TheBanyanTree: The little house by the fens

[John Bailey]

For a little over a year I've been living in an unsuitable though 
'desirable' house on an unsuitable though 'desirable' executive estate in 
an unsuitable part of South Wales.  The situation dried my creative juices 
to a dessication level roughly approximating a two-hundred year old fillet 
of salted cod. So we upped our sticks and moved diagonally East and North 
across the width of the Kingdom to Lincolnshire, at the edge of the fens 
and perhaps fifteen miles from Bolingbroke whence came Henry the 
Fourth.  The move took place over the 30th and 31st of March and this, my 
first journal entry in the new location, is an accounting, pure and 
reasonably simple:

Saturday April 3, 2004

THE LITTLE HOUSE BY THE FENS

The days running up to the Big Move on Tuesday, March 30th and, indeed, the 
move-out operation itself went like clockwork. We lodged the cats in their 
travel boxes behind the front seats of the car, hopped in ourselves, and 
drove away with never a backwards glance.

"That wraps it up for Wales, then," observed Graham, with some glee.

"It sure does," I replied.

"Meeeeeeow!" said Harry Cat.

"MRRRRAAAAAAH!" thundered Dolly the Mega-cat.

"Ah well," I said. "You can't say fairer than that, Dolly."

And off we drove in a North-Easterly direction, pitching ourselves and the 
little blue Ford into the maelstrom of motorway madness that is modern 
Middle England.

Shortly afterwards we got the 'and now, the snag' message. You see, what 
happens is, you get your chattels out of the house you're selling during 
the morning of moving day, aiming to be clear by lunch time. Shortly 
afterwards, generally while you're in the car driving to the new house, you 
get a message from your solicitor to tell you that Completion has taken 
place. The same message goes to everyone else in the chain, who are in the 
same position, and to the selling agents, telling them that it is now in 
order to release the keys to the new owners. The money has flowed from bank 
to bank across the system, ending up in all the right places, and all that 
is left is a quiet process for the solicitors tidying up papers and 
registering new ownerships and titles. It's a dramatic but not traumatic 
moment. Mostly.

Except that this time, the loan company for the people who bought our old 
house decided to throw a wobbly and hold on to the funds to the last 
possible moment before the bank transfer system shut down for the day.

"I'm sure it'll be ok," our solicitor assured Graham over the mobile phone. 
"Just keep driving and I'll ring you as soon as the money flows and we 
Complete."

"Oh dear," I said, keeping my eyes firmly on the road.

"Oh shit would be more like it," Graham replied.

"Don't worry about it. We'll be fine."

But you do worry about it, as you drive further and further away from your 
old home and towards a new one which you still don't formally own and to 
which you'll not have access until Completion.

It got later and later. We passed the three-thirty point at which the bank 
transfer system formally closes.

"Don't worry," said the solicitor. "We've still got time to get under the 
wire."

It was twenty minutes past four before we got the formal call and a great 
sigh of relief filled the car. It had been an increasingly quiet and tense 
drive up until then. Well, it would be, wouldn't it.

So we kept on going, crossing the Kingdom mile by steady mile, heading 
towards the house that was now our home. It had been a beautiful, sunny day 
but even with the extra hour of evening daylight it was getting very dark 
as we pulled out of Boston onto the Louth road.

"There you are," I said. "Only ten more miles to go."

"Will you remember the way when we get there?"

"Oh yes. No problem."

"Ok. I shall sit back and enjoy the view."

It was full dark when we arrived at about nine o'clock, though a clear sky 
allowed a bright moon to light our way. We collected the keys from our new 
neighbour. Too tired for an opening ceremony, we let ourselves in, rescued 
the cats from the car and shut the door for the night. We settled Harry and 
Dolly with a clean litter tray, most gratefully received, and bowls of food 
and left them to wander about, getting to know the place. Graham busied 
himself with putting up the camp beds we'd brought with us while I popped 
pizzas into the oven for our supper.

Didn't need rocking that night. Didn't even register that we were sleeping 
on little canvas cots, either. Dolly snuggled up to Graham, and Harry snuck 
in with me.

We woke Wednesday morning to a house of empty rooms, all seeming smaller 
than we'd remembered but with sun blazing in through the un-curtained 
windows and a soft light over the fens to the back of the house. Peggy, our 
neighbour's pet horse, looked over the fence to see what peculiar people we 
might be and then wandered off across the paddock, seeming satisfied that 
we were peculiar enough to provide plenty of future entertainment.

The removal men arrived in the middle of the afternoon, and started to fill 
all those empty rooms with furniture and with stacks of cardboard boxes. 
Harry and Dolly were locked safely in the bathroom, just as they had been 
the previous morning when we were moving out. The operation went swiftly 
but was somewhat marred by the foreman, who was anxious to get done and 
back on the road as soon as possible. The two younger guys with him 
couldn't have been more cheerful and helpful but he was in charge and a 
more miserable bloke it'd be hard to meet. After the happy experience with 
the guys who moved our stuff out it was a great disappointment to me that 
our moving in should be spoiled in this way.

The job got done, though we waved the enormous van with more relief than 
we'd anticipated.

"There you are then," Graham said. "Mission accomplished."

"Happy?" I asked.

"You betcha. Tired but happy."

"Me too. I'll start cooking dinner as soon as I can find a saucepan. Then I 
shall need an early night."

"Right. I'll go make up the bed."

The rest of that evening was pretty much the same as the one before. I woke 
the next morning, Thursday, to find Harry and Dolly snoozing happily in the 
kitchen. Harry seems to have come through the move with flying colours, if 
anything a little rejuvenated by it all. He finds the new house much more 
to his liking even if it is filled with cardboard boxes. Dolly took full 
advantage of the outrageous disruption to vent her bad temper and to 
express her extreme displeasure in all directions. By the end of Thursday 
however she had settled in nicely and seems now to be as pleased as the 
rest of us with our new circumstances. In spite of the cardboard boxes.

Since then we've been busy. Not surprising, really. We had a thoroughly 
satisfactory visit from the installation man to put up a new dish and 
connect us back to satellite TV. Our efforts to get the sofa into the new 
living room had all the makings of a Benny Hill sketch. It was not an easy 
operation and we ended up having to take the smaller window out of the 
masonry opening, complete with the frame, and easing the sofa in the 
old-fashioned way. Two or three trips out for provisions and necessaries 
for the immediate works have given us our first close-hand contact with the 
beautiful landscape and with Boston and Spilsby. No time yet for detailed 
inspections, of course, just a stream of impressions, all of them favourable.

The people are so nice!

The drivers are so mad!

At first sight, the landscape is incredible, with skies so big you could 
weep for them, and sunrises and sunsets to match. I have established my 
medicine walk, along the lane, over the Pooh bridge, down the track 
alongside the river -- they call rivers 'drains' here -- to Keale Bank, 
along a short stretch of single track road and then back into the lane. 
I've walked it twice now and find it to be exactly the right distance for 
me, enough to get me puffing and feeling a little stretched as I turn back 
into our gateway, but not so far as to be daunting. As my fitness builds I 
can add another loop, and another, all the way to Gibraltar Point and back 
again if needs be. Certainly more miles than I've been able to contemplate 
for years and years. And that's because it's all flat!

Pictorially I need a bit of time and a lot of adjustment. Currently it 
seems to me that you need three sets of eyes to do it justice -- Van Gogh 
for the drains and bridges, Turner for the skies, and a stark modernist for 
the fens and fields, Sutherland, perhaps.  I shall need to visit local 
artists and galleries to see what others have made of it but my own eye is 
already stirring and I feel I'll be happily occupied with it before too 
long. With the camera, certainly, but I also have a hankering to get out 
paint and canvas once more. Forty years ago I painted this landscape with a 
young man's eye. It'll be interesting to see what an old man's eye makes of it.

As to poetry, I have a feeling I'm going to do well here.

So, as Graham said, mission accomplished. We may be surrounded by stacked 
cardboard boxes but things are settling down, plans are being clarified for 
a programme of improvements, and we're wondering if one of the most 
important of these might not be the acquisition of a new AGA cooking range. 
Oh, and a new catio, of course. It's all great fun.

Above all that, we're established, we're comfortable, safe and happy, and 
we're all of us already feeling much more at home in our little house by 
the fens than we ever did in the Welsh doll's house.
--

John Bailey   Lincolnshire, England

journal of a writing man:
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>