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Annus horribilis
Filed under GeneralDec 26364 days ago, or to put a date on it, the day after Boxing Day last year, I was traveling back from a Christmas in Somerset when I received a phone call from my landlady. She let me know that a plumber had been called to the house on Boxing Day to stop a leak rushing from a burst pipe.
I came back to complete devastation, the carpets were soggy, water dripping from the walls, draws full of water, books wet through (including the first Self Sufficient-ish Bible off the press), the place was a mess. I was glad to be on my own so I could sort the place out at least a little and shield Ellie from the worst of it.
Things didn’t really improve that quickly, the landlady took two weeks to bring us a domestic dehumidifier. This was so ineffectual it seemed a bit like she’d asked an elderly man with a bucket to empty a very large lake. Friends and family did come to the rescue and we lent a further dehumidifier, towels to soak up the carpets and even some replacements for damaged belongings.
The house inevitably got very mouldy and it was pretty unpleasant to live there for a couple of months. We did eventually have a carpet cleaner come round, a brilliant bloke called Adrian from the Amazing Adrian Carpet Cleaning Company, highly recommended for anyone in the South Hams! He got the house somewhat in order and we tried to continue with things.
I finished my book, handed in the last edits of the manuscript then out of the blue my feet started to swell. A few days later, now the beginning of March I was taken into hospital with a Nephrotic condition later diagnosed as a serious kidney complaint known as Minimal Change Disease. I came out of hospital on the Thursday and on Sunday the landlady served us an eviction order.
This was a low point.
I tentatively went back to work and slowly got better.
Then some good news, Ellie found out she was pregnant! It was a mixed blessing as it was unplanned and at the time I was still fairly ill. Ellie had quite bad morning sickness but we muddled through and looking back the over-riding feeling was real joy that we were to soon be parents. A little scared maybe but generally happy about it.
Then more disaster as Andy got ill with the same condition as me. The disease wasn’t thought to be genetic before so now I had two things to deal with, a sick brother and the likelihood that my unborn child may have the same condition. I visited him and tried to phone as often as I could to reassure him through the worst of it. He too responded to the meds and he too slowly got better.
My book was released in May and we moved home to where we are now, a lovely, but slightly derelict cottage with one of the nicest landladies I’ve had.
I was still under treatment at this time and I suffered a bit from it, getting quite bad side effects from the long drawn out dose of steroids. Everyone tends to think that steroids will give a man breasts or facial hair for women but these were corticosteroids which made me manic when I was on them and just plain depressed when I came off them.
I was at a big low when Andy’s book came out which smashed sales of mine to pieces. As if to rub salt in the wound at one point I asked for my book in Waterstones, they didn’t stock it but they did stock my brother’s book, in fact it was in the top ten best sellers of that week.
You have to dig deep at times like that, I am now happy for him; he has written a book that has caught the public imagination. However I don’t mind admitting it, I was jealous as hell.
Come the end of summer, I go back to my teaching job. Not long after my return word gets to me that the job may not be there that long and I may have to reapply for it. Then this changes to a contract until November, then a few weeks later I’m told I may be there until April, then it changes back, then I’m told the place might close down. At this point I give up worrying about my teaching job and decide it might be time to start thinking about a bit more freelance work until a more secure job turns up.
Then in November baby Douglas is born. Nothing really prepared me for it and I still can’t quite believe it now. I find it almost impossible to put into words, it seemed like after the cloud of the preceding months there was at least a silver lining.
So now, 12 months from the start of the big pile of shit that began with a burst pipe, I can’t help feeling a little cautious of the coming year. I dread to say it can’t be as bad as last year but I really don’t want to tempt fate. I might be plain awful, it might be amazing.
What I really want from next year is it to be uneventful, nice calm non-descript months rolling into the next. I want this blog to have entries about the weights of vegetables I’ve picked and dug up. Perhaps a few nice baby stories, maybe even a foraging tale or two but most of all I hope it has nothing about bad health, nothing about landlords and nothing about flooding!
2 Responses to “Annus horribilis”
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I don’t know why, but some years just seem to be wave after wave of … organic animal byproduct… Mine’s just been poverty-stricken, but I’ve watched so many friends struggle with bereavement, illness, unemployment and looming homelessness
I highly recommend writing all the bad things on a piece of paper and burning it on New Year’s Eve. It’s what I did on New Year’s Eve 2008, which was a year from h*ll for me and mine. It feels very cathartic, watching all the pain and stress go up in smoke.
P.s. Loved your book!
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Dave said on December 30th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
It does seem to have been a hell of an organic animal byproduct for a lot of people I know too. Good tip with the list, I did a similar thing once a making a paper boat, setting fire to it and sending it out to sea, a sort of Viking burial of a crappy time.
Glad you liked the book, your website looks good, will have a nose around when I get the chance.
