Boxes, boxes, boxes….
Dear Reader, I bet you thought I had vanished into the ether or had stumbled down a ditch! Well it has certainly felt like it over the last week! We left the Big Smoke a week ago now and to be honest, life could NOT be more different. Everything is rather lovely here and Jerry, Primrose, Poppy and I keep having to pinch ourselves as it all seems too good to be true. It is every bit the rural idyll we hoped it would be. It was distinctly odd saying goodbye to the cottage but rather surprisingly I didn’t shed a tear (and I am well-known for being a tad gushy with the old water works). Perhaps that was because the time was right for us to go? The cottage seemed so small without all of our clutter and shutting the door, Jerry and I were more than happy to skip off into the sunset to try and retrieve the keys for our new countryside manor.
Boxes piled high in the ‘new’ cottage, Jerry and I spent our first night eating bread and cheese and drinking champagne from the girls’ plastic beakers. Utterly exhausted but very happy indeed. It wasn’t until Day 2 that I remembered what my lovely friend Bee had said to me about how I would feel in my first week. Then the sudden realisation hit me that there was an EXTRAORDINARY amount of unpacking to do, that the puppy still needed to be walked, girls still needed to be fed and that I was amidst farmland with no phone, no internet and no mobile signal as BT had crossed our lines with a dear old lady in the village who was housebound and now unable to use her phone too! Apparently the countryside has no need for that new fangled invention: the internet or indeed a phone line! So I can tell you, dear Reader, that I have so far spent the week unpacking boxes, yelling at BT, organising where everything is going to go, yelling at BT, shouting at the computer and phone, more yelling at BT….I am sure you get the gist, dear Reader. Margot without the internet it would seem spells mini breakdown. This combined with Monty the dog shredding a 12 pack of loo rolls, eating one of Jerry’s shoes, making himself sick gobbling up a dead mouse found in the lane, the girls refusing to go to bed because they want to watch the sunset from their bedroom window , the fridge and washing machine being too large to fit in the utility room despite being the standard size and did I mention no internet ?! To be honest, there is not enough gin in the world that could have mollified my black mood.
I am not sure that Minty would have approved of the plastic beakers…but needs must!
HOWEVER…..with every cloud comes a silver lining……..I can wholeheartedly say that never a truer word was said as we have been truly welcomed into the village with open arms. Villagers have left cards and bunches of flowers, invitations to drinks and all have greeted with the warmest of smiles and firm handshakes. The postman even ventured that he thought we would bring some much needed life to the village. So we may not be totally unpacked, we may not have any telecommunications (I am posting this from the top of our nearest hill as hanging out of the bedroom window was deemed a bit too dangerous by Jerry) BUT we all LOVE it here and feel very very much at home. Big Smoke – where’s that?! Our adventures in the countryside have just begun…..!
Sweet peas left on the doorstep!
