Rosie with static hair yesterday! She LOVED the big slide and would have been on it all day . . . She is very brave and intrepid, just like her grand-dad Keith. She has us in stitches yesterday afternoon as she sped past saying, "I'm being a cheeky monkey!" That's what Tam calls her.
I've just been on one of the Dartmoor pages I follow on Facebook, and a photographer had visited Throwleigh and taken some lovely photos. Oh, how I wanted to BE there . . . Anyway, one showed a cottage which suddenly reminded me of one we had the details of in Devon, called Four Chimneys. It ticked all our boxes, but of course was on the market about 5 years before we eventually got a buyer. I hadn't thought of it since. We were looking in Devon for years, online, but only viewed a few because it was a long way to go in a day, and if we stayed overnight, could get expensive. We simply were NOT MEANT to move there . . . Literally everything that could go against us did, right from the start. In 1987 we had a buyer for our Dorset house, had offered on Beaworthy Mill (losing it broke my heart) and Keith's gold shares were worth the price of the Mill outright (£60,000). He decided to wait over the weekend and sell them on the Monday, and then the Tokyo stock exchange shut for the weekend and dumped all its gold, and by Monday his shares were worth just a few pounds . . .
We loved the old building in Hatherleigh which had once been Hatherleigh Antiques. We were there for an hour, viewing it, and it was very affordable - back then. But, no sale at Ynyswen. We loved the thatched cottage near Oakhampton with a red kitchen and a lake . . . Ditto. No, we were meant to be in Wales and stay in Wales. Full stop.
Yesterday I suddenly thought of another house we viewed, but along the Welsh borders this time, just over the Shropshire border I think. It had a kitchen with a range, but that was in a glass-house extension and apparently bitterly cold in winter, despite the range. Work needed on windows, roof etc. Oddly it had about 14 sheds in the garden, some overcome by laurel bushes etc, and that's where the children went off to sleep when they were being a PITA . . . How odd to parent that way.
I know, I'm wittering on about nothing. I've had my walk (around the Groe today, nice and flat), collected my prescription, changed my library books and got cat wormers from the vet's. TV and quilt binding this afternoon.
But if you had moved to Devon, you would have been a long way away from family, especially Rosie who does look like she enjoys being a cheeky monkey. When we were looking, we viewed a bungalow, the estate agent had rubbed Alec up the wrong way, but the minute we walked in, I said I couldn't live there as it wasn't a happy house - that didn't go down well with the Agent! Another also had a huge conservatory kitchen/diner extension which Alec quite rightly said would cost a fortune to heat. But we are very happy where we are. Off in the rain to do the school run. Xx
ReplyDeleteThe family would have moved there to be near us. Had we moved to Beaworthy Mill initially, Gabby and Danny would have been born there (T is Dorset born and bred). Tam met Jon on an online dating site. She found it hard to get anyone to travel to back-of-beyond Builth to meet up . . .
ReplyDeleteYes, houses carry history - recent unhappiness as well as older Stone Tape type recordings. I amglad you are happy in the house you bought. I am often surprised that the last people here (incumbants for 20 yrs) didn't leave a negative atmosphere as he had problems with depression/PTSD and she was regarded equally as a nutter!