Eastern Promises ( or let's start at the very beginning...)

Somebody somewhere asked about my first blog post ever and I remember writing this....

Let's start at the very beginning and introduce my life.

I have just taken my clean laundry down to the bonfire and handed my rubbish to Therese for ironing – I have been in the country far too long and now I am finally losing it.

Yes, we did move out of London and are now in the depths of wildest Suffolk where the rabbits play chicken with your car at dead of night and Pheasants fly in low on kamikaze missions determined to drive you off the road.

This is our final resting place and from comments made by the parents on viewing our new home back in 2001 probably our nemesis as well. The story of its acquisition, like all good tales sees prospective owners Dear Charlie and myself falling in love with it, offering for it, nearly losing it, then battling it out with rivals to secure it for ourselves. A story of passion, skulduggery, hope against hope, and finally….my mother calling it Cold Comfort Farm and muttering about woodsheds while my father stares ashen faced refusing to say a word.

It's been a BIG project but one that has kept us entertained and hopefully allows us to entertain in turn. Just to clear the outside to see what’s there, Dad estimated he would need 10 men working 4 weeks solid – his chainsaw went into ‘hospital’ after a mere 36 hours.

Rookyard makes me laugh and not always with hysteria. We have woods, meadows, a fabulous moat, a hemp plantation - found in a secluded corner of the property - and of course the house itself with twisty corridors, undulating floors, inglenook fireplaces and at the beginning our very own mushroom cupboard providing delicious fungi for breakfast!

Boy, have we moved on since then…

So who/what else stars in the world of mine? There’s husband Dear Charlie who has informed me he is living his dream and not even the 6am commute everyday nor the ever-mounting restoration bill can make him change his mind. There are my two boys known as The Boy and Bog Boy, both heaven sent – and had I known how difficult it would be to have them in the first place I swear I would have had more fun in my twenties.

Animal wise there's Jack Russell, Tigger whern we firast came here and of course there are the chickens...

On the day we bought the house we had 17, but within a few weeks this dropped dramatically. But don’t feel too sorry for these chickens nor imagine that they were hunted like fish in a barrel. These are wild chickens with instincts honed by years of living life on the edge. Apart from waking us up at 4am every morning they serve no practical use at all – however, we became rather fond of them and have added to their number through accident, adoption and active management – more of that later…

Then there are my whippets Tattie and Gemma (mother and daughter) secured as a sop to a surfeit of maternal feeling after my first and most dramatic miscarriage. That gave me Tattie and in 2005 there was Gemma plus four others born practially in my bed!. Recently following the death of Biggles tehre is on the dog front Sassy yet another whippet.  Joining the Whippets are our two red point Siamese cats Agatha and Alice. What an eventful time they have had, probably culminating in the fact that the sky is awful big and doesn’t fall down when you go outside.

Well, the hunter gatherer is due to return any minute, I must dash upstairs and put a ribbon in my hair and then greet him at the door with a great big gin – “Darling, you know all your shirts…..”


What was your first blog?