Well, events have moved on apace here, though they slowed down when we became caught up in the bedroom curtain saga. It is astonishingly difficult to buy patterned blackout curtains for a child's bedroom, especially long ones suitable for the large windows of an Edwardian house. Of course you can have them made, but that pre-supposes that you have plenty of time. So our son's solution was to buy some lined curtains which would fit, and some cheerful material, and attach the extra material to the front of the curtains. They have no sewing machine, but they have a friend who does, so one night (Sunday or Monday) they went to her house and started work. The curtains were wider than the material, so an extra piece of material was bought, to be cut in half lengthwise to attach to the side of the curtain length so as to widen it. My son did the cutting of the material - not very successfully, I have to say. It would have been better if they had had a longer measuring tape, he claims. I think it would have been better if he had just cut it straight! Then he sewed the first seam, so he ended with a piece of cloth sufficiently large to cover one curtain. It would have helped if he had noticed that the two bits of material that he joined up together to make this piece of cloth were a different way up, but you can't have everything!
At that point, the friend's sewing machine broke, and they returned home despondent and curtain-less. A further problem was that the original lined curtains were not blackout curtains, and our daughter-in-law doubted that our grandson would go to sleep in a room that wasn't completely dark - he is used to it being very dark in his room in the flat. So the curtains needed to have the extra material added. At the same time, our son wanted to move in, as the kitchen was more or less ready, provided Paul could manage to connect the kitchen tap. The kitchen does look so much better - and it was a great luxury to sit at a proper table and eat breakfast. There are still things to finish as you can see but the end is now in sight.
On Tuesday morning I went over to the flat and we reviewed all possible curtain options. I got a needle, some pins and a lot of thread and prepared to do some pinning and hand sewing. It was difficult, as the curtain was very large and there were already two layers, but I got the material pinned and tacked into the correct position along the top of one curtain and pinned it along both sides. I also managed a hem, which wasn't easy, as somebody hadn't cut it very straight. This took most of a day, as it had to be spread out on the floor and so needed to be done when our grandson wasn't around, as I didn't want him eating the pins. In the meantime, my daughter-in-law had spoken to somebody she knew in the supermarket who said his sister was a seamstress and could help. This lady phoned on Tuesday night and arrangements were made to deliver her the curtains on Wednesday at lunchtime.
On Wednesday morning my grandson had to go to the doctor's; he had been unwell for several days, seeming to have tooth trouble as well as a high fever, diarrhoea and earache. The doctor said most of the problems were caused by a virus, and the earache and fever would go away and the diarrhoea would improve if he starved a bit. Poor little chap, having to move to a new house and an unfamiliar bedroom and do it on a starvation diet! He wasn't all that hungry on Wednesday anyway, fortunately. After the doctor, I looked after him while my daughter-in-law went off to deal with the curtains - a 40 minute drive, in the end.
Later that evening, she and my son went back to collect the curtains, to find that things had not quite gone according to plan. There was possibly a language problem, as it appeared the seamstress had not quite understood exactly what was required. The curtain I had pinned and tacked was fine; but she had not understood that, for the second curtain, a piece of extra material needed to be added to the side of the patterned width to make it wide enough to cover the curtain. So there was a nice piece of patterned material sewn neatly onto the curtain, but it didn't cover the entire curtain, there was an uncovered strip down each side!
While we considered the curtain problem, I suggested making a temporary blackout for the room with a panel of cardboard, so Paul did this on Thursday morning; there is plenty of cardboard from various delivery boxes, indeed it was used to cover the kitchen floor for quite a while, so he joined various bits with lots of sticky tape. It doesn't look beautiful, but it keeps the light out temporarily.
Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing on Thursday morning, we were organised enough to visit our storage and find a huge heap of boxes that might contain things we were likely to need - like plates, cutlery and kitchen equipment, or other clothes. The clothes I am currently wearing have been in my suitcase since we set off for Colorado in January, and I'm sick of looking at them. I'm hoping I'll have a delightful surprise when I open the box marked 'Nora's clothes', though it's so cold here I wonder if I would have been better to bring the box marked 'Nora's winter clothes'.
The boxes were all stacked in the flat on Thursday afternoon. I'm afraid they are still all there - we hope to unpack a bit at the weekend.
When my son came home from work on Thursday, we all moved house! There were still a huge number of their belongings left in the flat, but at least everybody had a bed with bedding and some clothes, and there were some kitchen supplies in both places. We did have a bit of a last minute rush about 10.30, just as they were dropping exhausted into their beds, when we realised they had no cups for breakfast, and went rushing round with them, but mostly we managed it.
Friday was spent unpacking in both places. A bit more unpacking was done in the house because we went there in the morning and helped. Our poor grandson was still fasting because his diarrhoea hadn't cleared up, but he was rather tired of the doctor's recommendation - toast. When my daughter-in-law could stand no more of Paul telling her where to put things in the kitchen, we went out to lunch, and our grandson ate a ham sandwich with great delight. It hadn't disagreed with his interior by the time I left - 11pm, since I babysat so they could go to dinner with friends - so I am hoping he is getting better in that area. He still has toothache and earache though, and now he is coughing a great deal as well, and clearly feels quite poorly much of the time.
He seems to like his new bedroom and is getting used to it gradually. He loves the new 'day room' where he can scatter his toys,
or sit on the big cushions - though he never sits anywhere for long.
He'll sit on the sofa for songs or stories for a short while, and he loves YouTube on the iPad as there are lots of children's songs. It's difficult interesting him in anything for long at present though, as he feels so awful.
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