I had a really interesting chat with our neighbours over our New Year’s Day lunch about the major renovation work they are doing on their cottage. It was originally an early 19th Century toll house on what would have been the old turnpike road, and is Grade II listed. That means that, although it requires […]
The mice came back in November, as they have done every year for well over a decade. It’s no coincidence that my annual rolling contract with the pest control company has a renewal date in November. The change in weather drives them to take shelter indoors, and then they hold tap-dancing parties directly above my […]
I was so glad that HMS managed to fix my boiler last week, as it’s turned cold. Really cold. It would have been utterly miserable without central heating! It even snowed heavily on Saturday for several hours. Big, fat, “proper” snowflakes. Fortunately it didn’t stick, but it was still heavy enough for me to cancel […]
It’s that time of year again when I get a series of emails from Christopher’s gmail calendar, reminding me to do a load of admin chores. “Get septic tank emptied” (done), “renew house insurance” (done), and most recently “Get boiler serviced”. I had to wait a few weeks for the boiler servicing company I use, […]
When Christopher and I first bought this cottage, it needed a lot of work doing to it. Most urgently, it needed completely re-wiring, as the original rubber-insulated electric cabling was beginning to perish. We found a semi-retired electrician, Jack, who spent many weeks crawling around in the attic and chiselling channels in the walls to […]
It’s been several months since there has been any sign at all of mice in the loft, and I was getting complacent. That was a mistake! They came back on Friday night, just as I was trying to get to sleep, and were scurrying backwards and forwards directly above my bed, all night long. I […]
I knew I had electrical issues in the extension when my washing machine and tumble dryer tripped off in the middle of a cycle, and wouldn’t come back on again, even when I reset the trip-switch in the consumer unit. But it turned out to be more widespread than just one pair of sockets being […]
I’ve had over a month free of tradesmen working on the house. The last time was in early January, when I had Dynorod around to unblock the drains. I’ve rather enjoyed a month free of writing large cheques in return for getting the house put back to how it ought to be! But I might […]
My house is on a main road, and even though I have double glazing throughout I can usually still hear the regular stream of traffic going past. I’m so used to the sound of the traffic that it took me quite a while today to work out what was different. There has been hardly any […]
My neighbours are renovating their cottage which is grade II listed. They are understandably keen to collect images and information about how it used to look, so have been looking through piles of old postcards and photos of the locality. They came across this lovely example from 1937 which is of my cottage. The first […]
