'The Legend of Boggy Creek', fruit gluts and an Asbestos Anniversary

Over the past two months that we've been living in Eric, I've been having flashbacks. A long forgotten memory of being scared silly keeps coming back. The film was about a large hairy bog creature thing that tormented a family in a trailer – well that's what I remember. A scene where a large hairy arm comes in through an open window remains etched in my brain – it scared me then, and now comes back when the dark descends over Eric. Woooo-oooh, Happy Hallowe'en!

 

 

We're settling into trailer life in all it's glory. We're warm and largely dry but the full eight hours sleep has eluded us for a few weeks now. Even the little snuffles we all make in sleep sound loud in a static, and some of us (not me!) emit long reverberating snores which are disturbing our littlest hobo. She only has one volume setting to her voice – foghorn – and when she can't sleep, no one can as she complains bitterly about the snores.

 

 

Autumn has gripped the household. Our harvest of apples, pears, plums and greengages has astounded us. Despite at least three years of neglect, the orchard of around thirty trees is still producing large quantities of fruit. In an attempt to enthuse the children one day, their Granny suggested a stall out front to sell the produce. And thanks to the generosity of passing cyclists, drivers and dog walkers they made over £20 in two days. Well into October, we're still collecting fruit – and caterpillars. I found one dead in my bra after apple picking one day – but as my husband says, what a way to go!

 

 

 

 

The Planning Application continues to drive me hopping mad. The short story is that it is looking likely we will get permission for a set of diluted design plans we've put forward. Great. The long story revolves around a Planning Department that's archaic, over bureaucratic and smug. The sheer subjectiveness of their decisions astounds me. 'I don't like it so you can't have it' seems to apply. If we had been assigned another, less officious and more pragmatic Case Officer we might be getting a much more aesthetically pleasing design......

Good news is that the builders start this week taking internal walls out of the existing house, and the deep ground works should begin the day after our Planning Permission should come through – 12^th November. It will be a big boost for morale to, at last, have some visible pushing forward of the project.

Whilst we are in the period of Halloween, we have been finding bones. Quite large bones. I'm not worrying too much about why they are there; I don't think they are human and that's good enough. After a conversation today regarding historical plague pits in people's gardens (still off limits for digging, just in case they can still contaminate) ….... I'd prefer to think they are bones from the odd cow or fox come to a natural end. And to add to the All Hallows theme, we have some owls that visit mid evening and hoot and hoot and hoot. 

We have a new member of the Lerway caravan team; today we were given 'Miranda the Marauder' from some good friends who were scrapping her. She's been put in the orchard, in her last resting place, as somewhere to go if you want some peace!  

Lastly of note, we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary in late September. We spent the day emptying a full 16ft skip of inadvertently loaded asbestos – our alternative to the traditional giving of 'tin' to each other! 

 

Thanks to Abi for supplying some great photos.

 

 

 

'Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness', oh! and asbestos.....

I've been told several times that I haven't actually covered our plans for No. 65 in this blog.

To be honest the plans have hit a brick wall in the form of an over official 'objectionable' (Architect's words not mine) Case Officer in the Planning Department, We've all heard horror stories about the hideousness that is local Planning Department but I truly entered this thinking that the reputation was urban myth. My naïvety is laughable!

We wanted to add a large extension which makes the house L-shaped with the aim of maximising the sunlight, and end up with a 5 bedroom modern house with views over the garden. Design features included a double storey atrium at the front door, french doors in the Music Room and Master Bedroom and normal windows for the smaller bedrooms. All this is currently stripped out by Planners claiming, subjectively, that it doesn't fit with the existing house style.  Details should be published soon of the diluted drawings that we have submitted on the South Cambridgeshire District Council website.

So our lovely plans for updating this ugly squat 1960s chalet style house are dashed slightly, for now! But we have a plan up our sleeve so watch this space. The house has been empty for three years now – it's a two storey house with no period or redeeming features, except one. The garden. It is set within an acre of raw land just prime for a little bit of love. A long front garden – now full with weeds and thorns – gives some depth from the road and then the garden opens up into an overgrown field and orchard ripe with possibilities. There is a row of five mature Poplars; majestic in their looks and their beautiful rustle in even the lightest wind. The icing on the cake for the kids are Blue and Floss; our neighbour's Ponies.

We have had great fun exploring and getting used to the garden. We've more plums and apples than we can possibly eat – apple crumble, frozen plums and plum squash (try it in Prosecco - yum!). Blackberries, sloe berries, pears, more apples are all coming. A first trial for Sloe Gin is on its way.

Listening to the gentle thud of the apples falling to the ground I was hoping for Newton-like enlightenment of some sort. The reality was more mundane; when one of the children disturbed my daydream with a request to identify poo. We'd been told of foxes and muntjac deer – particularly a Fantastic Mr Fox who has been seen nonchalantly wandering round the garden as if he owned it. Despite trying we've not seen anything ourselves. However several google image searches later (have you tried to search 'poo'???) we can confidently confirm the presence of deer and foxes. Sightings hopefully to come.

On a less romantic note(!) we had three large 7ft piles of rubbish in the garden. One was ash and burnt scrap metal. The second was grass cuttings and brambles; the third is of uncertain heritage. Some say it was a pond filled in; others say it was an old chicken shed allowed to rot in situ. All we know is that it is ugly and potentially hazardous.

The weekend's job was to attack Pile Three. There was no pond, but there was several decades of asbestos tiles, bricks, plastic, roofing materials, metal, chicken wire, and more rotting wood than came up from the Mary Rose! Who could just dump all that in their garden? It's beyond me. It filled a 16ft skip. And I'm left having sleepless nights worrying about our asbestos exposure.

Despite temperatures cooling, Eric and Ernie are proving to be snug and warm; although Abi informed me that she irons her already-ironed uniform 'to warm it up' in the mornings – ingenious or madness?