After many months, sleepless nights and a few tears too we have finally sold our little cottage and the new owner moved in on Monday. Although we are really happy to have sold it we are a little sad too as it was our first house, the house we lived in when we got married and we have many, many fond memories of it. Even though Martin was away most of the week working in Germany I never felt lonely living there and I always felt that the house had a really happy feel to it. We spent a lot of time decorating our home and to our friends we became known as the DIY King and Queen, as a result we often had many a stand up row in Homebase over "Farrow & Ball" paint colours and other such frivolities. Like the incident in Homebase where I failed to understand why we couldn't just fix a floating shelf to the stud wall in our kitchen to hold a ton of cookery books.
Here are some pictures of no.95 and a few of our memories to share, I hope you enjoy them.
When I looked at the picture above I had a really good laugh remembering the day we bought the enamel jug you can see on the worktop. Whilst on holiday in Cornwall we decided to hire some bikes and cycle fron Wadebridge to Padstow, which is only a 12 mile round trip and very pleasant. Unfortunately, I was not the accomplished cyclist then that I am now and we had a few hairy moments along the way. At one point I heard a surge of cyclists coming behind me and looked back to see how many there were and whether I should pull in. I needn't have bothered as my looking back caused me to swerve and I ended up in a heap in the ditch. Up front Martin heard a scream and looked behind to see me laughing my head off with a bicycle lying on top of me.
We got to Padstow at lunch time and as we were a little tired we decided to take a seat on a park bench and admire the view of the harbour. After our rest we got up, walked around the village, did some shopping (where I bought the big enamel jug) and stopped for a Cornish pastie. In hindsight Martin remembered a group of people laughing at me but he thought nothing of at the time. It's a really pretty little place so Martin decided to take a picture of me in front of the harbour. Here is the picture.
After this picture was taken I turned around and Martin told me that there were big brown horizontal stripes on the back of my top. I checked Martin and he also had the same brown stripes on the back of his top. We'd sat on a freshly painted park bench! I swear we nearly wet ourselves laughing.
It turns out that the painters had gone off for lunch and conveniently forgot to put up a sign. We tied our tops around our waists and got ready to cycle home but the jug wouldn't fit in Martin's backpack so we had to tie it to the straps. I will never forget the sight of Martin cycling all the way back to Wadebridge with this huge enamel milk jug swinging from side to side.
We spent lots and lots of time painting our house and as you can see from the pictures every room had exposed studwork. (In my ignorance of listed buildings when we first viewed the house I asked the owners if they did the studwork themselves and I was met with very strange looks. Oops.) I think we kept the masking tape industry in business for that year alone. On average we used six rolls of masking tape in each room. I'm amazed Martin and his Dad didn't break their necks when they redid the hallway - it was masking tape hell!
Our first and only Christmas there was a very happy and cosy one. As I came down the stairs on Christmas morning I heard the crackle of the fire, smelt the turkey in the oven and smiled at the twinkle of the fairy lights in the dining room. All this excitement caused me to miss the last three steps of the stairs so I slid down them hurting my bum really, really badly. Martin had to help me to the sofa where I spent the rest of the morning reading while Martin cooked the dinner. (All wives out there this is an excellent idea to get out of cooking on Christmas day - the bum was fine by the end of the day.)
I can't believe we ate that much food, Martin has just looked at this and said "that was some feed". I think it is impossible to cook a Christmas dinner just for two and we were eating turkey and ham for weeks. Seriously, we were. However, we would really appreciate a slice of ham like that now.
Since our house was so small every piece of furniture we bought had to be measured exactly right. We had been on the hunt for a pair of leather armchairs for the living room for a long time and I found some on the internet that looked and sounded like they would have fitted perfectly. They arrived... and they were huge, the internet had given the wrong measurements and since they couldn't be returned that day we had to live with them for two months until they could be sent back. They were so big they actually cast a shadow all over the room and sucked all the light out of it. Of course if they were scratched or marked we wouldn't get our money back so I spent the next two months living in fear anytime anyone sat down on them. Fortunately, we found the ones shown above and they were perfect for sitting and reading a paper on.
During our 18 months there we had lots of weekend guests who came to sleep in our little spare bedroom with the "not quite double but not quite single either" bed, it was 4ft wide. I always enjoyed the fondue nights with Stuart and Marianne, lazy Sunday mornings with Anne and Paul and lots of Balderdash with Steve and Louisa. Jimmy, I'm sure you remember the time Martin spent all afternoon cutting and measuring the end panel for the kitchen cupboard only for it to be cut way too short! Boy, did we laugh, unfortunately Martin was not so amused.
I know it might sound cliched but it is all these wonderful memories and experiences that make a house a home.
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