Happy New Year to you

Yes, Happy New Year to everyone and hope you all enjoyed your celebrations.  We went to Ben's for New Year's Eve and had a lovely time - scrummy roast dinner, plenty of beer and wine and chocolate Christmas pudding - we also helped them out quite a bit with their chocolate mountain!  Entertainment included Jools Hootenanny in the background, a game of Trivial Pursuit won by the Bob and Lucy team, Ben and I let them win of course and several rounds of crib swapping teams each time.  Of the three rounds - young vs. old, boys vs. girls and me and Ben vs. newcomers to the family, I was on every winning team!  Amazing as I have only played a few times and not for about two years - definitely beginners luck rather than any skill on my part I think!  We also did 'first footings' which I think is a northern tradition and which Ben was dead keen to continue.  For those who don't know, all the men have to go outside (OK by me and Lucy!) just before midnight and then come back in after midnight first throwing in a piece of coal, bread and some money.  This is to ensure you have enough fuel, food and money in the brand new year and, as Ben's were wrapped in a plastic bag, they shouldn't be short of those either this year.   I guess the bloke bit is to ensure that we poor, helpless females always have a good strong man around to take the bins out or something!  We did the same when we got home over the cottage threshold - Bob did offer to carry me over the threshold too, but I pointed out that was a different tradtion and that it might void the strong male to look afer me bit by rendering him incapacitated for quite some time!

Back to New Year's Eve, we went to bed at about 3am and we were on a blow up bed in the living room.  This was fine for a while, but after a few hours Bob whispered 'Are you lying on the floor?'  and, yes, I was.  The lilo had almost completely deflated so we had to blow it up again - luckily it was a posh one with an electric pump.  So, not much sleep, but not to worry - we more than made up for it by a long nap when we got home.  No traumas on arriving back this time - water, electric, everything worked just fine.

Today we have marked out where the opening for the stairs needs to go - that will be the last major structural thing to do, but we need to get three concrete lintels before we can start that.  Best just to take the top bit out first and then put the lintels in (three because the walls are about 18" thick) and then once the wall above is supported by the lintels you can take out the stone below without worrying about the wall collapsing.  We also wrote a list of what needs doing before we can get the electrician and plumber back . . . . lots!  Then we went for a walk, met a new neighbour and had quite a chat with him, walked on a bit more and bumped into some other neighbours so went back with them for a cuppa and then it was dark and another day gone!  Well, it is the weekend and we promise to do some work tomorrow, honest!

Oh, look, I found a plan of the house on the computer and thought it might be interesting for those of you who haven't been here - give you an idea of the layout when I'm talking about this barn or that.  The lounge and bed (full height), aka padded cell, were once barns.  The ground at that end of the house is about 6 feet higher than inside which is why the bedroom has had to be tanked and there is a door on the end wall at that level because there was a hayloft above the barn - that will become a door-shaped window.  The other bedroom is the oak-frame extension and the utility and bathroom are in the stone extension.  There was a tumbledown stone lean-to here before (just a bit smaller than ours) which was the scullery and dairy.  The 'store' at the end is a stone lean-to which will be the 'boiler room' and will house the heat store (that's a new sort of hot water tank), chest freezer, tumble dryer, boots and so on.  The only upstairs bit is above the kitchen and will be our bedroom and en-suite.  We always feel a little guilty that this was a family home and probably quite a number of people lived in the little bit that was the old cottage (and they kept one half of what we will have as the kitchen as the parlour only to be used on special days!) and here we are, just the two of us, deciding we really need to convert the barns and add extensions to make more space!