The Word Cloud

May I be so bold as to use the blog page to express my greetings to the cloud friends that I have made over the course of the year. I will not list your names, I did at first but there are many - some who have grown closer than others. I have even been bad at emailing some of you too. If you saw the state my house is in you would understand. I just want to say that you are not forgotten. Some I have not seen on here recently - I hope you are well, and have been enjoying the sunshine. I have not had the time or the energy (mostly the energy)to cope with all the paperwork and writing and daily living, so my time on here has been limited. Often I pop in and see what you are up to you. It is a joy to read your work and your achievements and see the writing that you are doing. We have accepted the offer on our cottage - we had to reduce it a fair bit - no, a huge bit, but I could see us waiting another couple of years and at our age it would be silly. We have to bite the bullet and go for it. We have not been able to find a property that we like or that is suitable - everything in Dorset being up a hill, or in a secluded retirement area and neither of us see ourselves somewhere like that - despite the truth being that we are well over the age for sheltered housing. As I often say, millions of people have neither bed nor board, so we are very lucky to be able to choose - it is sad that the quality of housing in Swanage is known to be dire. Either extortionate - if you can glimpse the sea by craning your neck, and need masses of work (both the case in our choice. What is so special about a glimpse of the sea? And I mean a glimpse. I have even stood on chairs when going round with the estate agents and said I am sure we should be able to see the sea from here. My son's house had been on the market for over a year so they reduced it by ten thousand and found a buyer that day. So, there is light and the family might all get down there. An Estate agent told my neice that he gets tired of people coming in looking for a champagne lifestyle on a beer man's wages. She was proud to say that she had 350,000! She shares her house with her parents and children and partner. It is strange to be selling up and moving down there now. When we worked down there we rented out the cambridge house and it gave us half our living for that year. Handing over my home to strangers every six months was hard enough. The family were all up here - now we have retired and can come home the family are all down there, and want us to join them. After 40 years in the village it will be a wrench. And we will have to live it to know whether we are making the right decision. I keep having the feeling that a bucket of elvers is writhing in my stomach at the thought of moving our few belongings out. We went back and forth for so long it will be funny not to come back. In the beginning we were like the darling buds of may, complete with mattress and pots and pans on the top of the car as we could not afford to buy any for the south end. I am sure we were a laughing stock. We lived in a cellar at the back of a shop. The purbeck stone was so thick we couldn't even hear thunder storms or the sea raging. I often dreamt that we would drown. We got away with it for seven years but finally the planners pulled the plug but that is another story. (the excuse used that there was insufficient drains for an extra flat - but it was sold to us as one - and now 3 more flats have been added plus a hairdressers so it does rankle. I must write about it some day. So, now we are going down again, complete with mattresses and furniture, for good. It has been very strange living a split life. We have been very fortunate that friends at both ends have received us back into their fold each time we returned. Sadly, as we have aged, some are no longer here. I am kind of excited but also scared. We moved a lot when I was a child. I was so pleased this week when I was worrying about starting a new life at our age with few friends and I remembered that I will still be able to load Wordcloud and meet with my cloud friends. So, back to the main point. Friends are important - more so when you can not get out to meet more or keep the ones you have, so I am very grateful to those of you who have befriended and supported me. Often the help went above and beyond- Mike, Tony, Minxie, Weens and Jill. So thank you all. I will pop in again in the next few weeks - hopefully, those of you I care for will still be here. Some of you having found agents or even publishers. A writer does not have time to move, or have builders round. I need little disturbance - just long uninterrupted days with someone to read the work, type it, masssage feet, and bring the occasional smoothie and chocolate. And what happened to APRIL?