Wednesday October 23rd 2024 "simple question : have YOU ever 'moved house' ?"

Dear friends, may I ask you - Have you ever moved house, I wonder? 

To clarify - by "move house" I don't mean "moved your home in the sense of putting in on the back of a big lorry, and "plonking" it down somewhere that appeals to you more" (!), I'm talking just in the sense of selling your house to somebody else and then buying another one somewhere else. I think very few of us have done the former, with most of us limiting ourselves to the latter [I'm glad you clarified that often puzzling point, Colin (!) - Ed]

a typical couple "house-hunting" online

And if all this includes you, you'll know that there are 2 key factors to get right: (1) moving to a nicer area that's got more of you want (and avoiding the reverse) and (2) waiting till the economy and, in particular, the housing market are in a good state for moving in. [A masterly analysis if I may say so, Colin (!) - Ed]

My medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I have been keeping an eye on the local press, mainly our regular Onion News West Worcestershire's print edition, looking for pointers. Picking the right time to move, with one eye on the housing market and the state of the economy in general is the first "biggie", and there was a good story in this morning's paper, with all the "stats", "graphs" etc to keep us riveted to our couch, to put it mildly!

The second criterion, however, is maybe even more important, if anything: picking the right area to move to - avoiding those wrong ones:

[That's enough Onion News stories! - Ed]

Point taken, Onion News! And, even more to the point - if Lois and I were to move to Mariana, or any deep ocean "nook" or "hideaway", come to that (!), who's going to help us around the place with things like changing the battery on the smoke alarm - something people seem to have to do regularly on this new-build housing estate in Malvern, just a few miles up the road from North Piddle.

I can't see any members of Mariana Trench's thriving deep-sea hump-back whale community, for instance, lifting a finger (or should I say, a flipper maybe (?!!!)).  [Please don't! - Ed] Call me a pessimist if you like haha!

flashback to September: after consulting two neighbours, 

Lois and I find out where the totally unmarked "flap" is, the one you

evidently have to push on, in order to open the smoke alarm 

"lid" and remove the battery - what madness !!!!

What a crazy world we live in!

And it's houses, houses, houses that are "on the agenda", as Lois and I chat our way through our morning walk on Poolsbrook Common this morning, and then "recharge our own batteries" (and we don't need a step-ladder to do that, luckily (!)), with a shared toasted tea cake, followed by a decaf americano each, at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop, where we've become regulars since moving here almost exactly 2 years ago, on Halloween 2022.

high up on the common in the lee of the lovely 700-million-year-old 

Malvern Hills a cloud floats gently behind us as the sun starts to burn away the mist

us at the Poolbrook Kitchen and Coffee Shop this morning

What a saga it's been.

We moved to this area 2 years ago to be near the support of our daughter Sarah, who was planning to move to these parts with her family in May 2023, after spending 7 years in Australia. 

Sarah, Francis and the twins were only here 16 months, however, before moving back to Oz. So now we're planning to move nearer our other daughter Alison, who lives with husband Ed and their 3 teenage offspring near Headley Hampshire, about 100 miles east of here.

flashback to October 2022: we pack up our stuff and shut our 

front door for the last time at the house in Cheltenham, 

where we had lived for 36 years -  bringing up our 2 daughters 

before seeing them get married, move away, and have families

flashback to November 2022: Lois and I squeeze ourselves into this

much smaller, new-build home in Malvern in the middle of an 

unfinished housing estate, with used packing-cases for "curtains",

listening to the background "music" of all-day pneumatic drills and 

the merry "Brummie" accents of the builders. Ah, the memories !!!

May 2023: in our little kitchen-diner, Lois and I greet our daughter Sarah, 

with husband Francis and their then 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, 

on their return to the UK after 7 years in Perth, Western Australia

September 2024: Lois and I say goodbye to Sarah and whole 

family treating them to a traditional British Sunday roast lunch

at Alcester's 18th century pub, The Royal Oak. Three days

later they were at London's Heathrow Airport on their way back to Perth

fast forward to this afternoon, and after a couple of hours in bed

we're "at it" again in what-we-call Bedroom 2, looking at some

Hampshire couple's house-for-sale featuring a hideous pink 

"chimney breast", and a massive - like 9ft tall, 9 ft wide - mirror 

at the end of their bed - what a crazy world we live in !!!!

What a saga!!   [You're done that one already. Just saying!  - Ed]

Poor us !!!!!!!

21:00 And after all that madness, it's a relief to turn to the "sanity" of art, just joking there by the way (!). [That's enough exclamation marks in brackets (!) - Ed]

We wind down for bed again on the couch with an interesting "arts" programme, in the company (not literally!) of TV's Waldemar Januszczak (crazy name, crazy guy!) and his "take" on what's been called the most influential work in the history of modern art - Marcel Duchamp's male urinal, which he signed on the bottom using a false name (R.Mutt, 1913), and labelling it "Fountain".

The Fountain, together with most of Duchamps' other "pieces", are housed in the Philadephia Museum of Art. And his "Fountain" has given him the title of the father of conceptual art.

Talking of "sagas" it's a far bigger one than mine and Lois's saga over the last 2 years, to put it mildly!

Duchamp was born in the village of Blainville, Normandy, in 1887, to an amiable, laid-back father - the village notary - and a stern humourless but very religious mother, who used to dress little Marcel up in his Sunday best, and take him to church every Sunday.

programme presenter Waldemar Januszczak visits the hous

in Normandy where Duchamp was brought up, and it's just

a few yards away from the village church, where his mother took

him every Sunday, dressed in his little "Sunday best"

And this "uncuddly mum" used to dress little Marcel up and take him to church every Sunday, Waldemar tells us, where he learnt about Madonnas and The Original Sin.

Lois and I are interested in all this, because we know that in later life Marcel was not a fan of women, to put it mildly. Was his mother the cause of this? 

In his early work as a cartoonist, Duchamp showed himself strongly against the burgeoning feminist movement, and in this magazine from the time, he mocks women's pretensions about having careers, in an article he has titled "Woman Driver".

In Paris, women had finally just been given the right to drive carriages, and so were able to become taxi-drivers. But in the cartoon Duchamp has drawn for the article, this female driver is not in her carriage and is nowhere to be seen.

Oh she's a taxi-driver and a prostitute at the same time? It's all a bit nasty, isn't it. 

And "Was it little Duchamp's "uncuddly mum" who started him on this almighty anti-women "jag" through his life?", Lois and I wonder. I think we should have been told, don't you, but unfortunately we aren't, although this is only a half-hour programme, so maybe Waldemar didn't have time for that, which is a pity, to put it mildly!

Further anti-women cartoons and later paintings followed, but what of his "Fountain" and its mysterious signature R.Mutt 1917? Waldemar has decoded the signature: "R.Mutt" is a sneaky reference to the German word "Urmutter" - "the primordial mother" - and a cheeky sideswipe at "Origin of the World", painted by Duchamp's, arch-enemy in the art world, Gustave Courbet.

a couple admiring Gustave's "Origin of the World"

at the Orsay Museum in Paris

And it turns out that Duchamp's "The Fountain", which appears to be a male urinal is really meant to recall a porcelain female vagina tipped over a bit.

Who knew? And almost before we realise, presenter Waldemar has "signed off" with his trademark finish, "There are a million stories in the world of art, and this has been one of them".

Fascinating stuff, isn't it! [If you say so! - Ed]

22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!