How is it ever possible to let Chocolate go out of date?

Saturday 7th September 2013

Out of date chocolate, toothpicks and lots more fivers..

Now I am sure I must be adopted.  Today, in the old stick's bedroom I found a large box of Thorntons chocolates out of date in 2010.  How is that even possible?  How can any sane person ever leave a box of chocolates unopened for more than a week, let alone two years?  In my house this type of behaviour is unheard of.  I believe it has to be a sign of a sick mind.

Today my truly wonderful mate Jackie and her fantastic husband Mark had offered to come down from Swindon to help at base camp.  I had put an order in to him upstairs to please keep the weather dry and I would try to be a nice daughter later on.  The forecast was rain and it had been raining in the night.  I am not able to do anything if it is raining as I cannot go in the house.  Everything has to be taken outside to sort due to the dust. Currently only about 20% of it comes back in.  If the weather is wet sorting is impossible.  So far I think I must have an angel looking after me because the weather has been dry each time I have been there and as I have been there from five to seven hours every day for the past few weeks I feel blessed. (Could this be a special angel?)  I arrived at the mountain at 8.30 for an early start.  The social worker had specified that there must be a space clear around the bed for the health visitor to get in and put the brace on so this is where we decided to start.  A reminder the bed looked like the picture below,  the floor has not been visible in about the past 15 or 20 years.

There was no chance for anyone to get near to the bed. With three magic IKEA bags five of us just filled the bags and carried them downstairs, emptied them on a groundsheet and went back in with the empty bags.  I sat on the lawn - (it was freezing cold today) and sorted.  The stuff was so dusty I had to wear an industrial dust mask outside on the lawn.  Horrible horrible thick balls of dust.  The nasty musty/dusty smell which I have come to associate with that house was very strong.  I spent all day sneezing and wheezing.  My eyes were itching and watering and I was a mess.  I had a very relaxing time sorting on the lawn and chatting with Jackie.  We had a lovely catch up during the hours we were sat there.

It was amazing to see what turned up today.  There were all of his travel itinerary documents from years back and lots of leaflets and postcards including seven postcards of Benidorm Palace (I believe they were free as there was no room on the back to write on them and he had seven the same).  Lots and lots of paper napkins and tissues from everywhere. Many, many junk mail flyers had been kept and lots of individually wrapped boiled sweets, none of which had been eaten, all of which had turned sticky on the outside of the wrapper and all of which, I suspect must have been free at some time.  Also there must have been hundreds of toothpicks in individual wrappers.  For a chap who only has about seven teeth this many toothpicks was just absurd.  All the bits of tissues, toothpicks and receipts from anything he had ever bought, ever, were there.  The receipts were all neatly folded.  Every single one had to be checked as inside seven of them - again neatly folded with no clue that they were anything other than receipts, were three twenty-pound notes, a tenner and six fivers.  A few of the fives were the old type which are no longer in circulation.  Some of these were at the bottom of a scrumpled up cheap carrier bag with only a tissue, the odd coin and a few toothpicks for company for the past twenty years or so.

There were also more odd but brand new shoes, yes more shoes, guesstimate about 73 pairs now.  There were a lot of old photographs, another of my mother's diaries from when I was small, one of my mother's shoes two sewing kits, hundreds of daily newspapers, half of them not even opened, dating back to 1984.  Lots of junk mail still in their plastic mail wrappers, twelve Hawaiian shirts, many silky pyjama bottoms, lots of new unopened bed sheets - although those on his bed appeared to have been there years without being changed.  There were yet more disintegrated carrier bags although a few looked more like they had been nibbled.. best not to dwell on this bit I find. There was SO MUCH DUST, everywhere.  The dust got in my throat, in my eyes, in my hair and it lingered everywhere.  We found more piles of empty envelopes and folded plastic bags. Why?  Why would anyone keep these? 

 After ten solid hours with five people helping, it now looks like this..  We had to stop there as time, energy, enthusiasm and oxygen all ran out.

The stairs also needed the carpets removed to make them safe.  The stairs as below are before and after.

Oggy and I went to the skip on the way home.  Oggy knows her own way to the skip she has been there so often.  I just need to set her to 'autopilot'.

'You have squeezed a lot in the car today'. says little skip man

'Small car - big appetite' I said - like his owner right now.  Lost about half a stone in the past four weeks and could eat a horse.  I know, I know, please don't nag - those of you who know me know I am a skinny type and am hopeless as I get so stuck in to whatever I am doing that I forget to eat.  Yes I know it isn't healthy and no I am not trying to diet I am just forgetful and I can't cook.

Came home for seven as the bloke wanted to go out to the pub 'for a pint' with his mate and Jackie and Mark had to get home.  Poor bloke he has worked so hard all day cooking an apple pie with the kids at home while I thoughtlessly went over to the mountain yet again to party all day.  How very damn selfish I am.  Of course he deserves to go out for a pint after all that work, must be totally exhausted poor love!

Sarcastic?  Who me?  Never!

At 7pm I went to visit the old stick in the hospital.  I had to take all 3 of the kids.  The kids do not like sitting still on account of the fact they are kids.  We got to the ward and he was sitting in the chair.

he said 'I was just thinking nobody has come to visit me for three days'. Bad start - I was in on Thursday and today is Saturday.  I told him as much.

He said 'Oh well - you're here now! Did you bring Chris' (my brother).  I pointed out Chris was an adult and he did not want to come.  I had been at the house from 8.30am until 6.30pm today had just about managed to go home for a shower and a sarnie.  I was not, therefore, able to collect my brother.  My comment went into thin air.

I sat on the bed.  I am so exhausted at the moment with the mountain, the kids, the job and the hospital visits that I have totally nothing left to say to him.  I have nothing to say to him most of the time, mainly due to the fact he has no interest in anything going on in my life at all anyway and when I try to tell him what I have been doing he changes the subject, dismisses it with a flippant 'oh yes' or it just takes too much effort to put it all into v e r y   l o u d   a n d   c l e a r words of one syllable on account of his apparent deafness (and refusal to get a hearing aid). It seems a little bit pointless.

The kids started getting bored and playing up, trying to wheel themselves around on a wheeled stool the ward has for visitors.  I tried to stop them so many times.  The old man was oblivious to the kids.  He could not see I was getting wound up. The kids were trying to talk to him but his lack of general interest in them soon makes them lose interest and so they carried on playing up.

I sat in silence.

He asked how it was going.  I told him I was really tired as I had been at his house for the past 3 weeks or so for between four and ten hours a day every day.  I waited for a reaction.

'Right' he said.

I told him we had done the stairs today, taken off the stair carpet (as the social worker said it was so frayed it was dangerous).  This was a very nasty job.  The dust was flying everywhere, the rubber underlay had disintegrated into a rubber dust.  I went outside while Mark did this as I am allergic to both rubber and dust.

'Did you try to pull it off in one piece as I suggested?' he said ' so we can measure it for the new one'.

I told his there was no way that was possible the bloody thing had disintegrated so much I am surprised it did not come off in 27 trillion pieces.  I also told him we had made a big space next to his bed which should be finished in the week.

Did he thank me?   Did he heck!

'When I get out I will need help with the netting in the garden' he said, 'I need to prune the fruit bushes because we have worked so hard to make them bear fruit and they are doing so well.'

Determined for him to show some appreciation I told him we had found lots of old five pound notes in bags on his floor.  I expected amused surprise.

'And you probably found lots of old stamps there too' he said irritably 'but you don't throw them out!'

What?   I realised afterward he was assuming I was asking him about those because I wanted to throw them out.  Does he truly think I am that stupid?  Quite obviously he does.

After about 45 minutes I figured I had best leave, the kids were bored stupid and I was feeling my feelings of frustration just coming to the boil.  We left at about 8pm.

So now I am sitting alone on the sofa, shattered although chuffed that the blog has now gone global :)  I am not the only one who has to go through something like this. 

 I have just checked outside and it is raining hard.

Thank you my angel :)