Thursday 19 January 2023
As of yesterday afternoon, we have lived in Scotland for two months, almost a month either side of the shortest day. I have found it interesting rereading, ahead of publishing, my older blog posts as they remind me how much has changed in that time.
We have gone from the first 24 hours in the house as warm as it ever was, to cold, to colder and then to pretty much perfect. We then got an electricity bill for c£2,200, which can’t be entirely correct, but which has forced us to only use the heating in the ‘cheaper’ hours of our current tariff. Coinciding with that by a day or two, it became apparent that our thermostat isn’t working and we are now back to being degrees of cold. The temperature indoors is currently our biggest challenge of living here.
We do have some resident mice but not every night and sometimes it sounds like only one or two and they seem to scamper around then go quiet around the time we go to bed. We have an overnight sonar repellent and have been spraying an essential oil repellent on the fan that one mouse seems to be trying to break through. It sort of feels that we are just about keeping things under control. Well, I say that but neither of us wants to look in the attic or floorboards. But no mouse sightings in the house. While that is the case, we are sort of okay with the mouse visits. Sort of. Every time we mention mice to anyone here, they start telling us about their mice and that everyone has them in winter, especially when it’s this cold.
There is water damage to one window-surround in the kitchen. That looks horrible and is a bit of a worry but we know it’s from the extraordinary rain and wind we had recently and we think we know where it’s coming in from. Someone is hopefully going to be able to fix that at the end of this month. While we’ve had minimal wind, no rain and ‘just’ snow, no more water has come in. Again, I’ve heard of a lot of people who have never had water ingress before but have since the exceptional rains and winds of recent years. Everything feels slightly better and more manageable when you know that other people are having the same problems.
Those are our main, apparent concerns/issues/expenses. The quiet, the fresh air, the sounds of birds, some of the most unbelievably star-filled skies, the hills, mountains, trees, plants we can see from every window, the sound of the river and various streams; it is a restful, happy place.
The house is slowly but surely becoming more homely. Last night, having been to a DIY shop in Peebles during the day, we put up another set of curtains, some dark blue velvet ones in the lounge (IKEA £60, curtain pole £15 and about £5 for curtain rings and wall screws; they are not built to last but are more realistically priced than the kinds of poles and curtains we’d really like). They make such an enormous difference to the lounge. We also bought a gorgeous, old Tunisian rug, which will go on the floor between the sofa and armchair once it’s dry from my having washed it last night. There is a long rug (which is actually a saddle bag but I think will work in one particular area as a long rug) and we also have a Moroccan leather pouffe. The three were from the Peebles auction again and came to £124. They’re all handmade and all lovely and we’d have paid significantly more for each item had they not been bought at auction with minimal or no counterbidding.
It was a great day to ‘have to’ go out, sunny and snowy. As a treat (erm, treat for what?!), we had coffee and cake at Cocoa Black in Peebles, a chocolate school, shop and cafe that was opened by a cocoa master. Everything in that shop is a joy to behold. My black forest cheesecake was a thing of wonder and joy.
Neither of us is sure why but we both still feel a bit unsettled. I feel like I’m waiting for something. I’m not sure why that is, but maybe it’s just part of getting used to a big move. We have a friend, Kyla, coming to stay from tomorrow until Monday, then on Wednesday we’re driving back to Lewisham for some appointments. We’re both excited about having our first guest and seeing what she thinks of the area and the house and our completely different lives here compared to Lewisham.