A Very Flashy Christmas from Brassington

We had a homesick moment earlier this week - a sudden urge to sip gluhwein beneath the benign gaze of Albert Square's Father Christmas, and to listen to the song of the Christmas Market reindeer. Of course we told ourselves that it'd be too crowded to move and that we've seen it all before anyway - loads of times, year after year: sparkly lights, pre-fab chalets, wooden toys - but you know, we weren't convinced. Sometimes you just want to eat a big sausage in the freezing rain and buy more stuff you don't really need.  It's not just the market we were homesick for, of course, but for ourselves as city people. Bone-deep, mind-forged Manc identities can't be unmade just by moving house.


But then the next day it snowed and when it stopped we went walking along the High Peak trail. It was one of those perfect winter days: the sky as blue as summer, the fields ice green, the brilliant, sparkly air.

It's tempting to make this into a simple feel-good story . .  we were homesick for the city, for its crowds and culture, for those well-known Lancashire delicacies: gluhwein and bratworst . . . but then were comforted, diverted, healed by nature. It's an old story - Wordsworth and the Romantics are partly to blame - but it's not quite true.  We loved the snow but sometimes you just need bad wine and tacky trinketry.  

So . . I went home and made gluhwein which Him outdoors said wasn't a patch on the reindeer's but he drank most of it anyway. And, anyway, this village has got its very own very dynamic light show at the gateway into the churchyard:    

A Very Happy Flashy Christmas to you all!

Where are we?

The Cottage we've moved into is called . . . wait for it . . . The Cottage - as are two other cottages within the same postcode and a few more in the wider village. The post person told me wearily that this was common -there are lots of cottages just called The Cottage, as well as plenty of barns called The Barn and the only way she/he can work out what belongs to who is by learning everybody's name. Which is nice. It took a week or two but now the GPO knows who we are which means that, as well as cards and letters we now also receive our rightful daily bin load of bills, adverts, free papers etc.

However, getting other deliveries is proving far more challenging - and Christmas by internet has only made it worse.  The people from Citylink, ParcelForce, DPD etc neither know nor care what our names are as long as they get rid. It's all been very exciting - one parcel was delivered to a coal bunker from where I skulkingly retrieved it - the neighbours probably think we're coal thieves - (what else can you expect from Manchester people?)

I've also managed to intercept a few deliveries by lurking about on the lane and flagging down men in vans. Could be misinterpreted. But today it's all gone wrong and my Amazon package has been posted through one of the other The Cottage's  letter boxes - the one that's a holiday cottage. I can see it lying in their porch in full view: desirable and unobtainable. Hope they visit soon.

The thing is - it's a tad frustrating but it's also puzzling: this has been going on for years and years - why didn't the previous owner or one of the other owners simply change the name to something, well, different? Answers on a postcard please. Perhaps in the olden days it was considered a bit fancy to give cottages names, after all everybody knew who lived where. This still works - neighbours, when describing where somebody else lives, often don't give the house name but the location - e.g. they live in the house on the corner next to the one with the red door.  It's still a little bit eighteenth century here. Except for all the delivery vans buzzing about, of course.And the internet that brought them here.

We do plan to change the name as soon as possible but we haven't thought of one yet. Joke suggestions so far from people who call themselves friends have been: Sixty Percent (because the balance between moving here and staying in Manchester was  60/40) - don't think that would go down well in the village, and it doesn't have much of a ring; Dunrunnin' was another - which doesn't deserve comment.

Ideas welcome - the winner gets a free lunch. If they can find us. 

                                                                         
                                                                             *

Rayburn demands recount!

In the last post, I said that, frighteningly, we had already used one whole tankful of oil and the Rayburn was to blame. I was wrong. Technically it wasn't me who was wrong but as I don't want to embarrass him I won't name names except to say that his name begins with R.  The gauge wasn't working - you're supposed to check it with a stick said the oilman (back to the eighteenth century) . . . and it turned out to be only a quarter empty. Phew!  Sorry Rayburn. Still getting rid of you though. You may make nice soups and cakes and perfect oven chips but you are going.
Definitely. Don't try and get round me.
 





(Cottage photos taken with telephoto lens by mancinbrassington, paparazzi)

First Snowfall - Second fill-up of the Oil Tank.

                                          

Snow! Oh sh . . winter's here, we haven't got a freezer yet, the dining room's a glass box and the path down to the lane is as lethal as the Cresta run - only lumpier. 

 

I keep telling myself that I ought to be nervous, that I'm about to find out why certain friends who shall not be named but who know who they are, implied that we were/are/would soon find out/ that we're mad . . . (they meant too old) . . . to leave the safe, cosy city and begin teetering down bad paths, messing with house extensions, stone cottages and being 3 miles from a shop, when we should be thinking about bungalows, slippers and cardigans. (They didn't say that last bit . . . but you get the gist) They may well be right - but you know being too safe and comfortable may not be all it's cracked up to be as a way to face ageing and mortality. Many of our friends - again you know who you are - have chosen some unsafe routes through life - extreme sports, risky jobs, working in the public sector, radical relationships, beings artists, writers, feminists. What's a dodgy path and a bit of snow compared with that. We all die in the end. There's no escape from that. I just don't want to escape life.

Our friend Jo, sent us a 'Welcome to your new home' banner she'd made which spells out Reasons to be Cheerful.  

 See Jo's work at http://www.joannamartinartist.blogspot.com/






 

The main reason to be cheerful is that the snow is beautiful, thrilling, exciting. Up on the hill today felt like walking through that famous Bruegel painting, Hunters in the Snow -  crossing the fields between black trees and hedges, squeezing through narrow stone stiles, stopping at the top to watch snow falling in great sweeps over the valley below. Darkness and light.

Another reason for cheerfulness is our wood stove - easy to light, super efficient and just what the heart and the cockles need on a day like this. Gives Him outdoors lots of wood chopping opportunities too - I can chop kindling perfectly well if I can get my hands on the axe, but this kind of country and weather brings out both his inner scout  and his inner Frenchman so it's hard to get a look-in. 

But it is very cold and as it gets colder, we are going through a frightening amount of fuel. The cottage has a Rayburn for cooking and central heating and it a serious binge oil drinker.  Living in the presence of this stove you can imagine that you've gone all Downton Abbeyish - maybe with a pheasant (or possibly  a peasant?) hanging from a hook over the kitchen range.  I can hear all you lefty-liberals snorting with derision at my class-traitordom but don't you ever have dreams of a new batch of bread baking in the top oven while a haunch of venison roasts in the bottom, wood smoke in the chimney, the sheep's in the meadow and all right with the world. But yes, I know, such a life never existed and anyway the likes of me, Wythenshawe girl, would have been blackleading the grate while the lady of the house used my back as a footstool. 

Anyway, fantasies aside, the Rayburn is no olde-worlde
kitchen range but a high tec piece of kit which probably cost a fortune to the previous owner, just as it will cost us if we let it, as well as being not so much environmentally unfriendly as environmentally antagonistic. It definitely has to go and be replaced with a less romantic but efficient condensing boiler and electric stove.


Anybody want a second hand dream machine that burns money?