In our arrogance, we think we have control over our lives and over what happens to us. But such control is superficial at best. Everything is always changing. Nothing is permanent. All things flow and shapeshift and slip between our fingers. Spirit longs for people who have noticed that control is an illusion. She longs for people who are willing to acknowledge that things don’t seem to work they way they think and who are ready to follow Her lead. Listen deeply. Let Her show you. Do you dare to take the leap?
Westacre Day minus 46
Hilde and Gerjan brought the ladder back to the hire shop first thing. Then Hilde went into London to work, and Gerjan set to taking the garden waste to the dump and cleaning up the very slippery decking. He’s done wonders these last few days. We’d love to see him again.
Alex is back at Westacre. He tested Matt’s plumbing and none of it leaked. He and Roger also took trips to the dump, but mostly with rubble and plaster board. Hopefully, that will be the last major dump trip for the bungalow.
“… the obvious can be very difficult for people to see. That is because people are self-corrective systems. They are self-corrective against disturbance, and if the obvious is not of a kind that they can easily assimilate without internal disturbance, their self-corrective mechanisms work to sidetrack it, to hide it, even to the extent of shutting the eyes if necessary, ro shutting off various parts of the process of perception.” – Gregory Bateson, 1968
Alex has done heroic deeds in our Harrow toilet. This may sound like an exaggeration, but believe me, seldom has such valiant battle been done in so small a space.
For a long time, the flush hasn’t been working right. Over the last few weeks, Alex has been fiddling with the mechanism in the cistern, fixing it, only to find that, after a couple more days, the problem would return, or another problem would appear. We are now keeping our fingers crossed for the latest repair.
Again in that small room, the walls needed tidying up. So Alex has been working hard with filler and lining paper. But in order to get the lining paper on the wall, he stood on the toilet seat and… broke it. He spent ages in a traffic jam to get to B&Q to get a replacement.
Flush and seat being repaired, and lining paper attached, the toilet needed a lick of magnolia emulsion. Our friend Gerjan applied that in the afternoon. Hilde has written her next blog post and has been general support system for the battles in the toilet.
In our blood and our bones, in the spirals of our DNA, we remember. We remember the time when the land was our mother, the one who fed and nourished us. We remember treating her with respect and gratitude. Forgetting this exiles us from our home and our ancestors.
Westacre Day minus 48
After hiring a ladder and doing some cleaning, Hilde went to say goodbye to the London Tamesis Druid group. She had a beautiful ceremony with beautiful people on a carpet of golden leaves. Alex made good the walls in the toilet and papered them with lining paper. Gerjan has started the job of repairing our windows, but he’s finding more rot than we’d hoped. It might be new window time in Harrow as well.
Westacre Day minus 49
Gerjan has done wonders in the garden, digging out some brambles, cutting the hedge, and weeding the patio. Hilde filled 12 boxes with just books, and there are many more to go. She also waded through all the window quotes. Boy those things are expensive. Time to choose who we will give the money to. Alex did his very final day as a contractor. This time, Hilde won’t let him change his mind.
Our friend Gerjan Roza has arrived today to help us make the house look good enough for potential tenants. Starting tomorrow, he’ll be blitzing the garden and doing some painting. I’m so grateful for his help, because with all the work in Roger’s bungalow still going on, this is just too much for us to take on right now.