Leo in his Egyptian pose!

Oh deer!!!!

View of field from back garden.

One of our cats - Pickle - posing as usual!

Life in t'country!

After years of dreaming of having a little house in the country, surrounded by nature, with a couple of cat 'familiars' for company, I finally got my wish in August 2006, when we needed to move from our 2 bed maisonette to a 3 bed house. Unbelievably the council offered us this farmers cottage, which we promptly snapped up! Where we were was convenient for the town centre, transport, schools, etc; but when you have chavs smoking their dope in the sheds next to your place, and the fragrant aroma is wafting up into your children's bedroom, and one of said chavs takes a piss outside the shed area, so that a hot stream of wee coasts down the ramp and past your front door - we were glad to leave it all behind!

We named our little cottage Gramarye. I always loved that name after reading it in James Herbert's novel The Magic Cottage - in fact, I think that's probably what initiated my dream.
Gramarye had not had any work done on it for years, and as the lady who showed us round on that swelteringly hot day in early August said, it needed a lot of TLC. Well, it certainly got plenty of that! It took an awful lot of badgering the council to do major work that should have been undertaken before we moved in.

Anyway, it's Friday night, I've just poured my glass of red wine, and am going to veg out in front of the telly!

To be continued...