Evidence of an under-used feather duster

It was 7.25pm on a recent Wednesday evening and we were expecting folks.

Before I continue with my story, I realise I could make that statement so much more startling with a comma ….

It was 7.25pm on Wednesday evening and we were expecting, folks.

However, it’s unlikely that you’d believe that we’d be expecting in THAT way, folks, because I’m now 63 and he’s nearly 70 and, frankly, we have enough to deal with, keeping up with what bins go out on which day and whether to reorganise the kitchen cupboards to give easier access to the dried fruit.

And we certainly wouldn’t welcome a baby waking us several times a night. We have our bladders for that and they’re doing a grand job.

Babies being born to the elderly has been done before, though. If we go way back, there’s a story in the Old Testament about the patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah who had a child when he was 100 and she was over 90.

They’d been childless but, one day, when Abraham was 75, God told him,' ‘You’re going to have as many descendants as the stars in the skies.’ No one could have blamed Abraham for raising a grey-white eyebrow.

We’re told that Sarah actually laughed when she heard God’s promise. And that is why, when their son was eventually born 25 years later - yes, 25, you heard right - they named him Isaac which means ‘laughter’ and not Colin which means ‘We couldn’t be bothered to think of a better name.’

ANYway, I was telling you that we were expecting some people round on this particular Wednesday.

But, now I think about it, the rest of that story won’t provide enough material for an entire post, and I’ve used up this post now telling you about Abraham and Sarah and how they were the embodiment of the phrase ‘Better late than never.’

Still, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

We’d made the room cosy and welcoming with lamps for our visitors, and lamps are all very well but they shed light on things you’d rather they didn’t.

As we were waiting for the doorbell to ring, I noticed that the lamps were illuminating some cobwebs along the ceiling, just above the curtain rail. Then I turned round and noticed more on the next wall. Then more on the next, and more on the next.

‘We’ve actually been inVADed,’ I said to my husband.

He felt I was exaggerating but, honestly, he thinks that about seventeen million times a day.

‘Those are SKEINS,’ I said. ‘I can’t have people come in here with the room looking like a Gothic TROPE.’

‘Give me the feather duster,’ he sighed.

So I reached for the feather duster - a long, long pole with a fluffy end which we keep tucked at the side of a bookcase.

It’s not often we get it out and use it.

But I probably didn’t need to tell you that.

How’s this for brazenness, though? I went to pick up the feather duster and found on it a spider cheerily weaving a web between the duster and the wall. The spider looked up at me. ‘Oh, hello,’ it said. ‘I thought I’d move in seeing as this is a permanent fixture. Do you like my new conservatory? And this is the new room above the garage.’

I took the feather duster to the back door, shook the spider and his ambitions off, and then watched my husband carry out the fastest and least targeted feather-dustering in history. I’m sure the cobwebs ended up everywhere - over the sofas, the dining table, the coffee tables - but at least they weren’t where the lamps were shining. What the eye doesn’t see blah blah.

We’d only just put the feather-duster back in its place before people arrived and then we put on our we-haven’t-seen-cobwebs-for-years faces and welcomed them in.

I wonder whether Abraham’s wife, Sarah, set up the nursery when first told she was about to have a baby. I reckon she furnished it hopefully with cot, toy cupboard, baby changing table and a colourful zoo mobile hanging from the ceiling, as well as a few pretty lamps, only to find that when people came round 5, 10, 15, 20, 24 years later to admire the nursery, and ask diplomatically about any baby news, she had some serious cobwebbery to deal with before letting them in.

It must have been a relief when Isaac arrived and the spiders said ‘Uh oh’ and crawled off in search of other homes to invade.

Ours, for instance. It took them 3,800 years to get here but get here they did.

Inside Fran’s Diary

On Thursday 15 May, I’m going to meet the Solihull Women’s Institute group and talk to them about my path from foster child to author. This will be a very special event as I’ve been invited to the group by one of its members Hazel who was my social worker in the 1970s! Hazel got in touch after ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ appeared on her Facebook feed as an advert (thank you, Legend Press).

Since then, we’ve met several times, after a 40 year hiatus, and now it’s all turned full circle and I’m going to speak to her WI group. If you’ve a copy of ‘Home Bird’, you’ll see that I dedicated it to Hazel and to another social worker Verity and to all social workers everywhere, because they jolly well deserve it.

Here’s a link to buy ‘Home Bird’ if you want to read the dedication and, while you’re there, you may as well read the book itself.

Coming up later in the year ….

Saturday 2 August - a ‘Saturday signing’ at Kenilworth Books in Warwickshire, signing copies of ‘Home Bird’ from 10.30am - 1.30pm. These are always lovely events, spending a morning in a bookshop and chatting to customers. Come and say hello!

Monday 15 September - A free morning event at Alcester Library, in conversation about my books and writing, hosted by Warwickshire Libraries.

Thursday 11 December - a morning talk about ‘Finding the Funny’ to the wonderful Probus Club. They meet at Leamington Rugby Club and when I visited them last year to talk about ‘Language Change’ they were kind enough to laugh at my jokes so this year they’ve invited me to talk about how to make a joke funny. This had better go well.