The home coming

Subject: FW: The home coming.

The Hoover is being dragged around again this weekend and the sheets washed, if not ironed, have already gone on the bed. The broccoli and the greens have arrived having shopped for the second time from my armchair. It's interesting having to interpret what the picture portrayed and what arrived. For instance instead of receiving a packet of button mushrooms I received just one and only two carrots. At least I bought, for me unusual things, things  I would have been blind to walking down the supermarket isle but here I now have them as I puzzle what to do with them.
I also had a rush of blood to the head and bought a few bottles of wine but with Andrew being tea-total and finding when I'm alone I have no inclination to pour myself a drink. I will have to wait for my old drinking pal Angela to arrive and help me out..
The reason for the activity is that Andrew is coming over on holiday for Christmas and arrives on Wednesday. I'v been told not to fuss and not to come to the airport he will make his way to the front door. I supposed we pay for our sins and having described my return to Bradford in 1966 being away for five years, I caught  the train and the trolley -bus home, nearly caused my Mother a heart attack by just turning up on the doorstep. At least I know the date if not the time but I will miss the anticipation as passengers stream through the arrival gate and you strain for a first glimpse. I have mentioned before my own emotional antenna out on such occasions as the families reunite, the lovers test their resolve and the loner makes his of her way through the thong.
It will be grand to see him again although in fact we have seen each other often with the aid of Messenger. I usually I wake to find a message or a video clip from India and it's a far cry from the paucity of information and contact I had with my parents back in the day
Letter writing was the main method of keeping in touch and the use of tape recorded messages along with 8mm video film placed me at the cutting edge back then.
But there's nothing like the real thing as we manoeuvre around our space trying not to be too gushing with the questions, (something I'm always accused of) and finding a line between the pleasure of finding each other much as we had left each other, his gaze I'm sure a little more acute since as the years roll by we oldies begin to show our age in many ways and children worry about what is inevitable rather than celebrating that we are still here.
There was some talk of Marie and Angela driving over from Wales but we are spending Christmas there so I doubt if it will happen and anyway Angela is ever so busy, like a chipmunk in her new forest home.

So it's out with the cleaning materials, the duster and the broom. Not too much, I might add I don't want to create a false image, the odd cobweb is handy for flies and the dust for writing the occasional a message. At least Andrew won't be like the 'sanitary police' who descended my house last time proclaiming this and that dirty and needing a scrub. Nothing missed their combined gaze as they took apart my happy complacency and reduced  me hiding away as the mop and bucket became the de facto statement of women's intolerance men's more casual approach to such matters. We simply care less for the order and the house proud  attribute, passed down from Granny to Mother to Daughter. We see the place we call home just that, a refuge from conformity and prying eyes where to chill means to sprawl out on the couch watching a rugby match oblivious to the noisy vacuum cleaner which suddenly appears just when the scrum nears the try-line. It's as if two universes clash, each oblivious of the other, each equally sure of their path and the righteousness of their cause. Just another example of the fact that men are from Mars and women from Jupiter.