Fluff's Journey : Jumbalances & Shute Manor

It’s been a strange few weeks, Julie’s ashes are scattered, I feel a sense of relief, well, more a weight lifted off my shoulders since we fulfilled her wish. I feel much brighter within myself now but I am still a long, long way from getting over the loss of this amazing woman and wife. Just last night drove home to me that I’m far from over losing my princess even eight months and day after she left me. My drive home from work was relatively normal though the weather was rubbish. As I came towards Liverpool city centre, the road is three lanes wide and I’m in lane two, I’m stopped at traffic lights listening to ‘The Vamps’ (you oldies google them lol) I’m listening to a track called ‘Shout about it’, in so many ways it makes me smile thinking about Julie, I looked in my rear view mirror and saw blue lights and heard the Siren, an ambulance was trying to make its way through, I pride myself on being able to see situations in advance and so I flashed my lights at the two cars in front of me who moved forwards and over , I followed but pulled broadside across the front of the car in lane one to get out of the way, the skilful ambulance driver would have seen the path we were clearing for him and he wove through the gap, the grateful paramedic in the passenger seat raised his hand in thanks, they were through with little inconvenience and, hopefully they either got the patient on board to hospital quickly or they got to their next patient in time to save their life.. who knows… Almost spontaneously though I just sobbed, the emotion of the moment, the music, the flash backs to having to call ambulances so many times to the house, the stress of waiting for them, of comforting Julie as we waited, the feeling of helplessness seeing her scared and in seizure, then following them to the hospital with their precious cargo of Julie on board just overflowed to the point of being inconsolable, tears were actually running off my face and chin I cried more last night than since the day I kissed her goodbye, even writing and recalling this has brought back the tears….. I’m not going to be getting over her anytime soon…..

Over the same period another two brave ladies and friends have lost their personal battles with cancer, Bernie Singleton aka Bernie the Bucket, fundraiser extraordinaire and Merseyside Woman of The Year award’s Philanthropist of the year 2015 and, a beautiful lady and friend Ann Byrne, I first met Ann over fifteen years ago, she owned BarberAnnes and through Ann I introduced Julie to Ann & dear friend Jeanette. Ann had been fighting cancer for a long long time, I’m guessing five years, even as she fought her battle she’d contact me to ask how Julie was, we last saw each other as the four of us bumped into each other in Costco one Sunday afternoon. Ann fought bravely though she relapsed several times and around the time Julie was nearing the end Ann was in Wirral St John’s Hospice, I truly felt it would be a close call to who we lost first. Ann rallied and she bravely fought on until last weekend when she too lost her battle. The world is poorer in many ways following the loss of these three friends.. My thoughts are with both families and close friends and this blog is dedicated to the memories of Bernie & Ann.

OK, let’s lighten this blog up a little before I reveal an exclusive!

For those that didn’t know, Julie was really quirky at times, hedgehogs were called ‘chitchogs’, armpits called ‘crumpets’ and ambulances called Jumbalances, Best friend June was called ‘Woon’, Best friend on Merseyside Collette was called Olive… (A day larking about with friends including Collette around shops trying on hats and Collette put on a hat and Julie decided she looked like Olive (Anna Karen) off the TV show on the buses (youngsters google it), me? I was called all sorts by

Me & Fatty

her, I even found a photo the other day of Julie & I sat on our stairs at a party, she’d saved it to the lap top as ‘Me & Fatty’, I laughed at the cheek of her but she was right... hahaha… Cuddles were sniggles. There are probably many more I’ll try and recall them but for sure she had her quirky ways. She hated the dark, she hated spiders , she hated big lorries on the motorway, she loved the snow, she loved vintage, she’d tell you she should have been a forties or fifties housewife though whether she’d have loved the war years, I very much doubt it but she loved that ‘kind of thing’. She loved Art Deco, she loved Downton Abbey, She loved Crochetting, Cake baking, Cooking, Card Making, in fact almost anything craft wise. Just realised they all begin with ‘C’.. Spooky.. She loved her children, grandchildren & life itself, she loved her granny, she loved her daddy too, The TV ad “Daddy or Chips?” hehe Chips never, never

Daddy or Chips...

stood a snowball’s chance in hell in that competition. Check out her many skills in the pictures below.... A few more ‘C’s’ She was charming, cheeky, colourful, caring, considerate and at times crazy, lol also at times, mysterious & mischievous but of course that doesn’t begin with C and I’ll cover off the latter in the not too distant future.

Her biggest passion was Shute Manor and her desire to turn it into something special. I bought 55 Grange Mount (it’s boring old name) before I met Julie. I actually bought it without seeing it, I was working in London and the young lady I was involved with then who rented an apartment set about house hunting, a few weeks later I got a call saying “I’ve found the house of my dreams, put an offer in on it”. I listened to the description as she passionately described it, 17 rooms, on four floors then I gulped as I asked the price… The price was scarily low and when I finally saw it the next weekend I realised why, it had been empty for around 18 months, there were even mushrooms growing in the then bathroom.. It was obvious the house had amazing potential and equally it was obviously going to be a money pit too, it needed so much doing to it. I shuddered but I bought it, slowly we started to do up the house then without warning

Mushrooms

that ‘relationship’ broke down and for the first time I was alone in the house. In those days I worked

away four or five days a week and weekends I carried on with the DIY very slowly, the house was built in 1840 lol probably the last time anything was done to it! I wanted to keep its character and when I met Julie thankfully she had a passion and desire to do up the house which had become her home, our home. She sold her house in Grimsby to move in and she invested in the house by contributing significantly to the new roof we had fitted, in return she became the Co-owner of what she named Shute Manor after we married, more quirkiness.. We both invested a lot of time, effort and money into it. I suppose had we done nothing else for around 8 years we could have got it finished and she would have loved to have completed it however we had a life, an amazing life building memories and doing things quite honestly Julie would never have done had she stayed in Grimsby. The chances of her ever seeing the Mayan City & Pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico, of feeding & swimming with Dolphins, visiting Walt Disney World in Florida and the child coming out in her, visiting the Golden

Vegas baby

Gate Bridge in San Francisco, seeing Rodeo Drive and all of the sights of Las Vegas, the Tulips of the Keukenhof and The World Heritage Site of Kinderdijk and its Windmills in Holland would all of been remote. We did all of these and much more, some things we did on our own, others with dear friends, the trade-off was Shute Manor was never finished but, she was so proud of her skills in terms of the interior design and her gardening skills too, she was very special, very special but you all already knew that…

Anyway… For the second time It's ended up just me alone at ‘The Manor’.. This time around it's different... As lovely as it is, as it was and as it can one day be again for me it’s lost its soul. I spend as little time here as I can and since Julie ‘left me’ on September the 9^th it’s been hollow, I’ve spent I think just six or maybe seven weekends at home, most days I’ve deliberately worked way beyond my office hours and I get home around 9pm, most of the time then it’s a routine of check my post, do my laundry, shower and head to bed until the alarm goes off around 06.30 and the pattern begins all over again…

I’ve ummmed and aahh’d since October with what to do, should I stay or should I go? I truly know so few people in the area, well people who I spend time with, daft as it sounds Julie who lived here for a shorter period than me had more friends locally than me, leaving home around seven and getting home around seven as used to be the case left me little time to socialise and that time was always Julie & Me time. It then begged the question as to what is holding me here? Work is 43 miles away, I could half my fuel bill at least, I could lose the £3.40 a day the Mersey tunnel costs me and if I considered a move to within fifteen minutes of the office I’d probably be around five thousand pounds a year better off and I’d reclaim around two hours a day currently wasted on my commute.

Basically I needed a reason to keep me in Birkenhead other than the closeness to the Mersey & The Irish Sea, some of my favourite eateries and the few close friends. I decided back then (October) that unless I had a reason to stay by the end of December that I’d call in Estate Agents, sell up and move on. I’m a big believer in when it comes to making important decisions that you draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper and on the left I write the pluses and on the right, the negatives, most times if you do that one list is clearly longer than the other, in the main it makes the decision easier. On my list there are more reasons to go than stay on the face of it.

I’ll write more on the topic (for it’s a blog in its own right) of dating and moving on but in the perfect world I’d find someone locally to give me sufficient incentive/reason to stay, I had several dinner dates from late November & in December but none of them came to anything beyond lovely dinners and late evenings and prior to entering ‘The Dating Arena’ (and yes that’s what it seems to be) there were a select few women that had they shown an interest I wouldn’t be writing any of this today, alas it takes two like-minded people to want to be in or grow into a relationship and well it’s fair to say there was much more of a desire on my part to want to see if there was reason for me to stay. I’ll be friends forever with the ladies but I don’t have to live in Birkenhead to keep our friendships and in the words of Arnie "I'll be back". There are two other ladies, young ladies that I’d have been honoured to have become more than friends with but no matter what people say age does make a difference (and lol looks) and suffice to say no matter how special I feel those two ladies are those sort of relationships are purely in the realms of fantasy and will never become reality, approaching 60 it’s lovely to have younger friends and be friends than be considered an old unattractive fool/letch lol, I truly only feel in my late 30’s though, damn you nature! Lol.

Well the end of the year came and dark damp miserable nights came along and I thought “Who’d want to buy a house on a cold miserable and damp night?” Not me! So I set myself another deadline of the clocks going forwards and the spring coming. Financially I am under no pressure to sell up, Julie was uninsurable with all of her health issues and well I funded the house myself before Julie came along and I continued that throughout our time together, Julie shopped for the house, she more than paid her way in many different ways but her money was hers to spend as she saw fit not on household bills.. Had I gone first the mortgage would have been paid up and Julie would have had a nice little nest egg, as it was and is our mortgage remains, it is small in comparison to most people’s but back to the point whilst there is logic that says move there are no financial pressures to put me in the position to sell up and move even if that is to be my decision. I suspect too my valuation and Estate agent's are going to be some distance apart but I can hold on until I get what I want for it, I’ve invested, no we’ve invested too much time and love into the house to just ‘give it away’….

So the clocks went forwards and spring is here, summer most definitely is not! Light nights put a spring in my step and the house looks better although far from perfect in bright light, it still needs so much doing to it. Another factor is whilst Julie’s presence is still reflected in her interior design and her quirky ornaments with her ashes scattered in the lake district now it doesn’t feel such a bad thing to do (as in considering selling the house).. Talking of Julie again (lol after all it still is her blog), I explained previously how I felt about not being able to just throw Julie’s ashes tube away and so I’ve bought the tub, the compost and two lavender plants and the tube was torn up and now forms part of the compost to feed and nurture the plants, they’re intentionally close to the front door & so I see them daily, I feel much better now.

So all of this done, whilst I thought for a short moment I’d found a reason to stay it isn’t to be, so... the exclusive is Shute Manor will be on the market in the very near future, someone else will need to lovingly complete what Foxy started.. Anyone want to buy a house???........