and so it begins...

It was the first brass band Christmas carolling gig tonight. You could tell because the temperature has been unseasonably warm until this morning when it checked its calendar and promptly fell 10 degrees and kicked in with an eye-wateringly vicious north easterly wind for good measure.

it was COLD.

But - I love this, despite the discomfort. People are happy (er). That's nice. And the music is really beautiful. Those carols. Those harmonies. Some of these songs are OLD old. even some of the newer ones are crunchy and beautiful. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. The minor-major modulation at the end of Coventry Carol. And the little kid, who shouted "Not likely!" when our conductor, Graham said that perhaps Santa will visit their house soon.

We are well - settling into the house and figuring out how it all works and what goes where. The alcove bookshelves are up and I'm really happy with them. They're made of scaffolding boards and cast iron brackets and I think you would never know that this is hands down the cheapest way to shelve anything!

(yes the clocks are still leaning against the bookcase on the floor. Maybe we'll put them up one day.) 

The mirror is from my friend Rose who assured me that Victorian terrace houses need mirrors and she had a few from her old house that we were welcome to - and - wow what a difference. These are workers cottages - the rooms are small - the mirrors are amazing. 

I do love the house - but I can't quite relax into it yet - I worry about things even though I know intellectually there's no point; that the worry is worse than the event - which in any case is unlikely. I feel the weight of responsibility for a structure that may require more resources than I have. I think I will get used to this and it will fade but I find myself staring at ceilings and walls with a vague feeling of unease.

But one thing I am looking forward to with no ambivalence at all is a two week holiday that will involve no painting, no DIY, no packing and unpacking - just the first Christmas in our house and a proper rest after a tumultuous year. Pubs with roaring fires, brass band carols, knitting, wine, cheese, puzzles - we are on the home stretch now.

mini-update

 I am sitting in our house on a sofa for the first time in over two weeks and oh - does it ever feel good!

SOFAS FOR THE WIN!!!!!!!!!

that is all.

More soon promise x

PS all good, just chaotic and busy xxxxxx

turning a corner

 It was a good day today. I thought it was going to be (that often - but not always - helps). Roger the carpet man (his name not an instruction - but hey whatever floats your boat) came at 8 to fit the carpets in the 2nd bedroom, the stair runner, the cellar stairs and the cellar. And lo did the heavens open and glorious light shone around and there was a parking space right outside the house which never happens. And the carpets look great and my stair runner is the bees knees so phew.

We stopped in one of the charity shops in town that often has furniture and saw, in the back, a really good sideboard/dresser type thing which we really need as we have a lot more kitchen than kitchen. We snapped it up and that solves another big problem.

Our friend Kerry did the first moving load for us in her camper van and now there is stuff - our stuff in the house - our house! 

And I did the first coat of wax oil on the ground floors which took forever but was veeeeeeery satisfying indeed.

Today, for the first time, I actually felt the excitement that everyone jeeps asking me about. "OOOh isn't it exciting?" they ask, or "aren't you excited?" and I think - well no. Scared, most definitely. Bored (pulling nails, anyone?) often. Exhausted? Always. But today - I was excited. 

Good thing too because I have a huge blister on the palm of my hand, what I think might be bursitis in both my index finger knuckles, and although I can be down, or up - the in-between bit is getting very difficult indeed. 

Also exactly 1 week left.

gulp.

Buy a house, they said. It will be fun, they said

 Well. It turns out getting the nails out of floorboards is the easy part.

Sanding them is no fun at all no no no not even a little bit. And it has not gone smoothly (see what I did there?!)

We've had to get a young whippersnapper in to help us as it is just too much. And then to top it all off the bloody sanders keep breaking! Nothing more can really be done until the sanding is done as it looks like the Sahara in there. 

ARGHHHH

"It's just a floor" I keep telling myself.

It's just a floor.

(2 floors are done and they look lovely. The dining room, however, is not going down without a fight)

And I've had to spend £100 on floor wax oil. £100!!!!!!!!!!! What's in it, the wisdom of the ages? Gold flakes? 2.5 litres of holy water? 

Not like I'll ever find out at this rate. 

Sisyphean

 If you buy a Victorian workers cottage in the UK, and if you are reasonably lucky, chances are that buried underneath the "progress" of linoleum and laminate and hardboard and carpet you will have fairly decent floorboards. Usually pine, but maybe oak if it was a posher house. 

We have been lucky. 3 of the 4 rooms in our new house have pine floorboards, in - salvageable - reasonable - condition. 

Whoo hoo we thought. Quids in. Hurrah. 

But wait.

The boards must be sanded. And to sand them, every nail must be either removed or pounded down so it won't catch. Looks easy from standing height, but you get down on your knees with your eyes on the floor (where - spoiler alert - you will be for what seems like the rest of your life) - and you will see that these boards are infested - positively lousy - with nails. Some small, some large. Some bent over and hammered in, some so rusted when you try to pry them out the head just pops off and you have to pound them in instead. 

You will go over the boards and pick out every crappy bit of metal. Then you will look again and see six more, laughing at you. You will do those. Then you will decide to be systematic and go through board by board and you will find so many more you wonder if perhaps you must have some sort of sight deficiency that is hampering your efforts. That's got to be it, you think, trying to stand up - stumbling on your numb and aching legs, and hearing the distinctive rip of denim on yet another bloody nail. 

I have visions of previous inhabitants. "Oh I say, Elspeth, it is a quiet evening. Why don't we pound a few more upholstery tacks into the floorboards?" "Oh John, you are terrible you are! Oh you hound - well go on then - pass me the hammer!"

oh hi!

Just popping in quickly to say it's going well but it's very very busy! If we're not sanding it or painting it, we're ripping nails out of it or scraping paint off of it. Kitchen worktops arrive Tuesday, and the floor sander on Friday (we're going to attempt to sand the boards in three rooms - wish us luck). Juggling all this with work is as fun as it sounds, but it's all good so far :)

Here's some pics:

 Bedroom floorboards uncovered

Partner in grime

some of the rubbish

It's a busy street! This cat runs the roost and i came in one day to see him sitting in our kitchen looking at me as if it were me in the wrong place!

And back at the oast the packing has begun...

 I'm actually quite enjoying this. Or at least, I'm finding it interesting. It's another puzzle, really. It's very hard work though. 

The kitchen is half gone - 

Neal has been prepping and Terry has been painting and it is really coming along. I have been uncovering the floorboards in the dining room for the last two days and miracle of miracles they look decent enough to sand and paint which is good news indeed as the alternative is either nice flooring (WAY out of budget) or cheap crap flooring (still out of budget but what can you do?).

I have a favourite tool now and that is a prybar. It is the bees knees and i love it. I am going to go buy my own. This thing is amazing. The floor boards were covered with a very nasty carpet, and even nastier underlay, and then a nailed down (all nails rusty, of course) boarding. It has to be pried up and then the nails pried out. It is dirty and dusty and I love it.

The house seems light and bright and we've met quite a few neighbours and they are all lovely. It amuses me that all the new people we are meeting find us very Canadian while I myself have never felt more British.

We work from about 8 till 430, then go for a pint that tastes about as good as any pint I've ever had. We come home, shower (and that too feels utterly fantastic), and make something to eat. A quick prep for the next day, and I'm in bed sleeping by 9.

Here's the man of the hour - our hero - 

Terry the Magnificent

 

Two more days - and we'll take stock and see where we are.

Now to eat - and sleep  - hopefully in that order.

and so it begins

Ah - much better.

The bank owns my house!

 Well.

It all went very smoothly, really, in the end.

Terry, our multi-talented musician/builder friend came over for coffee and breakfast and before we had finished the call came through that everything had completed and we could pick up the keys.

It was a strange feeling - walking into a house that is suddenly yours that you have spent all of maybe half an hour in. Based on this objective and thoughtful appraisal (!) you have spent your life savings and hocked yourself to the hilt in order to obtain it and now - for better or for worse - this is your house.

First impressions are that it is not as bad as I remembered it. This initial relief is quickly dispelled. It's just bad in different ways. But it is also good. The rooms have high ceilings and - for a small house - decent proportions. Only one room - the cellar - is seriously damp, and a lot of that may just be from being closed up for 7 months. It needs a lot of love. The kitchen is - well - the kitchen has to go. Even if we have to cook on a camp stove for 6 months. The drawers that have already fallen off prove to be plastic with cardboard bases held together with packing tape. We wonder if those are rat droppings and tell each other they can't be - what would they eat? Someone changes the subject quickly.

But Terry is buoyant. He bounces into the lounge where Neal and I are standing very still, staring at each other in a quiet-but-rising anxious panic. "Ahh," he says, "nothing here to worry about". He takes in our faces - "No really. It's fine." He launches into a detailed analysis of what needs to be done and what all of the options are and how long it will take and - literally all I know is that I need to take next week off, and Terry and I are going to work our socks off and it will all be OK.

Today we opened the back door and found it would not close again as it had warped so badly the door frame was pulling out and our friend James had to come and plane off about 3 mm so it would close again. But it does now, and it will all be OK.

We don't have to be out of the oast until the first week of September so there's time to work it out and - 

 - it will all be OK.

So close....

Last Monday, exactly 4 months to the day after first viewing the house we finally exchanged contracts! 

!!!!

We complete on Wednesday - but no one knows when on Wednesday. Of course they don't. God forbid you should feel some control in this process. 

But it is great news and we are oh - so - close - and I am like a squirming bag of cats. Nervous cats. Queasy nervous cats.

We still have to give notice on the oast and that may come with its own issues - impossible to predict. Best case scenario they say "oh ok great here's your damage deposit have a nice life". Let's assume that will happen :)

It appears that we may have actually pulled this off. 

!!!!!!

Guess what's happening with the house purchase?

HA HA HA HA HA

NOTHING!

sigh

Apparently this is normal. Our seller's solicitors are slow slow slow. Everyone is chasing them. They remain unmoved. As do we.

As far as we, our solicitors, the seller, and the estate agents are aware, nothing is wrong, so that's good, I guess. And I know - I really know - this is a lovely problem to have, really. 

But I am a planner and I am not a patient woman and I am finding this tedious in the extreme. How is this a system? If everyone hates it so much why do we still do it like this? Why is England England? I am channelling Canute, raging against the tide, with just as much effect. I seem to have enough self awareness to realise this but not enough to do anything about it. As in adjust my expectations, take advantage of the lull, and just enjoy myself. 

I will try, I promise.

In other, nicer and more interesting news, Neal got photobombed by a fox yesterday on our afternoon walk - how lovely is that? Neither of us saw him at all but he certainly saw us :)

Wedding cake

It was about this time, near midnight, exactly 11 years ago, that my friend Heather set down her drink and yelled over the music: "We need to make cakes". 

"Nah," I yelled back, "It's too late. We don't really need cakes. Nobody really needs cakes. It will be fine. Have some more wine."

"NO", she yelled. "Every wedding needs a cake. C'mon. We can do it."

And so we did. Two very squiffy women headed into the kitchen and proceeded, in the early hours of the morning, to turn out two truly fantastic lemon coconut layer cakes without injury or burning down the house. It was a miracle. We were really quite drunk. There was lots to celebrate, getting married and all.

Neal and I got married in a registry office with just us and our witnesses, then went for a bang up lunch with some of our closest people. More friends arrived throughout the day culminating in an adhoc gathering in the evening, and a wedding party the next day.

We only got married for the paperwork, and a bit of me still resents it - I don't see why it is any business of the state whom I choose to live with. There are other ways to regulate property and taxation. Never mind the issues around who and who can't "get married". In the end we figured if we had to go through with the motions we might as well get a party out of it.

Despite my almost complete ambivalence about it all - when I look back, I remember the laughter - ordering two of every dessert on the menu and everyone eating a bite and passing them around in a giant round robin of pudding. I remember the sunbeams shining on Neal and his Uncle Laurie at the table. I remember the beautiful buffet James and Heather made the next day, and our dog, Humphrey, nearly snagging an entire wheel of brie before we realised he'd been let out. 

But most of all, tonight, I remember the drunk baking. You can get through life all right with friends like that. 

And so we wait

We are closer. The mortgage was approved.

(I mean, I write that like it's nothing - like that's just what happens - like that isn't something that I always thought was out of reach. Like we're normal people doing normal things like buying a house.)

(Also, there is NOTHING normal about buying a house in England, just for the record. The whole system is BANANAS.)

And now - it is in the hands of the solicitors. If that doesn't strike the fear of god into you, nothing will. 

So we go on with our lives, not knowing if and when everything is going to change. Could be a few weeks, could be a few months, could be never. I am beginning to understand why they say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. I suspect that they don't mean moving, they mean all the crazy stuff and mysterious uncontrollable timelines that come before moving. I expect, at this rate, moving will be sweet relief. And we have it easy! There's no chain - we're not selling and no one needs to move out of our (hopefully) new house. Crazy town.

Yet - I'm glad to have this time in the oast - our old friend. And to try to get my head around what's coming. 

And it's spring - there's lambs, and wild garlic. The asparagus is coming up in Pauline's garden. Every day another tree has fresh lime green leaves. Today it rained and it smelled so good. 

And so we wait...

Send all your mojo! Cross EVERYTHING!!!!

 We found a house in Faversham. We made an offer, it's been accepted.

!!!!!!!!!

Now only 2 million things can go wrong instead of the 3 trillion or so we were facing before. The mortgage application went in on Friday, and it could take a few weeks to get a definitive answer. In the UK, nothing is binding until you exchange, so it is too early to get too excited - 1 in 4 sales fall through - and so much can go wrong - but - but - but - 

just look at it - 

Is it damp? Yes, of course, this is England. Everything is damp. Is it a fixer-upper? Without a doubt. Is it small? Well, yes. Does it have what we said we wanted in a house? Er, not exactly. Are we head over heels delighted and madly in love? Oh yes. 

Have we lost our minds? Quite possibly.

existential gardening

Last summer, one night at knit night, we were talking about gardening and I mentioned how much I'd like to learn , and that I wished I could just go help out somewhere where someone told me what to do. Later that week my friend got in touch. One of her friends has a small holding that they struggled to keep up with, and they'd be delighted with some ad hoc gardening labour. Thus began what has become a real highlight of my week. On Sunday mornings I pull on my muddy jeans and wellies, hop on my bike, and cycle out about a mile and a half to their place on the outskirts of Faversham. 

First, because this is England, we have a cup of tea. I sit down and am immediately covered in dogs - Murphy and Luna, Chinese Crested dogs; and Floyd - the soppiest spaniel you ever did meet. I drink my tea and we head out. 

The first time I went it was in the heat of summer and I picked 10 kilos of gooseberries and took them home to make wine. I looked like I'd been in a cat fight from all the scratches. Today it was overcast and mizzling and we dug out the weeds in two beds and covered them in cardboard, under the watchful eye of the robin. I have good gloves now. 

I've grown to love these Sunday mornings - it's like a sort of therapy. I show up, I drink tea, I work - none of which requires any thought from me whatsoever. I don't have to make any decisions, I have no responsibility, and I can see progress. It's really quite lovely. My friend's friend is becoming my friend, and she is delighted that I want to help. She is a good teacher. I am delighted that I get to play outside for several hours each week. It's win-win.

This morning was especially needed as I woke up with an existential hangover - the sort where you feel ok in body but quite miserably dreadful in spirit. I was worried about work, and house-hunting, and it all felt a bit much. Digging over vegetable beds didn't help exactly, but for an hour and a half I just thought about weeds and worms and compost and now, back home, life seems much less grim.

Floyd kisses didn't go amiss either.

No such word

 

An afternoon of house-hunting in Ramsgate, made much better by meeting up with friends who moved there a few years ago. 

Ramsgate was posh as, back a hundred years or so, and you can tell by the architecture which is grandiose, sweeping, heart-stoppingly beautiful. And the beach. Oh lord. There are worse places to wash up. It is a little rough around the whiskers though.

More houses to see in Folkestone tomorrow. 

Trying very hard to consider this whole house business a Yay and not an Ugh. Not yet succeeding.

Winter morning

 It's 7:15 am and I have just got back from a kettlebell class. 

I know.

See? You were right to worry about me - I have clearly lost my mind!

The classes are 3x a week and the Thursday class starts at 6:15. In the morning. I thought it was a misprint at first, but no, it really isn't. Yet, for several weeks now, I have set my alarm, got up, and gone to the class. The first morning, I stood in the bathroom for some time, wondering why everything looked so blurry, before I woke up enough to realise my glasses were still on my nightstand. 

The classes are tough, but good. My friend recommended them, as we were in the pub bemoaning the fact that we can't run anymore (the planter fasciitis has never properly gone away for me and running now leaves me limping with pain the next day. Even if I feel young, my heels know the truth.) In the pub, many things seem plausible. 

But you know? It's good. Even the early start. It's enough to keep even me out of the wine the night before, and I am feeling stronger. 

This morning, as I walked back home across the rec, the sun was coming up and the sky was alight - the stark winter trees resplendent against the orange sky, the frost on the grass glowing pink in the reflection. I stopped in my tracks - just stood for a bit, knowing that for a minute, right now, everything is OK - and truly believing, somehow, that it will continue to be so.