The countryside

It's a nice day out again, and I should probably be outside enjoying the sun, but I've got the house to myself for a few hours, so I'm going to do some cleaning while there won't be anyone in the way. Figured I'd post a bit on my adventures in the countryside before I get to mopping.

The countryside, at first glance, appears to be just as it seems in movies and on television. The greenery is astounding. Everything is so soft and rounded, no jagged mountains mucking up the gentle roll of the terrain. The clouds stack up one right after another straight on to the horizon and beyond. It’s quite breathtaking. On the drive back to the train station, the parts I could see through breaks in the hedges were so beautiful, my throat closed up in response (and no, it wasn’t allergies….I’m not allergic to anything).

Bunny’s house is also something that seems so clichéd that it can’t possibly be real. The yard between the first and second gates is home to her chickens, ducks, and pigeons. There are so many trees, you can’t see anything from the lane. After the second gate, there is another yard, the end of the gravel driveway, and a rough wooden awning unobtrusively extending from the side of the house. Her flower garden out front is a wild tangle of growth, and there is a small arch to a side garden complete with wicker lawn furniture. The side garden gets full sun in the morning and early afternoon before the house gets in the way of things. The roof sags as though it’s weathered too many rainstorms to be anything more than grudgingly cheerful when the sun comes out.

The house itself is an old barn. There are two parts to it, the main barn and the long barn. Corn was kept in the main barn, while cows took up residence in the long barn. According to Bunny, there was cow shit piled head-high in the long barn when she found the place. The long barn is now her sitting room, with bookshelves and couches and a baby grand and everything else that makes a sitting room a sitting room. The side that borders the lane is about halfway below-ground, with big windows all along the opposite wall that look out into the back garden and the view beyond. There is a huge fireplace and gorgeous exposed crossbeams in the ceiling. The main barn houses the kitchen, dining room, and a water closet on the ground floor, and the three bedrooms and two bathrooms (one en suite) are upstairs. There is also an attic, two-thirds of which is storage, with the remaining space devoted to a fourth bedroom. It is accessible through a ladder in the ceiling of one of the bedrooms. The upstairs was designed and added by Bunny. It creaks like hell, but doesn’t feel unsafe or rickety.

Nothing in the house fits. Nothing is comfortable to sit on. The only thing that was really relaxing was the bathtub, but the separate hot and cold water taps on it kept it from being perfect. If you forget and stretch out your feet while filling it, you’re in for a nasty surprise.

All of the doors leading outside are split, so you can leave the bottom half closed and still let in a breeze and some sunlight. Unfortunately, this also lets in tons of flies and other buzzing insects, so I found that one needs to keep an eye out for bees and wasps at all times. The doors inside the house also feel like they’re part of the old barn, with old-fashioned iron latches rather than doorknobs. There are windows everywhere, so the house is filled with sunlight, weather permitting.

The back garden echoes the riot from the front garden, with a nice bit of open grass in the middle. The plants climb up the sides of the house and would probably claim the grassy area within a couple of months if they were allowed to. You can see the surrounding hills that are dotted with more fields, all of which have been clearly delineated by dark green hedges. Some of the fields in the distance are home to sheep, others have scattered cattle.

Directly behind the house is a big field that belongs to the gentry who live in the nearby castle (not a proper castle, mind you, it was built in the Victorian era, although I haven’t seen it, so it might be a decent imitation…). Cows wander through the field, grazing where it suits them. The arrive via the lane that runs by her house in a great clamor of hooves, moos, and whistles of the men driving them. Sometimes they come right up to the barbed wire fence that separates her house from the fields and look you square in the eye while they chew their cud.

Did I mention that the barn is listed in the Doomsday Book? If you don't know what that is, look it up. It'll tell you how old the barn is.

I've got some pictures of all of this, but I'm still trying to collage them together so you can get a good view of the whole front of the house.

Next on the menu: gay bars in Soho and pebbles in Brighton.

Time to get my mop on. Hooray.