Someone out there's got a sense of humour

Our shower doesn't really get you wet.  I guess it could be said to be a shower ahead of its time.  Back in the 80s when the world was wanting everything to be bigger, better, faster… and showers to be wetter and more powerful, no-one was really thinking about the environment.  Except perhaps the person who designed our shower.  No water is wasted.  If you are washing or rinsing your arm, then your arm will be wet, but the rest of you will pretty much be dry. 

At the weekend Andrea told me that it’s not her personal trainer that attracts her to the gym, but the glorious, powerful, abundant showers.  Andrea’s shower is great.  I used to think my parents’ shower was pretty mediocre.  My parents’ shower is great.

You don’t really hang around in our shower.  You concentrate while you’re in there.   Concentrate on getting wet, then concentrate on the getting the soap off your body, no dawdling.  Then one day I the second light on the shower caught my eye – the first is to tell you the power’s turned on, but what does the second tell you?

The second light is labelled “low pressure”.  I laughed out loud.  So I’m not sure our shower was designed by an environmentalist ahead of his time.  I think it was designed by someone with a warped sense of humour.

Disco nights

It’s cold here.  I am reliably informed by those with thermometers on their cars (our car’s been reading -4° since its brief encounter with a hedge during the January snows) that it has been -10° today (though the BBC dissents).  For those who still work in “old money” that’s 14°F.

The cold has lead to several discoveries today.  The first was that we cannot get into the garages in cold weather.  We don’t keep the cars in there, but we do keep our Christmas boxes in there.  Our advent calendars are in the Christmas boxes.  One door is frozen shut; the other the lock is jammed, perhaps should we manage the lock we’d discover that the door too is frozen.  I think it’s just the ground in front has lost its usual give and the frozen mud needs a bit of clearing.  Guess where the shovel is?

My most recent discovery was that the bidet is very warm.  Well, not the bidet, we couldn’t get to the bidet behind the boxes even if the need for a quick wash were to strike during the cooking, but the bidet room.  I keep finding random heat pockets around the house and they’re all in the oddest places.  The guest room is incredibly warm too.

And the cold has also given us our very own outdoor disco.  We seem to have two choices with our security lights outside – to have them on full time or to have them on the security setting.  As they are 500W bulbs, we prefer to have them on as little as possible.  But the cold must be affecting them.  We have been treated to a disco all afternoon and evening – on, off, on, off – not even Oriana has been known to flick switches for as often or as long.  Perhaps the bulbs will burn out and peace will be restored.

Widow Twanky

I could fund our renovations by opening a laundry. 

We have two washing machines, one tumble dryer, and one washer-dryer – I’m all set. 

Except I’m not.

Old Norman’s washing machine has been driving me nuts.  It’s a small quibble, but when it’s finished it has to be turned off, then left for a minute, then you can open the door.  When the washing machine’s in an icy unappealing corner of the house, having to remember twice to deal with the laundry is a bit too much for me.

I initially thought that as well as my just hating Norman’s washing machine, it was also a shame to use it because it’s so uneconomical – no fuzzy logic, no great spin.. but now I’m not so sure.  I’m never tempted just to put a couple of items in the wash.  I wait until we’re desperate, till we have no pants, till Ruth’s got no school uniform left.  A full load every time – that has to be efficient.

So Ian agreed to switch over to one of the other washing machines.  Pretty straightforward, just pull the machine forward and switch over the pipes – but no.  The machine’s so old that there’s a hot and cold pipe… and they’re both stuck.  WD40 made no difference.  We’re going to have to get a plumber. 

Meanwhile, clambering through to the washing machines and tumble dryers to do any laundry now is like making your way through the jumble of furniture at an antique market to examine the forgotten commode in the corner, except that you have to do it with a basket of smelly washing under your arm.  Laundry has become so much fun.

The timer on the boiler’s also stuck, but fixing the timer that means we have to have the heating on full time doesn’t seem so urgent.

Locksmith

When we bought the house we were given two keys, both for the same door, and a set of keys to the garage padlocks.  Amazing.  This whole house could be secured with just one key.  Secured? 

A bag of keys appeared.  A whole bag.  One key, by luck the first I tried, worked for the only other external door for the main house.  So why all the others?  We think they’re all for internal doors.  Why would you want to be able to lock all of your rooms?

The swimming pool door could easily be opened from the outside, even when locked, so not surprisingly its key was hanging by the door. 

The utility room door barely latches; we would often pull it closed behind us then find it was open a few hours later – usually after noticing the fresher quality of the chill pervading the house.

Ian has been heroic.  He’s secured the swimming pool doors with real bolts and a lock that works.  It was cold and laborious but he got it done.

He’s been less fortunate, but no less heroic, with the utility room door.  We can now lock ourselves in, but we can’t unlock the door from the outside.  Half way there.

When you realise how long the little jobs take, the big ones suddenly look really daunting.

Things that go scrabble in the night

Sometimes there is a strange sound up on the roof.  Or is it in the roof?  It’s a scraping sound, almost like something falling down the chimney, but it’s high up.  Sometimes the scrabbling sound intensifies.  Often it sounds like it’s coming from the top of the wall.  The top of the living room walls are dusty unvisited places with the yellow concrete straw tiles sloping over them, hiding goodness knows what.  But often goodness knows what sounds like it’s alive.  We found a lot of rodent and bird corpses and don’t doubt that their relatives are still alive and well and living here too.  We just haven’t met them yet.

We are pretty sure that the curious sound that scratches and scrapes and occasionally tumbles down the roof is actually outside the house, but we don’t know that it is, and we don’t know what it is.  I could almost swear it’s the branches tapping on the roof, but there is no tree above that roof.

But much, much worse is the sound in the bedroom.  That too has a scraping sound, but it’s more intensive.  And the bedroom ceiling isn’t so far away; I can almost touch it.  And the bedroom has a false ceiling so there is definitely plenty of space for a colony of creepy things to be very well settled up there.  And the absolutely worst thing about our nocturnal visitors is that they come at around 5am.  We are woken by the sound, mesmerised and unable to relax till it stops.  I don’t know how we’d find out what’s up there, but I’m not sure I quite want to know either.

We need a cat!

Dom’s big idea

Dom has decided we must get the sundial working.  Now most sundials just work… at least they work if the sun shines.  Ours does not.  Ours does not have the upright that casts the shadow to tell you the time so we would need to replace that.

There’s another catch.  Our sundial doesn’t get much sun.  It’s indoors, on the sitting room wall. 

So Dom’s idea is that we install some clever lighting to cast the shadow at just the right time to tell the time on our sundial. 

To add to the complications, Dom doesn’t want anyone to know how the sundial works.  So he doesn’t want a simple track with the light moving along it casting appropriate shadows.  He wants clever spot lights strategically placed to cast the right shadows without anyone realising it.  No problem.

When Melanie comes and works out our lighting for us, we have a new challenge ready.  Melanie says it’s all about layers of light.  I’m trusting her layers will provide everything from crisp midsummer shadows to hazy shadows for overcast days, all telling the correct time, of course.

Now there’s a project to blow the budget on. 

At the end of us we should have the only 24-hour sundial in the country.

Disco cook

Our kitchen floor is nasty.

Everyone has seen the kind of carpet tiles, very thin cord, about two foot square, laid out like a chequerboard.  In our case the tiles are in chocolate brown and a muddier brown.  At least they were 30 odd years ago.

At the edges, away from the units, they are just ugly.  You can even see the original colours.

But as you get closer to the middle of the room and over to the units, they get thinner, and darker, and shinier, and stickier.  If you go to the sink in your socks, you stick.  You pick up your feet as you walk and your socks take that extra split second to follow.  Woe betide anyone who needs to kneel down to find something in the cupboard under the sink.

I told a mum at swimming.  She grinned broadly: “Like a nightclub floor!”  Then she was lost in a moment’s reverie.  I doubt she’s been to a nightclub this century, but she remembered, and she was right.

Maybe we should hang the glitter ball in the kitchen.

We're wellie here

Ian bought wellies.

OK so they were on sale along side bike equipment, but he did it.  Somehow that feels more like a commitment than shelling out all that cash and moving our stuff in.

He's barely been in the garden since we arrived, but now, at least, he can.

Bonfire night

There goes the village's combustibles and the beginnings of our claiming the garden as our own.

 

I'm not sure that this picture does justice to the bonfire.  Even as we left it had really only burnt one side.  Magnificent.

You say tomato and I say...

I have just googled the Indian bean tree and discovered that it's native to America.  I had assumed it was a tree from the Indian subcontinent... introduced to Britain by a colonial district commissioner who'd thought the tree would add interest to his garden back home in Surrey.  Wrong Indians.  Ruth never used to be able to understand the British Indians she would meet here were nothing to do with the American Indians she would learn about from her grandfather in Connecticut.  And here I now am muddling my assumptions too.  But my little American children have an American tree in their garden... it's like Norman knew we were coming.  Thank you, Norman.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November

Since learning that villagers can contribute their garden waste to the village bonfire, I’ve been feeling pretty obsessive about taking advantage of it to clear the garden a little.  An acre and a half of overgrowth (if such a thing exists) is a little much to put into a green bin for fortnightly collection.

I am not the only one.  The village gardens have been humming with activity this week and every other house has a tree company van outside.

OK, so I am the only one.  Whereas every other garden’s had a short back and sides with a chainsaw, I have been working with a little hand saw. 

I started at the gate.  There was no reason other than that I’d had a little advice from Dougie: cut all that back, the somethingorothers and the roses, it’ll all grow back.  And he also warned that the security light would be responding to the warmth of the plant growing round it, and security lights have 500 Watt bulbs.  Blimey.

So I slaved.  Shh, shh, shh went my saw.  Clip, clip, clip.  All with the backing band of the neighbourhood chainsaws. 

Then a nice man from the council turned up.  This is a conservation area so we can’t do any tree work without permission (not that I can really believe that all those branches of the village bonfire come with the full 6 weeks’ notice planning permission).  A sycamore that lost a branch over the summer and there’s an ash that the tree man thought should go so he applied for planning permission to take them down.  The ash is at the very back of the garden, hanging over Tim’s rather tidy garden and the broken down fence.  Ian had assumed the worst of the fence, children taking over the garden and we’d shoo them away and be cursed by the Selfish Giant.  But no, the fence is down because it was Tim’s shortcut to Norman whom he cared for in later years.  Tim looks like he’s well into his 70s himself, layered in cardigans and good cheer, and it’s hard to imagine him as a nursemaid.  It turns out the King Charles spaniel we met over the summer is Tim’s – come to share Norman’s chocolate biscuits but Norman and his biscuits are no more.

The niceness is, I assume, a characteristic of tree men rather than council workers.  They are like mountain air.  Their love of nature and ability to name everything they see is somehow energizing.  He told me that we have an Indian bean tree.  You can’t eat the beans.

The nice man gave more advice on how far back to cut the climbing plum.. did I imagine that name?  I cut it back some more, but my heart was no longer in it.  It was the nice man’s fault.  My long walk to the ash left me feeling I was in the throes of the gardening equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

That was Tuesday.  Wednesday was swallowed up in taking Oriana to view her new nursery.  They were impressed how well she settled, but of course really it was some kind of sick social experiment in which I deprived her for a fortnight of the company of anyone unrelated then watched her desperate quest for attention. 

To my great relief, ladies’ night in the pub is but once a month.  Well after midnight various of my fellow drinkers started to bow out, apologising that they were party poopers.  I accepted an offer for a nightcap at someone’s house – in for a penny, in for a pound – and got home at 2.  But Ian could not be persuaded to do the school run.

Time to clear the cobwebs.  I opted this time for branches large enough that they’d be pain to get to the tip.  The ailing sycamore I was told is hardwood and would make great firewood.  Perhaps so, but it was so brittle that I could snap off even quite large branches.  We had several bonfire-trips’ worth of branches.  Ian was suitably unimpressed.

The fallen sycamore branch

A nude branch and its debris

And ready to go

Well, perhaps the gardening was a waste of time, but it did blow the cobwebs away... and anyway, you've to to start somewhere.

And the stills

Perhaps a little easier on the eye that my dreadful filming - I might not know what the right career choice would have been, but it seems I was right not to go into movie making.

From the house

Signs of life

Rear part of the main garden

From the same place, west

I love these gates - pity they don't work very well

Looking under the grape vine to the gates

A spot of work needed

The granny annex

The way through the woods

Same view, same angle

We're going on a bear hunt...

I love this picture - worth turning sideways to see it

Not tomatoes, swimmers