family's grief - which is just outrageous. If somebody did that to a member of our family, she'd be the first to rant on about how outrageous it was.
Please forgive me for this rant - I just need to let off steam!
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