The elephant in the room
In between receiving another letter reminding me of an unpaid bill, and me paying for childcare which I inexplicably cannot claim as a business expense, I cast my eye across the internet the other day, looking for some entertainment, some diversion or something to inspire me for this week’s Family Matters. Well I certainly found it when I clapped eyes on the most appalling photo of the Spanish monarch, Juan Carlos and a bloke in a safari outfit, both clutching guns and smugly posing in front of a recently shot elephant. How obscene.
Firstly I was sickened by their proud expressions as they stood in front of a corpse of one of the world’s most beautiful and revered animals slumped against a tree. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing? Which year are we in? Aren’t we asked to save these animals? I didn’t realise that we are saving these animals so that rich morons can kill them for fun. I mean, despite the Self Help proverb, you can’t actually, physically EAT an elephant can you? And how hard can it actually be to shoot one, given the size of the target I’d say that it was probably the safari version of shooting fish in a barrel. So, what is there to be proud of? Then I discover that Juan Carlos is the Honourary President of the World Wildlife Fund in Spain, and has been since 1968. (Clearly he was making sure we got busy saving rare and endangered species so that he would have something to kill on his holidays). Apparently, you can book these sort of holidays through El Corte Ingles, so I had a look; slaughter prices range from 100€ for a baboon to 75,000€ for an elephant. You couldn’t make it up. Stupid man.
But then a second wave of rage rushed through me. I’d never really thought of Spain as being a class driven society before, but then I recognised it as the same feeling I had had when the Countryside Alliance came to London en masse one day. There were Barbour jackets everywhere, which in itself wouldn’t have been a problem, welcome to my city everyone, please enjoy. But no, they just complained and whinged all the time, and loudly, about how dirty London was, or how expensive, or how this or how that. Their attitudes sucked. Hooray Henry snorting idiots giving tweed a bad name. The arrogance and high handedness of these people made me furious, and that is exactly how I felt when I saw the King in front of the elephant. And I’m not alone, all over Spain a tidal wave of disgusted opinion has turned against the royal family. It started with the Duke of Palma, who is the King’s son in law, facing allegations that he has stolen over 5€ million of public funds from a non-profit organisation. The King’s indirect response to this was to say that justice should be the same for everybody in his Christmas speech. He also said recently that he was so worried about the employment situation in Spain that he was actually losing sleep, ah bless him. What Spain needs now is a hard working role model who is going to show the way and lead and inspire us to work our way out of the second recession we’ve experienced in the past three years (although some of us I know haven’t noticed we actually got out of the first one). Not some spoilt old man who has double standards and no actual grip on the situation that 95% of the population in Spain are currently living in. If Juan Carlos had squeaked ‘Let them eat cake’ out of the side of his mouth I wouldn’t have been surprised.
These people have got away with so many liberties over the years and even in one instance, committed a serious crime. But you can’t be angry at the King, he helped Spain move smoothly from Franco’s dictatorship to a democracy. So that gives him and his family a ‘get out of jail free’ card, and 8.2€ million a year from the public funds does it? Not anymore. Finally the Spanish media and the people have decided to notice the elephant in the room.
Printed in the Euro Weekly News on 19th April 2012
King of the Road
I have an announcement to make, I now have an older male in my life. I met him online on the Second Hand Mallorca group on Facebook. He’s a bit beaten about: he’s done some mileage, and he’s carrying some scars, but he is a hard working kind of guy, and I’ve grown quite fond of him already in the short time we’ve been together. He’s spent every day with me, carrying my bags and hanging around waiting for me. And he’s blue… Oh okay, okay, he’s a sixteen year old VW Polo, and of course, he has a name: El Topolino.
It was kismet when El Topolino and I crossed paths. I had recently been let down very badly by a certain car hire company based at the airport (after careful consideration I have decided not to give them any free advertising by writing my column about them and their reneging on their promises as just like a certain Irish airline I think they see any publicity as good publicity, so I won’t be ‘naming and shaming’). So I was in desperate need of some wheels. My husband and I need independent transport but we still only owned one car, so we had been availing ourselves of a blinding car hire deal, until the day it wasn’t a blinding deal anymore. So carless and stuck it was decision time. For some reason there were two or three different old wrecks under 700€ all being advertised at the same time on the group, but I knew El Topolino’s owner so we went along to meet the old boy.
Well, it was love at first sight. There is something very liberating about owning an elderly car which frankly is already as scratched, dented and rusty as it is probably going to get whilst still driveable. Perfect for me as my ability as a driver seems to have deteriorated as my age has increased (sssh, don’t tell the insurance company!). El Topolino has enabled me to relive the carefree part of my youth when I was driving an old heap. There’s no aircon and no radio, only one of the doors open and there are a couple of ‘knacks’ you have to learn in order to get the best out of El Topolino. He’s got personality, and I love him. He’s the perfect Mallorca car. Park him next to a Porsche and you know who’s going to be nervous about the scratches? Right, not El Topolino, that’s for sure. He’s the King of the road.
Now with the warm weather coming, AND two more English language radio stations due to launch in Mallorca, perhaps there are a couple of modifications to do, but for now, I am as happy as larry with my new BBFF (Best Boy Friend Forever). Is it too late to enter this year’s Classic Car Rally?
Written by Vicki McLeod ©2012
First published in the Euro Weekly Newspaper on Thursday March 15th 2012
Say what?
I wasn’t exactly a precocious child, it wasn’t as if I excelled at everything I did. Ooh no, not by a long chalk. But there were a couple of things that I did which other kids seemed to struggle with, and there were some things which I thought I should be able to do, but just didn’t do so well at.
One of those was, and is, public speaking. I thought I could do it, but I couldn’t and then I could do it, but only when I wasn’t thinking about it. Strange. I remember being entered into a debating competition at school, there were two other kids in my team, and we were supposed to be talking about the pros and cons of zoos. I stood up all full of hopeful ignorance and proceeded to die a death up there trying to propose the motion, I was a total failure, and I have never forgotten the humiliating embarrassment of it. It was appalling. My mum was in the audience and she was livid, not with me, but with the teacher of her fourteen year old daughter: ‘I cannot believe that she let you down like that’. Apparently my death onstage was down to lack of preparation, and that wasn’t my fault. Result, thought I. Followed by, I will never ever, ever speak in public again. And I managed to achieve that for many, many years.
In fact it wasn’t until 2007 when I accidentally ended up presenting a radio show that I said anything in public. But that wasn’t really IN public as there was just me, a computer full of songs and a wall to talk to, I couldn’t see anyone, so it wasn’t too frightening. I’m much better with words that have been written down, you can mull over them you see. But the spoken word, once you’ve said it, well you’ve said it haven’t you? No going back. Scary stuff.
However now and again, in fact this week even, I have to stand up in front of people I don’t know and say stuff. This is a challenge to me. And I almost always make a prat of myself, or at least I always feel like a prat. After a recent (and v poor) display I decided that this had got to change. It must be kismet as just like that a professional stand up comedian and teacher Logan Murray is going to be running a one day course in Public Speaking at Mood Beach in Costa D’en Blanes. (He’s also teaching a weekend stand up comedy course which my husband is going to do. We decided only one of us could do it as we would fight over who was funniest). If you want to join me then you can get more info from Glynis at glynisgerman@gmail.com . At some point after this date I shall be restaging my debate almost thirty years later on ‘Cruelty or Conservation, are zoos fair?’ just for my mother’s benefit, okay, and mine too, I admit it.
www.familymattersmallorca.com
Time to celebrate
What are you doing next week on Thursday March 8th? It’s a big day all around the world, a national holiday in some places, it’s ‘International Women’s Day’. It’s marked with events and parties, rallies, demonstrations, conferences and all sorts of gatherings in countries as diverse as Argentina, Belgium and China. The event started 101 years ago and was in support of the Suffragettes who campaigned for equal rights for women.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to not have equal rights, and indeed can’t imagine what sort of person I would be if I had to mind my Ps and Qs and not do exactly what I wanted to when I wanted to. I am an equal to other people in the world and my daughter is equal, and I have some very feisty women to thank for securing those rights for me. But there are still millions of women around the world who don’t have this luxury; there are women who don’t have the chance for the same sort of free education as I benefitted from. We take a lot of things for granted don’t we? Well I do anyway. It’s important to remember and to celebrate what we have, and to thank the people who came before us, and make sure that our kids know about where they’ve come from and where they’re going to.
But International Women’s Day (IWD) is not all worthy thoughts and good deeds. Last year I was involved in the organisation of an IWD event at Mood Beach. About one hundred women gathered to spend the day together, learning and talking about subjects which ranged from health to business. It was an amazing, celebratory, revelatory day for many of us.
This year I’m involved in the event again, and this year it is moving to The Lindner Hotel in Bendinat, a bigger venue to cope with the anticipated larger audience. There will be speakers presenting on subjects as diverse as sex, business, personal development and the future of the world! For example, Marga Prohens is one of the youngest members of the Parliament in the Balearic Islands. She is passionate about promoting an entrepreneurial spirit amongst young people. Marga will talk about the systems in place which can help anyone who is in the process of realizing their dreams of setting up a business, as well as about particular aspects in local politics which affect women and their families. Elisabet Shatouris, an internationally acclaimed evolution biologist and futurist, Jamie Catto motivator, speaker, filmmaker but best known for being part of the band ‘Faithless’, will also talk along with other fascinating subjects.
There will be chances to meet new people, to get involved with charities, and to meet up with women’s groups from around the island. The event is being supported by Calvia Council and the Balearic Government, along with local businesses IFA Spectrum, FIX-it Mallorca and ACN. And there will be a market stall area for small businesses to sell their wares. The whole day including a buffet lunch is 49€ per person. (And it is per person, not per woman, as men are invited too of course!). You can buy online and find out more about the day at www.internationalwomenmallorca.com
So, bring your mum, bring your daughter, bring your friends. It’s time.
By Vicki McLeod. Published on March 1st 2012 in Euro Weekly News www.familymattersmallorca.com
Sick notes
We have been besieged again with illness. But this time it’s not just us. Evil flu and cold bugs have been spreading around the island. Amazingly, only the women in our house have been affected. La Gidg and I were struck on Saturday afternoon. I think I prematurely sent her back to school on Tuesday as when I picked her up from school she still looked game, but no, within three minutes she was conked out on the back seat. Bad mummy.
It’s pretty normal isn’t it to have to work through illness, especially if you work online, or make yourself available to people to contact you online. Many of my messages in the past three days have read ‘Hi Vicki, sorry that you aren’t very well, could you just do this thing for me….’. It’s only the click of a mouse after all, right? So I guess I only have myself to blame. So instead of getting annoyed with myself for not taking some time off to get better faster I asked my Facebook friends for their cures for the common cold. Some of them are pretty sensible, some of them sound pretty unpleasant, but each of them apparently works…. it’s up to you if you try them!
There were plenty of votes for whisky, honey and lemon. Victoria Davis said ‘it won’t cure you but you’ll sleep!’ Natalie Jackson’s dad always went for alcohol and vitamin C although she goes for the more sensible Lemsip.
Quite a few went for garlic. Belinda Shaw’s granddad used to put cloves of garlic into a bottle of whisky. Garlic, which contains a chemical called allicin, can zap the cold viruses that lead to infection.
There were also a lot of votes for cayenne pepper and other spices. Lord Martyn Rose chomps on hot chilli peppers and gets himself around a good curry, he swears by them. Another friend, Alison Garbutt, stands by honey with ground cinnamon. She said she’s been using it every day for over a year and hasn’t had any colds or flu. Certain spices have been found to be beneficial bug fighters, including cayenne pepper, which contains an active ingredient called capsaicin that beats congestion by thinning the mucus in your nasal passages so you can breathe more easily.
Lisa Bonner came up with an unusual one, which I think is a variation on the German ‘wear wet socks’ idea for coughs. She told me to put Vick’s Vapour Rub on my feet and put socks on as it stopped coughs immediately!
You might also want to get stuck into some chicken soup which Selena Garfield said was ‘like Jewish penicillin’.
My more sensible friend, and the only one actually qualified to comment as she is a nurse, Sally Luxmore, said ‘night and day nurse! The old saying is treat a cold and it will last two weeks, let it run its course and it will take a fortnight’. Sage advice there, basically she’s saying there’s nothing you can do. Just drink lots of fluids, get indoors, keep warm, and find someone to supply you with plenty of cups of tea.
If you’re up to it now might be a good time to go and check on any neighbours you have that are elderly, just pop in and say hello. If they’re feeling under the weather they might need a bit of support, so don’t forget to do your good deed!
By Vicki McLeod
Published in the Euro Weekly News 23rd Feb 2012
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- Useful Herbal Home Remedies For Cold, Nausea and Stress (easyayurveda.com)
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There’s gotta be something better than this
6am. The alarm goes. It’s still dark outside. I know it is cold because the tip of my nose tells me so. The reason the alarm is set this early is because it is the only time I can find where I can be uninterrupted and do the things that I want to do: writing, thinking, sitting quietly and drinking a cup of tea. I say I am supposed to be getting up and having ‘me time’, but you could argue (as I do) that there is as much benefit in having ‘me time’ where you are sleeping in a warm bed than freezing in a stone built finca, hopping from one foot to the other on a ice cold tiled floor in the kitchen whilst waiting for the kettle to come to the boil.
It’s come to something hasn’t it when the only time in the day which you can find where there are no other demands on you is at 6am and you have to force yourself to do it. There have been some disappointing events recently: my birthday: no balloons or clowns, just sensible stuff like vouchers for new socks, although my friends did surprise me with a meal at a local curry house the actual owners of the restaurant couldn’t even be bothered to put on the lights and make a fuss of us: have a word with yourselves please restaurateurs! And Valentine’s Day, which passed in a haze of emails, hurried meals and stress, zero on the romance front despite having a very nice husband, we were officially ‘too busy’ to celebrate.
Something has to change, and I guess it’d down to me to get it done.
Everybody I know seems to be suffering with stress and anxiety, how are we going to cope with the economic crisis, so and so is moving back to the UK, this business is going under, that person’s had their house repossessed. How can we take back control of our lives when it all feels as if it is running away from us? When I start thinking about this I get the tune ‘There’s gotta be something better than this’ from the musical Sweet Charity running through my head, check it out on You Tube, it’s very catchy.
Which is why this weekend coming I am off to spend a day with Maria Mateo who is running a course entitled ‘Awaken the Goddess within’. It’s designed to ‘ignite my womanly powers’ which I am totally up for. ‘Life is too short to stand in shadows, so step into your powers now and shine’. Check.
I have met Maria so this should be an interesting day, she certainly knows how to get you thinking and she’s a very warm and witty woman. It’s time for us chicas to get back in touch with our powerful side rather than spend all of our days being downtrodden by stress and work. You can get more information at mmateo54@telefonica.net or visit my website and I will point you in the right direction. Us Goddesses in the making have got to stick together you know.
More details about the event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/202973289801004/
Click here for the flier: Awaken the Goddess within 18 FEB
The day it snowed
Please see below for a gallery of photos of a snowy Mallorca courtesy of some of my Facebook friends.
It’s Saturday morning, it’s not a school day, so it’s not the alarm that wakes us up. There’s a weird feeling in our house, as if it is being cuddled. We pad around the house sleepily, rubbing our eyes and wondering about making a cup of tea or getting a glass of juice. It’s nice, this no-rush early morning, it might turn into a good day. It feels like a firework has exploded in the living room when La Gidg opens a shutter, gazes out of the window and shrieks ‘IT’S SNOWING!’
Our neighbour, Carlos, is on the street, smoking a roll up because he doesn’t smoke in the house anymore since the baby came. He says that his wife’s mother says there hasn’t been snow like this since 1956. The snow is falling steadily from a dark sky. It’s fascinating to watch it appear in the beam of a street light as if it has come from nowhere. Magic. The snow is about 20 centimetres deep. I want to hug it. Carlos says the Spanish television says it is going to snow all day. How can Mallorca possibly be prepared for this sort of thing? Does the council even own a gritter or a snow plough? Why would they need one? The snow is so deep that it looks like we aren’t going anywhere today anyway, unless it’s by foot or by sledge. The snow has made everything feel so peaceful and cosy, it’s like being wrapped in a muffler. We’ve got a lot to do today, and none of it is going to happen. How liberating to say ‘we can’t come today, we have to reschedule’. And how easy.
La Gidg has never seen snow like this before, she’s six, she’s lived in Mallorca all of her short life. She is glittering with joy. What a treat for all of us. We pull on wellington boots and put coats on over our pyjamas and walk down the hill to our local cafe. There is a particular sound that snow makes when you walk on it; it’s a combination of a crunch and a squeak. A creak? A squnch? Other people are on the street too, they are smiling and saying hello to us. Everyone seems to be smiling, normally reticent and shy Mallorcans are actually saying hello to us without being prompted. Gidg is confused by snowflakes, ‘I thought they were like little stars’.
The snow has given our village a makeover. Even the street signs and power cables look graceful with their new icing sugar overcoats. There are more people stood outside of the cafe, they are all facing the road staring at the snowflakes falling as if they are watching a parade, some of them are trying to look nonchalant but you can tell they are all just as excited as Gidg. I see flashes of cheeky anticipatory grins from the man who runs the garage, and another one who is the local vet. Snowballs are soon flying from one side of the road to the other.
Gidg wants to eat the snow, we tell her to watch out for the yellow variety. We fling snowballs at the trees to make the snow fall down in clumps. She makes a snowman and snow angels. It’s the perfect snow day, although it’s only really going to be a few hours. But she’s going to remember the day it snowed forever. When I was about her age I remember being inspired to draw a picture of my family home with snow on the roof and on the trees. I put the picture beside my bed and went to sleep. Overnight snow wrapped itself around our garden and our house, and when I woke I thought I had conjured up this miraculous weather with my drawing. For one amazing day I believed I had magical powers. My brothers and I played all day in the snow. That night I drew another picture to bring more snow. But by the morning, it had started to thaw. My career as a child sorceress was disappointingly short lived.
Inside the cafe there is water on the floor from snowy boots; every table is busy, even this early on a Saturday morning. We are here in time for the freshly baked croissants which are still crisply warm and buttery. Gidg has hot chocolate, we have strong and bitter coffee with warm milk.More people come in behind us, one man is carrying a little dog in his arms it’s a dachshund: it needs a carry today.
On the way back up the hill to our house, the snow is already turning from crispy white to slushy grey. Not everyone has boots on: one lady navigates her way across the road in a pair of fluffy mules. She doesn’t seem to mind her feet getting wet.
When we get back home Gidg puts her last snowball in the freezer to save it. The big melt has already started, there is water running down the hill where a few hours before there had been squnch. At the end of the day, after she’s gone to bed, snuggled down under two duvets and wearing extra socks, I make Gluwein and gaze out of the living room window, hoping for more snow, and wonder about drawing a picture.
©Vicki McLeod 2012
It snowed today at sea level in Mallorca… for the first time in over fifty years…. we all got a bit excited… thank you to my Facebook friends for sending me their photos! You can hook up with me here www.facebook.com/vicki.mcleod
Passing the book
Family Matters by Vicki McLeod
When I was a little girl I loved to read. I read voraciously. I read anything I could lay my hands on. At the breakfast table I would read and then re-read the back of the cereal packets because I wasn’t supposed to read my book at the table. I was never seen without a book. I loved books about ponies and schoolgirls and adventures, about things that happened years ago, and things that may happen in the future. I was a book geek. I had every single Flambards book, plenty of Enid Blyton, all of the Narnia stories, along with lots of other classics and I would dive back into them time and again.
My books have been with me throughout my life. I did consider giving them to a charity shop about fifteen years ago. I gazed at them thinking ‘Why am I keeping these?’ And out of somewhere in the back of my mind came the answer ‘You’re keeping us for your daughter’. Ahh… well at the time I didn’t have a child or even particularly think I would ever have one, so this was a turn up for the books, but nevertheless I thought, okay then, I will hang on to you.
Now La Gidg is in her first year at our local primary school, and her reading in both Catalan and Castillano is coming along very nicely. But my husband and I had noticed that she wasn’t so keen to try to read in English at home, she was happy to have stories read to her but wasn’t so confident about reading to us. We’d tried encouraging her: putting on silly voices, trying out new books, bribery even . . . but nothing had really inspired her until she started to go to the Kip McGrath centre in Son Quint. They specialise in tutoring kids in English and maths and their methods have really helped Gidg to turn the corner from bookshy to bookworm (which makes her geeky mother very proud).
Gidg has been going every Saturday morning for an eighty minute session with teachers Julie Staley and Jay Hirons to get her on the right track with her reading in English. You’d think (well I thought anyway) that it would be pretty simple to get a kid to read in English, but it turns out when they’re also dealing with two other languages then possibly they don’t really want to bother. But the pronunciation of certain letters is entirely different so it is important to get off on the right foot. So with a great reward system (we’re now the proud owners of a completed star chart and some very swish new colouring pencils) the Kip method (including playing specially designed computer games, drawing and reading aloud) over the last ten weeks has worked like a charm. Last weekend without any prompting I found Gidg holed up in her bedroom pouring over a book (she’s into mermaids and animals) rather than watching the Evil Tiny Pops on the TV so that’s a 100% result as far as I am concerned.
So, after all these years, my childhood books will be getting their airing after all, I think it’s going to have been worth their wait.
You can find out more here: http://spain.kipmcgrath.com
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Calm down dear!
The behaviour of people continues to astound me. I know that we regulate each other´s acts, we wouldn´t do things in front of another that we knew were wrong or a bit unsavoury, but that doesn´t stop us from picking our noses from time to time in the comfort of the privacy of our bathroom does it? But nose picking, or spot squeezing or whatever is nothing, it´s just something that we don´t really want to watch. Try out and out harassment and intimidation of other people, you wouldn´t normally see that in public either, would you?
I´ve witnessed a rash of cyber harassment online recently. If you don´t know what that is then the definition of it is when a person is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another person using digital technologies. What people wouldn´t say or do in front of each other seems to have become quite acceptable behaviour when they are in they´re in front of their computer and at liberty. Like digital road rage there have been furious outbursts unleashed in Facebook groups based inMallorcathis week. What´s happened to make everyone so angry?
For one thing, in my opinion, some people who use online social network sites are not adept at expressing themselves in word form. There is an element of clumsiness, sometimes people don´t intend to cause the offence that they cause with their words, and it can just be a question of writing what you want to say and reading and re-reading to make sure that you have said it clearly without being rude or leaving room for other possible interpretations. You can write, read and then publish and if you realise you´ve said the wrong thing you can still have the possibility to delete. Perhaps it also had something to do with “Blue Monday” which was this week: it´s said to be the saddest day of the year, when we are all back to work and staring down the barrel of a credit card bill, or tax demand and looking at a very long eleven months until Christmas comes round again. So perhaps we´re just feeling a bit low. Or perhaps everyone needs to get out more and mix with actual people. The intimidating and unecessary public exchanges I have seen this week between people who don´t even know each other in real life has made my mind reel.
If grown ups are behaving like this to each other: firing insults and making public statements and accusations, then how can we expect children to be kind to each other? So, if you see it happening online to other people, or you´re tempted to have a go at someone yourself then stop. The cyber bullying sites for children recommend that you take five minutes before responding to something you might encounter online. Drop the mouse and step away from the computer and no one will get hurt! Kids are encouraged to find a way to calm down, perhaps through some deep breathing or getting outside and playing a game, talking to a parent or friend or giving a teddy bear a hug. All of this could be transferred without exception to be used by adults too. Or, hey, why not suggest to your Facebook buddies that you meet up for a coffee, and really get to know each other properly? Just a thought.
A new broom
After recovering from the evil lurgy which seems to have struck down plenty of the good people of Mallorca, I have now been struck by another bug. Symptoms of this particular bug include ruthlessly removing my child’s old toys from her bedroom, volunteering to hoover up underneath the wardrobes and alphabetizing books and separating them into different categories: fiction, non fiction, travel, etc. Don’t worry I am not pregnant (although someone did suggest that to me recently: it sparked off an emergency diet), I am merely going through my annual January control crisis.
I wish it were true that if you have your environment in check then the rest of your life will follow, but it definately isn’t the case for me. However I valiantly strive to colour code La Gidg’s wardrobe, ‘disappear’ my husband’s oldest and most threadbare t-shirts, and reduce the paper mountain of old newspapers and magazines back to a manageable level (thank goodness it’s winter and we need fire lighters everyday). I do this in the misguided hope that if my ducks are in a row that everything else will be too. I do this despite sharing my living space with two other people who don’t seem to either notice or care about things having a place ‘to be’. I DO care. More than is probably healthy.
Luckily for me there has recently been a rapid and impressive growth in the use of the social media platform Facebook as a marketplace to buy and sell items locally here on the island. There are plenty of groups in there but the one I tend to use is called ‘Secondhand Mallorca’. It’s like crack for the housebound shopper. I have found myself making some rather unruly, some (my husband) might say, even rash purchases. For example, I fell in love with and bought a bed which then wouldn’t fit up our stairs, and now have to sell it to get it out of our living room where it is stored with plenty of other stuff, most of it having come out of my daughter’s bedroom. (In order to persuade La Gidg that clearing out her room was a brilliant idea that would benefit her I needed to give her an incentive. What’s in it for her? New stuff mainly or at least the promise of new stuff. ‘Let’s clear this out and then we can sell it and use the money to get something nice for your bedroom’. Gidg is contemplating fairy lights and twinkly, glittery things that hang from the ceiling whilst her dad and I are secretly pricing up plasterers and figuring out if we can afford to start to get the walls in our house plastered. It’s all part of the plan).
So, my living room looks like Steptoe’s yard. This is a good thing as the rest of my house now doesn’t look like Steptoe or his son have ever set foot, or toe, in it. All of the detritus and extra stuff from around the house has slowly been shuffled into one room, and now with the help of online social media and ‘Secondhand Mallorca’ it is bit by bit steadily leaving the house. There are, of course, also the charity shops, it has felt a bit strange to be selling stuff which I would normally take to the Sally Army, but that plasterer isn’t going to do it for free you know. Not unless he is Paying It Forward which is the new big thing going on online as well. My friend Annie Verinder, who is an acupuncturist and massage therapist announced this week that she would be doing a day of free treatments each month with the understanding that the people who benefitted from the freebies would be ‘paying it forward’ with their skills for someone else. Hmm, perhaps I should ask her if she’s got any builders booked in for an appointment…
www.familymattersmallorca.com
