Bank Holiday Monday

It was a public holiday yesterday. Neither of us was working. HOORAY!!

So we went to Chatsworth for provisions, the Mudhut being effectively a vegetable free zone. Then we thought we'd go to Bakewell for a potter in the shops there. The crowds in Bakewell were **unbelievable**!! I'd forgotten about it being a public holiday really -- it was just a day when we weren't working. We beat as hasty a retreat as we could, given the crowds.

So we went to Bridge Street. It's fun actually "owning" a house. You can create chaos and mayhem at will. We knew there was a cellar under the house but that's all we knew. The staircase to the cellar had been boarded over. Cue The Builder, saw in hand who merrily removed the boards. Downstairs is a sweet little larder, the length of the stairwell. It needs lots and lots and lots of tidying and clearing (and perhaps something doing about the wall and some extra shelves putting up) but it's definitely usable. The boards have stayed up! The Builder turned his attention to the plaster mouldings on the loungeroom wall. They've come down now :-) We've decided to paint the loungeroom the same colour as the dining room (a sort of pale, creamy, yellowy colour) rather than touching up the damage with the dark, mushroomy grey colour it presently is.

While The Builder was doing this I turned my attention to the garden. I've dug up the bed by the back door, not because there was anything wrong with it in particular but because I want to put a herb bed there -- it's right by the kitchen door. I've got as far as the fence around the fish pond. The next thing is to get that down (it has a new career beckoning as the shield for the compost bins we're going to put in by the shed at the back. I shall grow passion vines and honeysuckle up it). The fish pond has had a reprieve -- I've found frogs in it!!!!!! We shall get some water plants and fish to keep the frogs company! Then I'm going to dig all the conifers out. I can't think of any good reason for conifers to exist at all, apart from a few plantations of pines for making furniture with. But not in any garden of mine!. They all have to go. And there are sooooooooo many of them. Sigh!

It was ever such a fun way to spend a day off. We went back to the Mudhut for a late lunch, then to B&Q (think Bunings) for supplies and then back to the house to do a few more things, such as replastering the walls where the mouldings (typed moulderings by mistake -- apt!) once were. We have acquired an enormous shopping list for B&Q. We're going back tonight with the van and a quivering piece of plastic to tackle it!

And so home for roast lamb, roast vegetables, wine and the snooker final. Was starting to get quite tense when I went to bed. Just as well I didn't stay up for all of it -- didn't finish until 20 to 1 or so.

It may not take as long to get this house ready for us to move in as I thought. The room that is going to need to most work is the loungeroom. Complete redecoration. Cupboards to hide the electricity and gas meters. Shelves in the alcove. Just a little touching up in the dining room. The cellar will need attention but we can do that once we've moved in. And we've decided to replace the kitchen flooring. It wasn't designed for kitchens and has shrunk. I don't mind the gaps between the "boards" aesthetically but it'll be awkward trying to keep crumbs out of them! Perhaps we'll start shifting things across earlier than I had anticipated.

The mudhut is starting to look neglected and forlorn. Everyone has lost interest in it. Freyja and Mark are also house hunting (of necessity, really, since we're about to abandon them to the damp and chilly fate of a cardboard box in the park) and everyone just wants to get organised and move on now, I think.

I'll try and remember to take photos of the work in progress at the house this evening.