kingandy | Home is where

We finished moving out this weekend. Keys were handed back and everything. It was a very lovely house, though it didn't score so highly on location - the neighbours were prone to all-night kareoke parties and habitually communicated by shouting at the top of their lungs. And the warren-like streets were horrid and narrow and really awkward to get out of. We never, ever have to go in there again, which makes me inordinately happy.

stsquad's house is now filled with boxes, which of course is annoying him, though he is being very good-natured about it. He's not actually demanding they get properly packed and stacked in the basement (which was always the plan), more sort of expressing a fond hope that "And when the dining room's cleared I can get back to the decorating..."

bacony, meanwhile, is fiercely independant and does not enjoy bucking to authority. Give her an order and she will almost invariably do the opposite. That's not to say she's lazy - far from it - just that she has to come to the idea of work herself rather than being told. She functions at work, I suspect, because she's there willingly; she's entered into a contract to perform some services in exchange for cash monies. Thus she can take reasonable instruction about how and when to perform these tasks. I'm vaguely concerned that Alex's polite and wholly reasonable prompts to clear the boxes may be taken as instruction and lead to resentment and suf-fer-ing. Especially since she's still slightly ill and apparently moody. Ah, well, time will tell.

The above is written in full knowledge that both involved will eventually read it.

My Mum often surprises me. Most recently, she laughed at "Invader Zim" when I switched it on. (Well, she laughed at "Career Day" but thought "Battle-Dib" was silly. I think Ms Bitters tickles her funny bone.) Not long ago, though, I was struck by the way she deals with people. When Gran was ill, she tried not to spend too much time with them - firstly because she didn't want them to become too reliant on other people, and also because she didn't want them become too reliant on her; she didn't want to be spending time there instead of other family members. It seems selfish, as though she didn't want to help, but she was really trying not to exclude her brothers and sisters-in-law. Then afterwards she spoke about leaving Grandad alone for a couple of hours at a time, to gently ease him into being alone. She didn't speak to him about it, just plotted behind his back about how to condition him to this new behaviour, as though he was a dog, or possibly a cat. There's always this part at the back of her mind that's considering how what she says and does will affect those she cares about, how she can twist it to make things better for them. It's something I'm trying to emulate. I'm not sure that I'm very good at it, because I usually try to make things better with comedy and comedy is inherently cruel, but I'm trying, which has to count for something.

These things are not unconnected. You work it out.