Do I dare say it (the E word)?

Do I dare say it? Shall I whisper the words? In teeny tiny letters so as not to tempt providence and the gods of ill-fate? We have exchanged!
I tried to post the news yesterday but kept being booted out so maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a fanfare. In fact, I didn’t even know it had happened until several hours after the deed was done.

Yesterday I had taken Zoe’s advice and gone off to get myself some serious pampering. South Molton, by some bizarre fluke, has a practitioner of chavutti thirumal, possibly the best massage in the entire world. You lie, butt-naked, with a sort of towel nappy over your bits, on the floor and your massage therapist uses her feet to massage you, while balancing on a rope slung across the room. OK, so it sounds like the weirdest kinkiest massage going, but by heck it’s soooo good. I had my last one twelve years ago and have raved about it ever since (which says something methinks). Anyhow, I was probably having my left buttock poked by a big toe at the moment the papers were signed and a fat dollop of dosh was being deposited into some account somewhere in cybermoneyland.

The run-up to yesterday had been – to put it mildly – fraught. Our buyer reverted to type and didn’t just move the goalposts but picked them up and ran off the pitch with them. At the very last moment he demanded to keep our Aga (having previously agreed that he’d stick by our original arrangement that it would go with us). Pastard. I was so angry I could barely think in a straight line. It wasn’t the Aga so much (to be honest, it doesn’t cook evenly and not sure it would even after renovation) it was the sneakiness and sheer unfairness of it. I will drive a tough bargain but I like to think I’m always fair and above board. He wasn’t. So all our plans of leaving everything tickety-boo with a bottle of champagne and a list of useful people and nice places to go have gone out the window. Petty, I know. But I’m afraid he’s lost our goodwill.

I should be feeling cock-a-hoop, I really should. But there’s a sort of anticlimax about it all now. Having waited nearly three years for this day, it would have been nice to have been able to celebrate it in style. But other events crowded in to nudge the lustre off it. My mother is getting more helpless and frail, and I am seriously wondering how much longer she can remain on her own. A crisis happened over the last few days and so I spent most of yesterday talking to my brother in the US about how to handle it all. Then we got the news that my father-in-law had been raced into hospital with pneumonia. His lungs are shot to pieces so the outlook is not great.

So, all in all, we didn’t really celebrate. Funny, isn’t it, how the rough and the smooth go together – as Faith says, life really is a rollercoaster. Nothing is clear-cut. There are no easy answers. Everything is shades of grey.

The ‘medicine’ of the last few days was that of the ant. We went walking in Horner Woods, where there is a lovely sculpture trail (OK, the sculptures are a bit ropey, but it’s fun finding them). We came across several huge ant-nests among the trees, absolutely teeming with ants - an incredible sight. Ant represents the power of teamwork. It also speaks of loyalty, duty and sacrifice, of learning one’s place in the larger picture –it’s an augury of family and community. It indicates a time of preparation before making further moves – a situation where patience and strategy are tantamount.
I thought it was very apt. Not just the family business that is unfolding, that must be dealt with, even though we would love it not to be there. But also the preparation for moving into a community. Away from our lonely hill, our rainswept valley, and into civilisation!
I also thought about our little purplecoo community and how intensely valuable it is. I can’t tell you how much your support has meant to me – all the way from CL to here. In the scheme of things, our problem was small but nobody belittled it. Everyone gave kind words, encouraging words, tales of triumph over adversity (I am still reeling at AnnaK’s experience!) – some even sent daily emails (Grouse, bless you, as if you don’t have enough on your overladen plate!).
Of course we can’t totally relax until we’re in the front door – if Bradders is out there, sure she’ll tell me what can go wrong twixt exchange and completion! But for now, it is good news and I am blissfully happy to share it with my dear friends. If nothing untoward happens by tomorrow night I intend to crack open the fizzy stuff and raise a glass or two…..(oh, OK, the whole bottle). Hope you’ll join me!

btw, no that's not me in the photo, nor is it Exmoor! It's my dear friend cowgirl on her recent holiday (I know a few of you have been asking after her)....but the pic sums up the feeling!

PS - don't know how many of you have read Hopping Moon's blog recently but she's having a really tough time and could do with all our thoughts and prayers and whatevers.

Wu wei (living with change)

I can’t blog. Just can’t seem to. I keep starting and then deleting it all. Nothing seems worth saying. Words seem empty. I’m all indecisive and mixed up and all over the place. We were supposed to exchange on Wednesday, then Thursday, now today. Will we ever move? What ill spirit is putting the dampers on everything? Because while, a week back, everything seemed to be going great guns (not just on the house but everything) now we’re stuck in the doldrums again. Calls not returned. Messages vanishing into the ether.

I can’t write, can’t draw, can’t clean, can’t do anything. Just sit and gaze out of the window (but not in a productive way). Letting the house martens hypnotise me as they sling themselves at the window, cutting it so fine, then an uptilt and into their nests. I wish I could be so flexible.
Last night we watched the deer, slanting down the hill at dusk. Then a fox sloping inbetween them. Half my heart winces at the idea of leaving all this. Half couldn’t bear to stay. Therein lies the problem I think – caught in the mid-place, stuck in the middle. It was funny that you were talking about that poster on CL – Janus. It’s a good image for how I feel at the moment, facing two ways at once – to the future and the past; to our old house and our new; life as it was and life as it will be. I know from bitter experience that the grass is rarely greener. I have made mistakes with houses before and dread making them again.

Sorry, this is just a splurge really. Words frustrate me so much at the moment. I want to paint, but can’t. I want to shake myself out of this inertia, but can’t. I should be drumming up more work but simply can’t be bothered. I let things drift.

Wu wei – standing out of the way to let things do themselves. Moving with, rather than against the nature of things.

So easy to write, so hard to do.

“Life lasts only a moment. Then another moment arrives and dissolves into the flow. We live our life from instant to instant. We realise that every experience of our lifetime has been impermanent except one. That there is an unchanging spaciousness in which all our changes float.”
Steven Levine, A Year to Live

Well, well. Look at that. I blogged. Can't load images though - ah well, never mind.....one thing at a time. jx

The Pit and the Pendulum

We go down, we go up. Life seems to delight in playing games with us at the moment. One step forward, one step back. We continue to do the house sale dance. Today we got a thick wad of papers from our solicitor – hurrah. Things are moving. Then we read them. Eh? Since when did a stream become diverted through our potential property? No wonder it’s darn well damp, if it’s got a river running through the cellar! OK, I exaggerate – but not that much. There were also horrible scary photographs of the behemoth of a wall that separates our house from the vicarage. It’s a mammoth wall. Forget Hadrian’s malarkey, this is akin to the Great Wall of China – huge and tall but sadly not as thick as it should be, and doing a bit of a Pisa number….(sorry, the geographical references are skittering all over the globe) This lean has been measured and tracked over years and seems to be giving up the struggle to remain vertical. We are advised to have builders prod bits. We are further advised to get quotes for its replacement. Replacement? I have visions of the pyramids being built (yup, we’re in Egypt now) – hoards of builders like ants in endless lines, overseers holding out bottomless buckets for us to empty out our pockets into.

Spurred on by your advice I have been sending ever stiff emails, starched emails, emails so sniffy and affronted that even Running Woman, queen of all shifty tight-lipped estate agents, began to quaver and sent back appeasing notes, ending up with an extraordinary phone call.
‘He (as in our buyer) wants to know when you want to complete.’
She threw it down like a cat bringing in a mouse. Pitifully hopeful of pleasure, but in all reality expecting a clout round the ear.
‘Complete?’ If ever a word could be spat, this was it. ‘He can’t even exchange so how on earth does he think he can complete?’
‘He just wondered when would work for you. He’s totally flexible. Maybe to tie in with school holidays?’
I know what he’s doing, the toad. He’s trying to take our minds off the fact that the whole thing is still wafting round in the air like a big balloon.
He’s trying to sound like Mr Nice Guy, Mr Reasonable. I know we aren’t the most hard-bitten of buyers but we aren’t total idiots.

I sounded off a bit and felt much better for it. We decided that, should exchange not happen on the 22nd May, then the house will go back on the market – full page ads, the whole shebang. If that doesn’t put a rocket up his, er, bottom, I don’t know what will. So, the clock is ticking.

Whether it’s the clock ticking or that bloody woodpecker still pecking (it’s now taken to acting as a 5am alarm clock, hammering on the wheelbarrow), I have had a headache all day. ‘Move the wheelbarrow,’ said Adrian. So I did. And what did it do? Started pecking at the flipping window. That’s all we need, window frames collapsing due to woodpecker activity.
When I got up, bleary-eyed and horrible after a few brief hours of slumber, there was another unpleasant surprise.
‘Come and look at this,’ yelled Adrian.
‘What is it?’
‘Come and look.’
Don’t you hate that? So up I got and walked out onto the landing to join Adrian, James and Asbo staring at a pit. OK, so not a true Quatermass of a pit, not a Pit and the Pendulum pit but a depression nonetheless. A concavity in the carpet between James’ room and the bathroom.
‘Oh for pity’s sake, what the heck is that?’
We edge up the carpet and found that we do not have floorboards, we have odd little squares of chipboard bearing our weight and that of our furniture. One had given up the ghost and had sort of collapsed in on itself. Rather how I felt looking at it.
‘Thank God that hadn’t happened when the surveyor came.’
Indeed. The surveyor arrived last Friday, unexpectedly and looking stressed. He’s gone into the estate agents to get directions to another house in the area he was supposed to be surveying and had been bullied into doing ours while we was out here. Well, I have to give the agents brownie points for that.
It was a hot day and he had four dogs in the car. Hurrah!
‘Oh, do let your dogs out – it’s far too hot for them in there. Jack won’t mind.’ Fixing Asbo with a pleading stare. Yes, I like dogs and I did have their welfare in mind. Well, partly. But most of all I know full well how wrongfooted anyone is when their dogs crap all over your garden path.
The poor man. He tried to demur but I gave him a look that said he would be cruel indeed (and I would be on that phone to the RSPCA within a nanosecond) to leave three labs and a terrier in a small car in blistering sunshine.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course, of course.’
So he let them out and they did what all dogs do which was to sniff around and then wee and poo liberally all over the place.
‘Oh God. I’m so sorry. Have you got a spade? I am SO sorry.’
‘Not at all, not at all. Don’t worry about it.’ Lady Bountiful incarnate.
Let’s be honest, he barely looked at the house. He asked me if we’d had any problems and seemed to think it perfectly fair when I said not. He desultorily measured the perimeter and took a few snaps with his digital and that was that. The poor chap could barely wait to herd his dogs back into the car and zoom away.

So there you have it. We go up, we go down. Our poo quotient rises; our floor levels sink. Then, just when it seems to stop still for a moment, Adrian gazes out of the window, over the lush greenness, watching four stags wander over the field.
‘We’re going to miss it, you know.’
Should I murder him now, or save it for a treat for later?

PS: Talking of pits and pendulums, I have given up on The Poe Shadow - type too small, story too tortuous. Life too short. Am now reading Shamanka, a children's novel about shamans and magicians (aaagh, but not remotely similar to my own, Walker Between Words (another segment of which awaits your perusal).

The one that started it all

I thought I’d try out my new blog for size and, for starters, want to haul over some (possibly not all hundred or so you’ll be relieved to hear!) from the old site. If any of you have ever wondered how it all began for me, here’s the first ever exmoorjane blog…..ah, memories.


Wednesday Nov 22 2006
I swore I'd never do a blog. Thought they were just for desperate saddos who wanted their tiny bit of on-line fame. But, I don't know why, maybe I need to get stuff off my chest - this seemed like a good idea. Of course, by the time I get home in a couple of hours, it might seem a very stupid idea and I'll be feeling very red-faced and abashed. But, hey ho, what the heck. Let's give it a go. We've lived on Exmoor now for eight years - and I never want to move. Well, there's the rub. I do want to move - just not from Exmoor itself. We need to downsize (not the 'need' bit) and we've been trying to sell the house for the last year and it's driving me potty. I figured writing a blog might be a way of venting a bit of frustration!

But it's not all doom and gloom and I hope I can also give you (if anyone wants to read this) a bit of an insight into a very lovely part of Britain - one that is often overlooked. Exmoor is a bit of a 'secret' park - it's small and is mainly in Somerset - not Devon as everyone assumes. As I write this I can see a cloud drifting across the valley, making everything soft around the edges. The colours are fabulous - the bracken has turned its dark russet and the hawthorn is stuffed with bright red berries. A line of pheasants saunter down the hill, taking the odd peck at each other and our neighbour's horse has obviously been rolling as his coat is a grubby brown rather than his usual smart grey.

By all rights, we shouldn't still be here. We had, we thought, sold the house - we'd been given a date for exchange and I'd started getting rid of all the clutter - including spare furniture - in preparation for our move. Then what happens? Our buyer's buyer pulls out. This really is cutting a very long, tedious and stressful situation short. In reality it lurched on for about two months (having been under offer for five) and there was much sobbing and gnashing of teeth and kicking the Aga. But what can you do? I felt like hurtling down to Guildford and cracking their heads together. We'd been off the market all summer and were now faced with losing the house we had set our hearts on and trying to find another buyer in the winter gloom.

So it's back to keeping the place clean and tidy (!), back to forcing a smile when you deal with complete and utter idiots who know nothing about the countryside - and obviously have no intention of learning about it. One lot asked what kind of mower we use to mow our ten acre field!!!!! The sheep or horse kind, I replied. Another lot pointed at the cows on the field opposite and said, 'Oooh, is that a working farm?' Er yes. 'Of course it is, darling,' said the chap, 'They make yoghurt or something.' Er no, darling, those are beef cattle and they make meat.

We just can't win - we're either too isolated, or not isolated enough. We're too far up the hill or not far enough up it. We've got too much land or not enough. We don't have roses round our doors and we don't have beams. Aaaaghhh you could scream, you really could. One couple stayed for three hours (seriously!!). They wanted to inspect every single nook and cranny and they asked me to beat the boundaries with them. They looked under our bridge, they peered into the neighbouring fields. At one point I thought they would ask me to get the septic tank opened up for inspection! We trekked up the hill to look at our spring and they sat and gazed enraptured (or so they said) at the views. I made them coffee, I fed them biscuits. At one point I thought I was going to have to offer them lunch, dinner and maybe even bed and breakfast. My husband and son, who'd been keeping out the way at football practice, returned stunned to find the car still sitting there. My neighbours, whose horse uses our large field, came and took down quarter of a mile of fencing, cleared up and left - and still they were there.

Finally they left and Adrian and I looked at each other.
'They loved it,' I said. 'They adore the area, loved the house, loved the land, loved the views. I think we've got it!' And you know what? We got a no-thank you - he was worried that our broadband wasn't fast enough!!!! My husband and I both run businesses from home - we are, I like to think, professionals who run a tight ship. If it's fast enough for us.....but no, you just can't figure out what makes people tick.

Reeling from that, the next lot were even funnier. A huge Landcruiser lumbered up the hill and out got two tiny people who looked for all the world like gnomes. Full-on shooting regalia, even down to the pom-poms on the socks. Personally I find it a rather silly look at the best of times, but really someone should have told them that if you're height-challenged, britches and garters aren't a good look. I'm just glad my son wasn't there or he'd have asked where Santa's grotto was. This lot stayed for a full ten minutes before briskly informing us that they wouldn't waste our time - the house was too large and we didn't have a cellar!

I've got to get going now. Off to my aerobics class - held in the local village hall and comprising a very odd mix, from twenty-somethings to Marjory (bless her) who's in her eighties and has a hip replacement. Holmes Place, it ain't. We shuffle around a bit, chat too much and then gather for coffee with various babies and toddlers navigating between our legs in the creche. It's good fun though. If this is boring as watching the proverbial paint dry, let me know...... Otherwise I may just whitter on for a bit.
Jane