Friday 30 December 2022
It’s been raining and very windy all night. I expect I’ll get over it but rain on two skylights in the bedroom is far noisier than rain on windows and I found it easy to convince myself some kind of leak or damage would befall the house. Then I considered the fact of the house having stood for 270 years and felt mildly better, but still couldn’t sleep. Noisy wind and rain. A reality check, though one we prepared for by doing a big food and essentials shop yesterday, the last day forecast for non-extreme weather until early 2023, the road in one direction is closed off at a fairly regular flood point. I suppose if I had plans I had to cancel or drive significantly further for, I would feel cut-off and isolated. But, to my surprise, I don’t feel as bothered about it as I would have expected. If there is an emergency, we will deal with it. I should maybe emphasise that we live in the middle of a very long B-road and that the flood-closure blocks us from the road to Selkirk, to Hawick, to Innerleithen; everywhere north/east. In the other direction, it should be passable to Lockerbie and the south.
Yesterday, I made plans to have a Zoom chat with a friend around our shopping trip to Hawick. I have never altered plans to factor in a shopping trip ahead of days of bad weather (more rain and flooding, wind and snow forecast). We wanted to go out before the roads flooded and before it got dark. We set off at 09:45 and returned home around 13:20, a shopping trip of just over three-and-a-half hours. By ‘shopping trip’, it was just for a couple of hardware shops, a baker, a butcher, to fill up with diesel after the London drive and to a supermarket. Things take longer when you live in a remote, rural area. And not just trips to the shops.
Our neighbour dropped round some of the post he’d kept hold of while we were away. This included an extremely exciting package from Thom, a friend of Chris’s. Thom, to me, is an Indiana Jones/Mick “Crocodile” Dundee type. In response to that, he told me he sees himself more as a cross between Compo from Last of the Summer Wine and the uncle from Only Fools and Horses, “but less glamour”. I think I am more right than he is, which Chris is in agreement about. The package came about after a conversation the three of us had before we moved to Scotland. Thom knows stuff that we don’t know stuff about, particularly where survival (ie living in a house, in an area far colder than we’re used to) is concerned. He sent us a winter survival kit, which included a makeshift heater/stove, extra special Swedish Army mittens, a load of things I had to ask him about and a selection of tins, tubes and packages which didn’t contain what the label suggested (eg, the Berocca tube contains Thom’s tea blend; I didn’t question what it consisted of! The closed tin contains a BB gun, which I didn’t photograph as it’s bright red and, “Yikes, that looks exactly like a gun”). I have since been looking on YouTube at all kinds of survival/no-electricity tricks and am mildly excited about my new activity kit to deal with a power cut in the midst of winter. I will be roasting mouse kebabs (I won’t, but we do have mice and we do now have a BB gun) and drinking tea when we are faced with no electricity and snow all around). I also have Thom/Indiana/Crocodile on a modern equivalent of speed dial, WhatsApp.
Yesterday, we abandoned the thought of carrying the (extremely heavy) chest of drawers upstairs and into the bedroom (we still have no drawers or wardrobe; we do have a lot of chairs piled with clothes though). I swept and washed the hall floor ready to manoeuvre the chest of drawers into the hall. It took hours for the floor to dry.
Last night, we had to take the wheelie bin out for rubbish collection this morning (unlikely, due to today’s road closure). That’s Chris’s job but I went with him because there were so many bright stars on display (a brief break from the rain and clouds). You have to open one gate (which requires more effort than you’d imagine – the gate needs repairing/replacing), wheel the bin down a muddy, stony drive, over a wooden bridge and through another (easier to open) gate. It’s a chore in terms of getting dressed to go out in mud, the opening of the gates and the uneven surface but it’s also an opportunity to look up, see the beautiful, clear night sky, walk over a fast-flowing river and appreciate that you really do live in the middle of the countryside and that it’s a very special place to live.
I did have my Zoom chat, I did start putting my study in order, I did finish painting the bright colours onto the bed frame and we did go shopping. As for today, I might walk a short way down the road (just because I want to go out), I would like to do a first coat of the bed frame’s main colour (Christmas pudding, a very dark plum-brown), I will carry on sorting my study and it’d be good to make the tall, skinny bathroom shelving unit that our neighbour took delivery of while we were away (another thing that takes longer than expected, almost all deliveries).