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elaine4queen · 2 years

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I do a bit of light housework. I think about the phrase. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say ‘heavy housework’ so I guess it’s one of those things, micro aggressions designed to minimise the work of it. Even ‘light’ duties are heavy with import.

I live alone and am 60. Garner talks about what it must be to be 60 and live alone rather enviously - she is writing from a time, place, and age where that seems to be an ideal. Her housework is for others, her family, she breaks up with her husband who thinks he works harder than she does. He does no housework. She resents it. This is 1980s Australia, so I can well believe it.

Yellow Notebook is full of gems. She goes climbing at dawn with a floppy haired London Barrister, and she says

Hooray! The first person I’ve met in a week with whom small talk was not necessary.

She also says a propos of nothing in particular

Imagine living in a city beside an ocean?

Which I do. I definitely recommend it. When I was little I asked my dad why we couldn’t we live at the seaside and he dismissed the idea. I couldn’t have understood at the time, probably, that work was so location based, and that the coast was not somewhere an engineer like him could get work, though, also, he was very attached to the area and the house and the family who lived at the time very nearby. He was so attached to the house that even as the area changed and he became less a part of it, he lived out his days there.

She talks about how good art is comforting, great art is discomfiting and how Henry Moore’s work makes her feel still and her breathing slows down. Obviously, I like this immensely.

***

My cunning plan was to do another beach-write. I was excited about it, even. So, of course, it’s pissing with rain. Undeterred from the shape of the plan - not to write at home today - I drive to Rockwater. It’s not my favourite cafe on the beach, that honour goes to Lexi’s where I can get a very good vegan sausage roll, but it’s outdoor seating and this is not an outdoor day.

Lola is a minor celebrity in this cafe. She comes here to schmooze on a weekend with Vivienne. Apparently she snogged Fatboy Slim here.

The lower floor has a lounge area and this is where V usually brings her. Lola pulls to go in the main door but isn’t completely determined, since the entrance to this bit is round the back. I haven’t got a sea view, and I am typing not writing, but I’m not at home, so it counts.

I knew that this bit of Rockwater had a retractable roof, but aside from realising it wouldn’t be open to the battering sky I didn’t think about it until I got here. It’s wonderful. I don’t know what the roof is made of but the rain on it is incredibly loud and exciting. It’s like camping but without the inconvenience.

Later today I’ve got a surveyor coming to look at the leak. Celeste and Burt will also be in, so they can see the source of it, as well as looking at my damage and the damage in Bert’s flat in the basement. Because the floor in the main part of my flat is considerably ramped, after running down into his TV and internet sockets the water has rushed across his living room ceiling and into his kitchen, also, obviously, full of sockets.

I’ve been extremely resentful of this. It’s gone on all summer, four months and counting, and my bathroom ceiling is a moire of stain and mould. I have a record of all the emails I’ve sent and some of the phone calls I’ve made. I ended up having to rope local politicians in. It’s ridiculous. But in the end they’re all people who aren’t joined up at all, and there’s no point in blaming any one individual, and when someone who is presumably high up, or designated the job of dealing with difficult tenants rings me I end up having a really nice conversation about bungaroosh - the insane material the building is mainly made of, and she strokes my ego, praising me for understanding the very niche nature of living in a bungaroosh house.

Basically, what it is, is stones and bricks and sometimes wood and general rubbish shoved into lime. The only bricks are arranged in a frame around a given wall, interior or exterior. It’s quite pretty. Then the whole thing is covered on the outside with concrete and sometimes scored as though there’s sandstone or something proper underneath the paint. The area wasn’t always painted Hove Cream, a special paint made just for us, which looks like 1970s vanilla ice cream. It’s very yellow which is probably from iron oxide, I think. These buildings look like the Georgian houses in Bath, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and London, but they are effectively sand castles. Although that means when you live in them you don’t know where leaks are coming from because of the odd paths the water takes, I actually feel relieved that these buildings are frail in a way, and not giving off a completely permanent vibe. When I lived in Edinburgh I felt locked out in the New Town, even though I lived there for a while, because although they are beautiful, the buildings have an immortality I find oppressive.

Decades ago council housing was offered to tenants to buy at discount. Right to Buy monies didn’t go back into building or maintaining public housing, it didn’t even go into the local areas, but central government’s purse. More recently, though, the government has gone in for selling off all publicly owned buildings and services to their mates. We’ve been almost completely asset stripped. So now the housing association properties might get Right to Buy and it feels pointless to resist it. Especially if I could optimise the space I’ve got. At the time HAs bought these buildings you couldn’t give them away. They’re listed and need loads of maintenance. Even without repairs it’s mandated that they have to be repainted every five years which I think costs about 5 grand. Anyway, it hasn’t happened yet. But I have completely redesigned my flat in my head.

It’s nice sitting here with a coffee. There’s music, but it’s almost drowned out by the rain and although it is currently PAN PIPES for fuck’s sake, it’s mostly fine. The space is massive and there are hardly any other people in here, and the dog is mainly settled on the chair next to me. She gets up now and then to meet and greet, and the woman who’s serving in here says she knows her, and also that her dog is called Lola too. We talk about dog names and the ‘shout test’ which I thought I had invented but she mentions it first - you don’t want your dog to have a name you can’t shout.

I’ve got bloody ages before the gym. I’m glad I came here though, because Lola wouldn’t have liked a rain walk, and she’s had a poo, so she’ll keep.

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