Saturday 7 January 2023
It’s 08:35 and still the sun isn’t quite up (08:37). It looks dark, breezy, wet and grey. Yesterday, we had an enormous leap forward in terms of our sense of home, and all because of a table.
When I got up yesterday, I decided I would definitely go to Peebles to collect the auction stuff, other than the table which I knew wouldn’t fit in my car (200 cm x 100 cm x 80 cm). I left home at 09:09, no rain, a suggestion of sunshine between clouds. For everyone who has wondered about excitement levels living in a remote, rural valley in Scotland, I was held up by three things I’d never have encountered in London, and all within the first twenty minutes of my setting off.
First of all, I had to wait at least five minutes for a herd of gorgeous furry, black cattle, including some delightfully chunky calves, to be herded from their overnight residence to their nearby field. There were twenty or so cows and calves, five people and still a few of them managed to make a break for a tall bank (where one of the five was waiting for them).
Within a minute of that, I saw a car coming out of a driveway suddenly stop. I thought it was to let me drive past before they pulled out but they had clearly just seen what I was about to see. So I was driving along, looking at the car that had just stopped abruptly, when out of the corner of my right eye, I saw a massive black shape whizz by. A military plane. I didn’t hear the full effect of its roar because my window was closed, but even with the window shut I could hear a roar. The plane was flying incredibly low and fast. My brain struggled to comprehend it was a plane. Then I pulled over to take a photo and another one came past. My photos were not great, but you can get an idea. I knew that certain kinds of UK military aircraft did practice flights along the valley and we’d seen one already (different to these two, as it was silent at first and I couldn’t comprehend what kind of bird could look like a plane, and then we heard the almighty aircraft roar a second later), but it’s incredibly exciting to see. Chris was at home and said he thought the first one was one of the trucking lorries doing a major emergency stop, then he looked out and saw the second one flying low in front of our house. See, you wouldn’t get that along the high street in Lewisham.
The third hold-up was probably more like ten hold-ups, sheep in the road. That’s really common but I was glad that, being superstitious about anything, including excitements and delays, the third thing was ‘only’ sheep. The way home was uneventful but more sunny and I enjoyed the drive.
Anyway, I stopped in Innerleithen for a walk through the woods to St Ronan’s Well (actually, I’d stopped there to go for coffee but the coffee shop I like was closed until today). The well was also closed, for winter, but the pavilion around the well was built for the first bottled water company in Scotland and is where people would come to heal their ailments with the sulphurous water. Apparently, in its heyday it rivalled Harrogate. The woods were pleasant but I encountered a few people, mainly dog walkers; far more people than I would encounter around home (none).
In Peebles, I collected our auction stash, did some shopping and raced home ahead of someone from the auction house who was able to deliver the table as he had a van available (the delivery cost about £10 more than the total for the table, four teak chairs, two oilskins and a fairly large framed print of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, but hey ho). My thoughts on the print were that it looks lovely, but Chris still isn’t at all happy about a print of a famous painting [eye roll].
As for the two oilskins, which were made by a Scottish company called Vinco 27, which appears to have been around until the 1930s, I love them. Unbelievably, the yellow one fits me and the dark green one fits Chris. I was slightly surprised by how enormously excited I am about them. In the pocket of mine, there was a large clam shell in one pocket and a small, cute rubber fish in the other. It is currently raining more so I’m going to head out into the garden to collect the SD cards from our two wildlife cameras (not that they’ve picked up any wildlife yet) and try out my oilskin. I hope it is entirely waterproof.
As for the chairs, which were surplus to requirements, they’re teak and they’re lovely. Two have cracks across the middle and one looks like it needs some work doing but they really are handsome and beautifully carved.
The table, however, is the star. If we had seen it in a shop, we wouldn’t have bought it, in large part because it’s huge and we probably would have thought it was too big. Two metres is very long. Chris and I carried it from the van, up the drive, our conversation rapidly turning to questions of whether it would actually get around the corners from the front door to the kitchen. Then a leg fell off. It’s an Indian table. I have a small Indian table that I bought in India and which the owner of the shop had informed me would be no problem to take on a plane because, as he demonstrated, the legs came off. I then realised that possibly all four legs could come off the massive table. Sure enough, the legs were attached by a simple yet complicated means and could all come off. The table may indeed not have got through the door and round the corners had the table legs not come off.
We put the table in, gave it a wax polish and, really, miraculously, we were both quite giddy and the house seems more homely.
On a roll, I cut a piece of old coffee bean bag, screwed two hooks into the wooden window frame and finally created some cover for the downstairs loo window. It is a lot more relaxing to use the toilet now, not that many people are ever likely to pass by that window. But they have and they do.
Right, I’m off out to test my oilskin and find out whether any animals were out and about the last two nights.