Tag: Moving House

#17 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Bobbing, Moving HouseLeave a comment
©Debs Bobber

How wrong could I have been yesterday! The fog and mist cleared quickly, by the time we had done our swimming the sun was up. Not only was the sun up but someone lovely had put up coat hooks at our normal swimming spot.

©Gill Bobber

It took no time at all to fill all the hooks with our swimming stuff.

What a kind thing to do.

When we moved house recently we gained a garage, which in some ways has replaced an art studio and two brick storage sheds in the last house. Inevitably it became a bit of a storage area and dumping ground during the move. It will never actually house a car.

Somehow during the move our cordless drill became disassociated from the charging port. The last place it could possibly be was the garage. And just like that the autumn project revealed itself! I can’t say it will be the most exciting of post-move projects, and would certainly have been better done before quite so many spiders had moved in, before the winter. An hour or so of reorganisation yesterday revealed the missing charger. That small victory became reason enough for me to stop the process. More effort and diligence is going to be needed to see this particular project through. Perhaps next week is the time to really sort it out…

For now I have an exhibition to prep for. How many times will I have to scuttle into the garage today to find missing art stuff!

Pandemic Pondering #538

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home TownsLeave a comment

Nobody expects, when they set out on the journey of a house move, for it to take one month short of two years.

Crystal Palace ©cpsubway.org.uk

Yesterday we finally completed on the end point of our house moving journey. We are not where we expected to be, but there were times when we had no idea what or where the outcome of our relocation would entail.

Of course the Pandemic played a massive part in making the whole process more complicated but in a strange twist Medieval history was also responsible.

In 1066 William the Conquerer gave his loyal warrior Robert the Bastard considerable chunks of land in Devon and Cornwall as a reward for victory in the Norman Conquest of England. Unusually the land has stayed in the same family since 1066.

Unknown to us, the house we ultimately planned to buy was on a patch of this land, ordinarily this would have complicated things a little. In our case it complicated things a lot when the current descendant, the 8th Earl of Mount Edgecombe died just two weeks before we were supposed to move. The house moving rule books don’t really have a legal strategy or flexibility for such an event, beyond just giving up and walking away from the situation. With the co- operation and a lot of trust between ourselves and the sellers of the house (but not the land) we opted for a homemade solution and rented the house for three months while the legal teams were able to catch up with the paperwork. Sometimes risks have to be taken and yesterday the paperwork was in order and the house became ours, the land transfer will catch up with us later.

Last night we celebrated with English Champagne, anything French seemed a little inappropriate as the events of 1066 had created such a massive wrinkle in our recent lives.

Pandemic Pondering #471

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home Towns, Serendipity1 Comment

The superlate blog, not the superlative blog!

Lamp post heart.

This late blog writing will not become a regular habit. The two things I thought I might write about are so far apart I can’t begin to sew them together but I will try. Coupled with no WiFi and no broadband and patchy signal there is an awful lot of hanging around waiting for deliveries that all the wonderful tracking apps are meant to stop. But currently tracking is not for me and neither, reliably, is a quick call from the driver to say he is close. So we hang around all day waiting for things to arrive. The bonus to this is that there is ample time for unpacking and reorganising, to this end we have sorted out the two large fireplaces that are monumental features in the new house. Not sorted out in a way that will ever see the use of fossil fuels but sorted out in an aesthetic and houseplant kind of way.

The pale gold sofa in the top picture was pulled out of a skip nearly 30 years ago. It lived for years in a conservatory and was the slightly uncomfortable chair of choice for teenagers desperate to think big thoughts away from their parents. Hardly the kindest treatment for a sofa, clearly designed for the finer things in life. A bit of reupholstery brought it back to life and it used to live in the upstairs part of @theoldmortuary. Even that, an undertakers home and workplace was possibly a bit beneath the dignity of such an elegant piece of furniture. Maybe this recent move has brought it more into the surroundings it was designed for.

The houseplants in the bottom picture are gathered together in an old fender found at the house. They need something to control them, it seems not a week goes past without a new one joining our commune. In between titivating and embellishing fireplaces while waiting for deliveries the dogs still need walking and that is how the heart on a lamppost almost inexplicably joins in with this blog.

I spend a lot of time looking at lampposts while Hugo and Lola sniff out the messages left by other dogs and then leave coded notes of their own. Most lamposts are dull for humans but this one kept me occupied for as long as it took my dogs to read the urine news further down. What is going on here? The texture in the heart is keeping me thinking long after our ten legs carried us back to home to more unpacking. Hope your Friday was worthy of the expectation.

P. S I did some digital tweaking on the heart for the header image of this blog. I suspect the heart covers a message that someone no longer wants to be legible…

Pandemic Pondering #468

On By theoldmortuary.designIn HomeLeave a comment

Another day with a late blog, no broadband, no WiFi and a very poor signal. Also after two days waiting in vain for engineers we now have to wait 48 hours before we can get another appointment. Instead of scrolling through our phones we continue to unpack. Here is a tidy corner featuring tinned products that Have printed tin rather than paper wrappings. We are not avid collectors of anything but we do love some printed tin. We don’t collect fridge magnets either but the tiny collection below is evidence of how far down the unpacking pecking order we have got.

We are off for a swim soon, so with luck tomorrow’s blog will not be a reflection of cupboard curating. Who could begin to guess when a normal service will resume.