It’s the shortest day of the year; Christmas and New Year
are just around the corner and, from here on, we get a little more daylight
each day. A new year, new veg growing in the potager and a boat to launch in
spring (if I get the renovation done in time), and as a bonus, I have been
asked to undertake a twenty day project for my old employer, so there will be a
little extra in the budget – reasons to be optimistic? You bet – especially
when I look back in my diary to this time last year.
The plan had been a three phase development of this little
cottage and barn. The first phase was a new-build extension on the ground floor
to the north with a new kitchen installed.
Phase two should have been a refurbishment of the existing ground floor,
removal of old kitchen, installation of a new log-burner, a new tiled floor
with under-floor heating, new dry-lining and an insulated ceiling between the
beams. The third phase would have been a conversion of the barn into a workshop
and utility room on the ground floor and a play-room above. When I say
play-room I mean a place were we can make our music, do our art, and hang out
with friends – maybe put a pinball machine and an old juke-box in there just
for fun.
Well plans don’t always work out quite as expected. Halfway
through the building of the Kitchen, the builder advised that it would be a bad
idea to complete phase one until all the dirty work of phase two was completed.
The problem was that the only viable access to the living room would be via the
new extension – better to rip out the floor and dry-lining and get the liquid
concrete into the living room now, before the extension is finished otherwise
we would have been dragging concrete and rubble through the new kitchen. ‘Oh
and by the way’ he added, ‘if you want power, water and drains into the barn,
we need to dig those channels before we lay these new floors’.
So phases one two and three became one single effort to sort
the ground floor of the entire property. It also
meant that stuff had to be
ripped out before new stuff could be installed. By this time last year we had a
home with no floors, no kitchen, bare stone walls, no doors, no running water,
except for a standpipe outside, no sink and only one working electric socket.
Everything was covered in plaster dust and we were surviving in one upstairs
room.
At such times you realise how important friends can be –
and, given that we had only lived here six months at that time, it serves as a
strong reminder that people are naturally friendly and helpful. We were offered
free accommodation in several homes and camping cars – and we had a different
invitation for every meal and celebration through the holiday period. We even
managed to throw a party ourselves using space heaters and a cooker that we
took off the boat. I have no idea how we stayed so cheerful that winter but I’m
pretty sure it had much to do with the warmth and friendliness of people who
live in this neck of the woods – Is it like this anywhere or is there something
special about this place and its people?
Well you might know better than me – I haven’t travelled
outside of Europe but I suspect there is something quite special about people
here. It’s a village that has traditionally made its living from the sea. The
men signed up for long and dangerous voyages to Newfoundland – fishing for cod.
The women were left to grub what living they could on the parcels of land they
managed to buy or inherit. They would naturally support each other during the
long months of the cod fishing season. The men, as seafarers, were cosmopolitan
and broad in their outlook and they were used to getting on with people in the
close confines of their vessels – in effect they were all in the same boat –
and that culture of mutual support and openness still seems to characterise
people here.
It extends even to people like us – newcomers. People make places, and collectively they
make the
David
No comments:
Post a Comment