It’s very quiet at home now, Alex and the grandkids have gone back to the lovely sunshine in Barcelona while we are still here with the rain. The kids were very excited to call us yesterday and let us know that they were in their swimming pool in the private park attached to their house. We were watching more heavy rain pouring down at the time.


But things get back to normal very quickly. I am just whiling away a little time sitting in the Garden Room reading another Brendan DuBois novel when I notice Christine has her Pink Black Book out and is busily scribbling what looks like a list of things to do. Now as I have said before I am very pleased that she has embraced the methodology of planning projects using the Black Book technique that I used for many years during my time as a project manager but she has become obsessed with it.


Eventually she stops and decides it’s time to wash some floors. Alex and the kids have been here for four weeks or so and now they have gone we have to spring clean the house! I didn’t realise they were that messy but it seems they must be!


I take the opportunity to look in the Book and sure enough Christine has been planning. Under a heading of Keith is a list which starts with Power Wash the Stone, presumably to get rid of anything left by the sewage after the flooding so that’s OK. Next in the list is Move the Bath, the bath in question is a cast iron one in the garden filled with compost with some shrubs or other growing in it which now needs to sit at the end of the new patio which is next in the list. Lay the Patio it says, that’s eighteen square metres of York Stone to move and set in sand.


Following on the list is: Lay the Lawn: Lay the Gravel Paths: Move the Shed, that’s a different one from the one I moved a few weeks ago, and finishes with Move Hand Basin that’s the one in the new laundry room.


So quite a list but to be fair she has also listed some items under her own name: Make Cushions for Joe’s Room: Prune the Flower Beds and some plants from the garden centre need re-potting. Now it may just be my biased view but my list seems harder and all together more substantial than the one under the heading of Christine.


And what’s more all these jobs have a time next to them and the last one is due for completion before the end of September. September! It can’t be done. What Christine hasn’t appreciated yet is that when planning a project you have to estimate the time required and then double it to make sure you can’t be accused of missing deadlines. These are things you get from experience, the same as always making sure that the IT department carry the can if things go wrong, it’s not too hard as everyone believes most things are their fault anyway.


I wonder if this is time to scrap the planning and get the Pink Black Book into the dustbin, I can always make out she has misplaced it, she is getting on a bit her memory's not what it was!


What I want to know is what ever happened to retirement, I’m supposed to be taking life easy and wondering what to fill my days with. Whatever happened to the ‘I’ days? What about the golf and bowling, the walking on the moors with lunch down the pub. I’ve even been shopping in Tescos with Christine today; she seems to have forgotten that some months ago she banned me from this.


I decide to get on the lap top, I have the site for Jet2.com bookmarked, time to book the next flights to Barcelona I think. August seems a good month to be out there. I get another beer out of the fridge better get in training for the Bodega

Well what can say? The car boot sale actually happened, Christine did indeed get up at six in the morning along with Alex and the kids and of course myself, and we had our table set up just after 7.00 at Bridlington. Fortunately there was no rain and it was a reasonably warm day so it could have been worse.


This was our first attempt at bar booting, and the last if I have my way, the people there selling stuff the same as us I am sure come from an alternative universe. As soon as we arrive on site and open our boot, they are upon us, vultures wouldn’t have got a look in. “Have you any jewellery”, “any computer games”, “any antiques” we are bombarded with questions, they don’t realise that Christine doesn’t speak before eight thirty and there’s still an hour and a half to go, no use talking to me I am only the driver and only here under protest, this is not one of the ‘I’ days I was looking forward to when I retired.


Before we can get them on the table we have sold the brass knobs and knockers, the porcelain handles and the dolls house not to mention the box set of North & South videos or the complete set of Faulty Towers videos. It took Alex a long time to pack the car carefully using every available nook and cranny to fit everything in but these guys are dragging things out more quickly than we can deal with it. Christine hasn't even got the table cloth on the table yet never mind arranged the flowers.


As yet the public haven’t started arriving and we have already serious depleted our stock so it’s going well.


People start arriving at around nine o –clock and all I can say is it’s beyond belief what some people will buy. It’s even harder to believe that anyone can be bothered to argue over the price of something for sale at 20p but they do. “Will you take 10p?". Will I take 10p, it’s only 20p to begin with, I can’t be bothered to argue and take the 10p. Alex and the kids think I am a soft touch and tell me not to get involved in selling things, I have to leave it to them.


As I can’t do the selling I take a walk around the other stalls only to spot my porcelain handles on sale at twice the price the guy paid me when he was rummaging through our car boot, the brass knobs and knockers have finished up on the same stall at more than double what I got for them. On the specialist video stall there was Faulty Towers and North & South all at a healthy profit over what they paid me, I begin to understand what it must feel like to be mugged. But seeing as the main reason for doing the car boot sale was to get rid of unwanted stuff I decided we had done OK.


Christine has brought pack up for breakfast, flask of wall paper paste and some bananas but fortunately Joe decides he wants a hot dog so it’s off to stall with him and as I’m there I find it hard not to have one myself, which certainly beats the pack up back at the car. Twenty minutes later Amber decides she now wants a hot dog so it’s down to the stall again and once again the smell is too much to resist and my second hot dog of the day although not needed goes down very well.


The people keep coming and we keep selling ‘junk’ and the 50p and £1s keep adding up but we are still stuck with the TV and the video recorder. These are two large items that we definitely don’t want to be taking home with us so I decide it’s time we put them together as a package, £5 for them both. £5 for a TV and video that can’t be bad can it? Except the only person who has looked at them all morning wants them both for £4 and even then I have to carry them to her car. Now being aware that I have been accused by Alex and the kids of letting things go too cheap I consider telling her to take her £4 elsewhere but at the last minute I change my mind and snatch the £4. I drive a hard bargain!


At the end of the sale we had achieved our main objective of getting rid of most of the stuff we brought having only had a few items to bring home which finish up in the tip. We also make £60 after paying for our pitch which then has to be shared five ways as the kids seemed to think they are entitled to a full share.


The kids decide to save their dosh towards a computer game, Christine is going to buy plants and Alex is getting a lipstick. Me, well having spent over eight pounds on hot dogs and over fifteen pounds on fish and chips on the way home I need to do another car boot sale just to cover the cost of the last one. But all in all it we did have a good laugh and we did get rid of a lot of junk.

Now I tend to think of Christine as a ‘hoarder’. She keeps old magazines in piles all over the house. We have ornaments and things stuck in cupboards that never see the light of day. We have Joe and Amber’s first shoes, we have christening spoons and plates, we have all sorts of old implements in the kitchen draws that not only don’t we use we wouldn’t know what they were for if we wanted to use them. We have chests and blanket boxes filled with curtains and bits of material because “you never know when we may need them”. I know they haven’t been needed in the last ten years at least but you never know!


So over the years I have tried to get rid of many of these items only for Christine to say “Just put them in the boot of the car, I’ll take them to the charity shop”. So into the car boot they go and the next time I need to take rubbish to the local tip they are still in there and I then put them into the shed. As you know not long ago I had got to the point where I could no longer get in the sheds so something had to be done.


A car boot sale, that’s what we need.


We had got to this point a few weeks ago but then Christine started reclaiming many of the things for the car boot to go back in the cupboards in the house never to be seen again but this time it may different. Alex and the kids are here and I ask them to go through their wardrobes and toy boxes, that’s Joe and Amber’s toy boxes I don’t think Alex still has one although we do still have dolls and dolls houses from when she was little but they are going on e-bay apparently. But maybe this time we will finish up with plenty to car boot.


Well this morning my plan is to get everything out of the sheds and have a look at what we have and sort of think about prices, this may seem a waste of time as nothing ever sells for more than £2 and most things for 20p, so down the shed I go suggesting that Joe and Amber come along to help if they want a share out of the proceeds. So we set up the table and I start passing things out of the shed.


There are Barbie dolls, a miniature snooker table, some electronic games, some Simpson comics, coloured boxes, a pink bus that opens up and many other items, but then eventually the kids stop appearing at the shed door. I assume the table is full and they are trying to find places to put things, Wrong! They found somewhere to put things, their bedrooms. They are as bad as Christine. I explain to them that if we have nothing to sell we will not get any money and their share will of course be nothing. I see them thinking about this and very quickly their need for another computer game is greater than their need for a fluffy pink cuddly toy that has been in the shed for two years or a miniature snooker table that was never used when it was new.


So we gather everything together on the table outside the shed and decide we have enough to have a car boot sale. At this point, naturally for this summer,we have a downpour of rain and I am now trying to dry everything and put it back in the shed. Every one else is of course very busy and needs to be some where other than out in the rain drying junk.


So there we have it, enough for a car boot sale now all we have to do is decide on where we are going and when. It must be this week because Alex and the kids go back to Barcelona after the week end and the kids want to be there to make sure they get their cut of the dosh. I don’t believe for one minute it will happen and it certainly won’t once the kids have gone back. Christine doing a car boot? It’ll just never happen, but if it does ours will be the only table with a table cloth and it will of course match the colour of the car. I’ll keep you posted.

As you will be aware Alex and grand kids are over with us for a few weeks enjoying the delights of a UK summer as opposed to summer in Barcelona! Her husband Dave couldn’t quite understand why anyone would want to swap the sunshine of Spain and come here for a few weeks so he elected to stay behind.


Not that he is gloating but we do get a message from him every day giving us an update on the weather in Barcelona. Christine just ignores them and comments that she wouldn’t want to sit in the sun anyway.


This surprises me a little as the armoire in her bathroom has many assorted bottles and jars of sun products all from the likes of Clinic and Estee Lauder and I am sure all costing more than the odd few pounds. So what these are for is beyond me if you don’t go out in the sun. But it gets me to thinking.....!


Seeing as I know from experience that she also doesn’t go out in the rain I decide to see what coats are in her wardrobes. The first problem is of course finding the right wardrobe, three down one to go when I come across them. Rain coats in various colours, some very posh and some for every day use all with designer labels and all looking very unused. When I raise the question with Christine she simply replies “I don’t do rain”. So why have the coats?


There are various anoraks and cagoules with hoods ideal for keeping wind off the face all looking like they have never been out of the wardrobe. “I don’t do wind either” says Christine. Same with the winter coats, different styles and colours all looking new and all designed to keep her warm. “Not as warm as the central heating” says Christine “I don’t like the cold”. So why have we bought them all?


Here we have an Armoire full of sun potions that never see the sun as well as a wardrobe full of raincoats that never get wet and winter coats that never see the winter but I seem to be the only one who thinks this is unusual as Alex and her mum can’t understand what I am on about and simply plan their next shopping trip. They seem to do quite a bit of that....


Take Saturday, they decide to do the food shopping, that’s at 9.00 o-clock in the morning, they arrive back at twelve thirty having had morning coffee and elevens in Cafe Nero in Beverley but also carrying bags with logos like M&S, Jaeger and Phase Eight. “Had to keep out of the rain” says Christine “didn’t have a rain coat with me”. Unfortunately most of the bags belong to Christine which will only give Dave something else to gloat about. But the main point is while they are out shopping to keep dry I am still trying to clean up the garden following the floods.


Where are they on Tuesday lunch? Down in Beverley again having lunch with Vivien, Christine’s friend who has known Alex all her life and what are they doing shopping for something for Vivien’s up coming cruise so why they both came back with bags of their own is beyond me. But what am I doing? Cleaning up the garden following another flood. The share out of the work load seems a little unfair to me, I think I need to make some entries in the pink Black Book.


Wednesday night sees them going out for dinner with some girls, well girls may be stretching your imagination a little but they are not all pensioners yet, who Christine used to work with quite a few years ago. As for me I am having dinner at home with the kids sausages, roast potatoes, thick gravy with mushy peas so all is not too bad. At least I have finished with the sewage in the garden.


So it’s now Thursday and I am sitting writing this in a place called ‘Big Fun’ in Hull which is a kids entertainment centre with dozens of kids charging all over place, loud music blaring out of lots of speakers and a strong smell of burger and chips. And would you believe it Christine and Alex have gone into Hull to the shopping centres. There can’t be anything they haven’t already got but I am sure when they return they will have more bags.


They have been gone three hours now and I have a headache from screaming kids and bad coffee. I don’t think the bacon sandwich helped either. I mention to my grandson Joe that grandma and his mum seem to spend a lot of time out shopping. “It’s only like you and dad when you come to Barcelona” says Joe “your always down the bodega” and off he goes to continue having Big Fun. 'Out of the mouths of babes........' and all that. I can’t win, still only two hours to the school bus.........!

I haven't forgot about Retirement Blog and I will be back to normal soon, I hope. Just at the moment it is a constant battle to keep the flood water out of the house. After all the work and planning it has taken to refurbish the cottage and get to the point we are now at it would be heartbreaking for Christine to have to start again to say nothing of back breaking for me.


At the moment we are again watching the main sewer overflowing with water shooting out, all of which ends up in our garden. The road looks like a river and our garden like a lake but so far the sand bags are working and we have no water or sewage in the house. So that makes us luckier than lots of people in and around the East Riding of Yorkshire. So as the saying goes 'mustn't grumble'.






Alex and the grandkids arrived here at the beginning of last week and it has rained each day since sometimes lightly but mostly as constant rain or heavy showers and after each shower we have the flood as the sewers fill up. Nice subject!











So since Alex and the kids have been here we have had heavy rain, thunder storms, floods, sewage all over the garden and terrorist attacks with the terrorist alert level being raised to critical. They got trapped in flood water last week on their way back from visiting their other grandparents at Scarborough and a journey that should have taken 45 minutes took over three hours. They have reached the point of wondering why they are here and I am sure I have seen Joe, our grandson checking flight availability back to Barcelona.


Dave who stayed at home is currently sunbathing in 28 degrees although he is grumbling that is a little cloudy. Shame! Meanwhile once again this morning the sand bags where needed but Christine and I were at a funeral so Alex set about getting the sandbags from the bottom of the garden. Unfortunately she did not know the path ways as well as me and stepped of the path into knee deep water in the garden but she succeeded in barricading the doors and keeping the water out although getting very wet in the process. Thanks Alex.


Well that's where we are at the moment still dry inside so far. What worries me is that I can see Christine looking around all the rooms and I am sure she is planning how to redecorate and what furniture will be required in the insurance claim. I had better sneak a look in her pink Black Book to see if she is making plans or maybe I'll just open another bottle of wine and sit and watch the rain.