Was feeling a bitty shaky on this day, as three days into the week for telling the agent whether I will take the smallholding, I was still not sure. Felt a light depression setting in, as almost no sleep, and a lot of nightmares concerning bright green houses and monster bulls can play havock with the old nervous system! I could never be as depressed as my good friend Lizzie back in Scotland, who drank a bottle of red every night, smoke umpteen packets of cigarettes, then get one helluva astma attack from this indulgences, which then prompts an an anxiety attack, and who then phone me at three in the morning to get the paramedics!
So I decided to clean the fishpond, as sitting in the flat, or walking down to town brought no peace, and I wondered if a bout of hard work would calm me down. Stinky and dangerous job, as the fish kept on jumping from the kids fishing net, or the holding bucket. My left small toe got badly hurt when, diving after a bally bright orange Houdini with a flashy tail, it caught on a jagged rock, making me jump around on one leg and using some fine vocabulary! But I eventually got the job done! The next day my Houdini was floating upside down, which was a pity, as he was the prettiest fish in the pond. Maybe I was just a teeny bit rough after I hurt my toe, which I had to doctor with horse linament, and was now swolen and purple, and very tender! But the last straw was when, on driving up Mead street in front of the school, I was once again caught up in the schoolmum rush! Sitting caught up behind a young blond mum in a huge silver monster parked in the middle of the road who was inspecting her nails one by one, then had a good look at her make-up and hairdo, then sat staring into space, apparently oblivious of us childless road users who just wanted to go our ways, I thought of the Haarlem traffic consisting mostly of cattle, horses, donkeys, chickens, and even a few pigs, and then and there made up my mind! I was going homesteading!
Back home I phoned the agent to tell her that I was all for living at Haarlem, then made an appointment with an attorney to start the process of buying. This bally old man, who anyway looked ridiculous with two thin strands of hair combed over his bald scalp, treated me like an imbecile, just because at my HIGH age I wanted to do what in his eyes was a strange thing! When he asked me for the fifth time if I was sure, I got a little upset, so I gave him a saucy wink, just to show him there was still some life in me, and he got so flustered he kept quiet about the practicality of the whole thing, and got on with it. But I got a lot more frustrated as time went by, as the transfer took for ages, and I was scared that it would not be done before I had to leave for my Job in Strathyre, Scotland. In the meantime I stared doing some naive paintings for the craft markets to pass the time! The one photo is of my fish pond in my very small garden.