I'm back & ready to go!
We have had the most fantastic Christmas & New Year.I won't go into to too many details but suffice to say all went very well. Our house guests had a good time & we all ate, drank & were merry. Everyone mucked in & helped with preparation,clearing up & washing up. H was as good as his word & put our new front door on, complete with all locks & hinges. It was slightly strange on the Thursday morning to eat breakfast with the front door wide open(to set or dry or something!)I should explain that the dining room is open plan to the hallway.
J&C did a complete survey of the garden & C says she will do us a plan of our dream garden. I said could she also do one that we could afford. I'm sure it will be lovely & can't wait to see it.
The other J (female) has taken loads of photos of the house & garden which she has sent on a CD.I have yet to look at them but hopefully will put some up on the blog. Still haven't sorted that out, but it is a New Year's resolution.
Talking of which we had a lovely New Year, the better half's sister & her fella came up. it was quite quiet but we went to Southwold on New Year's eve afternoon & walked down the pier. then came back & cooked a nice supper & drank a very large amount of alcohol & went to bed slightly squiffy at 2am.
We also went down the pier at Southwold on Boxing day, this is becoming a habit, but it is so beautiful there & only a 15 min drive from us.
Between Xmas & New year the better half's son & his girlfriend came for an overnight stay. It was lovely to have them here but they had problems finding us. I have sent instructions to all my other friends who have found us no problem, but they insisted that the SatNav would get them here.
Well they ended up in a field & had no map with them, so we had to give instructions to their mobile(which kept getting cut off due to lack of signal) & they eventually made it about an hour late. The youth of today, they so rely on technology! There has to be something said for good old-fashioned maps.
On the Sunday before New Year we decided to take down the swimming pool. Had I mentioned we have a pool?
Well it is an above ground one, plastic held up by scaff poles & in the wrong place outside the dining room window. Anyway, the better half had pumped out most of the water & there was just a few inches left to scoop out with buckets. Oh the glamour, wrapped up warm & in my wellies bucketing out water, & then mopping out the last few drops & all the leaves from the surrounding oaks. I should mention that while doing this the Better half discovered that the pump in the septic tank had packed up & it was filling up fast! But he is so clever & found an old pond pump & connected that instead, so crisis of overflowing sewage averted! This country life has it's moments.
The pool is now down & stored away safely in one of the stables. It gives me a chance to see the space more clearly & think about the type of garden I want there. it will have to be something quite simple to begin with as if we open in April I only have a few months. I should explain that I plan to do the garden landscaping & planting myself to try & keep costs down. It should also help with keeping fit.
Now the holidays are over & we have to get down to business. The last month has seemed like one long holiday as neither of us are going out to work, but we have to remember that getting this place up & running as a B&B is a job.
Today we decided to take down the old coal bunker which the previous owners had left full of old rubble. That was a job & a half but we did it, keeping the hardcore for the new car park & bagging the rubbish to go to the tip(which we have yet to find!) What we did find was an old grave stone. I was completely spooked as I thought the initials said FH(mine) but actually they said EH with the date 1894. Apparantly this house used to be an old Methodist chapel but nobody said anything about burials. And we have to have the pit for the new septic tank dug right where we found it!
On that note I think I will close.