We're all pooped. It's hot at home and we drag our weary bones around the flat, Charlie and Toffee look as if they've just completed a marathon, their tongue's loll out and they leave a trail like a snail on the kitchen floor. I've noticed their appetite diminishes too, in the hot weather, as if they don't have the energy to eat. Personally I always find it's difficult to sleep during these mini heat waves. The flat warms up and though I can induce sleep with a combination of Nytol and wine, I wake in the early hours searching for a cool spot on the bed. Someone should invent an air conditioned pillow that stays cool throughout the night.
So, the place is on the market now, and the first prospective buyer is coming to view it this evening. It's not that I don't like the flat you understand, it's just that the area outside my door has turned into Beirut. It's never been upmarket but there was at least a sense of community. Now the other other person and I, who's first language is English, down my street, nod at each other if we pass, in a knowing sort of way. I'm not saying this in any disparaging way about the people who've moved in. In fact I feel rather sorry for many of them, but they've entered the country, been housed....and abandoned, pretty much to their own devices. They are probably completely unaware that, in suburban London, it is not the done thing to dispose of your litter over your neighbours garden wall, or leave chicken carcases on the street corner.
But we've been here for a while now, and "nested", comfortably. I'll be sorry in many ways to leave. I'll miss the quirkiness of the things like the toilet, a cast iron Victorian affair, that needs to be approached and handled with confidence to flush. I've sat and tittered many a time as visitors and freinds have tried, over and over again, to wash away their ablutions, with increasing panic...to finally emerge from the bathroom with a "sorry, I can't get your loo to work".
And of course I want to foster. I've been busy this past 12 months filling in my form "F" and going to the meetings. In fact we've (we refers to me and the zoo by the way), have undertaken major renovations to create another bedroom with the help of the idiotbuilderfreind (but that's another chapter, and I'll need to be in a good mood to write it). All we are really waiting for now, in the words of my allotted councillor in this process, is "the right child". Which, I think means one made of rubber and titanium. Just think, me, two dogs and a small child....whatever are they thinking of? In any case it's a good enough reason to contemplate moving to a place where one's not frequently woken up by low flying police helicopters.