The Donated House

So guess what, the houses didn’t get moved *again* which bummed me out for the first 12 hours or so of this weekend, because I am kind of apprehensive about the whole plan (Roll it along on fence posts? No way of getting machinery on site? What could possibly go wrong?) and also because I am just a moody cow and apt to sulk when things don’t go according to plan. I didn’t have a very clear idea in my head what I wanted this massive workforce (12 people for dinner friday night and more on Saturday) to be getting on with if it wasn’t that, and I was feeling a bit fragile and as if I was going to end up squandering the opportunity to power through loads of stuff on account of I hadn’t planned for the forklift not arriving.

Luckily, my friends are awesome and dinner was so lovely and convivial and followed by such a cheerful evening drinking wine round the fire, I was lifted from my grumpitude and managed to enjoy myself.

Saturday was kind of semi-productive, if a little directionless as people made the best of the piss-poor leadership (I may have been more cheerful but I wasn’t any more competent) but the whole thing got a million times better when we decided to go swimming. I’d heard of this place at the top of one of the hills that surround Todmorden, and I vaguely knew where it was.  I have been occasionally disappointed with what passes for a swimming experience in England, so I didn’t allow my hopes to get too high, but I was very impressed. I’m not sure of the history of the place (must google it) but I think it was one of the reservoirs for mills in the area, and at some point in the past it was bought by “the people of Todmorden” as a recreation area, so now it’s the local swimming hole. For those willing to climb 20 minutes up a hill to get to it. It was absolutely lovely, really very big, not too crowded, lovely sandy bottom, not slimy or horrible and not a single zombie to drag you under screaming while your friends watch in horror. Think of my delight.

That more or less shot us for usefulness that day, but I made mole for dinner (the chocolate sauce, not the mammal) and everyone just relaxed and sat around and we had another fabulous evening. It felt a bit like a festival site, actually.

Sunday was WAY more productive, as we sort of settled on a project and made quite a lot of progress getting the ivy off the mullioned shed (as we now call it) in preparation for getting it re-roofed. Here’s what it looked like before:

And here’s what it looked like (albeit from a different angle) after we’d hacked a whole lot of ivy down:

There was a wall under there all that time! And luckily it turns out it was not being held up entirely by the ivy, though we did borrow a prop from Barbara to put under the arch, just in case the crumbling sandstone down the left side turned into a pile of dust. Barbara says there’s someone nearby who has a quarry and can cut me some replacement stones.

I’d like to get the rest of the ivy off that bit of shed and get the roof down. It will have to be done bit by bit from the inside, since there’s no way that roof could hold a person anymore, but we can’t just pull it down because the slates seem to be in surprisingly good condition and we hope to re-use them, so it’ll be a matter of slowly and carefully dismantling it from the inside (through the convenient hole in one corner) and just cutting off the generous layer of ivy and nettles as we go.

Naturally, my work ethic being what it is, we did a reasonable amount of cake eating even on the hard working days. I rather outdid myself on baking day and made about 5 kinds of cupcakes, peppermint brownies, lemon poppyseed cake, raspberry and lime cake, banana bread and zucchini bread. I’m afraid there were leftovers. I obviously need to work people harder.

Val, Steven and Lizzy took some time in the evening to work on a tune, which provided the first music we’ve really had on site. I’d really like to have more and I want to get the basic amenities in place asap so that it’s a bit more comfortable. There’s a plan afoot to build a washing station with a decked area over a soakaway so that hand washing, dish washing and showering can all happen in a clean and covenient, covered place, without making a big muddy bog.

Val brought us instructions for making a “tip tap” which she’d done with school children in the context of learning about Africa (where these are making a real difference to children’s health). We made one for hand washing up by the toilet, but I want to use the idea for the shower in the new washing area. I think I can use a watering can, which can be filled with warm water and controlled with a foot lever, using the minimum necessary water. I could really have done with a shower up there after pulling all that ivy dust off the top of the wall.

Actually, I haven’t showered yet…

We took a trailer load up there last night, partly to satisfy ourselves that the house bits hadn’t collapsed into a wet pile, which they hadn’t, and there is a great deal of evidence that it’s mainly because the neighbours have taken very good care of them (hooray for the neighbours!).

In addition to the buildings being in good shape, we found that the flora was certainly flourishing. I was delighted that that included my token petunia pots, which I’m quite sure have been watered by the neighbours, because they’d have been stone dead otherwise. Above and beyond the call of duty, that is!

Unfortunately, everything else is flourishing, and that is mainly stuff we don’t want flourishing, like quite a lot of horsetail and bindweed.

The path that was clear two weeks ago is criss-crossed with the bindweed, and the chairs and firewood pile in the marquee are acting as climbing frames. Well, there’s a job for the first workers to arrive tomorrow to get on with. I expect that will be a regular job, really. I’m no gardener, but I’m given to understand I would be best off making friends with both plants, as we’ll never be rid of them. Oh well, bindweed is quite pretty in bloom, and horesetail is apparently good for your hair and nails. And for scrubbing pots with. I’ll give that a try.

Anyway, today is baking day, so I need to get back to it; large workforce expected this weekend and I must keep them sugarred up so they work like demons!

Preparations are underway for the big work party this weekend. I really hope we can get the houses down the drop and roll them into position. And I really hope we get the appropriate weather for it.

I hope to get up there for Friday morning and get some more tent spaces levelled out, as well as the hexagonal party marquee erected (for the first time, I hope it’s all there.) I got a couple of metres of some fantastic plastic tablecloth in a delicate lace print, so I’m planning to set up a cake station in the style of ridiculous vintage lace and broderie anglaise.

I have found that you can never do too much baking in advance of these parties. Today I’m going to sit down with my ever-expanding library of baking books and choose 5 or 6 wonderful high-sugar energy sources to have on hand at all times.

Keeps the workforce happy!

Well, after a fashion…

Steven was clearing out the old chrysanthemum greenhouse and found a tap that works. We’d previously found half a dozen that didn’t, so that was a bit of a jump-up-and-run-to-look moment. We aren’t sure where it’s coming from though. The pressure isn’t very high, possibly indicating a tank under the greenery somewhere rather than mains. I tasted it, and it tasted very metallic (that could easily be lead piping) so further investigation is definitely needed before any use is made of it.

However, it’s a nice example of the little discoveries we are always making around the place. It’s such a joy to make little bits of progress on clearing paths and getting to know the place with ever greater intimacy.

The house-moving has rather ground to a halt, though. We’d got them as far as the top of the drive and put them up on some old roof-beams to keep them off the damp ground. The last job Anna and I did at the end of last weekend was to tarp them, not nearly as well as we should have, due to exhaustion, so one of them got a bit damp in one corner and the neighbours had been in to re-hang the tarp on the other (which was, luckily, dry) so we’ve taken our time and retarped both buildings in the hopes that they will stay dry (or dry out) over the next 3 weeks, since that’s how long it will be before we can do anything about them.

Meanwhile, the foundations and rails we struggled to get done in time can just sit and wait. We have a plan for getting the buildings from the place where they will be dropped to the foundations, involving rolling them on fenceposts along these rails. It’s all downhill, but we have no real way of knowing whether the challenge will be to move the things in the first place or to stop them from moving too fast. Or whether they’ll just slide off sideways. Anything could happen.

Last weekend we borrowed our neighbour’s dog (our down-here neighbour, not our up-there neighbour) since they were going to be away overnight, and took her up there. She was good as gold, as expected, and just ran around sniffing everything and then slept by the fire. She’s used to going caravanning with them, so she slept on the floor of the caravan next to us just fine, though later when we put her in there to keep her out of the way of the swinging buildings, Elmo said he found her on the bed. I think she may be used to being treated with leniency.

This weekend was pretty quiet, aside from the water find. On Saturday Toby (the neighbour’s son) showed me where they pick bilberries, about 10 minutes’ walk up the hill. Fabulous views, we really REALLY must get around to doing some walking one of these days. And I’d brought my bilberry picking device, which quadruples the traditional method’s yield, so we got almost a pint in about 20 minutes. I asked Toby to invite his parents down for brunch on Sunday and we made bilberry pancackes and fruit salad. I had 3 frying pans on the go, so I churned them out pretty fast and it was just all perfectly lovely. Alice and Alex (the parents) were very impressed with the bilberry picker and I’ve sent them the link to the place I got mine.

In other news, we have got a viewer for our house (!) which means we’ve got to spend the next two weeks blitzing it into some kind of viewable state. To which end I should be upstairs grouting and painting…