Just Humans Being...

Life is set to change again for us. We have had a great time entertaining many B&B guests, but now have decided to stop & concentrate on the things that are far more important. Firstly, ourselves... Sharing our home with many strangers is quite exhausting & Sime in particular has worn himself out giving his all, something neither of us had really noticed until we stopped. Secondly, Bebe (Sime's mum) is going to be moving in with us... Her dementia is progressing, though the conditions she was continuing to live in were obviously not helping. We feel she has been let down by the social care support team, her carers seemed to be excellent on the surface, but in reality - she has been badly neglected. On our last visit, we found her flat in a terrible state. The cleaner had disappeared, her hairdresser had stopped going in & some of the carers didn't even bother to feed her! On top of all this, she has been phoning the police about her hot water ...

I can't tell you how many times we've started writing about various things, but have had to stop due to lots of things going on... We have lots of draft posts, some with a few photos & no words, some with just a title & a line or two... It's quite a few, but neither of us seems to find time to get them finished & after several weeks the desire to share those photos or ideas just fades & we move on to the next thing. Some days are just so crazy... Getting up at 6.30am to prepare breakfast for guests, then doing a full day's clean, returning at about 5.30pm, cooking dinner, eating with our guests & more often than not - chatting away until late, washing up & finally falling into bed at around 1am... I don't know how we do it, but we do.  The one thing we are doing right this year is making sure that we have 2 days off from going out to work, which is great - though frustrating for some of our customers who desperately want us to work ...

We've had the most busiest 2 days of the year so far... We have hemp protein in our porridge every day, which really helps to keep us going! Yesterday, we had a crazy day, the house we cleaned was it's usual hovel & took a lot longer than we'd thought... Second home owners with more money than sense & children who have absolutely everything, but don't look after any of it!  Completely different world to ours... Thank goodness! Today's been equally difficult, as some owners contacted us at the last minute to say their son & friends would be coming down today (just as guests were leaving)...  We already had a full clean to do, so said we could get there after 3pm, which we did & amazingly, everything ran smoothly. We managed to clean the 3 storey house in 5 hours between us, came home & prepared our guest room for folks arriving tomorrow. Any minute now we'll be eating our very late dinner & then it's all systems go ...

Another whirlwind of a week...  Filled with busy work days, lovely guests & surprise family visit! Last Thursday, we went to see the  Eden Choir  at the Eden Cafe with Asa's parents... Melvin & Lesley also spent their last night in Cornwall at Meadowcroft . Their second stay with us & we feel honoured to have them... Especially as it gives us chance to show our appreciation for Lesley's fabulous homemade Christmas gifts - which we have been extremely lucky to receive over the past few years... Including delicious homemade chocolates! The Dolphins Fly  played their first gig of the year... Which was a crazy night & ended in a bar room brawl... Nice though, as our friends came along too! Gorran Haven Beach on Tuesday morning... And 5 minutes later the clouds came over... Lupe enjoying a roll in the dirt... Fleaby fast asleep & stretched out... We have loved having another couple return all th...

First of all, thank you all for your comments about Bebe. We've had more stuff to sort out around her this week. Fortunately, from down here this time - but still time consuming.  We are still unsure what the future holds for her & whether she will eventually move down here... Working in social care for many years has left us both with little faith in any residential home. We have both witnessed abuse & neglect & feel it is such a difficult decision to make, we also promised Bebe that we would never put her into a home... On the other hand, she's not keen on moving all the way to Cornwall, so for now - we just hope that she can continue for as long as possible in her own home. We know all there is about vascular dementia, having cared for nan & doing huge amounts of research, but working with a variety of folks - lots with quite challenging behaviour stands us in good stead.  We know what hard, full time work it is & that it will have a big impa...

At last we've finished preparing our guest room. Everything in there is either old or been given to us, hence the quirky curtain arrangement! We'll probably change it round again at some point, as we want to put a writing desk in there to attract writers - it's such an ideal place & we've already had enquiries from some who are looking for long stays, so it's exciting! Some of the furniture is from a holiday property we look after, so not really our cup of tea... But it was free! The walls are wood panelled & the room is the brightest in the house! Entrance to the en-suite shower room. We have a similar en-suite in our room, so are very lucky! Though ours isn't as tidy... Hahaha! The showers are amazing - we are spoilt!  They are the best showers we have ever used, which has always left us disappointed when travelling, nothing compares to them. Anyway, here is the website we are featured on:  Air B&B    Just got the rest of the house to sort ...

The last week seems to have been crazy, several owners of properties we care for have decided to sell or rent out long term, it's like all of a sudden everyone's starting to panic about their finances - we've lost 4 big earning jobs - just like that... We've been through a blip & have worried whether we would have to leave this house sooner than we'd expected, as we were convinced that we would no longer be able to afford the rent... Then something great happened - a new job came along & then another one & suddenly we've realised that we're going to be busy again, especially around Christmas, so the heat is off. We had a good chat with our landlord, his Wife & Son - they don't want us to leave & for some reason, they think we are wonderful (we think they are too)! So now one of our dreams is about to come true - they've given us the go ahead to start doing B&B - yippee! We hope to be starting in the spring & are now ful...