Decrepitude

Lest anyone think that I am living the dream, here is a part of it that is more nightmare.

This is one of the walls the so-called wash house at the cottage. Built at the same time as the main house around 1800, it was probably exactly that – somewhere the washing could be done, separate but not that far from the fireplace in the cottage where the water would have been heated. The cottage itself had no bathroom or kitchen at that time – they were additions in the late 1960s. Yes, that late. It was also in 1962 that electricity first came to the cottage. That probably sounds like a long time ago but that’s during my childhood, so it doesn’t seem so to me.

I often wonder about the lives of the people who have lived here over the last couple of hundred years – I have their names and should find out more about them. In the twentieth century, they were mostly older couples and widowed single people, in the nineteenth, families with children and even a lodger who was a weaver – nearby Spaxton used to be a centre for cloth manufacture way back. With no shops for two and a half miles, they probably made their own bread and got their eggs, milk and meat from the farm down the lane. They definitely will have grown their own vegetables. They would have had to walk everywhere, for the cottage is relatively remote and there isn’t space to keep a horse, although there’s a barn over the lane that might have been rented for that purpose.

I don’t feel very driven to repair this wall. It’s not doing anyone any harm and it has a kind of beauty about it; the wash house being built into the hill behind. I like the link with the past that being able to see under the very twentieth-century rendering allows. Although a bit of the ceiling did fall down the other week. Must get that fixed.

Read Full Post »

Real retro: my local

After a long, tiring day of strimming the banks at the back of the house, weeding, lugging around sacks of soil and manure, and putting up a reed-screen contraption thing to disguise the oil tank, I head off to the pub in the evening. I’ve stupidly forgotten to buy any food, even though I’ve been close to a supermarket earlier in the day. Sometimes life just feels too short for a huge shop and long queues.

I walk up the lane, taking real pleasure in one of the first good evenings in couple of weeks. I notice that a tree has come down up the road in the gales; its branches still stranded in limbo on top of the hedge on one side of the lane but its trunk now vanished, leaving a big, naked gap in the hedge on the other.

Swallows swoop, cows moo and lambs bleat. Somewhere, in the distance, quite far away, a dog barks. If you listen hard on a country evening, there’s always a dog barking somewhere.

One of the real blessings of living here is having a pub that does food within walking distance. It’s remarkable because there’s not much else within walking distance, unless you count fields and hedges. Well, there’s a letterbox, just past the farm, but it doesn’t do food.

I time it to arrive at the pub on the dot of seven – no ‘longer opening hours’ in this neck of the woods and I’m starving. I’ve been there waiting on the doorstep for them to open up before now.

Surprisingly, the pub is already heaving with people. Somerset time doesn’t always correspond to real time. Dave, the landlord, and Sue, who helps behind the bar but lives at the farm, are looking hot and bothered trying to keep up with the orders. The checked shirt and merino pullover crew are out in force. “There’ll be a bit of a wait,” says Dave. So I tuck myself into one of the few remaining seats – a chair by the fireside – with a pint of beer, The Guardian and my iPhone (they have free wifi intermittently when Dave forgets to turn off the router).

I sometimes struggle to explain the pub’s appeal but today I finally realise what it is. It’s that it’s an almost completely unreconstructed pub from the 1970s, all red patterned carpet, brown painted wood, horse brasses and ballads like Please release me always – always, without fail – playing softly in the background. No sawdust on floorboards and deafening conversation echoing around the place here. You get the drift?

Some of the customers haven’t changed either. Quite literally in the case of one of the elderly women sitting nearby, who is wearing an orange and brown flowered dress that she must have purchased over 30 years ago.

On quieter nights, when the customers all start chatting across the bar to each other, I’ve heard regulars say they’ve been coming here for 30 years and that neither the staff nor the menu has changed. It may not be very exciting but it’s good and reliable: scampi and chips, fish pie, cauliflower cheese, sausage and mash, steak and chips and so on. A bit of salad comes on the side of each of the oval plates, that can only be described as ‘garnish’. You aren’t expected to eat it because ‘five-a-day‘ hasn’t been invented yet. But, because I’m not quite a part of this time warp, I always do.

Read Full Post »

A place of a few distractions

Working from home this week, I find I’m massively distracted by the sudden, fine weather. It’s mighty cool in the living room, as the walls of the cottage are 18 inches thick but upstairs it’s warmer under the roof.

There’s weeding to do and sawing up all the wood that I’ve been collecting over the winter for kindling. The garage is full of it. My saw is blunt, or may be I just can’t saw, either way – I’ve been making heavy weather of it.

In the house, I find there are other distractions like my new bag (bought in February at Palmgrens in Stockholm but not yet used), which I have to play with until I know it well enough to ignore it; endlessly repositioning things within it for optimum ease of use. Ridiculous. I’ll get the hang of it soon enough. But I’m delighted that it’s finally warm enough to use something that says ‘summer’ quite clearly. Let’s hope the weather can hear.

Read Full Post »

Gain and pain: a typical country weekend

At long last, the weather was fine and springlike this weekend, after about five weeks of grey skies and rain.

Saturday

I dropped by Nether Stowey car boot sale this morning – the first of the season – which was rather lame. A very poor turnout of sellers; about half as many as usual. I should think most people were so delighted to have some good weather for the first time in weeks, that they had other activities on their minds. I must keep going though as I’ve had such good things from there in the past: a huge fireguard, a tin bath, a great set of Hedgerow china for a song, and this Lloyd Loom linen basket/stool.

Entertainingly subtitled: ‘a Lusty product’.

I’ve finally done it up with some oil cloth from Norfolk Textiles (I’m obsessed with oilcloth) and some braid from V.V. Rouleaux and it now looks like this. I scrubbed it thoroughly but didn’t repaint it, as I wanted to keep its slightly worn appearance. But I find I neither like it particularly nor have any use for it, so I’ll probably give it away.

When I got back, I set to strimming the roadside banks, which is the perfect situation to encounter neighbours. (Round here anyone who lives within a half-mile radius is considered a neighbour as there’s no-one immediate.) I met two women passing today for the first time: one who lives in a house called Witches Barn (not sure about apostrophe) and the other, on horseback with two dogs running free (so brave, or perhaps, foolish), who is newer here than I am, which makes me feel better.

Having chatted with them, I thought, it really is a bit like The Archers, with local people being up in arms about a new anaerobic digester and various planning applications. “Where’s it all going to go?” One of them wanted to know. Where indeed? Into a big lagoon of slurry, possibly at the farm down the lane. Oh joy. It smells bad enough from time to time, as it is.

Then I lay about on the grass in the sun, listening to the birds and the tractor in the field next door, and weeded for hours and hours. Now I ache from bending and kneeling, as well as from wielding the strimmer.

Sunday

This morning I went riding: sunshine, swallows flying up high, the ground finally drying out after weeks of rain, sparrow fledglings chattering noisily in the bushes, carpets of bluebells in the woodland for as far as the eye could see, the countryside really starting to brighten as the trees thicken with leaves and rape fields come into flower. And, when we got to Cothelstone Hill, the sheer pleasure of a rare, clear, 360 degree view from the Seven Sisters. Fabulous.

It was all great until Marmalade – a rather inappropriately named black and white mare – got thoroughly fed up with me while we were trying to close a gate (easier said than done on horseback) and suddenly took off at speed straight into a tree branch that caught me on the head, back of the neck and shoulder. You’re taught to bend forward when encountering an overhanging object; if I hadn’t instinctively done that, I would have been thwacked straight in the face. Thank goodness for riding hats too, although the impact rammed mine down so hard that one my eyebrows feels bruised. Anyway, I’ll live.

I find myself thinking that this place is has marvellously healing powers for the weary mind and soul, if not the body.

Read Full Post »

Quiet industry indoors

Gloomy and wet. The lane rainwater-full. Gales blow. Garden chairs crash and windows leak.

Floors washed, paperwork done, holes drilled and pictures hung. Even washing machine plumbing, long standing left, is ticked off the list.

Now feeling neat.

Read Full Post »

Where do you get the energy?

Well, around here, it comes in a huge tanker that blocks the lane while the oil tank is filled. Having lived all my life in a city, where the most involvement you have with your energy supply is letting the meter reader in, having to worry about whether the oil is going to last for the next couple of weeks is a new thing for me. As is paying for the best part of a year’s fuel all in one go and having to keep it under lock and key, so that it doesn’t get stolen while you’re not looking. Stick that in your pipes, city dwellers.

In three years, I’ve never been here when the delivery arrived, so obviously I had to get out there with my camera. The driver was the usual garrulous Somerset chap, only a little hindered by the traffic slowly building behind his tanker.

I knew the oil was piped into the tank via a hose but I’d stupidly always imagined something the size of a garden hose, not an enormous great red thing more akin to a something a fireman would wield. But, as a result, It was all done in about 20 minutes from start to finish. Just as well for the Land Rover driver stuck up the lane, waiting patiently. Bit of an occupational hazard  around here.

I’d always felt a bit guilty that it must be hard to make a delivery out here. However, this lane is nothing to worry about apparently: “You wouldn’t want to drive your car down some of ‘em,” he said. I know the types of lanes he means; some of them are more like tracks, barely the width of a car, overhung with trees and ivy and, often, on a steep gradient as well.

He was also worried about the possible fuel tanker drivers’ strike because a depot blockade would mean they couldn’t get out and make deliveries. Recent orders for heating fuel have been flooding in, with so many people in the country using oil or Calor Gas for heating their homes and water. The news never mentions that there are people who depend on oil for more than transport.

Related articles

• Offer may avert fuel tanker drivers’ strike (guardian.co.uk)

Read Full Post »

Location location (for mice)

So it was all lovely when I arrived. I unpacked the car, let the cats out and went straight out to take some pictures of the lovely last bits of afternoon light.

There hasn’t been much snow but it’s very cold. The thermometer shows -5.(Shush, you folk who live in colder climes. This is cold for the south west of England. We’re used to mild air from the gulf stream.)

So I should have expected…frozen pipes. There’s no hot water and I can’t flush the loo. OK. I know how to flush the loo with a bowl of water when the cistern won’t fill. I can cope. But the thought of frozen pipes fills me with dread. We have history.

What’s particularly annoying is that I spent days and days, and wrecked my knees for months, lagging the damned loft after the last episode. Now, it turns out, there are mice who are making nests out of my lagging, which is why the pipes are frozen again.

Effing mice. That’s what I say.

Night, night.

Postscript: My remedy of leaving the loft hatch open and the central heating on all night defrosted the pipe and everything is now back in full working order.

Read Full Post »

A year in the country

It’s good to look back over the last twelve months and a few things that happened. It’s so easy to let life whizz past you without noticing much about it. For instance, I’m surprised that it’s only last January that I was making bike seat covers, as this feels so much longer ago to me.

In January a huge, new cowshed was completed next door to spoil our beautiful view over Bridgwater Bay.

It was also so cold that the many birds that visit my garden were more than usually glad of some extra food. (I am turning into my in-laws with binocs constantly at the ready.)

In February, the weather was warmish and then cold, giving us daffodils, primulas and frost.

In March  the cash-strapped council still managed to open up our most local footpath almost over the road, which must have been on the planning list before the crunch. But hooray for it, as it’s the best way to get to our nearest walk.

In April, the days grew lighter again and Percy was confused about doors.

We had visitors from London, who inspired me to make some changes to the garden.

And I ticked a chore off my list by painting the garage, which needed timber preservation – a rather Swedish blue, natch.

In May, we stayed home and went out.

June was disappointingly un-sunny, but things grew anyway…

As July proved.

It was often not until the evening that the skies cleared and the sun came out.

By August, the wheat had ripened.

And we took ourselves for walks.

Then, in September, the harvest was brought in, changing the views.

In October, the neighbouring field gained some very ordinary cows. We usually have rarer breeds round here. I’m a cattle snob.

The neighbouring farmer cut down the hedge so that you could actually see Broomfield Hill from the garden.

Then as the days shortened in November, there was more staying in than going out.

Although, the occasional walk was managed.

Until the year ended in a grey and mild December; such a contrast to last year’s snow.

All in all, this has been a good and happy year. What more could I ask?  I hope your year was   also good and that 2012 will bring you all you wish for. x

Read Full Post »

Running before I can walk?

I’ve been riding just over a year and have been making progress – apparently. I didn’t really notice but, one day, a couple of months ago, I realised that I was always put on a Saturday morning ride instead of an afternoon one. Then it dawned on me that the others in the group could ride better and faster than the ‘walkers’ I was used to riding with, and that I was now one of them. Not that I’m very good. There’s always someone saying, “no, don’t carry a whip with Joseph, it upsets him,” when I’m just trying to look the part, or “you’ve got your chaps on the wrong legs,” when I was just in a hurry to leave the house. Ahem, of course I knew that, didn’t I?

But slowly and surely, I have gone from (sorry) wetting myself every time the horse began trotting, to actually being able to stay in the saddle when cantering without “seeing daylight in between” in my riding teacher Sally’s words. They’re very frank, these horsey people, which possibly coincidentally is also the name of her horse. Frank, that is, not Horsey. I like the sound of Horsey though, it’s quite Jane Austenish.

Now, it’s been suggested that I move to riding a different type of horse altogether. A thoroughbred instead of a cob. Something that looks more like this (on the left)

than these, which are sweet natured and steady, but slooooow.

I’m excited and looking forward to this, but also a little apprehensive. Running before I can walk? Never mind what comes after cantering…

 

Read Full Post »

Spindle tree

The other week I walked across from Manor Farm to the cottage and caught sight of this:

I had never seen anything quite a vibrant and somehow un-English with it’s bougainvillea-like colouring. As I didn’t know what this was, I took a few pictures, carried on my way, intending to find out more, and then… forgot all about it.

However, yesterday my last post was read by Bridget from Arignagardener, so I visited her blog and saw that she had written a post about what was blooming in her garden recently. She had posted some pictures of her spindle tree (Euonymus europaeae), which I’ve never heard of before or seen (despite the fact that I planted some other kind of euonymus in my garden about 20 years ago). Clearly, it’s the same thing. Apparently it’s a common hedging plant. I must have been going around with my eyes shut, or perhaps just never walking at quite the right time of year to see this brilliant display of colour in the hedgerow.

The hedgerow concerned was planted only fairly recently (within the last 10 years or so) by my neighbours as part of the Countryside Stewardship Scheme. Sadly the scheme now seems to be rather falling to pieces, with the council having next to no money to spend on luxuries like making the local area more accessible to walkers. The scheme made the upkeep of the countryside in traditional ways affordable for farmers, who would otherwise have chosen cheaper methods. Isn’t this prettier than holey hedges, their gaps filled with barbed wire and old rusty junk?

Sadly my neighbours decided to close the scheme’s walks across their land recently because they couldn’t be sure of the insurance arrangements as the funding wasn’t likely to be forthcoming in the future. Lovely John said: “Of course, that doesn’t apply to you…” but it’s no good for others, who don’t know them personally, is it?  Thanks, bankers.

But on this case, it’s real thanks to Bridget for providing the clue to my mystery plant. Isn’t blogging great?

Read Full Post »

The spider and the fly

Something woke me at 4.20, so I drove through the last of the night and was in time to catch the sunrise at Spring Cottage.

And clear up the dead things.

There are always dead things.

And sometimes live things.

Damn. I wish that spider was in focus. It was enormous.

 

Read Full Post »

Mouse’s tale

No, that’s not a typo although it could be. Percy – that very bad cat – had brought in a mouse.

So, of course, I tried to rescue it. In the picture above, it was inside my left shoe (as I was callously photographing it; so much for ‘rescue’), but I didn’t know that. I thought I would be very clever and pick it up by its tail – which turned out to be my shoelace – you can see why.

So I picked up my shoe and shook the mouse out and off it ran into a tiny, tiny gap under the front door. Both cats sat there patiently all evening, mouse wardening, and then got bored. I went to bed. Then, just as I was falling asleep, my other bad cat roused me from pre-slumbrous thoughts with the most plaintive and unusual cries. Annoyed, I switched on the light.

And was served a damp little mouse; dead as a doornail. Poor little mite.

Read Full Post »

Weekend to remember

This is the weekend that smashed records. Saturday was the third warmest day of the year in the UK and the weekend was the best at Spring Cottage since 2009. It felt weird – summer temperatures with completely the wrong flora. Leaves to rake up and almost flowerless beds, along with clear blues skies and temperatures in the 80s. While I’m grateful for such warm times after our miserable summer, there is a sense that these are strange days.

There was not much in the garden to bring inside for a vase, so I made do with some pretty camomile flowers and some rue.

The weekend was rather  busy with lots of chores along with reading and riding. The gutters needed clearing to avert winter floods, as the farmers’ hedge topping had lodged a ton of finger-sized splinters along their length. The size of their cutter-thing must be huge. My side of the field boundary had to be trimmed as well, as there was about a foot of cobnut that they couldn’t reach or didn’t want to touch, perhaps. As always, it didn’t look like much but produced a massive pile of cuttings which need to be swept up. I’m halfway there as I write this; taking a break from the work to rest my back before I get tired and bad tempered. I never have grown up in that respect.

There are still some blossoms here and there, like this sweet rose which rambles its way through the hedge and appears across its crown.

The holly tree is fully of berries, which I’m going to capture now because they’ll all have gone to the birds by the time their more ‘seasonal’ time comes along and I want to make a wreath.

Then I tackled some DIY. The door of the woodshed has been sticking since the winter, so I got out my late father-in-law’s Bailey and planed down the offending section. I always feel very pleased with myself when I achieve something that I’ve been putting off for months. Although, I do wonder why I procrastinate so much about relatively easy things and let them get on top of me.

I enjoyed doing this, if for no other reason than that a Bailey is such a wonderful tool; one of the first that I can remember seeing as child. It is such a clever thing, with its mechanism for minutely adjusting the blade and its inherent strength and clear, practical design. This one has wooden handles and has been lovingly looked after. It has been inherited by my son and I hope that, one day, he will make himself useful with it. Most of my tools were my parents’, which gives an extra dimension to how I feel about using them.

I also rubbed down and primed the front windowsills and part of the gateposts, which hadn’t lasted very well since they were painted just over a year ago. So, I feel a bit better about the upkeep of the house, which I’ve been neglecting since it has become less of a project and more a part of my life. It is rather a lot to keep on top of.

But it is, of course, October and the evenings are shortening. So it wasn’t long until the house cast its long shadow over the field; at which point, I was delighted to see some deer sitting on the far side. This is the closest I’ve ever seen them, although I have found some suspect poo in the garden front time to time. Not that I want to encourage them in, but it is nice to see them. Oh! How I wanted a longer lens, but this does enlarge so you can see their faces a bit better.

I took myself off to the Travellers’ Rest for supper, where I made an entrance by throwing myself down the steps of the bar area. They must have thought I’d been on the booze all afternoon. I think I was just rather tired – I can get quite spacey when I’m physically exhuasted. I do so love that I can just sit there peacefully, reading the news on my phone, listening to the others talking about their holidays, the price of grain and their new silos.

Walking home in the almost pitch black tunnel of the lane (the picture below was taken much earlier), I felt comfortably hidden in the folds of the country night until the light of the cottage’s windows welcomed me home.

Read Full Post »

Quick sloe gin

I have just made some sloe gin with the sloes I picked on Saturday.

Sloes are the tiny plum-like fruits of the blackthorn, which is a common hedging plant in the UK.

A basic recipe is 450g of sloes, 225g of caster sugar and one litre of gin. Followed by about three to four months of patience while the gin absorbs the flavour in a dark place. Shake your bottles every now and again; more often at the beginning, to help it all along. Then enjoy. Should be perfect around Christmas-time.

The best thing was that it took about 15 minutes to make, as I discovered from Twitter that, if you freeze the sloes beforehand, you don’t need to spend an hour pricking the sloes all over to help them release of their flavour and colour.

Even in the three or four hours since I made it, it has started to take on some colour.

However, I’m going to stop photographing it now, as it’s not photogenic and I’m starting to feel like one of those people who keeps bottles of their own wee.

Read Full Post »

It’s showtime

I just have some rather murky phone camera pictures but I bet you can guess where we went today. I never knew you could enter a village show in so many categories, even eggs!

And I bought a Scrabble game the same vintage as the one we had when I was a child in the car boot sale. Perfect!

Read Full Post »