House Cosy

don't have a subtitle for this one

I don’t have a title for this post (I do now). I am sitting in bed processing my thoughts, in-between scrolling on instagram, checking WhatsApp and my bank app, you know, just in case someone has deposited a large sum and sent me a heart emoji to say ‘enjoy, you’re worth it’. They didn’t and they haven’t.

Those new to my life and minor tribulations may not know that I have been spending every pound I have on buying and renovating a large house in West Wales with my husband Russell (stalwart of the NHS and therefore of course not loaded). The last bit of major work that we can afford is the rendering of two outside walls. This work got stopped by an over enthusiastic building regulations officer, or Jobsworth Weener, who stated that if working on over 50% of any thermal element blah blah insulation blah blah Welsh Government blah climate change. Turns out we are exempt from this ruling because it would not pay pack the cost in savings on fuel over 15 years. Any jobsworth weener worth his salt would have known that just looking at the walls we are dealing with, but I paid out £450 for a report from an energy assessor and so JW said, oh, yeah, ok then. Four weeks later. Tumble weed on the scaffolding, no builders in sight, sand bags clogging the drive (grand name for slab of concrete next to the house). Scaffolding now starts incurring rent, because apparently that’s how it goes.

Now, in an ideal world, or even a less than ideal one but one where I had a little more disposable income, or just income actually, I would have insulated the whole house, wrapped it in a house cosy and not thought twice about whether I would ever see the benefit financially. But the world is not ideal, and frankly this house would cost more to totally insulate than it actually cost to buy. Probably. Maybe.

Anyway. I now have a new quote from a new builder/renderer but he can’t start for three weeks. So that’s where I am. Not sure which way this will go. Meanwhile the meter is running on the scaffolding. And the Welsh rain it do come down and get into the cracks.

Moments like this make me wonder why I have made some of the choices I have made over the years. Some of them which don’t really seem like choices at all, just a bending to the winds of chance. It was a joint decision to move to Wales, between me and my husband. Lots of reasons made it seem like a good idea (and to be clear, I still think it was/is), not least of which was the fact that even with insane rises in house prices in this area, increasing week on week as we began our search, the money from the Bristol house could buy us a decent home here, where after the mortgage was paid off we would have only been able to buy a one bed flat in Bristol, maybe two bed if we didn’t mind a basement. Also, the sea. I am not a cold water swimmer (don’t start on that) but I love the sea, I love walking by it, breathing it, hearing it, swimming in it (when it warm enough) and just knowing its there. You don’t get that in Bristol (sorry Weston, not quite there).

The downside of course is that it has taken me further away from people I love, in particular my son who lives in London. If trains were reliable this would not be a problem but they are not. They are broken just like everything else seems to be broken. Anyway, the sun has come out now and it’s a perfect day for putting sheets out on the line, hear them flapping in the wind and know that smell of them when I come to bring them in. So that’s what I will do now and stop being negative, turn that frown upside down and breathe deep.

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”

Mary Oliver