I have been working at home now since the Manor closed for conservation 4 months and I need to get out.
We have been snowed in, flooded in, fogged in, and today it's overcast and in minus numbers AGAIN.
I have written and re-written chapters of my book - phoned a friend, tweeted, blogged, e.mailed, cleared out at least 3 years of ancient (2000) business accounts by shredding them and bought a garden incinerator to burn the shreds. There's more to do.
We've taken 4 boxes of videos to the dump, and there's still, my dear husband tells me eight boxes of finances to shred and burn - looking at all the work we did over the years and the surprising amount of money that passed through our hands during that time - made we wonder why we aren't millionaires by now!
We're not!
We surfed credit cards and changed banks for best rates and one of the letters we kept was from the HSBC saying that my husband was 42p overdrawn and that they had transferred 27p from his savings account to try and help re-dress the balance and could he come to the bank and discuss how he was going to pay the remaining 15p. We peed ourselves laughing! This all happened because he changed his account to another bank - but considering the multi millions the HSBC handle and what has been happening recently in the banking world it seemed really funny.
Old BBC payslips showed I was on megabucks at one time and I spent it on private education for my son
and my mortgage after that there was not much left for me - so I lived on Mars bars and Twixes for lunch
and when he left public education - then we had money! We used to go shopping for designer clothes,out to restaurants, I worked weird shifts at Television Centre so got shift allowance as well.
Aah those were the days! Valued at work, exciting stuff to do, loads of friends and rellies always busy with fun stuff, my son being my best friend, all I needed was the perfect man in my life.
Now I have the perfect man - I have lost most of everything else - but life changes and you have to learn to deal with it, and after a period of grieving for the loss of my family and my job, I think apart from the need to get out, everything is finally getting back on track.
So I am off to meet my lovely hubbie for lunch in Oxford, I have blogged and tweeted and e.mailed - time to get into the real world for an hour or so. Yeah!!
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Moving Experience
So we are moving again, this time to a pretty Oxfordshire village to a wreck of a 1960s house we will do up.
A lovely avocado bathroom, a kitchen which would look amazing in "Call the Midwife" a blank patch of grass that is the garden and no heating. The challenge is exciting, a blank canvas, we'll pull all the innards out and start again.
Sadly our castle has never materialised so we will have to sell some of our antique furniture and move ever so slightly into the modern world. I would love to live in a huge17th century honey coloured Cotswold stone house with stone lintels and a big open fireplace with fire dogs. A huge garden for my pets to roam and explore and the thing I want most of all at the moment a Blenheim Cavalier King Charles puppy.
But the 60s house has potential it's in a village we know well, the road seems quiet and there are views of the Church steeple and thatched cottages in the same street. It will be cosy (i.e. small) and we weren't looking to downsize but in Oxfordshire a small house is all we could afford. Having paid over £12K in rental a year to live in a house where when you mention to the landlady that such and such needs doing she smiles and says - "Oh thanks for telling us - we'll get that done when you move out." She is a lovely lady and does get urgent things done like the heating boiler which burnt out last week in minus temperatures. Whereas in your own house you just do it. When I rented my Cornish house I kept on top of the repairs because it can get expensive if you leave them and it's not fair on your tenants.
So I am now writing my book, getting a job,buying a house, speaking engagements, dieting, working at the manor, making 17c Clothes and doing websites, I am getting a bit tired, especially in the cold. For someone who doesn't have a full time job I have never been so busy.
But I can't wait to have my own house again and we will not have to deal with other people's decoration and bad plumbing, corny as it sounds it really will be a moving experience for me.
A lovely avocado bathroom, a kitchen which would look amazing in "Call the Midwife" a blank patch of grass that is the garden and no heating. The challenge is exciting, a blank canvas, we'll pull all the innards out and start again.
Sadly our castle has never materialised so we will have to sell some of our antique furniture and move ever so slightly into the modern world. I would love to live in a huge17th century honey coloured Cotswold stone house with stone lintels and a big open fireplace with fire dogs. A huge garden for my pets to roam and explore and the thing I want most of all at the moment a Blenheim Cavalier King Charles puppy.
But the 60s house has potential it's in a village we know well, the road seems quiet and there are views of the Church steeple and thatched cottages in the same street. It will be cosy (i.e. small) and we weren't looking to downsize but in Oxfordshire a small house is all we could afford. Having paid over £12K in rental a year to live in a house where when you mention to the landlady that such and such needs doing she smiles and says - "Oh thanks for telling us - we'll get that done when you move out." She is a lovely lady and does get urgent things done like the heating boiler which burnt out last week in minus temperatures. Whereas in your own house you just do it. When I rented my Cornish house I kept on top of the repairs because it can get expensive if you leave them and it's not fair on your tenants.
So I am now writing my book, getting a job,buying a house, speaking engagements, dieting, working at the manor, making 17c Clothes and doing websites, I am getting a bit tired, especially in the cold. For someone who doesn't have a full time job I have never been so busy.
But I can't wait to have my own house again and we will not have to deal with other people's decoration and bad plumbing, corny as it sounds it really will be a moving experience for me.
Wednesday, 13 February 2013
Cornish Dreams
Well Trevor Grills dreamt of making his fortune perhaps, or bringing the wonderful voices of Fisherman's Friends to the world, and his dream cost him his life in a freak accident. Would he have changed anything?
I didn't know Trevor but I knew Port Isaac and Cornishmen and so I don't think he would have done.
Cornwall invades my Oxfordshire home, with paintings from John Miller, Judy Trevanow, and many others, and a pottery lamp made by another Fisherman's Friend on my sideboard to match the vase on the table.Seven years working and living there, cleaning my own holiday cottage and marketing it, selling my business of print and design alongside working as a temp to make ends meet. I had three jobs in Cornwall most times.
It made me ill, the damp sea air creeps into your bones if you are not Kernow born and bred, but I loved it. Those who emigrated long ago for work, the Scots and the Welsh and the Yorkshire miners descendents live and are almost as accepted as those born and bred in the craggy land that drops spectacularly into the sea.
This time of year the sea fog crept in and stayed until March, the Pendeen Watch howled soulfully into the grey cold night, During the day Polish men and women pick daffodils and vegetables for the supermarkets on the hills above Marazion living in cold caravans and spending the pittance they earn in Lidl in Penzance.
The fire would crackle and spit and I would put potatoes into the embers and they would cook a smoky delicious crispy coat with a fluffy inside. Cornwall lives in me, the colour of the sea, the smell of the air,
my own pet seagull called Barney, so old he couldn't fish so we fed him and he became a member of the family.
I hope Trevor goes to a Cornish heaven, where he can sing to his hearts content and hear the waves crash onto the beach and listen to the seagulls circle and see his family and friends in Port Isaac getting on with life like they have always done, but without him, and missing him.
God Bless and God Speed Trevor and keep singing.
I didn't know Trevor but I knew Port Isaac and Cornishmen and so I don't think he would have done.
Cornwall invades my Oxfordshire home, with paintings from John Miller, Judy Trevanow, and many others, and a pottery lamp made by another Fisherman's Friend on my sideboard to match the vase on the table.Seven years working and living there, cleaning my own holiday cottage and marketing it, selling my business of print and design alongside working as a temp to make ends meet. I had three jobs in Cornwall most times.
It made me ill, the damp sea air creeps into your bones if you are not Kernow born and bred, but I loved it. Those who emigrated long ago for work, the Scots and the Welsh and the Yorkshire miners descendents live and are almost as accepted as those born and bred in the craggy land that drops spectacularly into the sea.
This time of year the sea fog crept in and stayed until March, the Pendeen Watch howled soulfully into the grey cold night, During the day Polish men and women pick daffodils and vegetables for the supermarkets on the hills above Marazion living in cold caravans and spending the pittance they earn in Lidl in Penzance.
The fire would crackle and spit and I would put potatoes into the embers and they would cook a smoky delicious crispy coat with a fluffy inside. Cornwall lives in me, the colour of the sea, the smell of the air,
my own pet seagull called Barney, so old he couldn't fish so we fed him and he became a member of the family.
I hope Trevor goes to a Cornish heaven, where he can sing to his hearts content and hear the waves crash onto the beach and listen to the seagulls circle and see his family and friends in Port Isaac getting on with life like they have always done, but without him, and missing him.
God Bless and God Speed Trevor and keep singing.
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