Banangrams

I spent the whole day going through a bookshelf upstairs which mainly had very old books from my grandmother‘s house which I rescued before the clearance company came in and also from my mothers place, some of them go back to the 1860s and some of them are written in by my ancestors, the problem is there are just so many of them, in reality I am not going to read any of them I wouldn’t think, they just hold sentimental value and some of them are very beautiful to look at as well.
I sorted out the ones with special inscriptions which are personal to the family and the ones that I really love and ended up with three shopping bags full of ones I felt I could let go of. Then I searched on the Internet to see if any of them are worth any money, the ones I thought might be I forwarded to an antiquarian book dealer with some photographs but he wrote back to say that they weren’t worth anything. I expect if I stick some of them on eBay I make £10-£30 here and there... I haven’t decided whether I will try to sell them myself or not, my priority is making space and stopping to sell lots of individual items is only going to delay the process. I was surprised that a lot of these very old books could be found for sale on eBay already considering their age but I suppose everybody had lots of books back in the day and everybody feels sentimental about things that theor departed loved ones owned. My mother kept literally everything and helping her clear her house and getting rid of her things has been a massive job for her, for Gerry and his family and for me. I don’t want my children to go through the same thing. Mum has been gone nine months now and I feel ready to tackle all the things of hers that I have here, I have been dealing with it but I’m really going to do it now, we have decided to rent out the top of our house for a while and that means moving our bedroom and my studio into other areas in the house and for that I need lots of space. I’m glad to have a reason to do it and I’m finding the process very therapeutic, it’s incredible how many things we have in this house, quite ridiculous really, we are always so busy that sorting out things and tidying up properly has never been a priority.

My mother-in-law Gill arrived about 3 PM, her son-in-law is looking after her husband for the night so she could have a break with us, she was able to get the train up here, we watched some old family movies that I found when I was tidying up including one that had her mother meeting Zebedee as a baby on it, lots of films of the boys growing up and Lola and Ruby and us looking very young!

Max made a delicious curry with all the trimmings and after Zebedee went to work we sat round the table with Gulliver and had a lovely dinner and then we watched an episode of Star Trek called the trouble with Tribbles which was very silly indeed, Zebedee had found a furry object at college and brought it home which reminded everybody of the Tribbles.

Then we played bananagrams which is such a great game.

Beatrix at Kingston College rang to schedule in Zebedee‘s one-to-one sessions which he is now entitled to following his diagnosis of ADHD, I really hope it’s going to help, he scored 100% in his practical test today, we just need to get him through all the revision, he is dyslexic so reading is difficult for him, he just needs to get all the information into his brain somehow so that he can pass the multiple-choice exam, he will have a reader for that so as long as he knows the answers he’ll be fine and then he will qualify as a personal trainer and fitness instructor.





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