Of mice and…

When we first started looking in earnest at making the move out of London and in a desperate attempt to bring a focus to our house viewings, given that we were having to travel some distance to view houses in person, we put together a ‘must have’ and a ‘definitely not’ list. Internet house porn only gets you so far in sifting the possibles, the no ways and the ‘oh that looks nice’ and our list helped slim down the potential viewings list. Every weekend we were looking though, we always threw in one to ‘challenge’ us, or rather, to rule in or out a particular feature. (Were this to be a tv programme, I guess they’d call it the mystery house!) From what you know of us already – the heart versus head blog post earlier this year- you won’t be surprised that the part- thatch house we bought ticked more of the ‘definitely not’ list than the ‘must have’. And with the thatch come some unplanned for issues.

The first of these came when trying to insure the house where we found we had a limited range of possible insurers. The upside is the fun I have had with companies who cold call trying to sell insurance, whom I have delighted in stringing along in an overly cheery manner until they realise that they cannot help me…. simple pleasures! The second has grown since we have lived here and it is the utter joy I get from looking at the curves, angles and sharp, crisp edges of the thatch – water reed (also known as Norfolk reed), I now know, is amongst the best of thatching materials, with a life span significantly longer than other thatch materials. The writer her indoors, when looking for me to run some errand or other, has all too often found me in the back garden staring at the roof, one of my new ‘guilty pleasures’. Having said that, another thing I have enjoyed as I get older is that I just don’t feel that guilty about these sorts of things any more. (When pushed by friends at Spotify dinner parties, I always used to say that Supertramp were my go-to guilty listening artist, but I’m not remotely guilty about them or their oeuvre anymore, even Breakfast in America!) The third issue is the fact that mice love a nice thatch. Mickey, as we have unoriginally named our current co-habitor, has hitherto resisted the peppermint oil which we have liberally sprayed around the house, as well as the humane ‘pest reject’ plug-ins, which emit a frequency designed to drive away all sorts of minor pests. All these plug-ins have achieved thus far is to cast a nice glow at nighttime, when all the lights are off and stimulated spiders to spin fantastic webs. Luckily these webs have been beautifully highlighted by the Aga, which ‘had a moment’ and coughed up lots of soot into the air. Pampered city dog has managed to ignore Mickey completely, choosing instead to share her food with him – methinks a cat beckons!

As indicated above, having behaved itself for some time, the Aga chose this week to falter/overheat/put itself out/cough soot all over the kitchen. Child #1, living up to his male stereotype didn’t even notice the dirt when he graced us with his presence late morning and proceeded to walk soot all over the new stair carpet, leaving unimpressed parents. Aga fixed once more, after our new best friend, the plumber, came and sorted out the faulty oil filter, we are now back to Aga toast and Aga ironing, the writer her indoors’ new best thing (apart from the now slightly scorched duvet cover, left for too long on the hot plate cover).

I still wait for the complaint from Mickey for the lack of heating over the last week….

Eating: Cider and cheese soup – recipe courtesy of Nigel Slater, using Somerset Cider and Montgomery Cheddar cheese, both from The Somerset Cider Brandy Company, whose shop and farm is a really fascinating visit (be prepared to stay longer than planned!) with homemade seeded wholemeal loaf.

Drinking: The above, a really pleasant surprise – eminently quaffable and also from Somerset.

Listening to: Eric Dolphy, Don Cherry, Robert Maxwell and Andy Williams. Not my normal habits, but, after meeting up with an old friend recently and re-discovering our shared love of the novels of Murakami, I am re-reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and the above are all artists name-dropped during the novel; I have taken to making a Murakami playlist when reading.