Since the family moved over the river the cottage is one to one-and-a-half
walk from the bus
stop/shop/shower/baby-sitting/nice-cup-of-tea-and-recharge-the-laptop-while-sending-email.
And the landrover I borrow from time to time is heading west.
So - the next BIG expense is a road-legal quad bike.
Which (let's face it) is MUCH MORE FUN!
I DON'T get to dry my hair - I DO get to travel to work, in November, with wet
hair and the start of a chill headache;
I DON'T get a seat on the 7.15 train - I DO get to stand on the 7.55 train
with my nose in someones armpit;
I DON'T get an hour of writing done before work - I DO get to rush into work 5
minutes late (and with wet hair);
I DON'T get to check my bag before I run out of the house - I DO manage to
leave without my purse, and therefore without breakfast*. Or Lunch. Or Tea.
Or, even (as the fridge is empty after my weekend away) Dinner.
It's my fault. We should talk more often.
I must arrange proper call times for catch up chats.
But not at 7.05am on a Monday morning.
Please.
(Thank you the lovely man in the new coffee shop made me cappuccino anyway. I
love you and I will buy coffee from you every monday for at least a year)
At the moment it is my (almost) ideal writing spot. No neighbours, no
internet, no 21st century chores. Just a warm bed, a big chair, a small fire
and a pot of coffee sitting on the hearth.
But it is a bit tough on visitors, and almost impossible to imagine lending to
other writers, even those who want to try a "Walden Pond" experience for a
short while.
The biggest issues are-
Electricity: I don't need it for lights, or refrigeration, or entertainment.
But I do need to juggle the laptop batteries,and even then have to take a
recharging break every 2 days. I rely on neighbours who don't mind that I
plug-in while babysitting or drinking tea, but that's not really an option for
the average writer with the average battery time plus mobile phone, etc.
Heat: I have a small open fire, built into the redundant hulk of the 1859
kitchen range, supplemented in the winter but two calor-gar heaters. Most of
the heat generated goes straight up the chimney, and the fire is too small to
heat the whole building or to keep a fire "in" overnight or while taking a
walk. It's an inefficient use of fuel (wood - bought and collected), and I
spend most of the winter with my toes on the grate, wrapped in a shawl.
Plumbing: There is none. I have a spring fed cold water tap in the
larder/scullery. Hot water means a kettle. That I can live with. But the loo
is an issue. If I am in the cottage for less than 24 hours - I dig a hole in
the woods. Longer than that, and I set up the folding composting loo, which
works well, and is perfectly hygienic, but is aesthetically challenging.
So, these are my choices for the next upgrade.
My choices are:
a.) a wind turbine - cost about £400
I've seen a turbine that works like one of those whirling signs you see
outside newsagents - it's compact and can be folded away if the noise is
excessive. I'd need to get cabling, a deep cycle battery and an inverter as
well, and experiment with the best way to set it up - but I confess, the
pleasure of trolling up for a weekend and knowing I'll have always have enough
juice stored up to run the laptop/phone/DVD/radio/charge the LED lights would
be, well, game-changing.
b.) a woodburning stove - cost around £1000
I'm thinking of installing this in the alcove next to the fire (currently a
cupboard with a stone floor) and running a flue up through the bedroom and out
of the roof, rather than trying to squeeze a small stove into the existing
tiny fire space. That way I can have the advantage of economic heat in both
rooms and the option of an occasional small fire for cooking, making toast and
indulging my pyromania from time to time.
c.) a composting loo
This is the big spend: I know the lo-tech version of the "seperett" system
works; as the name suggests it eaily and hygienically separates the, umm,
products, into wet and dry, and then composts them using different methods,
well out of sight. It is easy to use, easy to clean, and while the camping
version is a bit challenging for the casual visitor, the upgraded version,
powered by a solar panel, looks and feels, to all intents and purposes, like a
conventional plumbed in loo.
The loo itself is only £500 - but there is no point in upgrading without
replacing (repairing) the combined outhouse/porch in which it would be
installed, as the original structure is on the point of falling down. And as
the cottage is some distance from the road, that means co-ordinating
materials, builder and transport, in the summer, when the ground is dry enough
to bring up a 4 wheel drive.
And then it would make sense to also upgrade to a tiled floor, and to put in a
small cold water sink.
But that feels like a HUGE undertaking right now.
--
Tanya Lees
Holdfastfilms
--
Mail created using EssentialPIM Free - www.essentialpim.com
So - no excuse for not writing this afternoon!
I'll stick it out for a while longer, then go an procrastinate at home. It's
warmer there.
I just sat down for an hour in Somerset House - skaters zooming past the
window - and brainstormed another 50 things that could go wrong for my lead.
Before I even started he was orphaned, impoverished, exiled, alone and hanging
from his fingertips over a snake-infested haunted listening to the lions roar
in the desert.
And then I made it even worse for the poor sod. Fifty thing, including
Typhoid and/or the day of Judgement and all the fire of hell.
Job well done.
Now I have start concentrating on accreditation for the Berlin Film Festival.
Confession: I've never actually bothered to accredit before, just turned up
and blagged my way into parties. There is public access to so much of the
festival, to the shuttles, to the hotels, to the screenings, to the QandAs, to
the bars. Only the market building itself is off limits, and that has limited
appeal anyway, as long as you have contacts inside to score the party tickets.
The temptation to write beautifully is a terrible curse. You get instant
acclaim, and it certainly helps to sell an idea,but its all to easy use the
elegant handwaving to obscure grotty holes in the structure.
It reminds me of the life-classes I did in the art room at school; I always
got high marks despite appalling draftsmanship because I polished the product
up so nicely that who cared the models elbow was in the wrong place.
Now I am resisting all my instincts to make the prose I am writing atractive.
It's just bits of old words flung together and held up with string and gaffer
tape. Without the glamour and the polish and the handwaving only one thing
will make the story still stay up.
The truth.
If it's true, then it will still be standing tomorrow.
If not - well, I just have to pull it apart and stick it together again, until
it does stand up.
And that will, belatedly, be far more satisfying.
+++++
In other news - I just slid past the bread department at Waitrose and scored
£13.00 worth of poilane for - wait for it - £1.16.
Sourdough, walnut, rye - It will all go in the freezer and come out a slice at
a time for toasting.
I love Sunday nights at Waitrose.
I feel like crawling back into bed all the time. It's 12pm on Sunday,
and I already want a nap. Again.
My brain is fuzzy, my eyes are heavy, I've barely done more than load
the washing machine and walk to the High street.
Even espresso has no effect.
(I couldn't understand why the signal in my London flat got worse with
every passing year, until I was unable to make or take a call at all
unless I walked 50 yards from the front door - then I realised it wasn't
the signal, it was the annual phone upgrade. I bought a £13 Nokia 3310
- the model I had 7 years ago - and BINGO! - a working phone! No
camera, no mp3 player, no apps, no internet, but dammit, I can call the
fire brigade if I need to.)
Anyway, back to the camera - I want to be able to carry something small
that will snap household snakes, and the lesser known North Tyne turkey
bird, and the fairy castle I found in the woods.
Someone has deliberately released turkey chicks onto the land so that
they can run a novelty "shoot your own Turkey" event in December.
Because of course, the practise of releasing non native species into the
wild for sport and profit and shit and giggles has never caused
ecological disaster before now.
After all, it's not as if the land is in a NATIONAL PARK or anything.
It's not as if the local river bank is invested with imported mink, the
water with imported signal crayfish, or that the red squirrels of
Northumberland are disappearing under pressure from imported North
American greys - oh wait!
Luckily for everyone (except the poor Turkeys and unwary drivers) the
birds haven't mastered the green cross code, and are being squished
flat, daily.
Turkeys. Wild Turkeys. Released in the Northumberland National Park.
Without even touching on the ethical issues of shootin' huntin' and
fishin' - who does that?
WHO DOES THAT!!!!
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate:
A pettiness.
Picking up an armful while I walk across the field is now a pleasant
daily chore, and they smell wonderfully sweet as they burn.
Four years ago the cottage was festooned with webs, great brown bellying
curtains of them, hanging from every window, across the stairwell, from
the low ceiling beams.
I feared they might be one seasons worth - but I've never found the
cottage to need more than two de-webbing session a year, and then I am
only wiping away the very smallest wisps of white from window frames and
keyholes (it's the draught - it carries small insects through the gap,
into the waiting spidey jaws)
Of course this could be the result of the all conker-ing horsechestnut
eco-friendly spider repellent - I've only sprayed the windows twice in 2
years, but who knows.
The first day I visited my new cottage I found a poisoned mouse expiring
on the doorstep (the same doorstep the adder was sunbathing on last
week). As I cleaned I found little splayed out mouse skeletons in hard
to reach places. And later, when I first lived in the cottage full
time, I just managed their presence - keeping them out of food supplies,
using peppermint oil to deter them, wiping down and sweeping daily,
never allowing food or equipment to come into contact with unwashed
surfaces...
They disappeared entirely 18 months ago, when the cottage was left
uninhabitable by floods, and weasels and owls moved in. And they have
yet to move back in...
The damp?
Well, it's a different place now, I open the door, warm fresh air
streams out, biscuits stay crisp, sugar pours, the bed is dry and aired.
But it is summer, and the winter was a dry one, so I have my fingers
crossed for the months to come.
So the dusk is full of horny (literally - they have the cutest iddle
widdle horns) teenagers yelling "Muuuuuuuuummmmmm!
MUUUUUUMMMMMMM!!!!!!" and being ignored.
(I notice that Mum does eventually turn up - when I locked up last night
the sheep were all settling down in pairs and triplets to sleep)
Chase sheep out of blackcurrant bush.
Pick a mixed bowl of black- and red-currants.
Pick over the currants, (removing wisps of wool as well was twig). Rinse.
Put 3/4s of the currants in a pan with sugar, and pop on a slow fire.
Make tea. Read "Sharpe's Rifles".
When the currants start to bubble, take off the fire, cover and forget
for a while. Read.
Slice a good but slightly stale loaf of white bread. (I got one from
waitrose, reduced to 20p)
Line a pudding basin with the slices of bread, trimming them to fit, and
filling any gaps. Cut a lid and put it aside.
Fill the breadybowl with the cooled fruit, pop on the breadylid, a
saucer, and a tin can to weigh it down.
Forget about it.
Next day - cook the rest of the currants and let them cool down in their
juice.
Some point in the afternoon - turn out the pudding dish, and pour over
the extra currants and juice.
Admire the purpley yumminess.
Eat.
I found him/her sunbathing on the doorstep on Saturday afternoon - as I
approaches he/she slithered under the door and into the cottage.
Gorgeous creature, pale gold with a zig zag of dark brown down the back
Snake definitely more freaked out than I was - after all, I as a.)
wearing boots, b.) able to step straight over that arrow shaped head c.)
aware that Adder venom, though painful and temporarily disabling, is
almost entirely non-fatal to fit human adults, and d.) snakes dislike
the presence of humans almost as much as they dislike the proximity of
Gruffaloes.
I just sat on the steps watching Ada (or Adalbert) the Adder, turn tail
and slither back outdoors again.
I must get a new camera for moments like this.
