Wednesday 30 November 2022
According to my ‘weather station’, it is 8°c outside and 21°c inside, without any heating on. I am writing this from the warmth of our home in London. The forecast for Selkirk came up as -3°c when I turned my laptop on, which is the temperature it was when we set off for Lockerbie and the trains back to London yesterday morning.
When I woke up yesterday in Scotland, the Velux windows were, I thought, steamed up so much I couldn’t see out of them. I opened a window to look out and touched the ‘condensation’ but it wouldn’t wipe off. I eventually twigged that it was frost. Thick frost. The kind of thick frost we don’t get in the area around our flat in London (by virtue of it being a block in a very urban area; I’ve seen frost that thick on Blackheath and in Greenwich Park, though rarely).
We had decided to leave home at 09:45 for our 11:11 Lockerbie train. Far too early but we had no idea how easy it would be to park and thought we might as well have a walk around Lockerbie, having only ever been to the train station. We both had pre-departure chores, mine indoors, Chris’s outdoors, to bring in tins of paint from a former pig shelter (I’d read that paint shouldn’t be kept below zero degrees) and two bags of coal from behind the house.
All chores were done in good time, we had bacon and fried egg for breakfast and were out the front door at 09:45. But we didn’t get going until 10:11 by the car clock, exactly an hour before our train to Carlisle. The car doors were frozen shut, the windscreens were covered in thick frost and all my ‘car stuff’ was back in London, removed from the car to make as much room as possible for bags for our drive up on the day we moved in. I did, however, have a rubber condensation scraper, which sort of helped. Eventually.
Meanwhile, wearing very pale pink socks in my holey Crocs, I went to the downstairs loo to do a quick going-away check. In anticipation of our return home on Sunday, Chris had brought in two 25kg bags of coal. The coal delivery man, contrary to our experience, was adamant that the coal bags are kept outside because they are completely waterproof. They are not. We’d anticipated their being wet as almost all bags we’d used had been wet, so had laid down a flattened packing box to put the bags on. When I opened the loo door, the [many expletives] coal bags had started leaking inky black coal water, which had spread from the cardboard and started pooling on the loo floor.
I ended up cleaning the floor, carrying both 25kg bags outside, cutting open a corner of the bottom, trying to shake the bags to get as much water out as possible and cleaning up as much as I could. The wretched bags leaked over my Crocs, dribbling black coal water on my pale socks. The drier blocks of coal were coated in, would you believe it, frost, the not-waterproof bags were icy cold, I was not wearing gloves. I ended up with black splodges on my socks, bitterly cold fingers and more blackness to my hands and fingernails (I do clean my hands, it’s just that I have two areas of dry skin on the side of each index finger and I can’t get all the coal off from the rough skin), coal juice down my (fortunately, black) cords and my poor back complained even more.
Chris was still de-icing the car, engine running – thank goodness I have a new battery and the car did at least start with no problem. I opened the gates, bashed some ice on the puddles, ascertained that the wooden, side-less bridge across the river was slippery, took out a wheelie bin full of rubbish, wiped my grubby, cold hands down my trousers and took photos of the beautiful frosty landscape. I also inhaled the amazing earthy smell that the frost seemed to have emphasised. It was beautiful.
Once we were both in the car and set off, despite all the mess and inconvenience, we both admitted to feeling a sense of satisfaction at having done some hard work to make our journey possible. Though with the caveat that the coal issue should never have happened.
When we arrived back home to London after an uncomfortable and ludicrously hot train from Carlisle to Euston, the most enjoyable first impression was the fact it was so warm (I reiterate: no heating) that we had to open the bedroom window and the balcony door, though the door only for half an hour or so. The bedroom window was open all night. We each had a bath, with hot water that flowed quickly and after merely sliding a switch. No coal mess and no stove burning required (though we do have an override immersion in Scotland for faster/easier hot water when necessary). As I’d been too hot for too long on trains and felt a bit out of sorts, I volunteered to walk to a Nepalese restaurant to collect a takeaway. The cool-not-cold air, walking and the promise of an Indian meal made me feel much better. We both appreciated the ease of getting a takeaway meal. However, all that said, if someone told me now that I had to choose between our London flat and our Scottish house, I would refuse to make a choice. I love both extremes. But right now, at a comfortable temperature, appreciating a slight coolness from sitting next to the balcony door, the thought of coal and more layers of coal dirt and more lifting of bags of leaky, wet coal; London might just win.