I spent a great day in Birmingham city centre yesterday; the Artsfest makes me realise that there are some good points to living in this city. We have some amazing talents and amongst them is Black Voices. This is the second year we got to see them and for free. They are brilliant vocalists and despite the suggestion of the name they sing of unity rather than highlighting differences. I’ve found two vids of them on Youtube – hope you enjoy them!

 Again sorry for the lack of posts. I’m still ill and haven’t been able to go to work for another week and to be honest I’ve just been sat at home watching TCM – so nothing much to blog about. I am getting better though and I will be going into work on Monday.

On Monday I had to phone the boss again to tell her I just wasn’t well enough to come in and that I’d be seeing my doctor. I managed to get an appointment though my heart sank when I found out which doctor I’d be seeing. He was involved in the ‘care’ of Desmond which was less than satisfactory to be honest. He’s one of those doctors who seems to hate sick people and hate sick people who have ideas and opinions in particular. He managed to totally avoid eye contact throughout the entire consultation! I left less than five minutes later with a sick note for another week, a prescription for a new antibiotic – the third one so far – and instructions to go straight to the local hospital for a chest x-ray. I didn’t think too much of it till I got to the hospital but when I was sitting in the waiting room I began to worry that maybe it was more than just a chest infection. I shrugged off that thought almost as swiftly as it entered my head. Anyway, like I said, I do feel better on Friday night as I write this than I did on Monday so those antibiotics must be working.

After a week of being on my own I had the ex boyf. come and stay on Thursday night and it was great to see him not least because it’s been quite a few weeks since he was last down from Manchester. He’s still trying to sort out the letting of his flat in Birmingham city centre – he tried to sell it but this damn credit crunch has made that impossible just now. Still, it was lovely to have him down and just to sit and eat dinner and watch some TV. He stayed in Birmingham till this evening and met Patrick for the second time now. We three spent the day dodging showers in Birmingham city centre which was nicer than it may sound!

Oh! I said I was keeping my fingers crossed!! Well, I called the agent on Monday because I hadn’t heard anything about a survey being done on the house by the buyer and his mortgage company – this is an important stage in the house sale process, until the mortgage company have satisfied that the house is a good risk they won’t even consider releasing the funds to the purchaser. My agent said she would get back to me and later that day the survey was booked in for Thursday morning. Thursday came and two surveyors arrived, they looked more like undertakers! They were very stiff and serious (as I guess they need to be) and asked me some questions before roaming around the house with clipboards, torches and step ladders. I left them to get on with it and watched TV. The only worry was that they eventually ended up outside looking at the roof and the chimney in particular, they seemed to be taking a great deal of interest in in and were taking pictures and making lots of notes. I should have asked them if there was a problem but I really felt that answering questions was something they wouldn’t be happy to do. Once they left I did get myself into a bit of a state imagining that their was something wrong that would cause me to lose my buyer but having spoken to my agent I calmed down a bit as she assured me it is something that wouldn’t necessarily be unusual for a surveyor to do. There’s no point getting too worked up about it till later next week when the survey will be released to the buyer, only then will I know if there is something to worry about. So I am keeping my fingers crossed!

So, my last few days of freedom before it is back to work, Patrick is here which is great and this weekend is Artsfest – the largest free arts festival in the UK and also it is the English Heritage Open Weekend when members of the public can access to buildings that are normally closed to them! I’m hoping to see inside a Masonic Hall, the City Mosque, a Victorian Synagogue and the wonderful Arts & Crafts Art School. Plenty of distractions to enjoy – click on the link to see what you might go and see this weekend if you were here. I hope you have a nice weekend wherever and whatever you plan to do.

Sorry for the silence recently. I’m still ill and it’s starting to be boring! I went to Belfast the weekend before last with my left ear/eustacian tube so blocked that I couldn’t hear anything and it is still blocked, all I’m getting is a continuous (and I mean continuous) high pitched tone in the left ear. I’ve been signed off work for another week and the doctor told me I have bronchitis in addition to a middle ear infection. I’m on a new set of antibiotics and hopefully they will do the trick.

I haven’t had the energy to do much more than take Fintan out for his walks but being partially deaf has given me a different picture on the world. In some ways it is a blessing – I’m only hearing half the moronic conversations that go on around me. It is rather isolating though and when you are living alone and feeling ill it isn’t really what you want to be feeling.

The latest news on the house sale is that I have now signed all the contracts etc and really it is just a waiting game. I’m continuing not to hope too much that this is finally it, but I was cheered to read an email from the purchaser that was directed to me from the agent, the tone of which suggests that the buyer has already ‘mentally’ moved in. I am just going to have to work out the best date to hand my notice in at work now.

I’m so looking forward to starting my new life with Patrick, we talk about it on the phone several times every day and have even got some furniture in the house we are going to share. I know that it is going to be difficult at times – I haven’t lived with a lover/partner before but I approach the whole thing with excitement at the challenges we will face and overcome and the great things we are going to do together. I never saw this happening when I first met Patrick – though I knew I liked him straight away. It’s the stuff of romantic fiction really and I am so happy that what started out as ‘friendship – with benefits’ blossomed into our wanting to create a shared life together.

After Desmond died my circle of friends narrowed – not because they were his friends as we led different lives - mine just drifted away as I guess I spent less time chasing people around trying to make things happen. I found that apart from my ex boyfriend and one German friend there was really no one else around. In December 2006 I went to Gran Canaria expecting to just have two weeks away from the reality of life here and to put and end to a year of grief and stress (remembering of course that it started with my father almost dying and the insurance company traumas) but of course that wasn’t what happened – it was my turning point, my epiphany! I was sat on a sand dune (naked!) and it dawned on me that I had spent too much of my life thinking I just wasn’t good enough for anyone/anything and it was then that I decided that when I finally came home I would put myself out into the world again but with a new self confidence - I’d take a chance that I might be rejected and prepare myself to deal with it if I was. I put pictures of my face on dating sites; for so many years I felt I was too ugly to do that! I got many compliments and several ‘dates’ and eventually started talking to Patrick.

So here I am now. Hopefully just four weeks or so from another new start, another new life. I’m so excited!

what appeared outside my house on Thursday morning…

of Patrick, click the link below!

http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article.aspx?art_id=1509

He’s so talented.

Day four of being off work with the cold – I’m enjoying watching the film channel and taking all the classics in that they show – I watched the Kenneth More version of The 39 Steps this morning and am now watching Julia with Jane Fonda.

I don’t exactly love my job, though it has gotten better recently, but I have to say that being ill and not being able to get to do anything fun while I’m off has me thinking that I’d like to be in the classroom today. I have a low threshold for boredom it should be said! I’m going in tomorrow regardless of how ill I am feeling as I fear that one or two students are leaving and I want to make sure all their paperwork is in place.

On Saturday I shan’t be bored as I’m off to Belfast to spend the bank holiday with Patrick, I fly home on Tuesday evening and then back to work. I’m hoping that this will be one of the last weekends I’ll be flying out there or he to me for that matter. I do wish that the business of house selling in this country could be speeded up somehow.

On the subject of films… unlike some people I never threw my VCR recorder/player out when DVDs came along. In fact about three years ago I bought a VCR/DVD combination – partly so I could copy all my video tapes onto DVD it must be said. Anyway… the charity shops in the village (and there are many of them in Harborne Village) are always selling off video tapes very cheaply, because of course no one wants them anymore. I had to go and get some food yesterday so went into Harborne to the supermarket there and also had a look around the charity shops – mainly for books which I cannot resist – I noticed that they were selling off video films for 25p each so had a good look through and got a couple of good ones to watch while I recover from this awful cold (TCM is great in the morning but by early evening some of the films aren’t as good. I did get one film that I bought just because it starred Kathy Bates and Phillip Seymour Hoffman ‘ Miss Liza’, have you seen it? It was excellent, another reminder that it is possible to make good, small films in the U.S. I shall use the charity shops as a kind of video rental shop, return them after I have viewed them and give someone else the chance to enjoy them – better to pay 25p than the £3.00 or so that they must charge these days in places like Blockbuster (I’m not allowed in the Blockbuster store in Harborne after a little argument I had with them regarding scratched DVDs – they arrived with me that way btw!).

Right, clearly I am bored and perhaps even boring. I’m just going on and on typing up my thoughts and I’M bored with them so well done if you managed to get this far!!

Oooh! Meryl Streep has a bit part in Julia!

much to say at the moment – I’m waiting to hear that the guy who has offered to buy the house has signed the papers. He was supposed to have done that on Saturday but he’s fussing over his mortgage (trying to get the best deal). I am trying not to panic about this – shades of the Italian do come to mind – I will give him till the end of the week and THEN I will start to panic!!!

I haven’t been able to get into work this week, I have a cold that’s not shifting, so I have nothing to do but watch daytime TV… thank heavens for TCM!

Come Back To The Five And Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean? I had a copy about twenty years ago – I got it for a pound or so from a video rental shop that was selling stock off. Having moved cities and even countries since then it disappeared some time ago but the memory of the story always stayed with me. A month or so I watched Steel Magnolias with Patrick and was reminded once again of the film. I went online to buy the dvd of the film and was surprised to see that it wasn’t available – it hasn’t been released on dvd. I eventually tracked a copy down on VHS video and paid rather more than I did the first time round to get it. It was SO worth it though! We watched it last night and although bits of it were very familiar a lot wasn’t. The main three actresses; Sandy Denis, Cher and the divine Karen Black were as good as I remembered them but the nuances of their performances and of the supporting cast had escaped me before – previously I think I just saw it as a bit of camp fun, a ‘chick flick’ (so degrading a term especially when applied to a film like this!). Patrick voiced the opinion that had also occurred to me – that CBTTFADJDJD was the script that Tennessee Williams would have written of he’d been asked to write Steel Magnolias.

but it does indeed look like I have a genuine buyer at last. I don’t want to jinx it of course but on Saturday I had some viewings lined up including the guy I may have mentioned who looked the week before, liked the house but, “wasn’t sure it was the right time to buy”. Somehow or another he changed his mind or the agent changed it for him but I was called back from an unscheduled walk with Fintan to answer some questions about the house. I told him all he needed to know and then some! He left with the agent and they chatted outside before parting ways. The agent returned 30 minutes later with a couple who were first time viewers and as they left he told me that the guy had made an offer to buy and named a price as he spoke to him outside the house.

There was nothing to do but to leave it to sit till Monday as the office had closed for the weekend. I called on Monday and had the offer confirmed but asked them if they could see if they could squeeze him for anymore cash (well it never hurts to ask!). He raised his price slightly and I accepted. So… this Saturday he is going to the office of the agent to get the ball rolling. He needs to sign his papers for the mortgage application (already agreed in principle) and notify me of his solicitors. It could of course go tits up at any point during the process but he seems genuine anyway. I have requested that he work towards closing the deal by the last week in September and hopefully it will happen – though solicitors are well known for dragging their heels over property purchase in this country.

I’m not handing in my notice or anything just yet but Patrick and I are making tentative plans at this stage. The first thing I want to do once the house sale goes through and I have the cash in the bank is to pay off my debts and then I fancy a week of sunshine somewhere before we start up our new life in Belfast. You are all of course invited to stay once the place is sorted out.

I’m very excited about this new development in my life but as I have said I’m trying to keep a lid on things till I know things are going as they should.

Patrick is coming over this weekend so I expect to spend lots of time sitting in bed with Fintan too while we start to make some plans!

I have accepted an offer on the house!!!

More later.