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paula's diary |
Removal men turned up at Blenheim Gardens at 8.00am sharp – not really ready – they asked when the washing machine would be finishing its cycle! Six men in red T-shirts loaded the entire house in just over 2 hours, lifting huge pieces of furniture including the washing machine single-handed. Angus had a near-death experience after the tranquilizer - just what we needed as we set off on our 4 hour journey to Cornwall.
We arrived tired but excited at the house and unloaded the car and van with our overnight stuff – the removals men would stay “somewhere nearby” and unload the following day. They had suggested Ley but as this is a true hamlet – about 6 houses – we persuaded them that St Neot might be a better alternative. The house looked fairly cozy for our first night – airbeds to sleep on with a nice warm duvet, Black & Decker workmate for a kitchen table with kettle, toaster and two mugs. We even had hot water (Richard had fixed the immersion heater when we’d been down the week before). Unfortunately the loo didn’t flush so we had to make do with the more primitive ‘bucket flush’ system.
Decided to go to the local pub in St Neot – The London Inn - for a meal and met the removals men in there. We had a few drinks with them while they told us several removals men stories like the one about the woman who had a dead cat in her freezer – she wanted the cat to be buried in her new garden rather than leave it behind at her old house – not sure how long it had been in there though!
Not a good night’s sleep as the airbeds lost most of their air and the slate floor was freezing. The removals men did a great job of unloading us despite their raging hangovers. Everything was marked either ‘Sitting Room’ or ‘Store’ which made things simple and we ended up with a comfortable bedsit in the large sitting room and one of the outbuildings full of boxes from floor to ceiling.
Richard tried to fix the loo while I went off to Liskeard to find the local supermarket. I came home to find a strange man helping me to unpack the shopping – was this a neighbour I wondered – no it was Auntie Pat’s husband, Charles. They couldn’t resist coming to see us after Maggie (Richard’s mum) had told them about the house the week before. They came bearing a huge bag of freshly caught mackerel and shared a celebratory glass of champagne as we gave them the grand tour. Andy Shaylor turned up soon after (he had a photographic job about 30 minutes away) and stayed for supper…and then the night as he was enjoying the red wine.
Thursday 19th July
Ate breakfast outside in the sunshine. Angus was wandering around outside – I don’t know why I was worried about him running off as he seems to need to know where we are and he is far too much of a scaredy cat to go too far. He caught his first shrew (inside the house). Richard had another attempt at fixing the loo and then put some temporary roofing over the bathroom and kitchen.
I started coughing in the evening and couldn’t stop – probably consumption from living in a damp house or have I been reading too many Jane Austen novels? Terrible sleep with tickly cough and many trips to the bucket-flush-loo by torchlight
Friday 20th July
Sky Digital satellite TV installed.
Saturday 21st July
The loo flushes!!
Raining hard this morning so the buckets in the kitchen were filling up fast. Not nice washing hair in the kitchen sink (as bathroom is currently out of action) while cold rain drops drip from ceiling. A house full of holes means that the outside comes in – rain, snails, slugs, mice, voles, shrews, spiders and flies. A huge snail was making its way around the bathroom last night and there was a slug on the soap dish. Angus was having fun chasing a shrew this morning until it ran outside through the gap under the sitting room door.
Monday 23rd July
Had a day off today after the man had been to empty the cesspit – very smelly and lots of ‘solids’ to get rid of as it hadn’t been emptied for 25 years. Went for a walk in the Lewarne Estate to try to find the ruins of the old manor house – didn’t see any. Took a turning along a path marked on the Ordnance Survey map but ended up neck high in nettles and boggy ground.
After lunch we went in search of slate cleaning products – Delabole Slate Quarry seemed like a good idea – and Rock Bakery pasties. Stopped at the Oyster Catcher in Polzeath for a quick beer and sat outside in the brilliant sunshine looking out to sea – thought ‘this is why we’re here’.
Tuesday 24th July
Skip was delivered so the kitchen and bathroom ceilings came down. Richard found a mummified rat amongst the debris – yuck! Our neighbours, Natalie and Ian and Olivia (3 years old), came round to invite us for a barbeque on Friday and stayed for a drink or two while they were here.
Wednesday 25th July
Pest control from the council turned up to remove the wasps nest in the roof of the sitting room. We’d lived with the buzzing for a week and it was driving us mad. Luckily they stopped buzzing at night but we couldn’t do any work in that area outside as there were too many wasps around. The man thought they were bees and wasn’t keen to remove them, being a beekeeper himself. On second viewing he decided they were wasps and gassed the lot of them.
Thursday 16th August
Bit of a gap in the diary but its amazing how quickly time passes when you’re not working and every day feels like the weekend. Have stopped wearing a watch and have to ask each other what day it is. We’ve had mixed weather and enjoy the sunshine while we can. The house is still not waterproof even with the new roofing and the buckets must be in place at all times just in case it rains. There are a few leaks in the sitting room and these change depending on the direction of the rain. Can’t imagine how people were living here before, especially in the winter with no central heating. We’ve managed to eat outside for most meals – eating outside the front door, almost on the road never ceases to amaze me. Certainly couldn’t do that in Wallington but here there is only really a track, not a road and we’re not overlooked at all.
Job interview at the Health Authority did not result in a job. Having intermittent panics about the lack of income especially when the roof may cost more than we thought. Apparently Delabole slate is twice as expensive as slate from Spain or Argentina! Considering selling our bodies – Richard says he would get more money than me – only if he sells his to science!
We’ve had several visitors and have started serving cream teas if they give us enough warning. All have liked the house but those with no DIY experience look a bit scared and think we must be mad.
Ros and Sarah came to stay for the weekend to keep me company while Richard set off for a bike weekend in Dorking (should have been Brands Hatch but there was a bit of a mix-up with dates!). Had a really good weekend mostly involving gardening related activities. Started with Duchy of Cornwall Nursery – all impressed with low prices of plants compared with the South East – car resembled jungle as we set off to the Eden Project. Amazing biome structures and exotic plants – also ride on tractor/train back to the entrance. Pub in the evening where we found we had just missed the St Neot carnival. Arrived just in time to see the carnival King and Queen (both about 3 years old) being paraded in the back of a Volvo estate with the boot lid open.
The following day we set off for Heligan – I love this place. Lots of plants at Heligan can also be seen in my new garden. Decided to name parts of my garden in the style of Heligan – e.g. The Woodland Walk, Bottle Dump Hill (I’ve found several empties in the garden already), The Rhododendron Path, The Upper and Lower Patios, etc!!
Ros and Sarah seemed to enjoy themselves even though they had to dress in winter pyjamas and thermal socks at night and Ros had nightmares about wild axe-wielding maniacs breaking into her room.
Richard returned and refused to touch a drop of alcohol for an entire week.
The St Neot Flower Show
A fantastic event in the St Neot calendar – a huge horticultural competition that is obviously taken extremely seriously. Run by the WI, there were a total of 139 categories of flowers, vegetables, homemade pickles, wines and vinegars, cakes and scones, knitted and crocheted items. There were also photography prizes, children’s poetry and the intriguing ‘garden in a seed tray’. The best bit was that there only seemed to be a maximum of three entries for most categories, sometimes less, so everyone was guaranteed a prize. Richard and I obviously had the same thought – which categories shall we enter next year? Straight home to scour the Thompson & Morgan seed catalogue for the biggest vegetables and giant sunflowers for next year.
Richard’s Mum and Dad and ‘Aunty’ Kate visit
Richard’s Mum and Dad were so excited about coming to see us that they set off a day early. They arrived at 10.00pm to be welcomed at the house by a mass of candles outside – must fix that outside light. Unfortunately there was a mix-up with their room booking at the pub and instead of a twin room for Maggie and Kate and single for Derek, all they could offer was a double room. They did, however, offer to sneak into one of their twin rooms while the single occupant was asleep to steal the other single bed. They could then make up a ‘family room’ for the three of them – cosy! We had a ‘phone-call from Derek at about 11.00am to ask if he could stay here with us instead. Maggie and Kate, meanwhile, had a terrible night’s sleep in a double bed with the church bell chiming every quarter an hour.
They proved to be fantastic workers. Kate and Maggie chopped trees and branches and lit a bonfire that continued for a week. Derek got covered in ‘piss and bathwater’ whilst helping Richard to drain some liquids from the cesspit and make concrete lids for it instead of the thin corrugated ones. At the end of the first day we were all exhausted and retired to the pub for a meal. Derek accidentally got very drunk and started waving to the waitress across the bar (she was waving to her boyfriend sitting behind us). We pretended he wasn’t with us which only made things worse and he began telling anyone who’d listen “he’s my son” and hugging Richard. The next day he had a bit of an upset tummy - “must have been the pudding if I had one”!
After another day’s hard labour, Maggie’s friend Jeremy from the National Trust arrived with a proper Cornish welcome – a wooden spoon so that our pot would always be full and a tin of furniture polish. Can’t quite remember what this was for – so our house will always be clean? We went to the pub again as a barbeque was out of the question – it had rained heavily in the afternoon and we’d had our worst flood yet – water coming in under AND over the sitting room door and streaming across the room. Buckets and saucepans were everywhere to catch the water and Kate was manically mopping the kitchen floor. Maggie and Derek decided that we needed a large tarpaulin over the sitting room roof and bravely went out in the rain to strap the biggest one we had to the roof – unfortunately it wasn’t big enough to stop the leaks and a few nights later at about 1.00am Richard and I could bear the sound of flapping tarpaulin no longer and went out to take it down in a force 9 gale.
On the way to the pub we stopped off at the St Neot Church Fete. A huge barbeque was cooking in an enormous fireplace in the garden. This was the only part of the old vicarage left after a huge fire several years ago. There were several stalls selling plants, books, raffle tickets and bric-a-brac. Owen the Farmer was there and introduced us to his daughter Lydia – I picked her brains about manure for the garden. I managed to cause a rift in the village by buying the agave from the plant stall for the reduced price of £2. Everyone else had been told it was £5 but it was getting late and they just wanted to sell it.
Dinner was fun with Jeremy telling us all sorts of Cornish tales, which villages did good WI lunches on which days of the week, etc. Apparently the beast of Bodmin Moor story is quite likely as American Servicemen brought their cute young pet pumas with them when they came over during the war but let them go wild as they were fully grown by the time they had to leave.
Ros and Andy come to stay
Two more willing helpers bringing lots of food and warm clothing with them. As it was the August bank holiday several friends were in the area and we had plenty of cream teas throughout the weekend. Guy and Carolyn arrived with the kids and a few Rock Bakery Pasties – hurray! They were on their way home after a week in Rock – Guy’s granny lives there. Ric, Nick and their kids were staying for a couple of days in Polperro and came to see us. Richard took them for an open-topped Jeep safari across the moor and Emily fell in love with a small pony that she named Mouse. Just as we thought we’d said goodbye to all our guests after the weekend, one of Richard’s old work colleagues turned up with his girlfriend on their way to Penzance.
Ros and Andy were perfect guests bringing a lasagne and an apple cake – both delicious – insisting on doing the washing up and looking for jobs to do the entire weekend. We went to Tavistock and bought some sausages and fresh veg from a farmer’s market for a barbeque. Ros and Andy sustained multiple injuries – Ros got a wasp sting, Andy put a metal stake through his wellies, banged his head really hard on the door frame and fell face first into a peat bog during a walk around Colliford Lake. After all this, I was a bit worried when he decided he’d like a go with the chainsaw!
During a walk around the Lewarne Estate (we’ve found the remains of the manor house by the way – a very small bit of wall), Ros and I spotted a deer in the woods;
My list of wildlife spotted in the area now consists of:
Shrews (like mice with long pointy noses – Angus brings us plenty of these)
Mice (ditto re. Angus)
Voles (like mice with snub noses – ditto re. Angus)
Snails and slugs (inside and out)
Bees, wasps, flies (huge amounts especially when eating outside)
Horse flies and midges (seen mainly around the cesspit)
Green woodpecker
Swallows (nesting in the outbuildings and chatting on the telephone wires)
Spiders (lots – mainly of one type with tiny bodies and really long legs)
Deer (in the woods)
Peacock (everyday sightings but can also be heard squawking in the early hours)
Owl (heard but not yet seen)
Buzzards (seen very close up in the garden and once outside the sitting room door – must be hunting for shrews if Angus leaves them any)
Cows (pretty red cows and calves that make an incredible noise when they think they’re going to be fed) Also a herd of Highland cattle on the moors on one of Richard’s Jeep Safaris
Ponies (Jeep Safaris)
Sheep (ditto)
Chickens (often heard as the neighbours have more than one cockerel and they compete with each other throughout the day)
Dogs (neighbours have two – Rosie comes to the house every time a car pulls up – she used to live here and I think she’s looking for her old owner)
Bats (good to watch when eating outside at night)
Squirrels (seem to be stealing my hazelnuts)
Pheasants (these stupid creatures seem to have a lot of trouble getting out of the road as you’re driving along)
Badgers (ditto)
Seagulls (plenty of these around Liskeard – strange as its not that close to the sea)
Wood pigeon (“many exotic birds turn out to be wood pigeon” Derek Grieve)
Sloe worm (but don’t tell Ros – we poked it with a stick and it certainly wasn’t Slow)
Sunday 30 September
Another long gap since I last wrote my diary. We’ve both been working quite hard on the house, especially after we heard that the roof won’t be fixed until January or possibly March. This means filling every hole that we can find in the windows, doors, walls and of course the temporary roof so that we are as air- and water-tight as possible for winter. Richard has been very busy putting in the central heating – lots of lovely radiators everywhere. This is due to be tested next week sometime – fingers crossed. I have become chief glazier, replacing all broken and missing window panes. Its been quite cold at night and we’ve taken to huddling on the sofa in front of a gas fire (bottled gas obviously).
I’ve started working for Ian, the neighbour, as his temporary admin assistant. He works from home so its not far to travel and the money is handy as its our only income at the moment. However, I really do need to find a proper job and earn some decent money as the house needs so much spent on it. A possible job has come up in Plymouth – Commissioning Manager for Derriford Hospital – hope this is the one.
Mum and Dad came to visit and were a bit shocked about the state of the house – I’m sure they had plenty of warnings. Dad did some ‘hard pruning’ in the garden and we had another huge bonfire. Lots of days out to Padstow, Fowey and Heligan and meals out in the pub and a really good meal at The Wellhouse at St Keyne where Mum and Dad were staying.
Richard went off to Dorking for a funeral and took the train from Bodmin Parkway. He said it was quite a good service and it was only delayed for 20 minutes by sheep on the line outside Plymouth. I spent my first night alone in the house but it wasn’t too bad now that I know all the noises at night are just all the animals outside. However, I wasn’t too keen on finding that a mouse had decided to take up residence in my underwear drawer! A visit to Trago to check out their amazing selection of mouse traps – obviously a bit of a problem around here. Angus has failed us – how can he live with himself?
Autumn has definitely arrived with leaves blowing around everywhere (including the bathroom!). Although its cold at night, we’ve had lots of sunshine and we’re still eating lunch outside most days. Not so nice today though - its really windy and the rain is lashing against the windows and sploshing in the buckets so it’s a trip to the pub for lunch.
Sunday 9 December
Its getting colder down here and we're really pleased the central heating is installed. Richard put in the entire system himself - round of applause, please! I've no idea how the people who lived here before us managed with only an open fire and a Rayburn to heat this place. We had a power cut one evening and began to wonder how we would cope without heating for that one night. We'd just decided we would have to go to the pub for a hot meal and to keep warm when the power came back on again. Apparently power cuts are not uncommon in this part of the world and we were lucky that the one we experienced only lasted 45 minutes. It made us think though and the next day we went out to buy lots of candles and holders - one for each room including the bathroom - I was in the bath when the lights went out!
The new roof in on! Its making a huge difference as there is no water coming in the main part of the house any more and there are no buckets to trip over either. We eventually decided to change our builder as the favourite was making noises about starting in March. Within three weeks of getting a quote the new roof was completed. A huge amount of work was dependent on the roof being done so now we can start insulating the roof, plasterboarding ceilings, rewiring the entire house, plastering walls, not to mention putting in a new bathroom and kitchen and then doing a spot of decorating.
We've spent the last three weeks exploring the West Country as the builders wanted us out of the way of flying slates so we've been to Newquay, Truro, Plymouth (and discovered the nice old part - the Barbican), Tavistock and various DIY, plumbing, timber and builders merchants. We've bought our new kitchen - Shaker style cabinets (doors £7 from Homebase), a butler sink and a solid wood worktop. We've also bought an enormous woodburner for our huge sitting room - takes whole tree trunks in 1foot lengths!
Now that the builders have gone we're back to work on the house, clearing the site of slates and bits of wood. Richard is concentrating on the guttering, replacing any plastic with cast iron salvaged from elsewhere on the house or bought from reclamation yards. I'm attacking the downstairs bedroom at the moment - hacking plaster off the walls and scraping and sanding the paint off the concrete floor. The wooden window sills need replacing and we haven't decided what to do about the fireplace yet. We decided to sweep the chimney and discovered that it was full of twigs. The neighbours had told us they had seen jackdaws making a nest there and we found both the nest and the birds - a couple of bird skeletons dropped down the chimney along with all the twigs!
My last diary update mentioned the mouse living in my underwear drawer. There have been a number of other wildlife spotted in the house. One evening while we were watching TV something flew past our heads - it was a bat!! I suppose it had mistaken our sitting room for a barn and had hung upside down on the beams for the afternoon, come nightfall it had woken up and started to fly about the room, diving at our heads - nightmare! Angus jumped onto the beams and started to swipe at it and eventually it flew into the kitchen where it landed low enough for Richard to catch it and release it outside. Most of our bird spotting has been done outside but I did find a blue tit in the letter box one day. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds before it flew past me and into the house. Angus (of course) came to try to catch it, leaping into the air to try to grab it but luckily the bird flew out the door and got away. A few days ago Richard spotted a mouse running across the kitchen worktops. It was just like the film Mousehunt as it ran up and down the mop leaning against the wall, across the worktops and eventually into the kitchen sink after a quick swipe with a wooden spoon. For some reason we always catch them alive and release them outside so that Angus can bring them back in again, drop them while playing with them and lose them under a cupboard.
Visitors are still flooding in, friends and family coming to muck in with the restoration and take in a bit of Cornish scenery while they're here. This is a great combination as it means we can continue our work on the house but also have a few days off to tour the countryside. I still can't believe we actually live here when we walk on the beach on a sunny autumn afternoon - its just the best!