9 MAY 2008

Well, work is certainly underway! From the front garden the house entrance still looks more or less the same, framed in a haze of apple blossom and surrounded by bluebells.

But venture in through the front door, and you soon see daylight up ahead.

The top two train compartments on the left hand side have been carefully cut out to create the extra space for the kitchen extension. And much of the former kitchen/future utility/shower room has been taken down and is in the process of being re-built. We were prepared for that. But what we had not bargained for was the fact that the floor had been dug up and foundations laid for the cement slab. So where only last week we stepped out of our sitting room on to carpet, we now step on to scree chippings. It was a surreal experience to sit on the sitting room step with a cup of tea looking straight across on to the garden. I kept losing my barings and having to remind myself where the divisions of the new rooms would be.

In the end I managed to get my head around it, and was able to go round with John, the builder, saying roughly where we would want things like the kitchen doors, sink and cooker. I took down measurements and will send him a more detailed plan this week. It’s all so exciting. I’d wondered if Mary (nearly 4) would find it disturbing to find her erstwhile home taken apart and open to the sky, and had been careful to prepare her. But I needn’t have worried: she ran around laughing and kicking up the scree with her pink wellies. As long as she gets her long-promised bunk beds there will be no trouble there. I’m the liability when it comes to sentimentality. I couldn’t help but feel glad that we had not been around for the actual cutting out of the compartments, and found it strange to see the scraps of old wallpaper with which our predecessors had decorated one of the rooms we had only used for storage exposed to the air and fluttering in the breeze.

There’s now no hot water nor electricity, and the remaining rooms are packed with our possessions, so we were heading off to my uncle’s farm a few miles away to spend a couple of nights. Must get a new tent so we can camp on the lawn in the course of future visits (a mouse shredded the last one). There was just time to thank John, Doug and Richard profusely for all their amazing hard work, hand over a wad of cash and write a cheque to ‘William the Concreter’ who will be coming to pour the ’slab’ for the foundations in a few days time. I wonder what will await our next visit!

Caption: Me on the step down from the sitting room and Mary in what will soon be a new shower room.