15. roadkills

It had the feel of a David Lynch movie. The mist was thick and the headlights of the car bounced upon it, it was like driving into a wall that kept receding away. We were on the motorway in the dead of night, having decided to drive home overnight as Fox was finishing work at 9 pm. It was very unsettling, at least for me. And then suddenly, what just hopped in front of the car? No, not Laura Palmer but a stupid white bunny that was treating me to my very own experience of "bunny caught in the headlights".

I screamed a scream I would have prefer Fox not to have heard for it was more akin to a 10 year old girl's having a bad dream than to a 35 year old man's driving a van, albeit a small one. The rabbit did what any rabbit is supposed to do when caught in headlights, it froze. And this, I'm pleased to say, saved its life. I started to relax when Fox said: "Imagine if it had been a deer". Indeed.

I had never killed any animal on the road (or off the road for that matter), and after my encounter with the rabbit my eyes rarely strayed from the road. So imagine my surprise few days later when my first roadkill didn't turn up to be a rabbit or a deer but a bird. Yes, a bird. The threat came from the air. The little buggers are darting from one edge to the other on either side of the road and quite close to the ground, in search of food or mate. But oblivious to the traffic. The poor thing hit the windshield with a thump! and ricocheted over the car.

I was mortified, so Fox came to my rescue: "It's probably just stunned hon, they always flight into windows and stuff". Windows travelling at 110 km/hr? Doubt it. But I feel lucky, really, because when I told the story to Cathy she remembered when she hit a bird once. It hit the front of the car, rebounded off the roof and crashed on the windshield of the car travelling behind, going through it and losing its head in the process. That kind of carnage would buy me years on the couch.

14. camping it up

I resigned yesterday. I didn't feel elated or had a smirk on my face, instead I handed in my letter to my superior in a doorway, feeling very conscious of the fact I was leaving a month earlier than previously stated. But I'm sure she understands that sometimes we say something and then do another, after all she promised me during my job interview that I'll be put forward for my level 4 in British Sign Language but turned me down every single year when I asked for it. See?
But the truth is that we can't afford not to be there any longer, my early departure is more of a necessity rather than a choice. We know that local youth is getting into the school (probably through the broken windows, and the buggers don't even switch off the lights before leaving) and when Dave lifted the floorboards this week he found more than the mummies of two previous lodgers (see above and below). He found dry rot. Or so we think. We need to get an expert on site, and pay him of course. More cash out of our pocket and no job has started on the house yet.
And why not? Because our project manager is dragging his feet to find another mason, probably hoping to wear us out in a waiting game (for two weeks he ignored our phone calls and emails). Should we get impatient and get workers on site he would be entitled to denounce a lack of trust and ask compensation under the terms of the contract we signed before leaving us to sort things out. We are of course tempted to buy him out, and it's still an option we're considering, but we are foaming at the mouth at the very thought of handed more money to him for having done so little.

So in the end it became evident that as long as we would be in London there would be little or no progress made on the renovation, so we decided that one of us should go. Speaking French, it fell on me to pack up and move. The project manager might be able to dodge our phone calls for two weeks but it will be interesting to see how he'll do with yours truly camping on his doorstep.

Well, not so much camping as 'caravaning'. We first thought about cleaning and turning the kitchen of the house and its adjacent room into our living quarters and 'roughing it up' but papa would have none of it and within days found us a caravan. The comfort of the caravan will be a small consolation for having to go there on my own as Fox will remain behind until I find a job to keep us afloat for the first year. This is disheartening as we have seldom been apart, twice for a week at a time and each time I have been miserable throughout. This is not how I pictured our move.
I imagined us driving one sunny day, leaving Britannia behind smiling at each other. We would arrive at the school at sunset, we would open a bottle of wine and put fresh sheets on the bed. We would eat amongst the carton boxes looking in each other's eyes. The next few days would have been spent unpacking and painting around the house, walking in the garden sipping wine and the evenings listening to the house talking to us, getting used to its noises. But instead the house won't 'talk' to me but will scare the living Jesus out of me, along with her living-dead cats and army of flies. I will have to hide from the neighbours in the caravan (Fox is the sociable one and would have to do some serious damage control by the time he joins me). Hopefully job hunting and stalking our project manager will keep me busy.