So, it’s been a while since we’ve written, for which I apologise. In between my writing this post and actually getting it online, Jess has managed to post, so obviously now I have to catch up.
The weather has thoroughly cheered up now after all the snow and I’ve just walked round the fields with the dogs. They plug their faces into the rabbit holes, and I look at all the lovely wild pansies, buttercups and orchids that we get. All three of us probably look a bit weird. Anyhow, the warmer weather is a relief as the winter was very cold, and very long. Throughout it though, there were three things keeping my heart warm.
The first is that I’ve got a new love interest. Jesse is OK with it. So far. Mainly because he, too, is in love. This is the new guy:
And his name is Alfie. He’s 1% Springer Spaniel, 1% Labrador, 10% gorgeous and 88% horrendously obsessed with escape/rabbits. He was a rescue pup, we got him last October. He runs off on to the moor with a cheerful look back at you, safe in the knowledge that you’ll trudge 5 miles down the road to catch him. He has yet to learn the meaning of the command ‘come’, or indeed many of the various swearwords which usually accompany it. In fact, he seems to think they’re a command to run faster. He ran off a few times in the snow, coming back very tired and full, after 8 or so hours. He looked dead pleased with himself and usually bought a dead rabbit with him. I don’t know if that’s because he couldn’t fit it in after the 20 or so he’d already polished off, or whether because – like a bashful dinner guest – he felt it would be rude to go home without one. So these days we don’t let him off the lead, but I don’t think he notices – he just carries on running like a small tank and it’s up to you to keep up.
The second thing is Jesse, who has done some absolutely brilliant work on the house in 2017. So, we’ve gone from this, to this, to this:
And from this to this:
How the kitchen fireplace looked at first!
He’s done brilliantly, and I know there are more pics on his post, so I’ll let you look at them there.
The third is Lorna Doyle, who is sitting next to me while I’m writing this. Here’s a candid interview with her.
Lorna, how do you like living out here?
It’s very nice.
What’s your favourite thing about it?
It’s so fresh. And windy.
Do you miss anything about London?
I miss my friends.
Do you love Alfie?
Very much.
Do you love Alfie more than George?
No.
Excellent. Thank you for your time.
We’re reading a lot of Famous Five at the moment, which I don’t think helps on the dog front, since Timmy is some kind of magical intuitive super uber dog. Lorna looks at George every night as he’s lying upside-down on her carpet, oblivious to any commands, with great disappointment, as if to say, you should be off solving an adventure and catching bad guys.
At least it’s not just us – Facebook is awash with pictures of missing dogs who have run off after baby rabbits at the moment.
It’s always nice when everyone else is doing as badly as you.
It’s been a while since the last post. Partly because it feels like there is so much that has happened that it is daunting to write, and partly because, paradoxically, so little progress has been made that it feels embarrassing to say anything.
So the new approach will be to say very little, not to cover everything, but to post more often. It’s going to be a bit like PMQs. i.e. “We have actually put more money into schools…” No further explanation necessary 🙂
Well, in the small news. We have started playing a lot of Words with Friends 2 on our phones. If you ever feel stuck with too much time on your hands just download that app and your life will be busy and fulfilled once again – or maybe for the first time – it’s that good.
Secondly, I was getting the front garden ready for its first ever appointment with a lawnmower, removing stones and whatnot this afternoon and found a couple of old coins, possibly a threepence and a sixpence. But we won’t know for sure that they aren’t saxon gold pieces until tomorrow when we take them out of the cup of coke that they are soaking in. So, old money in the garden. Talking of which, Lorna and I were having a lovely walk and paddle this morning and watching Alfie (our little Springer-Labrador mashup) who was straining at the lead, staring up at the moor and twitching his nose, dying to get some hectares under his paws and little grouse chicks in his belly, and she asked why the grouse are protected by keepers. I told her it’s because of the splendid rich folks who keep all that land for growing heather and raising lots of grouse in it so that they can go out with their friends and shoot them all (the grouse that is) for fun. And Lorna said, “yeah but that doesn’t happen any more Dad”.
So anyway, house stuff: It’s all moving pretty slowly because we are busy with work and all that. But a few cool things have happened recently…
Windows. We had to have a lot replaced. Langley Furniture Works built us some new ones which the heritage officers approved of and apart from nearly bankrupting us they did a wonderful job. The windows that were salvageable I repaired and painted to match the new ones as best I could and I’m pretty pleased with the result. You can get pretty far with wood hardener, 2-part filler and a shaky old ladder.
Pantry window during
Hall window before
Hall window during
refurbished window 2
Bedroom window during
refurbished window 1
I’ve also been cleaning up the old fireplace lintels using a nail-gun. Its a very slow, juddering, deafening and filthy process but well worth it, bringing up the colour and grain of the stone beautifully. Check it out.
before cleaning up
more cleaned lintels
A needle gun
more cleaned lintels
How the kitchen fireplace looked at first!
Kitchen fireplace lintels pre clean-up
Cleaned up lintels in the kitchen
Lastly we have had a lot of noteable weather and neglecting to mention it just wouldn’t be British damn it. So here are some pictures of our little world in the snow and the sun.
Sun!
Recent snow on the road
Finally the new apple trees I planted last year are starting to bud so we surrounded them with manure and leaf-mulch and have started chucking buckets of water on them, hoping for a bumper crop and cider all round in the summer!
We’ve had some lovely visitors recently, including the wonderful Orange family. Chris built Susie a website at the kitchen table in a few hours and also took a nice video of a walk we went on in which animals and children seemed to narrowly avoid hypothermia and I forgot I had a flask of hot tea in my bag – sorry about that guys!
I (Susie) feel that the title above sums up, more than anything, how the last few months have been for me… especially where this blog is concerned!! I know some family members have been asking for an update for a while, so apologies, I know we haven’t been here for some time.
Snowdrops coming up in the front garden
It’s been a case of thinking I’ll write when I feel like it, but as we all know, waiting until we feel like doing something rarely means we’ll ever get around to actually doing it. So, just to warn you, this blog isn’t well thought out – I haven’t planned it, I don’t know what I’m going to write about, but at least I’m getting something to you.
One of the reasons I’ve been reluctant to write is that there have been so many changes in the house, and the task of writing about them has therefore become increasingly enormous. Two of the many good things are: the pointing on the front of the house has been finished (hurray!) and the heating actually works (amazing!!) For those of you who don’t know, we had a biomass heating system installed last August, which is a great system when it works… but unfortunately, for various reasons, it didn’t work until the beginning of January. So, we got through tonnes of wood (literally) and were very cold, which was a depressing feeling. It’s almost a year to the day that we moved in – then, it was snowing, and freezing, even in the house. You could see your breath; the cooking oil froze. There was nowhere warm.
A year after we moved in and it’s snowing again. But this year the radiators are installed and working, my daughter is in a lovely hot bath as I type, there’s homemade bread in the oven (a REAL oven! Goodbye Baby Belling), we have lights, a real bed (we slept on a mattress on the floor for 11 months – having a bed back feels AWESOME) Lorna has her own room which has proper painted walls and a ceiling and everything… and we have 25 tonnes of wood in the front yard. Who wouldn’t want 25 tonnes of wood in the front yard?? No one, that’s who.
Newly planted apple trees in the back field
Lorna’s room. Not always this messy. Often worse
lovely kitchen, nearly finished
For those of you geeky people (you know who you are) who want in depth pics of the boiler, details of its temperamental behaviour, how we light it (blow torch, great fun), how much wood we use, where our water tank is, how the pipes were laid etc etc etc; never fear, it’s all coming. This blog is like a cover-all. It’s like a contents page, and then the next few entries will have all the juicy details.
Our little stray, Little Black Kitty, liked hiding down rabbit holes and popping up beside you. She never completely got over her shyness, but was a fantastic mouse catcher
And just in case you’re wondering about all these smug-sounding achievements and thinking about leaving your own comfortable city life in quest of a fun-filled life in the wilderness, here’s a few ‘not so great’ things to balance it all out: firstly (brace yourselves) the kittens died. Jesse was totally heartbroken. We think one got run over, and the other one we’re not sure about. Both of them chose to come back to our workshop to die though, which was very touching and we’re glad they felt safe with us. We haven’t told Lorna about the second one yet, but a new cat is already being planned. Secondly, the farm is so far from anywhere. I miss the gym, I miss boxing, I miss flat roads to run on, a pay check to depend on, friends within reach, how easy it was to buy vegan food, and good coffee. Oh gee, those first world problems. I feel as though getting fit after a year of doing nothing is just impossible. I’m getting migraines all the time. The scaffolding man has been a bit of a nightmare – that’s unrelated to the migraines. Although, actually…
Also, one other chicken, Tomato Ketchup, got run over. I don’t know why our chicks dice with death, but they’re always on the losing side when they do. Mayo, the last chicken standing, is turning in to what’s probably the fattest chicken in the world. She follows us round all the time outside and pecks at our feet and we feed her becasue we feel sorry that she’s lost both her buddies. She even hops up on the kitchen window ledge to peck on the glass when she wants feeding/company. Lorna started calling her the Chicken Of Doom because wherever you go, Mayo will run after you, little legs pumping away. If you stop walking, she attacks your feet. But now Lorna calls her The Survivor, which is a bit more superhero like. We have birds nesting on top of the chimneys and they wake me up at 5 in the morning making a real racket. So, I acknowledge that those things are in random order, with varying levels of severity. Things are amazing, and hard, and scary and tough. And exciting. And full of wood.
Susie cooked a Hunter’s Stew today with Linda McCartney Sausages in. I feel like that says a lot about how life has changed since we left London. Nothing in that sentence would have happened back then!
We’re still cooking on the Baby Belling in the Utility room, but I have resolved to have our new kitchen functioning by Christmas. That felt quite far off when I first said it but is now only a month away! I think it’ll happen though. For real life – as Lorna would say.
Lorna is getting on quite happily at school now. She went to a birthday party in the Allendale Beauty Salon yesterday. Fantastic hey? It’s all mystic crystal balls and stuff in there and all the girls from her class went in and came out with new hairstyles, glittery patterned nails and whizzy little tattoos. Now that never happened in Crystal Palace. Although there was decent coffee everywhere…
I’m a bit bitter about coffee today (geddit) cos we did a big shop in case we got snowed in or armageddon arrived and we ordered four bags of coffee beans – that’s beans – but we can’t find the grinder – it’s in a box in the barn somewhere. So like total junkies after we walked George through the snow this morning, deciding to climb a big hill and getting snow in our wellies, then realising we were out of ground coffee, we went straight to the barn without even changing our frozen socks and shoes and spent a grim 15 minutes opening boxes and pulling everything out. No grinder. No coffee. Just a recorder which I gave to Lorna and instantly regretted. The nearest shop is closed on a Sunday so that’s it. Deprivation.
Anyway, house stuff: I’m plastering Lorna’s bedroom at the moment. Hoping that she will be installed there in a week or so. It’s a bit slow because I’m rendering some of the walls instead of just boarding and skimming, and repairing the old plaster where possible instead of just starting over, to maintain that old house feel and keep the limey dryness..
All the old pointing between the stones had to be removed – it damages the stones and causes water to be trapped in the building.
I raked out all of the pointing from the front of the house. So what looked like the picture above now looks like this:
Scaffolding on the front of the house allows us to rake out and re-point
Unfortunately it has been too wet and snowy to put in the new pointing since then so we are losing a lot of heat and I really want a clear spell. Just a week will do. Please skies, be kind.
We have got a heating system now and the whole place has been rewired so there are sockets and lights in places that make sense – that felt good – massive thanks to Nathan our electrician for doing such a great job. And bringing banana cake with him.
Anyway, the really big news is the animal news.
Sadly one of our chickens was run over by a car last week. We have three chickens, and Sarah was great. Really chubby. Bye bye Sarah, thanks for the great double-yolkers and the comedy flying pecks at George’s nose.
Sarah is the one on the right. Ketchup is the one on the left. Mayo is camera shy. All named by Lorna, obvs.
We also have some new additions that we didn’t expect. KITTENS IN THE WORKSHOP. Here’s how it happened (it’s full of drama).
First a black and brown kitty showed up. I was putting the chickens away one night and noticed that they weren’t going up to roost on their little perch. Instead, they were kind of huddled into corners of their shed and clucking anxiously. So I went in to have a look and there was a little black shape curled up in their bedding box. I leaned in close for a good look and suddenly two bright yellow eyes opened up and stared at me. Then the shape uncurled and shot out of the chicken shed super fast. I said goodnight to the ladies and shut up their shed and then went into the workshop and found that the little kitten had snuck in there through a gap under the door. It did its shooting out thing again when I went in but I guessed it would be back. There are warm heating pipes running through that room which the installers haven’t lagged yet (grrr), so I made up a little pile of straw and bedding on the floorboard above the pipes, then went in a bit later with a bit of tuna and some milk. I know – total soft touch. So that was one kitten.
Then the next day the tuna and milk were still there, so I left them, feeling a bit despondent. Then I went back that evening. No tuna, but the brown black kitten was curled up on the bedding, Then there was a bump and its mum jumped down off a chair and gave me a hard stare. Maybe tuna wasn’t her thing. That was two cats.
George with his eye on the chickens. He practises his rounding up skills on them, and they practice self-defence on him.
Then a couple of days later when I went in with a bit more tuna and milk, there was no sign of mum or junior and I turned to go, but then (excitement mounting!) there was a scuffle from the corner and a tiny ginger tom with a stripy white tail started scrabbling all round the workshop in fright and then shot up a bit of electrical trunking, jumped from the plug socket to the window sill and out through the gap in the door. Three cats. I can’t keep up!
It’s good news though, because after the heating guys drilled some holes in the walls and forgot to fill them in for a few days, we started to hear scratching at night. Then Susie discovered a packet of biscuits with a hole nibbled in the top… the biscuits were decimated. Then the next night she woke me up and whispered, ‘look over there!’. I looked where she was shining her phone and there was a little brown mouse with a big fat biscuit-belly hiding behind a leg of our desk. The leg was thinner than he was. So we’re ok with some cats moving in. If it’s between a cat eating all our tuna, or a mouse eating all our biscuits, the biscuits win every time.
So anyway, I’m hoping, and please hope with us, that by Christmas we’ll have 2 bedrooms plastered and decorated and a working, decorated kitchen. We’ve already ordered the turkey so there’s no going back!
Here’s some news in pictures…
Jesse working on putting up the new joists in the adventurously-named Bedroom 1.Ta daaa! A few minutes later, it looks like this 😉
These little cutie birds were born in the eaves of one of the barns. Just to add to the number of stray animals who are living with us. Thankfully, these ones don’t eat tuna or biscuits.
These pics are of the kitchen ceiling. The second one shows where Jess repaired the old laths, which were coming loose. The one on the left is the plastered version.
Jesse here. I’m sitting in Newcastle station on the way to London where I’ll be doing a bit of recording on an album my dad is making and my brother is arranging. Looking forward to seeing them and getting a bass on again! While London boils though we are glad to be high up in the North Penines. It might be a different story in winter but for now i’m allowing myself a little bit of smugness.
Here’s us looking smug in our favourite spot for paddling
Paddling is a bit hazardous because of how smooth the bedrock is there. Beneath the water is very slippy and George, for one, isn’t 100% confident with it just yet.
He stood there for a while, bless him.
Work on the house has come to a turning point as the clearing out has pretty much finished and the construction part begun. It feels great to be repairing rather than removing. Here is me looking happy about building a hearth over the weekend, using old roof stones that were piled in the yard, a sand and cement bed and a lime pointing mix. There us now a lovely stove on it but I don’t have a picture right now.
Another bit of progress is the new ceiling joists going up in the upstairs bedrooms. Here’s the first few. (A lesson learned on chemical fixings for wall plates – don’t use more resin than you need and make sure the rods are in straight or you will suffer afterwards!)
Lastly a bit more newspaper found lining the walls in a downstairs room. Here’s the article…
Guess the year before scrolling down…
Were you close?
When I get back from London I’ll finish getting the ceilings up upstairs and then start on the pointing. A wonderful bloke called Tim from Eden Lime Mortar came over yesterday to give me some pointers (haha) and basically, it’s going to be a long and tortuous job – although if the sun is shining and the radio is working I can think of worse places to be.
Next I’ll post some pictures of our uber new biomass heating system, which is currently sitting in the barn looking big and ready.
A holiday home at the other end of the village. I haven’t got any pictures which really give you a sense of the scale of the valley we live in, or how remote it is – but I like the loneliness of the house.
When we first started planning to relocate, I called my lovely friend who lives in the Eden Valley to ask her about what life in the country is like. My dad grew up in the country, but his house was next to an Italian prisoner of war camp in Gloucestershire. The American troops used to give him rides in their army trucks, and candy, and high fives.
The family had no electricity, and every day they had to get water from the well, which was inside the camp. I love hearing about his childhood, but didn’t think there would be too many things from his experience which were going to be relevant to ours. At least, I hoped not.
Speaking of funny neighbours though (and I digress here, but it’ll be worth it) there’s a Buddhist Temple/retreat type house thing up the valley from us. We knew it was there before we moved, because you can see it on google maps, and look at pictures of their beautiful forest. But Johny, one our neighbours, didn’t know about them, and on the first day he moved here, woke up at 6am to see 40 monks sitting in the field behind his house, omm-ing peacefully in the dawn of a new misty day. Now there’s a way to wake up. Some of the monks go running a lot, and it makes me realise how dependent on specialist running gear I’ve become, when you see them bowling happily along in cumbersome brown habits.
Anyhoo, I called my friend, and asked what her life is like. And she said, it’s just like living in the city, but a lot harder. Going to the shops is harder. Heating your house is harder. Doing anything is harder. And you’re covered in mud the whole time.
So now we’ve been here three months, I thought it was time to reflect on what she’d said, and tell you all what life is like for us here.
It’s true that I’m covered in mud all the time.
It’s true that some things are harder, but not overall. Nothing, for me, is as ‘hard’ as dealing with inner city stress and commuting. In London, I felt constantly ugly, badly dressed, and not trendy/hardworking/cool/rich enough. I also felt pretty fearful, not for my own personal safety, but of chaos, which I don’t like. Here, there’s none of that. You could go everywhere in a pair of wellies and no one would care. In fact, the first day we turned up at Lorna’s school, Jess merrily chirped, ‘Oh Sooz, everyone dresses like you!’ Meaning, sort of sloppy. So it’s great, I fit right in, which is just as well, because keeping clean in our house genuinely is hard – every wall literally comes away on you if you brush against it, and the whole place is constantly covered in a coat of limey dust from the walls and ash from the fire.
Shopping is indeed harder. In London I used get Amazon packages the next day. You know that little bit underneath the ‘order’ button which says ‘Order before 5pm for free next day delivery!’? Well, yesterday it said, ‘Order before 5pm for free delivery in the next 23 days!’. Great.
The nearest shop is 7 miles away. Lorna’s swimming lessons are 30 miles away.
And it is harder to cook on a camping stove, and all live in one room, and be cold most of the time. That bit is hard.
But the real differences I think lie in the people. London is obviously massively diverse, but you can pretty much always find People Like You. And you probably spend the majority of time with People Like You. Here, there are no People Like Me. I was at a kiddie’s party the other day, and met the birthday girl’s great great grandmother, who was absolutely lovely. She used to farm cattle, and was telling me about the new people who had moved in to the farm when they retired. And then she muttered, with real steely animosity, ‘But they farm horses now. It’s just not right. Not a real farm any more.’ She angrily shook her head, and looked at me as if, you know what these evil horse people are like, right?! Chuh.
I was pretty nonplussed, I’ll be honest. I don’t know if that’s a common farming view, and I suppose it’s a pretty silly example, but I guess what I mean is, in London I could predict people’s views. Even if I knew they would just be a little bit fruity bonkers – because let’s face it, there are quite a few extreme people in big cities – I still knew what was coming. But here, I’ve got no idea what I’m going to experience or hear when I meet people. Everyone I’ve met here, pretty much, has been friendly, sound, welcoming and endlessly willing to help. But their views are different, which is something I hadn’t anticipated. I still don’t know why the horses are such a bad thing. Their political views are different (the people’s views, not the horses’) and their lifestyles and family set ups are different. Affection is shown in different ways. Socially, I am a little at sea.
One thing that is the same though, is me. That sounds stupid, but really, it’s the one thing I definitely expected to be different. When you anticipate a big life change, you always think that somehow, because your life is drastically different, you will be different. You’ll feel different, or behave differently.
But none of that is true, I’m sad to report. I felt stressed in London, I feel stressed here. About different things, sure, but I still get that horrible chemical panicky feeling in my head. When I realised that, I realised the reality of taking your problems with you wherever you go, which I knew in theory before, but not in practice.
Realising something though, is half way to changing it, if you want to. So I’m making a concerted effort not to feel stressed, and to exert a bit more self-control. To enjoy the peace and beauty of being the only human on the moor. The absolute stillness. The sound of my own breathing being the only thing I can hear.
PS – if you really want to know how it feels living here, the best way to do that is to come and visit! Maybe wait until we have got heating/ceilings/real walls etc etc, but when we do, you are welcome. Whoever you are. Even if you, too, hate horses.
Lorna has been singing songs from Annie all day. Jess thinks its subliminal messaging, that she hopes she’ll be adopted by some other people. Looking round at the chaos which is our home it’s easy to understand why sometimes.
We have re-homed Toby, our lovely older dog. It was too much having two of them; especially when you’re trying to train both. It would have been a bit heartbreaking to part with Toby if we’d not been completely at our wits end over having two dogs who couldn’t stop fighting with each other. Toby was housetrained, eager to please, obedient. But he was Jesse’s dog, and George is Lorna’s. So, fearful of breaking our small daughters’ heart, we decided to re-home Toby, and keep the smaller one. George.
George is such a funny mixture. Imagine George Wickham from Pride and Prejudice. That’s pretty much our George. Looks gorgeous, behaves as if he’s got no standards at all. That’s because he’s got no standards at all. Like George Wickham, our George only acts on bribery, and often not even then. Destined to be a sheepdog, but it would be a completely unsuitable career for him because:
He has zero interest in sheep
He has zero interest in herding
He has zero interest in following orders
He is pretty lazy. Sorry George, but it’s true.
Also, he has pink on the top of his mouth rather than brown (which is apparently the right colour for dogs who will be great sheepdogs) no bump of knowledge (little bump on the top of their head, if they will make a great sheepdog) and no spot on his leg (not sure what that one is for, but apparently it’s very important.)
All those things I learnt from Ian the Farmer. Jesse laughs at me for believing old wives tales. But I almost believe Ian, and I definitely believe that George would not make a great sheepdog.
Right now he’s asleep with his head on my foot and yes, he looks charming enough to elope with, but half an hour ago he peed on my office floor and I was ready to throw him out of the window. Not that I would, in practice, ever do it. I’m just making a point.
Speaking of Ian the Farmer, he lent us some sheep. Not to keep, just to keep the grass down on our fields. I say hello to them when I go for a run and they stare back at me. So far the sheep have been doing great, munching away and not causing any rucus.
Last week we bought some plants for the garden, including two beautiful roses. Planted one in the front, and it lasted 48 hours before the rabbits had gobbled it all up, like small, fluffy wood chippers. The one in the back garden looked a bit more lively, but definitely as though someone had had a nibble. A cautious nibble.
Jess got a picture of the culprits yesterday. It was the sheep.
Nature’s creatures are conspiring against us.
On the flip side: we’ve got midges (boo) but they don’t like eating me (hurray!). One small victory for mankind.
Tomorrow I’m going to tell you all about our voting experience. I can’t wait. We go to vote at Brian and Doreen’s front room, in the village. Brian catches our moles for us, and keeps chickens in our field in exchange. Forget the excitement of ‘will we wont we’ on the EU. For me, all the excitement is about voting in someone’s living room. I. Cannot. Wait.
Jesse – People round here kindly ask me that question a lot. We have been blessed with a group of very nice people as neighbours. They walk or quad bike past while I’m standing in the yard with George saying “Do a wee wee boy. Please…” (George is a puppy by the way, in case you were wondering) They wave and zoom on or stop and pop the question.
My standard response is a non-committal “It’ll get there” or something, while inside I’m thinking “a plan – what a great idea!” Anyway here’s a glimpse of a plan for the house, just to prove to myself and you, dear reader, that there is one.
Hi it’s Jesse here. I’m going to write a bit about the move and my work on the house so far. The first eight weeks have been a lot of work – I was expecting to have a more relaxing life when we moved north, and in many ways I definitely do, but my attitude to work hasn’t changed. I never feel like I have done enough! I thought my bosses in London were quite pressurising but I think it was really just me. So that’s the only thing about a big move – you are still you when you get there!
We are loving being here, really. We have our own place. Not just a house but a bit of the planet, a beautiful bit.
Here’s a little week by week account – we’re going in depth here…Feel free to skip to some nice photos at the end.
Week 1: We moved! Cleared out Jenson Way and moved everything to storage in Newcastle in a hired van. It took three trips. Louis, Dad, Lizzie Perrins and Nancy all lent a very appreciated hand. I took ages loading the van up to the roof every time, Tetris style, so that nothing would move about on the journey. I did a lot of brooding about how much stuff we have and how untidy it all was. Susie did most of the work packing everything up.
We stayed at Nancy’s for a few nights in Newcatle and then set up camp in a big tent in one of the barns. It was absolutely freezing. Our little girl slept under about 7 layers, one pink button nose poking out of an arctic sleepingbag. We cooked in the house and carried food out to the barn, by which time it was usually fridge temperature. The loo was in the house. The whole shebang was exciting in a way, but became tiresome after about one night. It snowed after five and with a big sigh of relief (which froze immediately in the air) we moved in to the house.
I had spent most of that week peeling ten layers of wall paper and newspaper from the walls and ceiling of the upstairs snug, 5 layers of lino from the floor and cleaning it lots. Seriously the wallpaper patterns were incredible. It is a real shame that mould and cold had ruined everything because these farmers had style! The newspaper articles were wonderful time capsules about orders for Newcastle tankers from the Greeks (how times have changed) and women’s fight for equal pay (so at least some thiings have stayed the same!) We peeled back the wallpaper over the chimney breast to find a beautiful old cast-iron fireplace in a massive stone surround, painted orange! Inside the oven section there was a golden lamp and two alarm clocks, no idea why, but we found something romantic in it all, and began calling them our treasures.
So we moved into that room when the snow came and we are still in there now in balmy June!
Week 2: Mainly stripping wallpaper and layer upon layer of disintegrated lino from the bar room. It didn’t make sense to clear out that room then for any reason other than that I was really excited to have a room that was once the village pub when the place was full of miners, and it still has the bar! The walls are a ridiculous hotchpotch of various eras of plaster and panelling. After a lot of scraping away disintegrated lino and cork I uncovered the stone floor. Susie and I had argued about what the floor would be. Susie goes with pessimism sometimes to guard against disappointment – although to be fair she did marry me so she must have a big optimistic streak! I on the other hand am massively, unrealistically, optimistic about most things. About the floor I was right though. Beautiful, massive flagstones! Get in! One up for the optimists.
Week 3: I took out the fireplace from the bar room, an oatmeal tiled 1950s surround with an open grate that looked really out of keeping with the much older materials of the room.. Lots of the tiles were missing and the grate was wet and rusty, plus it was ugly from the start, so I was probably right to remove it, but it might have turned out better in the short term to keep it in. Apparently this was the fire that the old farmer sat in front of every night before he moved out three years ago, and it kicked out a lot of heat. It also had a very old copper back boiler that was still connected to the immersion tank so I was a bit hasty there. But on the plus side, behind the old oatmeal fire surround, and a lot of wallpaper and plaster, is a really big inglenook fireplace of solid stone – something else I’d confidently, and almost baselessly predicted would be there. Haha – two nill!
I spent today very very carefully removing all the bricks that had been built up inside that inglenook fireplace in the bar room, so that the oatmeal thing could be stuck on the front. There was about half a ton of bricks and rubble which will come in handy for drainage channels in the garden. I’m aching now though! The bar will look just brilliant with a lovely stove in that space. We’ve decided to keep that as a dining room. It’s got two doors, so can feel like a bit of a corridor, but it’s got bags of character.
Week 4: Operation clearance began in the hallways and upstairs bedrooms. Lots of the plaster was blown thanks to movement and historic roof leaks. The roof was replaced 20 years ago but the ceiling and wall repairs weren’t done as our old farmer only used a couple of rooms in the house. So the bedroom and hallway ceilings look scary.
To summarise, because this is getting boring, I pulled out a load of 1960s tongue and groove ceiling which had at some point replaced the original lath and plaster. A lot of the joists had come down years back so I took out the busted ceiling joists and am putting in new ones next week.
In week 5 not so much got done. Susie was travelling with work and I had care of the little one and the dogs. Why did we buy two of them? George pood everywhere and cried whenever he was alone. Lorna was pretty unhappy with me for not being mum. I was very glad when Susie got back! I cleared out the fireplaces, which had decades of birdsnests in them. I was amazed at the industriousness of rooks. The twigs have kept us in kindling for three weeks and counting! We got a fire going in the upstairs snug – one of the greatest moments of my life.
Week 6: I had an ear operation in London so didn’t get much done – not good enough I know! Got quotes for the windows to be replaced and spoke with the conservation officers – one mean, one nice. Is it especially the public sector where the whole experience utterly depends who you get – maybe that’s everywhere.
Well the clearance has continued since then. Today I was filling a skip and opening up another fireplace in what we have decided will be the kitchen. I also found a big pile of flagstones among a load of rotten junk behind the garage – absolute bonus as I can use them to make hearths in the fireplaces downstairs. I’m off to see my mum and dad for a few days this week but the more fun stuff should start next week. Putting up new ceilings upstairs!
By autumn we want to have heating in, the house re-wired (don’t worry, a proper electrician will do that), new windows in and the house repointed. And things like a proper kitchen and bedrooms would be nice. I;ll also need to repair the barn and garage rofs before winter. We’ll get there!
Well that’s how the work on the house is going. Pretty well really. Being here is amazing. When we go to have a cup of tea in the field above the house, or just stop and breathe in the clear air and listen to the non stop birdsounds, I feel pretty lucky.,
bit of plastering to doEqual pay!Fire in the snugSpring is here!Cheeky GeorgeHotch potch wallsjoists that were leftNewspaper under the linoA window hidden behind wallpaperTeesside!Toby – good boy!Put another layer onWhose eating our roses?
“Right, Susannah, so even though I won’t be dealing with you any more, you’ve got my direct line. If you or Jesse need anything, just call.”
“Thanks so much Steve, I really appreciate it”, I manage to squeak out, head pressed against the phone, balancing a coffee and baguette on my phone-free arm in Pret.
“And, Mrs Doyle, I really, sincerely, hope there are no midges.”
“You and me both! I’m holding you personally responsible you know…”
We hang up, I pay and leave, joining the stream of commuters heading in to work at Milbank, near the Houses of Parliament in central London. Steve works at the auctioneers, and I’ve grown used to hearing his gentle North Eastern accent.
Bloody midges. I get the feeling, and not the first time, that we are being absolute idiots, walking into a midges-infested breeding ground while all the locals snigger behind their tractors, one wellyboot propped up on the lowest rung of an 8 bar gate.
When I told my friend Heather we were thinking of moving to the North Pennines, the first thing she warned me about were the midges. ‘They ARE awful!’ she wrote, as if trying to convince me to take the threat of mini winged hell-raisers a bit more seriously. Living in South East London, it was an effort to visualise how anything might be, let alone barring the windows on any sunny evening against a swarm of blood thirsty hooligans.
Midges join the list of about a billion things I’m worried about. Here are the others, just to welcome you to my world for a moment:
1. The house is mouldy
2. We have very little money
3. Neither of us have a job (as such)
4. We’re buying a 16 acre small holding and I can’t keep a pot of basil alive
5. My mum will hate the drive over the dales – also, the journey will be 8 hours instead of 8 minutes to their house. I feel as if I’m kidnapping her granddaughter.
6. Aforementioned granddaughter is leaving a school where there are 90 children in her year alone, to one in which there are 28 children. In total.
7. What if I run out of petrol. Or get stuck in the snow and the car falls down a hill, with me in it.
8. We have no idea what we’re doing, what it’ll be like there, or if we can handle it.
And those are just things which spring to mind. But there are a few things on the plus side. Dogs, animals, fresh air, no threat of being mugged constantly nagging in the back of my mind, no commuter, underground stress, no fear of being blown up by a terrorist, trees, mortgage-free, silence, mud, space. For my daughter: a red school uniform jumper instead of a blue one. You might think that’s a small thing, but then, she is small, and apparently the red jumper is like Christmas to her.
And, at the end of the day, it is a wild and raw place. I am wild, although you wouldn’t know it to look at me. And this feels like heading to somewhere where I belong.
Today, our deposit went through to take the farm off the market. It’s all begun, and we are heading into the unknown.
itsallgonenorth 