Outside of swimming or having a bath, on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2017, I got wetter than I think I've ever got in my life. I made the almost fatal mistake of going to the annual Wigtown Show in a flimsy summer jacket, jeans and trainers. By the time I walked home - 1 mile - I could hear my feet squelching in my saturated footwear.
So, this year, I opted not to go, despite the 'weather forecast' saying that any rain would hold off until at least 4pm. The long range weather had said it would rain on August 1st, three weeks ago, but then it mysteriously was replaced by an assortment of optimistic forecasts, which I believed as much as I do in the Tooth Fairy. At 1.40pm, forty minutes after the wife and chums set off, it started spitting, by 1.55pm it was chucking it down like it had forgotten how to rain - which it had for almost three months. It was grim, windy and the rain began to get a bit horizontal and I felt vindicated and not light of £8 for what would have been about two hours of dodging rain and sheep shit.
This is pretty much the most consistent thing wrong with living here, although 'wrong' is the wrong word...
When the weather is bad, it is worse than most people who live on the mainland/main body of the UK can imagine. The landscape here is very much moulded by the elements, but when it's blowing a hoolie you can't imagine the damage it might do in leafy suburban Northampton or Bedford. Where we are is very south-western Scotland; we're not the furthest west you can get, but we're a little left of Plymouth if you draw a straight line down the map. That line pretty much goes through the right side of the Isle of Man (yes!).
We get the Atlantic, via Ireland, before most and I've said to various people that this is a place where you can actually see the wind. The rain tends to be fine and drenching or torrential and drenching and the bottom line is if it's really raining you ain't doing anything outside. Even walking the dogs on awful days becomes a chore. Rain you can cope with. Wind is actually more annoying. Wind and Rain can turn even mild days into an uncomfortable, unpleasant and seemingly endless trudge. But hey, it's not where I used to have to trudge.
However, when the sun comes out; when the thermometer gets into double figures, it becomes more like the reason we moved here. Yet, on freezing cold days, snow sitting on top of the mountains warms you up, because you don't see that kind of thing in the flatlands of East Anglia. There are enough things to be seen and enjoyed to make the sometimes fierce weather something you simply have to put up with.
I also learned about living in a rural environment. There are times when the place stinks. I mean like a thousand dead rats in a vat of shit and chilli powder stink. Slurry, which is poured on the field like shit from a cow's arse, helps the grass grow and they need to grow lots of grass for the ruminating beasts in the winter. This year has been awful; for someone who worries about breathing more than others, the stench is so great sometimes I've thought I was going to suffocate. This is a really bad thing about the place, but apparently because it has been so dry it hasn't happened as much as it usually does in the summer. Oh extreme joy...
And, I am only talking about 3 minutes a day for however many days it stinks. It doesn't really happen near town, but is often somewhere along our journeys.
I talk about the lack of availability in my vlogs, but there is also the lack of variety. Unless you want to travel (or get someone to drive or, heaven forbid, hire a taxi), we're pretty limited in our drinking establishments. The Craft is our destination of preference; it is 130 paces from door to door and it serves enough reasonable beer to make it a place to drink; the staff make it our local. The Galloway Bar is for locals and lager (lagger) drinkers, I've been in once. 1.2 miles from our house is the Bladnoch Inn; it sells a variety of real ale (singular) on a rotating basis; sometimes I've seen Bitter & Twisted others Greene King IPA. I've not been in the place since the winter.
Drive and inside a 25 mile radius you will find about four good pubs, but that's a lot of square mileage. There's the Clachan in New Galloway, which we haven't been to, which is about 30 miles away; the Steampacket in the Isle of Whithorn, about 17 miles away; The Hoose O'Hill in Glentrool about 18 miles away and, um... A couple of others that we haven't discovered.
The same applies to food and as a vegetarian of many years it's not easy to find an interesting variety. If we ate fish we'd be laughing, but we're proper vegetarians that don't eat things that were sentient or something like that. There are places that do actually cater for veggies, but I'm a food snob and I think they lack imagination and why would I want to go and pay for something I could most probably cook myself and for cheaper?
Forget supermarket variety as well and you see a place where there are areas where you have to 'make do' and suddenly the south-west of Scotland looks like a great example of what Brexit Britain might look like as a whole.
We're also in about the 2nd worst place in the country for Freeview. If we didn't have a booster box (giving us 28 channels), we'd have about 8. We could invest in FreeSat, but not having much choice on the telly means there should be time for other things. Besides, on the upside, internet speeds are among the rural country's top 10%.
The thing is, I can't count on one finger the number of times in the last year I've wished I was back in Northampton. I can't count on one hand the number of times I've thought variations of 'Oh shit, I can't get that here'. I have sometimes regretted coming here for the bad luck that seems to have befallen the dogs. Doug, when he isn't running into barbed wire or tree stumps, is constantly lacerated by Ness (who has rediscovered her insecurity recently in a big way). Lexy had her stroke and is now beginning to look her age and Marley had her accident, which kept her on the lead for 6 weeks.
I've missed a pub quiz that has a cash prize. I've missed not being so close to Leicester. Most of the other materialistic things, I've grown to accept that I might not see certain things again, or once in a blood moon. I've missed my mates, but the vast majority I have as much interaction as I did before, but without the face-to-face aspect. Hopefully, that will change in the coming months with visits from folk planned.
Something I've neglected mention anywhere is the fact that I may have inspired my older brother to follow in my footsteps. Our dad was always one for moving on. I don't think he had itchy feet, he just looked for the next challenge and moving to new places was something he did with our mum frequently. Their children have all become static and sedate with our lives and for me this was going to be and is my last great adventure. For Steve, moving to Wisbech is his. You probably couldn't get two more polar opposites in rural terms than there and here, I just hope he knows what he's doing.
We had an inkling and to be honest it has turned out better than we would have been happy with. The lack of (part time) work for 'incomers' has become a bit of a concern, but we're trying our hand at something quite unorthodox for us and if it works then we might try our hands at doing some more (he says intriguingly).
I have to admit that one of my worries was something my brother-in-law Neil said, half-jokingly. "How long before you fall out with everybody?" ...
I made some 'resolutions' when I moved here. I've kept some of them, but I procrastinate so much I'm actually a bit of an expert at it. I have also slipped back into some older habits, while not keeping up with more recent additions to my lifestyle. I don't walk enough, despite having all these woods and beaches. I drink far too much, but many of the new or old bad habits are often offset by the amount of smiling and laughing we've done. We've not made a huge amount of friends, but that might be down to the fact that the majority of the people we do socialise with are fantastic company, so we've not had to do much. The thing is, one of the things that makes this place so special from towns and cities; people will stop and chat to you, wherever you are, like they've known you for years. They're genuinely interested in you, especially when they know you live there.
I've fallen out with one person - a mad woman from Lewisham.
A special mention for the great dichotomy. The Tourist. You have the locals and you have the 'grockles'. The same species, yet two completely different things. Galloway needs the Tourist, but the Tourist is something I now have a completely different perspective of. I've been here a year; I've adapted incredibly well to the pace of life and I'm gradually erasing most of my time-based OCDs and as a result, this summer in particular, I'm getting irritated at there being an extra DOZEN cars on the road, pootling along, admiring my bloody countryside... Yet, the place needs to double its tourists, at least, in the coming years, because it needs to counter the loss of other money and that requires the locals to be more accommodating - not that they aren't, far from it - and that means more options for a new kind of holidaymaker.
There are always things I can moan about, but fortunately the lack of variety is more than made up by the weather; in which we have been truly blessed this summer with a longer summer than I can remember and while I expect the rest of it to be more akin to this part of Scotland, that means you're the ones, down there, stifling in the 21st Century's first revisit of 1976. Usually though, I whinge about the lack of accuracy in forecasting up here than the actual weather.
The truth is, what we've lost, we've more than made up for it in other ways. Yes, we can't live on fresh air and scenery, but we'll cross that bridge when it becomes an issue. I expect there are going to be some tough times ahead, but that's going to be for everyone else as well.
There is something on the horizon that I'm both looking forward to and dreading at the same time. Going back to England at the beginning of November. The occasion will be a great one, but I haven't had a single tug to come back south of the border, not a jot (well, apart from when an old friend of mine lost - as in he ran off - her dog on Bradlaugh Fields and I'd just about convinced myself if I was there I could have found him). Unfortunately for friends hoping we'll drop in, we're going to be a long way from Shoesville, mixing it large with da fam, innit.
I've realised that in many ways I'm easily pleased, but I kind of think this is the place I've been yearning for all my life.
Wednesday 8 August 2018
Wednesday 18 July 2018
Wigtown - The First Anniversary
There's a moment, on the A75, when the picturesque rolling countryside of 'Dumfrieshire' changes from 'Yeah, but it's nothing special' to 'Wow!'. This happens as you approach the Gatehouse of Fleet, a large village on the cusp of what locals simply call Galloway.
The south-west coast and Galloway hills are remarkably well hidden up to this point; the eagle-eyed will have spotted the mouth of the Solway Firth driving along the A75 near Annan and Dumfries itself (population - as big as Bedford, just) has Criffel, in the background, to impress newcomers. You can see Criffel on a clear day from the M6 in Lancashire. I expect that there are a lot more family holidaymakers who make the journey to that part of the county than venture this far west. South of Dumfries are beautiful and touristy places such as New Abbey, Carsethorn, Kirkbean, Southerness, Sandyhills, Kippford, Palnackie, Rockcliffe, Auchencairn, Dundrennan and eventually the sublime Kirkcudbright. The fact that you've probably never heard of any of these places is something of a tragedy. Imagine the Lake District but bigger, quieter, dog-friendly and with more variety... Oh and when I say 'touristy' what I mean is there's more people wandering around aimlessly or in some cases, ponderously.
The thing is, you never quite realise how jaw-droppingly stunning the place is until you reach Gatehouse. You're driving along on a reasonable road with the Southwest Scottish countryside all around you when you reach the brow of a hill, what follows is an apex of visual pleasure. Sitting to the left of the A75 is Fleet Bay, which opens out into the Solway Firth. You can see sandy beaches, small islands and islets nestling in the sun-kissed bay and look right and you can see Gatehouse nestling in the foothills of the Cairnsmoor of Fleet, the southernmost hills of the Galloway Forest Park and directly in front of you is where these two converge. I rarely do that drive now without the word 'wow' slipping from my lips.
Three miles further along and you're driving along the edge of the hills with the sea 50 feet below you. Off to your left is your destination, only 3 miles away as the crow flies, but still another 20 by road and usually that would bother me, but the stretch of the A75 between between Carsluith and Newton Stewart is possibly the best stretch of road along the entire A75 (you can see the traffic travelling along it if you stand in Wigtown Harbour and look east) - you have buena vistas wherever you look and the contrasts between your left eye and your right are, at times, mindblowing.
The journey from Newton Stewart to Wigtown is also quite staggering, a view I've often said whether I'm driving south or north is one I'll never ever get tired of. Driving down to Wigtown you have the Machars on your right, but your gaze is often drawn left to where you have already been. Where you drive along the foot of the Galloway Hills past Creetown, Palnure and Blackcraig you are more than aware of the towering presence of the Cairnsmoor, when you drive in the opposite direction on the other side of the Cree it is a backdrop rivalled by few places in the entire United Kingdom.
Wigtown is a town - a Royal Burgh to be precise - but to anyone from urban Britain it looks and feels like a large village. Just 1000 people live here, yet it is steeped in history and is home to Scotland's version of Hay-on-Wye. There are two garages, three if you count my neighbour's workshop. It has a primary school, a Co-op, a butcher, eight bookshops, an engraver/picture framing/stationary place, a community shop, a pub, a restaurant/hotel/pub, two antiques shops, four cafes (one specialising in vegan, vegetarian and GF), two nurseries (the plant variety), a tourist information centre, a print shop, a sewing shop, a medical centre and a pharmacy, the 'Biggest Little Shop in the World' - run by our own OBE recipient (a man known as Scad), a couple of knick-knack shops, a small pet shop, a Town Hall with library, very clean public toilets, the Festival shop and a post office/newsagents. There are other things going on - The Craft holds an alternative market once a month; there's a Saturday market, which runs between Easter and October, in the town square.
We've just been to our second Wigtown Food Festival and witnessed our second Riding of the Marches - we couldn't really miss it - over 100 horses rode past our house (just as I was taking the dogs out - which was 'fun'). We might only be 100 metres from the 'town centre', but out of my office window is mainly fields (because we actually live on the outskirts of town) and the tradition is for the riders to walk the perimeter of the town (although this has changed in recent years so that other parts of town can watch).
The last week, the first of Scottish kids' summer holidays, has been full of events for families, children and adults. The word 'festival' is used a lot up here; we have the Book festival, the Food one and the Wigtown Festival, which is essentially an exercise in unifying an already friendly community. There's everything from a hanging basket competition, to poetry contests, games, bat walks, treasure hunts, educational things outside of a school room and events for the kids that incorporates nature with mindless fun.
There's the Wigtown Show, which takes place on the first Wednesday in August. For the last two years the attire du jour should have been scuba gear, but this part of Scotland had seen record amounts of rainfall in the last couple of years, so much so young mothers were worried about bairns being born with webbed feet. The show is a celebration of our rural life - it's about the farms, the livestock, the local delicacies, craftsmen and it's embraced by thousands of people, whatever the weather. In two weeks it'll be our second one and the long range weather forecast isn't for rain, which, would be nice.
The book festival comes along in September, at a time when the minuscule tourist trade is beginning to dry up. It divides opinion in many of the worst ways, because while it saved this glorious town with its 1862-built Town Hall that sticks out like the Eiffel Tower it also created some of the divisions I've heard of in the 12 months I've been here. The book festival brings about 30,000 extra people to the town over a ten day period. I missed a chunk of it last year because I had been ill, but apart from the odd car parked in front of our house, I saw little evidence that it creates the kind of havoc the locals talked of; but I'm a towny and what locals might think is an inconvenience, I probably still view it as interesting.
My reservations with the book festival are two-fold. I don't think it is particularly ambitious and I don't believe it does enough to reward the townsfolk. I'm friends with some of the bookshop owners here and I try to avoid discussing the festival with them because, I'm new here and I don't want to fall out with people especially over any radical ideas I might have and the often caustic way I have of delivering ideas. The thing is, the biggest gripe I've heard from Scottish people in town is while the 'festival' expects the town to ensure it's a success, the 'festival' is loathe to reciprocate. I know that during that 10-day period, a lot of the shops, owned or run by local people have their busiest times of the year (and this is a good thing), but it appears to be through no help from the 'festival'.
To give you a basic example; there appears to be an expectation from the 'festival' for local businesses to be as accommodating as possible, but if one of these local businesses asks for something as simple as a plug or help with promotion (which ultimately would be of the benefit of the attendants of the festival), the 'festival' couldn't possibly do that, not without those businesses contributing fiscally to the festival. It does appear to be a case of you scratch our backs and we'll ignore you.
The problem appears to be that the people responsible for the festival are very set in their ways and seem to object to or simply reject outside suggestions. As someone with a background that might possibly be beneficial to such an event, I want to be able to try and make the festival beneficial to everyone in the town, not just the people who feel they own it. However, I have done nothing because I've not been here long enough; maybe when someone asks me I'll be able to see it from a different perspective.
However, those things aside, if you look at what this small place has you can understand why it still thrives during the dark winter months (that aren't any longer than they were in Northampton, if truth be told).
The last year, until May, was blighted by rain (and wind, but mainly rain). As I said, after years of above average rainfall, a couple of unexpected floods in neighbouring Newton and a seemingly endless winter. Plants died; essential repairs were needed and the sun seemed reluctant to come out more than fleetingly. We began to get to the stage where we needed the sun's fan dance to be more revealing. May threatened to come alive, but the temperatures were held at bay, yet spring couldn't wait any longer and when the fine weather turned to awesome weather every day felt a little like Christmas. 'I didn't move here for the weather' has been my motto since we moved here, but the truth is, it was. A good constant circulation of air, which has so little pollutants in it and living near the coast can and largely have been a bonus and while I feel as though I've been ill a lot (3 times in 12 months), I think the first two were definitely down to acclimatisation and the last one (despite the last dregs hanging around) seems to have cleared up in record time (he says, tempting fate like a carefree rapscallion).
Obviously, some work I could do and enjoy would be nice, but I'd take simply something I can do because it would be nice to earn a few bob for a few more years to ensure we have more for the coming Armageddon. Plus, the dilemma of trying not to say too much or push an issue too far has prevented me from pursuing any ideas I've had, because there is a change has to be a very gradual thing here unless it is going to instantly change lives. You can see that in the confused suspicion some people have of vegetarians or the lack of imagination in menus or promotion of businesses. Plus, if you are a plumber or an electrician and you're reliable and good, you could probably make a fortune up here, if you were prepared to have a customer based with a 50 mile radius of your home - possibly wider. The number of people we've met since we've been here who have struggled for specific tradesmen has been disproportionate to anything else, by that proverbial country mile.
Our house is still a few years away from how we'd be totally happy with it, but it's strange living in a much bigger house. More rooms when you're as forgetful as me is, if nothing else, extra exercise. The garden, not so much because we've always had reasonably large back gardens, but even the new one is considerably bigger than our last place. It is also well established, had well-documented drainage problems, and we're still finding as much fuck-wittedness from the previous owners outside as we have inside.
We have pleasant neighbours - on both sides now - and we're on speaking terms with all three families that back onto our garden. I still think the BT exchange building, directly in front of the house is the worst thing about living here, but I can prance naked in front of an un-curtained window with no chance of anything human seeing me outside of working hours, so it has its plus points. I'm doing a regular pub quiz at my local bar and that is proving to be quite popular and the wife is volunteering for stuff while simultaneously looking for what few jobs she can even apply for.
We do a weekly pub quiz at the Bruce Hotel - the place we stayed in the weekend we first looked at this house - and Taken Up the Merrick is as successful as Squonk! was in Northampton, but wins considerably less money. In fact, we've integrated quite well and my brother-in-law's concern - "How long before you fall out with everybody?" - hasn't come to fruition. I've fallen out with a psycho from London, because she's a psycho and I occasionally wonder if I'm a bit too 'Phil' for some people at times, but I also moved here to be myself and to not feel as though life is a competition or a contest of some kind and Marmite and all that.
We've rediscovered the art of getting drunk. I believe I have regressed to a stage ill-befitting of my stature and age, but I give zero fucks. We've had new potatoes, beetroot and lettuces from the garden; alpine strawberries grow all over our garden and the old boy's knot weed no longer seems as apocalyptic as it did. Urgency has disappeared; roadworks don't irritate and there's no school runs or background noise. The truth is after 12 months there is very little I would change and very few things I would tweak.
There are many things that make me laugh and smile and that's good because I want to be as happy as I can for the rest of my life and by coming here I did something about it...
Come up and see us sometime; you can lose yourself and everyone else very easily.
The south-west coast and Galloway hills are remarkably well hidden up to this point; the eagle-eyed will have spotted the mouth of the Solway Firth driving along the A75 near Annan and Dumfries itself (population - as big as Bedford, just) has Criffel, in the background, to impress newcomers. You can see Criffel on a clear day from the M6 in Lancashire. I expect that there are a lot more family holidaymakers who make the journey to that part of the county than venture this far west. South of Dumfries are beautiful and touristy places such as New Abbey, Carsethorn, Kirkbean, Southerness, Sandyhills, Kippford, Palnackie, Rockcliffe, Auchencairn, Dundrennan and eventually the sublime Kirkcudbright. The fact that you've probably never heard of any of these places is something of a tragedy. Imagine the Lake District but bigger, quieter, dog-friendly and with more variety... Oh and when I say 'touristy' what I mean is there's more people wandering around aimlessly or in some cases, ponderously.
The thing is, you never quite realise how jaw-droppingly stunning the place is until you reach Gatehouse. You're driving along on a reasonable road with the Southwest Scottish countryside all around you when you reach the brow of a hill, what follows is an apex of visual pleasure. Sitting to the left of the A75 is Fleet Bay, which opens out into the Solway Firth. You can see sandy beaches, small islands and islets nestling in the sun-kissed bay and look right and you can see Gatehouse nestling in the foothills of the Cairnsmoor of Fleet, the southernmost hills of the Galloway Forest Park and directly in front of you is where these two converge. I rarely do that drive now without the word 'wow' slipping from my lips.
Three miles further along and you're driving along the edge of the hills with the sea 50 feet below you. Off to your left is your destination, only 3 miles away as the crow flies, but still another 20 by road and usually that would bother me, but the stretch of the A75 between between Carsluith and Newton Stewart is possibly the best stretch of road along the entire A75 (you can see the traffic travelling along it if you stand in Wigtown Harbour and look east) - you have buena vistas wherever you look and the contrasts between your left eye and your right are, at times, mindblowing.
The journey from Newton Stewart to Wigtown is also quite staggering, a view I've often said whether I'm driving south or north is one I'll never ever get tired of. Driving down to Wigtown you have the Machars on your right, but your gaze is often drawn left to where you have already been. Where you drive along the foot of the Galloway Hills past Creetown, Palnure and Blackcraig you are more than aware of the towering presence of the Cairnsmoor, when you drive in the opposite direction on the other side of the Cree it is a backdrop rivalled by few places in the entire United Kingdom.
Wigtown is a town - a Royal Burgh to be precise - but to anyone from urban Britain it looks and feels like a large village. Just 1000 people live here, yet it is steeped in history and is home to Scotland's version of Hay-on-Wye. There are two garages, three if you count my neighbour's workshop. It has a primary school, a Co-op, a butcher, eight bookshops, an engraver/picture framing/stationary place, a community shop, a pub, a restaurant/hotel/pub, two antiques shops, four cafes (one specialising in vegan, vegetarian and GF), two nurseries (the plant variety), a tourist information centre, a print shop, a sewing shop, a medical centre and a pharmacy, the 'Biggest Little Shop in the World' - run by our own OBE recipient (a man known as Scad), a couple of knick-knack shops, a small pet shop, a Town Hall with library, very clean public toilets, the Festival shop and a post office/newsagents. There are other things going on - The Craft holds an alternative market once a month; there's a Saturday market, which runs between Easter and October, in the town square.
We've just been to our second Wigtown Food Festival and witnessed our second Riding of the Marches - we couldn't really miss it - over 100 horses rode past our house (just as I was taking the dogs out - which was 'fun'). We might only be 100 metres from the 'town centre', but out of my office window is mainly fields (because we actually live on the outskirts of town) and the tradition is for the riders to walk the perimeter of the town (although this has changed in recent years so that other parts of town can watch).
The last week, the first of Scottish kids' summer holidays, has been full of events for families, children and adults. The word 'festival' is used a lot up here; we have the Book festival, the Food one and the Wigtown Festival, which is essentially an exercise in unifying an already friendly community. There's everything from a hanging basket competition, to poetry contests, games, bat walks, treasure hunts, educational things outside of a school room and events for the kids that incorporates nature with mindless fun.
There's the Wigtown Show, which takes place on the first Wednesday in August. For the last two years the attire du jour should have been scuba gear, but this part of Scotland had seen record amounts of rainfall in the last couple of years, so much so young mothers were worried about bairns being born with webbed feet. The show is a celebration of our rural life - it's about the farms, the livestock, the local delicacies, craftsmen and it's embraced by thousands of people, whatever the weather. In two weeks it'll be our second one and the long range weather forecast isn't for rain, which, would be nice.
The book festival comes along in September, at a time when the minuscule tourist trade is beginning to dry up. It divides opinion in many of the worst ways, because while it saved this glorious town with its 1862-built Town Hall that sticks out like the Eiffel Tower it also created some of the divisions I've heard of in the 12 months I've been here. The book festival brings about 30,000 extra people to the town over a ten day period. I missed a chunk of it last year because I had been ill, but apart from the odd car parked in front of our house, I saw little evidence that it creates the kind of havoc the locals talked of; but I'm a towny and what locals might think is an inconvenience, I probably still view it as interesting.
My reservations with the book festival are two-fold. I don't think it is particularly ambitious and I don't believe it does enough to reward the townsfolk. I'm friends with some of the bookshop owners here and I try to avoid discussing the festival with them because, I'm new here and I don't want to fall out with people especially over any radical ideas I might have and the often caustic way I have of delivering ideas. The thing is, the biggest gripe I've heard from Scottish people in town is while the 'festival' expects the town to ensure it's a success, the 'festival' is loathe to reciprocate. I know that during that 10-day period, a lot of the shops, owned or run by local people have their busiest times of the year (and this is a good thing), but it appears to be through no help from the 'festival'.
To give you a basic example; there appears to be an expectation from the 'festival' for local businesses to be as accommodating as possible, but if one of these local businesses asks for something as simple as a plug or help with promotion (which ultimately would be of the benefit of the attendants of the festival), the 'festival' couldn't possibly do that, not without those businesses contributing fiscally to the festival. It does appear to be a case of you scratch our backs and we'll ignore you.
The problem appears to be that the people responsible for the festival are very set in their ways and seem to object to or simply reject outside suggestions. As someone with a background that might possibly be beneficial to such an event, I want to be able to try and make the festival beneficial to everyone in the town, not just the people who feel they own it. However, I have done nothing because I've not been here long enough; maybe when someone asks me I'll be able to see it from a different perspective.
However, those things aside, if you look at what this small place has you can understand why it still thrives during the dark winter months (that aren't any longer than they were in Northampton, if truth be told).
The last year, until May, was blighted by rain (and wind, but mainly rain). As I said, after years of above average rainfall, a couple of unexpected floods in neighbouring Newton and a seemingly endless winter. Plants died; essential repairs were needed and the sun seemed reluctant to come out more than fleetingly. We began to get to the stage where we needed the sun's fan dance to be more revealing. May threatened to come alive, but the temperatures were held at bay, yet spring couldn't wait any longer and when the fine weather turned to awesome weather every day felt a little like Christmas. 'I didn't move here for the weather' has been my motto since we moved here, but the truth is, it was. A good constant circulation of air, which has so little pollutants in it and living near the coast can and largely have been a bonus and while I feel as though I've been ill a lot (3 times in 12 months), I think the first two were definitely down to acclimatisation and the last one (despite the last dregs hanging around) seems to have cleared up in record time (he says, tempting fate like a carefree rapscallion).
Obviously, some work I could do and enjoy would be nice, but I'd take simply something I can do because it would be nice to earn a few bob for a few more years to ensure we have more for the coming Armageddon. Plus, the dilemma of trying not to say too much or push an issue too far has prevented me from pursuing any ideas I've had, because there is a change has to be a very gradual thing here unless it is going to instantly change lives. You can see that in the confused suspicion some people have of vegetarians or the lack of imagination in menus or promotion of businesses. Plus, if you are a plumber or an electrician and you're reliable and good, you could probably make a fortune up here, if you were prepared to have a customer based with a 50 mile radius of your home - possibly wider. The number of people we've met since we've been here who have struggled for specific tradesmen has been disproportionate to anything else, by that proverbial country mile.
Our house is still a few years away from how we'd be totally happy with it, but it's strange living in a much bigger house. More rooms when you're as forgetful as me is, if nothing else, extra exercise. The garden, not so much because we've always had reasonably large back gardens, but even the new one is considerably bigger than our last place. It is also well established, had well-documented drainage problems, and we're still finding as much fuck-wittedness from the previous owners outside as we have inside.
We have pleasant neighbours - on both sides now - and we're on speaking terms with all three families that back onto our garden. I still think the BT exchange building, directly in front of the house is the worst thing about living here, but I can prance naked in front of an un-curtained window with no chance of anything human seeing me outside of working hours, so it has its plus points. I'm doing a regular pub quiz at my local bar and that is proving to be quite popular and the wife is volunteering for stuff while simultaneously looking for what few jobs she can even apply for.
We do a weekly pub quiz at the Bruce Hotel - the place we stayed in the weekend we first looked at this house - and Taken Up the Merrick is as successful as Squonk! was in Northampton, but wins considerably less money. In fact, we've integrated quite well and my brother-in-law's concern - "How long before you fall out with everybody?" - hasn't come to fruition. I've fallen out with a psycho from London, because she's a psycho and I occasionally wonder if I'm a bit too 'Phil' for some people at times, but I also moved here to be myself and to not feel as though life is a competition or a contest of some kind and Marmite and all that.
We've rediscovered the art of getting drunk. I believe I have regressed to a stage ill-befitting of my stature and age, but I give zero fucks. We've had new potatoes, beetroot and lettuces from the garden; alpine strawberries grow all over our garden and the old boy's knot weed no longer seems as apocalyptic as it did. Urgency has disappeared; roadworks don't irritate and there's no school runs or background noise. The truth is after 12 months there is very little I would change and very few things I would tweak.There are many things that make me laugh and smile and that's good because I want to be as happy as I can for the rest of my life and by coming here I did something about it...
Come up and see us sometime; you can lose yourself and everyone else very easily.
Monday 9 April 2018
Zen and the Art of Dog Urinating
It has been noted that I have been quiet on social media for the last week. It has been a conscious effort, and I have commented on a few things on Facebook and Twitter, but generally I have been gently withdrawing. More of an experiment than anything else, I have been reminded recently of why I came to feel so bitter and twisted about my old life; the Internet is an easy place to rage at no one and then allow it to follow you into the real world like a bad smell.
About ten days ago, I realised that I'd been edging towards the curmudgeonly old fucker I was hurtling towards in Northampton. I was allowing extraneous things pervade my relatively boring life to compensate for the lack of motivation to do things. Brought on, I hasten to add, more by the weather than by any impediment of a human nature. The feeling that something is looking down and laughing at you because the hole you're digging in the ground sat there inviting me on a daily basis to shuffle down the garden and royally screw my back some more until the day I could finally do it and the heavens opened for best part of the next three weeks. That kind of feeling.
So my time has been filled with more of the shit that I subjected myself to back down there and as a result, a mixture of me seeing myself descending into becoming unpleasant company and the total understanding of why it was happening, I did something about it. Being a fully-paid-up member of the Luddite club, my mobile phone is beginning to look stylish again. It's one of the shite Sony Xperia's and I use it for so little that is probably the sole reason it is still alive and functioning. I take shit pictures with it; I send text messages; I even use it for phone calls... Oh and I have used the internet function Chrome browser thing to check football scores and my Facebook account when we had no wifi here. This has been my Facebook access all week, usually during periods we're too civilised to talk about. This is a solid gold deterrent. This is like standing next to the wife completely naked with a jellyfish, six pairs of handcuffs and asking if she fancies a shag.
The first thing I did was limit myself to actual computer time. I decided that, as I get up first everyday - yes, I know how crazy that sounds - I would have it on until breakfast. Depending on what I needed it for, I have pretty much only used it for watching things (and playing a bit of Scrabble) and illegally downloading US TV series episodes. I haven't stopped myself from using Facebook, I'm just limiting my time and it appears to be ... I dunno if 'working' is the right word. It's like being an addict but allowing yourself a little each day, if you exceed it you're not allowed it the next day; but it's also like cheating at golf - you're cheating no one but yourself. Essentially, it's been easier than I expected because I'm not stopping myself. It's for my own good. (The irony in that statement being - tonight I splurged)
The upshot is, while I haven't been able to do as much in the garden as I would have hoped, I have done some of the more essential pruning (I know! My life is sooo exciting!) and I've managed to do some things like plant some potatoes and plan out what I am going to do that doesn't involve the rest of the 'garden project'. I have attempted to find some new places to walk that are both taxing but not likely to have me collapsing in a heap of breathlessness and freaking out my walking buddy, who already must think I'd be better off carting oxygen tanks with us.
In an amongst this, I have manned a market stall for a day to help a friend out. I have returned to the site of Doug's last bad accident and we both got through it without incident. I have discovered I might be losing weight through eating less, I'm probably putting it back on by virtue of building up a tolerance to alcohol. I've seen a blues singer; a local Scottish folk band and helped the quiz team return to winning ways and realised that I'm at my happiest when I'm not trying to find a reason to dislike something or someone. There's too much of that about already; I'm old enough to remember when there was such a thing as community and the concept of love they neighbour was second nature not some weird invitation.
Part of the realisation was simply seeing how easy it was to be a towny in a place where it has no meaning. There is no point in perpetuating ill-feeling; life is simply too short. One thing I've learnt since I've been here is "respect others' opinions even if you simply can't agree with them." There's not enough of us here to let inconsequential beliefs stand in the way of a friendship; the same way you can't let someone's pernicious madness inveigle into your life to the point where you let them spoil your evening. I might be sounding a bit cryptic, but essentially there's a lesson there for anyone I know who wanders around with an invisible chip on their shoulder, thinking that their opinion justifies a higher position because it's theirs.
I am as guilty of it as anyone. I am big enough to acknowledge it, even if it hurts. So, if by some fluke of nature you are that unbelievable cockwomble I met down the beach last week, I appreciate that getting a grovelling apology from my wife for our dog pissing on your £150 coat was not enough and you wanted to shout at me and demand I a) keep my dog under control - what I was essentially trying to do but some cunt was getting in my face at the time, also demanding that b) I also apologise, because I didn't realise at the time that you were some moronic chauvinist who didn't think an apology from a woman is good enough for your £150 fucking coat and needed one from me. I completely understand your annoyance and I apologise for telling you, loudly, that I 'Really don't give a fuck' - several times in answer to various questions - but I had tried to do both things you asked in a nice humble and apologetic way, but you, being an extreme 21st century prize cunt, wouldn't fucking let it lie. So, as a result of you pushing me to nuclear Northampton levels, you are lucky I didn't rip your fucking head off and shit down your neck, you fucking worthless impotent cretin.
<breathe>
And I feel so much better now... 😊
About ten days ago, I realised that I'd been edging towards the curmudgeonly old fucker I was hurtling towards in Northampton. I was allowing extraneous things pervade my relatively boring life to compensate for the lack of motivation to do things. Brought on, I hasten to add, more by the weather than by any impediment of a human nature. The feeling that something is looking down and laughing at you because the hole you're digging in the ground sat there inviting me on a daily basis to shuffle down the garden and royally screw my back some more until the day I could finally do it and the heavens opened for best part of the next three weeks. That kind of feeling.
So my time has been filled with more of the shit that I subjected myself to back down there and as a result, a mixture of me seeing myself descending into becoming unpleasant company and the total understanding of why it was happening, I did something about it. Being a fully-paid-up member of the Luddite club, my mobile phone is beginning to look stylish again. It's one of the shite Sony Xperia's and I use it for so little that is probably the sole reason it is still alive and functioning. I take shit pictures with it; I send text messages; I even use it for phone calls... Oh and I have used the internet function Chrome browser thing to check football scores and my Facebook account when we had no wifi here. This has been my Facebook access all week, usually during periods we're too civilised to talk about. This is a solid gold deterrent. This is like standing next to the wife completely naked with a jellyfish, six pairs of handcuffs and asking if she fancies a shag.
The first thing I did was limit myself to actual computer time. I decided that, as I get up first everyday - yes, I know how crazy that sounds - I would have it on until breakfast. Depending on what I needed it for, I have pretty much only used it for watching things (and playing a bit of Scrabble) and illegally downloading US TV series episodes. I haven't stopped myself from using Facebook, I'm just limiting my time and it appears to be ... I dunno if 'working' is the right word. It's like being an addict but allowing yourself a little each day, if you exceed it you're not allowed it the next day; but it's also like cheating at golf - you're cheating no one but yourself. Essentially, it's been easier than I expected because I'm not stopping myself. It's for my own good. (The irony in that statement being - tonight I splurged)
The upshot is, while I haven't been able to do as much in the garden as I would have hoped, I have done some of the more essential pruning (I know! My life is sooo exciting!) and I've managed to do some things like plant some potatoes and plan out what I am going to do that doesn't involve the rest of the 'garden project'. I have attempted to find some new places to walk that are both taxing but not likely to have me collapsing in a heap of breathlessness and freaking out my walking buddy, who already must think I'd be better off carting oxygen tanks with us.
In an amongst this, I have manned a market stall for a day to help a friend out. I have returned to the site of Doug's last bad accident and we both got through it without incident. I have discovered I might be losing weight through eating less, I'm probably putting it back on by virtue of building up a tolerance to alcohol. I've seen a blues singer; a local Scottish folk band and helped the quiz team return to winning ways and realised that I'm at my happiest when I'm not trying to find a reason to dislike something or someone. There's too much of that about already; I'm old enough to remember when there was such a thing as community and the concept of love they neighbour was second nature not some weird invitation.
Part of the realisation was simply seeing how easy it was to be a towny in a place where it has no meaning. There is no point in perpetuating ill-feeling; life is simply too short. One thing I've learnt since I've been here is "respect others' opinions even if you simply can't agree with them." There's not enough of us here to let inconsequential beliefs stand in the way of a friendship; the same way you can't let someone's pernicious madness inveigle into your life to the point where you let them spoil your evening. I might be sounding a bit cryptic, but essentially there's a lesson there for anyone I know who wanders around with an invisible chip on their shoulder, thinking that their opinion justifies a higher position because it's theirs.
I am as guilty of it as anyone. I am big enough to acknowledge it, even if it hurts. So, if by some fluke of nature you are that unbelievable cockwomble I met down the beach last week, I appreciate that getting a grovelling apology from my wife for our dog pissing on your £150 coat was not enough and you wanted to shout at me and demand I a) keep my dog under control - what I was essentially trying to do but some cunt was getting in my face at the time, also demanding that b) I also apologise, because I didn't realise at the time that you were some moronic chauvinist who didn't think an apology from a woman is good enough for your £150 fucking coat and needed one from me. I completely understand your annoyance and I apologise for telling you, loudly, that I 'Really don't give a fuck' - several times in answer to various questions - but I had tried to do both things you asked in a nice humble and apologetic way, but you, being an extreme 21st century prize cunt, wouldn't fucking let it lie. So, as a result of you pushing me to nuclear Northampton levels, you are lucky I didn't rip your fucking head off and shit down your neck, you fucking worthless impotent cretin.
<breathe>
And I feel so much better now... 😊
Tuesday 6 March 2018
Not So Heavy Weather (or How to Fall off a Wall)
It seems that every one of us suffered at the hands of the 'Beast from the East' and while the rest of the country attempted to deal with knee deep snow, bitterly cold winds and travel disruption, most of the south west of Scotland remained relatively snow free. Yes, we've had some and if you drive to Newton Stewart (7 miles away) and go into the hills (a few miles further north), there is much evidence of heavy snow fall - but the hills seemed to stop it from going much further.
I've spoken of the wind and because we're out west it seems to blow a hoolie more often than not, predominantly from the west off the Atlantic and Irish sea. With a south-east facing back garden (despite the constant flooding), it's sheltered from the wind on most sides, which is why there were so many plants thriving in it that would struggle further south - we do have a kind of micro-climate here.
Tuesday was horrid; howling easterly winds that seemed to tear at any exposed skin like a rusty rasp. Travelling back from the beach that afternoon, thawing out in the car with all heaters on the go and still wearing our hats, I offered the fact that it was going to be the following day when we'd really understand why the weathermen were concerned.
I reckoned Wednesday was pretty much the coldest day I could remember for a long time. Despite dressing up like Scott of the Antarctic nothing seemed to stop the teeth from infiltrating my attire. The windchill was about -12, the temperature gauge in the car read -1 and even the sea had frozen around the edges of Garlieston beach. It wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the bleakest day we've had on the beach, but being buffeted about by 40mph winds blowing directly off of Siberia's arse was actually painful.
Newton had some snow that evening; almost a centimetre and we kept seeing flurries of icing sugar snow blow everywhere, forming drifts up to 3cm deep by the kerbs. We were getting all the cold but fortunately none of the white stuff that by this time was crippling parts of country and seeing the first RED warnings from the met office, for snow, for years. The weather forecast, which said the worst of it would be that day, now extended that worst day into Thursday, but with an even higher windchill!
By Thursday, our friends were suffering from the big freeze, even up here. Boilers breaking, pipes freezing and despite us being pretty much unaffected by the snow, everywhere to the north and east of us was horrendous. Oh and the wind was vile. If Wednesday had been memorable, Thursday pissed on it from a few feet higher up. We decided to use our brains and we headed for the east side of Garlieston beach, it has a big hill behind it, covered in trees, which acted as a form of natural windbreak. In a moment of weirdness, I felt like I'd overdressed. The temp was still sub-zero, but out of the wind it almost felt like simply a cold winter's day, but once I ventured further down the beach, out of the shade and into the wind, it was like being knifed with razors pulled straight from a vat of liquid nitrogen.
We got home; shut all the doors, closed the curtains and realised that while our house is pretty well insulated even in this kind of weather it's difficult to take the chill out of the air, even in the house. The wife got on with her little part time job and I wrapped myself around an electric fire trying to feel the end of my nose. Then, without much warning, there was an almighty CRACK! The wife called me out to the sun room and we were greeted with one of our fence panels laying on the patio, the post having sheared off because of the now 50mph+ gusts of wind. We both agreed it was something we'd worry about on Friday, but then both realised we were going to the pub quiz that evening and Doug would easily jump the wall, be in next door's garden, without anyway of getting back in - because the retaining wall on our side is three feet high, but five feet on the neighbour's side. They also have a four foot wall running down the other side and a six foot fence at the end of their garden... If he got over there, we'd struggle to get him out.
We decided we needed to try and fix the fence, in a fucking gale throwing needles and pins at us...
Necessity is the mother of invention and without the adequate tools or wood and the broken post in an extremely awkward place that required an ambidexterity I wasn't aware I had, we managed to re-fix the post using a wooden brace, gate hinges and brute force. The problems began when we had to slide the fence panel (only 2'x2' but a large flat surface) into the metal catches.
Now, I need to remind regular readers and inform anyone venturing in for the first time that I've struggled since the beginning of January with a slipped disc, caused mainly by the fact I've become a sedentary fat bastard and have let my exercise slip and those same reasons for it happening have been the main reason for my unusually slow recovery. A key issue about hurting your back is you compensate and as a result you end up pulling muscles in other parts of your back, especially when you begin to do things that are a little more physical; so I've been in a little vicious circle of giving myself minor twinges and injuries as a result of trying not to hurt my lower back. I'm also fat. Not obese, but rotund around the midriff.
Anyhow, here comes the inconsequential sub plot...
I've noticed a kid round these parts; a little fat kid who seems to struggle to hang around with the other kids. Since we've moved here we've been quite pleased to see the kids play outside, but this kid, we'll call him Dee, appeared to be the one who everyone dared to do things because he would do stupid things to curry favour with them. As the months have gone on, it's clear he spends a lot of time outside, alone, and he seems utterly immune to the cold. It is also clear that fewer of the other kids have anything to do with him; you can imagine their parents saying, 'I dusnae want yers hanging aroond with that Dee, he's a wrong'un.'
There was obviously no school on Thursday and sensibly none of the other kids around here were outside, but Dee was. Over the space of an hour, I'd watched him run across the back of my garden; sit on the wall surrounding my neighbour's garden, throwing stones at their shed and then jumping off the roof of another shed in his own back garden. I found this a bit disconcerting until I later discovered there was a big trampoline next to the shed and he was jumping onto that. He was obviously bored, so when it came to sliding the fence panel he took up a spot on a nearby wall and watched us as we attempted to guide the panel into the slots. With the wind howling from the east, straight into our faces, it was no wonder it didn't fit into the slots properly; it jammed and the only thing for it was for me to take a hammer round to the neighbour's garden and try and unjam it without causing any damage to the fence panel.
Our neighbour's is being saved as a retirement home for the people who own it and live elsewhere. It is managed daily and there are gardeners and handymen always updating and upkeeping the place. If I had the money I'd like to buy it and turn my house into one big house, with one huge garden... Our neighbour's garden has a four foot wall running down its east side and double gates that are chained and padlocked. The only way for me to gain access would be to climb over the wall.
Now, in my head despite my ailments I'm still 18 and a four foot wall is something I'd simply vault over, but today I was still suffering a little with my back; I was cold, I had several layers of clothing on (a blessing in many ways) and the only way I could safely do the wall was to hoist myself up, swing my legs over and jump down the other side. It was simple in its simplicity.
Did I mention the 50mph+ gusts of wind coming off the hills?
I managed the first half extremely easily. Swung my legs up and was hit by a gust of wind that literally took my breath away and I started to fall sideways. In an incredible moment of clarity, in a millisecond I pulled my outstretched arm away and landed on my hip and back. Had I tried to break my fall, I would have broken my arm. The only thing I really felt was the force of the fall - I was falling onto grass with a thin layer of snow on it. It didn't hurt and despite my shouting OUCH! It was more for effect than anything; the wife couldn't see me so I needed her to know I'd done something. I mean, I could have knocked myself out and she was holding a precariously balanced fence panel in a hoolie.
Dee asked me quietly if I was okay and remarkably I was. I'd spread the fall across a large area of my torso. As I got up I noticed the shed I saw him throwing stones at and it had a large window and there were dents and gouges out of the wood under it. I made a mental note and walked over to the fence and finished the job, while having a laugh at my misfortune. The wife didn't see it, but I painted a suitably comical picture for her to cheer up what was fast becoming a shit day.
As I was finishing and trying to decide how to get out of the neighbour's garden, because there was rocks, gravel and concrete on the other side of the wall, which would do nothing to soften my fall if I fell again. Dee got the neighbour's wheelie bin and turned it on its side, I told him he was a genius and he asked me if I was from Australia. Once introductions and handshakes were done, I was just about to walk away when I turned to him and said, "Dee, you know you were throwing stones at that shed earlier? If you break the window, I'll have to tell the people who own this house it was you; you do understand that, don't you?" He nodded meekly and I told him he was a good lad and to enjoy playing out.
An hour later, just as it was getting dark, someone rang our doorbell and ran away. I managed to get upstairs in time to see Dee running down the neighbouring street, the way kids do, when they've done something wrong. On Friday, I saw him hanging around the BT exchange, I said hello and he waved at me. "Dee, you don't know any kids round here who think its funny to ring doorbells and run away do you?" He shook his head very slowly and said no he didn't. "Okay, no bother, but if you do know someone who does that, tell them if they do it again at my house I'll let the dogs out after them." And gave him a huge cheesy grin.
The next morning, I found a pile of stones outside my front door...
Friday, my hip hurt. I went for a long walk with the dogs and my mate Ian; I did a lot of moaning about my hip and felt he got a laugh out of my misfortune and probably I did him some good as he's been missing his other half who has been 'darn sarf' during all the bad weather.
This morning, I thought I was having a heart attack and realised that it was simply an aching left side of my body. I did some hoovering and other housework because that's how rock and roll my lifestyle is now.
And that was last week... Already it's Tuesday, the weather has warmed up and before you know it I have other things I could write a blog about.
I've spoken of the wind and because we're out west it seems to blow a hoolie more often than not, predominantly from the west off the Atlantic and Irish sea. With a south-east facing back garden (despite the constant flooding), it's sheltered from the wind on most sides, which is why there were so many plants thriving in it that would struggle further south - we do have a kind of micro-climate here.
Tuesday was horrid; howling easterly winds that seemed to tear at any exposed skin like a rusty rasp. Travelling back from the beach that afternoon, thawing out in the car with all heaters on the go and still wearing our hats, I offered the fact that it was going to be the following day when we'd really understand why the weathermen were concerned.
I reckoned Wednesday was pretty much the coldest day I could remember for a long time. Despite dressing up like Scott of the Antarctic nothing seemed to stop the teeth from infiltrating my attire. The windchill was about -12, the temperature gauge in the car read -1 and even the sea had frozen around the edges of Garlieston beach. It wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the bleakest day we've had on the beach, but being buffeted about by 40mph winds blowing directly off of Siberia's arse was actually painful.
Newton had some snow that evening; almost a centimetre and we kept seeing flurries of icing sugar snow blow everywhere, forming drifts up to 3cm deep by the kerbs. We were getting all the cold but fortunately none of the white stuff that by this time was crippling parts of country and seeing the first RED warnings from the met office, for snow, for years. The weather forecast, which said the worst of it would be that day, now extended that worst day into Thursday, but with an even higher windchill!
By Thursday, our friends were suffering from the big freeze, even up here. Boilers breaking, pipes freezing and despite us being pretty much unaffected by the snow, everywhere to the north and east of us was horrendous. Oh and the wind was vile. If Wednesday had been memorable, Thursday pissed on it from a few feet higher up. We decided to use our brains and we headed for the east side of Garlieston beach, it has a big hill behind it, covered in trees, which acted as a form of natural windbreak. In a moment of weirdness, I felt like I'd overdressed. The temp was still sub-zero, but out of the wind it almost felt like simply a cold winter's day, but once I ventured further down the beach, out of the shade and into the wind, it was like being knifed with razors pulled straight from a vat of liquid nitrogen.
We got home; shut all the doors, closed the curtains and realised that while our house is pretty well insulated even in this kind of weather it's difficult to take the chill out of the air, even in the house. The wife got on with her little part time job and I wrapped myself around an electric fire trying to feel the end of my nose. Then, without much warning, there was an almighty CRACK! The wife called me out to the sun room and we were greeted with one of our fence panels laying on the patio, the post having sheared off because of the now 50mph+ gusts of wind. We both agreed it was something we'd worry about on Friday, but then both realised we were going to the pub quiz that evening and Doug would easily jump the wall, be in next door's garden, without anyway of getting back in - because the retaining wall on our side is three feet high, but five feet on the neighbour's side. They also have a four foot wall running down the other side and a six foot fence at the end of their garden... If he got over there, we'd struggle to get him out.
We decided we needed to try and fix the fence, in a fucking gale throwing needles and pins at us...
Necessity is the mother of invention and without the adequate tools or wood and the broken post in an extremely awkward place that required an ambidexterity I wasn't aware I had, we managed to re-fix the post using a wooden brace, gate hinges and brute force. The problems began when we had to slide the fence panel (only 2'x2' but a large flat surface) into the metal catches.
Now, I need to remind regular readers and inform anyone venturing in for the first time that I've struggled since the beginning of January with a slipped disc, caused mainly by the fact I've become a sedentary fat bastard and have let my exercise slip and those same reasons for it happening have been the main reason for my unusually slow recovery. A key issue about hurting your back is you compensate and as a result you end up pulling muscles in other parts of your back, especially when you begin to do things that are a little more physical; so I've been in a little vicious circle of giving myself minor twinges and injuries as a result of trying not to hurt my lower back. I'm also fat. Not obese, but rotund around the midriff.
Anyhow, here comes the inconsequential sub plot...
I've noticed a kid round these parts; a little fat kid who seems to struggle to hang around with the other kids. Since we've moved here we've been quite pleased to see the kids play outside, but this kid, we'll call him Dee, appeared to be the one who everyone dared to do things because he would do stupid things to curry favour with them. As the months have gone on, it's clear he spends a lot of time outside, alone, and he seems utterly immune to the cold. It is also clear that fewer of the other kids have anything to do with him; you can imagine their parents saying, 'I dusnae want yers hanging aroond with that Dee, he's a wrong'un.'
There was obviously no school on Thursday and sensibly none of the other kids around here were outside, but Dee was. Over the space of an hour, I'd watched him run across the back of my garden; sit on the wall surrounding my neighbour's garden, throwing stones at their shed and then jumping off the roof of another shed in his own back garden. I found this a bit disconcerting until I later discovered there was a big trampoline next to the shed and he was jumping onto that. He was obviously bored, so when it came to sliding the fence panel he took up a spot on a nearby wall and watched us as we attempted to guide the panel into the slots. With the wind howling from the east, straight into our faces, it was no wonder it didn't fit into the slots properly; it jammed and the only thing for it was for me to take a hammer round to the neighbour's garden and try and unjam it without causing any damage to the fence panel.
Our neighbour's is being saved as a retirement home for the people who own it and live elsewhere. It is managed daily and there are gardeners and handymen always updating and upkeeping the place. If I had the money I'd like to buy it and turn my house into one big house, with one huge garden... Our neighbour's garden has a four foot wall running down its east side and double gates that are chained and padlocked. The only way for me to gain access would be to climb over the wall.
Now, in my head despite my ailments I'm still 18 and a four foot wall is something I'd simply vault over, but today I was still suffering a little with my back; I was cold, I had several layers of clothing on (a blessing in many ways) and the only way I could safely do the wall was to hoist myself up, swing my legs over and jump down the other side. It was simple in its simplicity.
Did I mention the 50mph+ gusts of wind coming off the hills?
I managed the first half extremely easily. Swung my legs up and was hit by a gust of wind that literally took my breath away and I started to fall sideways. In an incredible moment of clarity, in a millisecond I pulled my outstretched arm away and landed on my hip and back. Had I tried to break my fall, I would have broken my arm. The only thing I really felt was the force of the fall - I was falling onto grass with a thin layer of snow on it. It didn't hurt and despite my shouting OUCH! It was more for effect than anything; the wife couldn't see me so I needed her to know I'd done something. I mean, I could have knocked myself out and she was holding a precariously balanced fence panel in a hoolie.
Dee asked me quietly if I was okay and remarkably I was. I'd spread the fall across a large area of my torso. As I got up I noticed the shed I saw him throwing stones at and it had a large window and there were dents and gouges out of the wood under it. I made a mental note and walked over to the fence and finished the job, while having a laugh at my misfortune. The wife didn't see it, but I painted a suitably comical picture for her to cheer up what was fast becoming a shit day.
As I was finishing and trying to decide how to get out of the neighbour's garden, because there was rocks, gravel and concrete on the other side of the wall, which would do nothing to soften my fall if I fell again. Dee got the neighbour's wheelie bin and turned it on its side, I told him he was a genius and he asked me if I was from Australia. Once introductions and handshakes were done, I was just about to walk away when I turned to him and said, "Dee, you know you were throwing stones at that shed earlier? If you break the window, I'll have to tell the people who own this house it was you; you do understand that, don't you?" He nodded meekly and I told him he was a good lad and to enjoy playing out.
An hour later, just as it was getting dark, someone rang our doorbell and ran away. I managed to get upstairs in time to see Dee running down the neighbouring street, the way kids do, when they've done something wrong. On Friday, I saw him hanging around the BT exchange, I said hello and he waved at me. "Dee, you don't know any kids round here who think its funny to ring doorbells and run away do you?" He shook his head very slowly and said no he didn't. "Okay, no bother, but if you do know someone who does that, tell them if they do it again at my house I'll let the dogs out after them." And gave him a huge cheesy grin.
The next morning, I found a pile of stones outside my front door...
Friday, my hip hurt. I went for a long walk with the dogs and my mate Ian; I did a lot of moaning about my hip and felt he got a laugh out of my misfortune and probably I did him some good as he's been missing his other half who has been 'darn sarf' during all the bad weather.
This morning, I thought I was having a heart attack and realised that it was simply an aching left side of my body. I did some hoovering and other housework because that's how rock and roll my lifestyle is now.
And that was last week... Already it's Tuesday, the weather has warmed up and before you know it I have other things I could write a blog about.
Saturday 17 February 2018
Anniversary Waltz
Last weekend it was exactly one year to the moment we first
set foot in this house.
The fact we drove to this part of Scotland with six houses
to see at all, of which this one was firmly the least likely house to be
bought, is something I still find
weirdly surreal. A year ago, I doubt there were many people who thought we’d
ever move – I even suspected, for a while, that it was an unattainable desire,
mainly because my mantra for the later part of the 2010s has been: This is Hell
and We Can’t Leave.
Seven months after moving here, I do feel like a different
person. I get compliments from England about smiling – this can only be
positive.
The best person to ask if I’ve changed would be Luan – aka
Mammary Lass – who recently spent a week with us both up here and seemed to
genuinely enjoy herself, despite it being January and much of what I would have
liked her to see was obscured by clouds, lots of clouds… However, she’d never
admit to me improving at anything other than getting ugly, so maybe you don’t
ask her and just take my word for it.
A weird thing happened in the local pub recently; I had a
disagreement with someone over something – the EU – and instead of having that
prickly, uncomfortable feeling for most of the rest of the evening, I spent
five minutes realising and then wondering why I wasn’t feeling all prickly
towards the person I was having a disagreement with. I concluded it was a
combination of two things; it wasn’t really anything big enough to throw my
shit out of the pram and this place simply chills you out to the point where
being laid back is almost a gymnastic discipline, man.
Anyhow, one of the reasons I moved was to lower my blood
pressure and therefore prolong my life. This is achieved
by not allowing my old self to reappear and the only things in recent weeks
that have raised it have been ‘real world’ shit. We were without the internet
for a week and discovered that being isolated means diddly to major
corporations, even if you live within spitting distance of their exchange
building. Once, I would have sat here regaling you with tales of lazy
engineers, surreptitious drug-taking and the wanton waste of resources I have
witnessed since my office looked over the building, but, you know, I can’t be
arsed.
A ‘coincidental’ thing started happening shortly after
texting BT on their SMS service. I’ve been inundated with spam; text messages
and phone calls from people either wanting to sell me stuff or gamble my money
away. I had managed to pretty much avoid all unwanted mobile attention for a couple
of years, either by using a call blocker or by registering with the telephone
barring service thing and ... I don’t know... You send a text to BT, you get an
announcement up saying it will change the way your charging details are – or
something like that – and the next day and for the last seven, I’ve been
getting three calls and five texts a day from unwanted, bogus or simply dodgy
places. I wonder if other people have had anything like this happen to them or
if I just notice it more because I never got any before this.
On a more positive note: the wife has got herself a little
part time job, one she will be starting next week and working from home. It’ll
be good for her to do something new and different. The potential for me to be
forced into doing something practical will be there immediately, mainly because
she needs to buy herself a new computer – a laptop – and until we make the
decision on which one best suits what she’ll be doing, she’ll be taking over my
office for 15 hours a week.
Now, as I’ve alluded to elsewhere, the wife had a crappy
Christmas and I have spent most of 2018 hobbling about with another horrendously
bad back – caused, I’ve no doubt, by the fact I’ve become a fat bastard since I
moved here. I’m in one of those Catch-22 situations, by which I need to lose
weight and I also need to do more exercise, but all the associated aches and
pains that develop when you have a bad back have been in control, so doing the
latter to help the former hasn’t been as successful as I would have hoped. I
have made a start and begun to push myself again – but watching me wheeze and
struggle for breath after walking up a small hillock must be a mixture of
painful and hilarious for my new mate Ian, who I’ve started a weekly walk with.
I’ll feel better if (or maybe even, when) I can wear shorts
again.
One of my projects that I will, hopefully, begin while the
wife is using my newly redecorated office, is trying to solve the problem of
the severely flooding garden – I think this is a good way to get some exercise.
Based on photos from 2014 and from our visit here in 2017, I
think it would be fair to say that we’ve had a lot of rain down since August,
maybe much worse than other years – one dog-walking friend at Garlieston
suggested (maybe jokingly) that the weather has been awful since we moved
here... Locals claim it has never quite been as wet as it has for the last six
months and I’ve mentioned elsewhere how determined
the rain up here appears to be, this has been proved by the simple fact that
the new roof on the shed is leaking and it appears to be through sheer volume
rather than any fault in the re-felting. The wind doesn’t help – literally and
metaphorically.
Anyhow, we have this, possibly slightly forlorn, idea that
by digging a big fuck off hole in the middle of the lawn, about four or five
feet deep, filling it up with the gravel that currently passes as part of our patio
area and then filling the last part with massive great oyster shells which are
littered all over the beach (you mustn’t take the stones). The hole full of
gravel and shells will act as both a soak away and an ornamental pond that
rises and falls depending on the water table. I’m not convinced it will solve
the problem, but as it is the first and most logical course of action, I need
to be able to dig a small grave and therefore giving me a physical project
which, coupled with more walking, should help me get my weight down.
If that solves it (and as I said, I’m not overly confident),
I will then have the best part of early spring to get the neglected parts of
the garden sorted and the next stage of my project going. Using the soil from
the big hole, I intend to build up the two raised beds to a level where I feel
they can be used to grow salads and vegetables. At the rear of the garden,
where it doesn’t get quite as pond-like, I’m going to get my mate Frazer round
to cut down the leylandii and put a proper fence at the bottom of the garden.
In front of this fence will be a staging area with a 12’ x 6’ greenhouse –
which will give us a total of three areas down the garden for growing veg; all provided
the soak away does its job. This is MacMonty MacDon reporting from Gardening
Scotland... Film at 11.
The garden project is just the tip of the iceberg, so to
speak. I am as I said I’m getting back into some walking; I’m going to edit my
book – which isn’t physical, but will stimulate my befuddled brain – and I’m
going to take up Tai Chi and look for a genuine way of earning money while
keeping myself amused. The first part of the year has been a write off; I’m
facing the impending spring with a crazy little thing called optimism.
I'm sure there was something else...
Thursday 18 January 2018
Wigtown - 6 months - The Initial Verdict
"If we don't do something with what we've got left of our lives then we'll regret it for the rest of them."
I said that to Paula in November 2016, shortly after her mum died. Being two intelligent people prone to stupid, almost reckless, actions at times this was not an uncommon desire - to escape society; whether we'd have the balls to go through with it was another matter entirely.
If you'd asked my four closest friends in Northampton during my last few years there, only Phil (One El) seemed to genuinely believe we could do it. Roger barely entertained the idea outside of a kind of fanciful 'what if we won the lottery' way and Tony was the only person who said he didn't know if it was a good idea and would be sad to see me go. Jones, our 'joint' bf friend, was happy to look after the dogs when we came up here a year ago to see if we could do it; and she talked about it in an excited way, but you could tell from the last few weeks we were in Northampton it was something she kind of didn't think was ever going to happen... And I think that's the weird thing. I think we became this 'fixture' in Shoesville; yeah, we might not have been the party animals we once were and we hardly saw anybody any more, but Phil and Paula up sticks and fuck off to Scotland? Really? You're having a laugh? They're part of the fittings.
I still have to pinch myself. I said to the wife on the way back from the beach last week that sometimes I have a double-take moment where, like some acid flashback, I go, 'Wow. I actually do live here!'
The fact I was driving up here less than 12 months ago - February 13, 2017 - with the intention of buying a house almost seems like a fanciful load of nonsense; a waste of money; an exercise in nothing apart from having our first weekend away from dogs in over 25 years. The fact I'm writing this from the inside of my house, in Wigtown, in Dumfries and Galloway, in Scotland, says so much more than Mr Verbosity here ever could.
Yes, it was reckless. Paula gave up a 30+ year 'career' with HMRC; I gave up being unemployed and on the verge of incandescent rage for a more laid back unemployed chill. The wife sleeps a lot - she likes sleep; it's acting like some Tax Office detox. We've barely had a cross word. She's a wee bit weirder than I ever thought she was, but I know what I'm like and I'm gobsmacked she hasn't killed me yet; because this is pretty much the first time, apart from holidays, we've spent 24/7 in each others' company.
I am never ever going to say, "The scenery is getting boring". I'm probably never going to really moan about the beer, even if I may never have Oakham or Newby Wyke again. Of course there are things I miss about civilisation, but the longer I go without them the less I care. Availability is the only hurdle here, most things not in shops are obtainable via mail order, if you want to trust the internet with your shekels.
It rains here. Not yer average rain; but rain that seems to like ramming it home about how bleedin' wet it is. It's windy too and as a vegetarian I know a few things about wind. The thing is... begonias are perennials here. I don't know if that's a scientific thing, but in Shoesville if I left my begonias out throughout the winter, the first frost would turn them into some kind of brown sludge, never to be seen again. Up here they're so hardy they pop up every year unaffected by the cold.
The previous paragraph is not an obscure euphemism.
Buzzards! Birds of prey. Herons. (non-flying) Deer. (avoidable) Vet's bills. Foxes, woodpeckers, kingfishers, feral sheep, great egrets... fuck me it's like a zoo up here with no cages and pragmatic medical practitioners. It's an animal place, just keep your eye on your long dog because it doesn't pay for it to be a wanker up here.
It also doesn't appear to be as dark as I expected. A lot of this has to do with living near the sea - flat horizons, you see - so light hangs in the sky much longer than it would in the Midlands. As a result, despite dawn and twilight's dreariness, I haven't felt like winter's dark glove has enveloped me this year. This might have to do with my ... comfort with living here. I don't know if 'comfort' is the word I want. I do feel comfortable, but I also feel at ease and 'at home'; that might have something to do with the fact that my father's family originated from this neck of the woods, so in a existential way, I have come hame. I can't help hope that May, June and July will be well worth experiencing - I like daylight and I expect to see a lot of it.
'Everything is bigger here.' Says the wife, often.
'Yes, but it isn't Texas...'
I am of the opinion that germs are harder and considerably nastier up here - all that deep-fried Irn Bru. As a result, in six months I've had two nasty viruses and the wife, who simply doesn't do 'ill' has been ill twice as well. A lot of this is down to the 'holiday' factor - you relax and your body becomes a target for every nasty bug - and some of it is to do with new and countrified germs (like starting work at a school) that town germs simply are outclassed.
Christmas was awful. I hate admitting it because it wasn't supposed to be. You know; it was supposed to be great - our first Scottish Christmas and New Year in the adopted home of festivities. But the wife got ill in the lead up and I got ill once the main day was history. Since then it has been more like lurching from one day to another rather than recovering. A good day was followed by a bad one and then I slipped a disc. I'm not sure how I did it; I think it might have been getting out of bed. Then, in what might be seen as a foolhardy thing to do, we both dragged ourselves to a pub quiz and the half of the team that hadn't succumbed to germs caught up with everyone else and left me thinking I'm never going to recover this time around...
I'm pretty convinced I would have been ill in Northampton and I may have been worse factoring in various things. The thing is, I had a mild cold that took me off my feet for a fortnight back in October. This new thing has already lasted three weeks and has only recently shown signs of letting up. The best advice we've been given this winter is 'get out more' and we had massive intentions to do just that, but at the moment taking the dogs down the beach has become like mobilising for war and subsequently we still haven't got out except for shopping and the pub quiz. It should be pointed out that we wouldn't be or aren't any different than we would have been back in Shoesville - geography is just a thing in this case and not a factor.
If I'm waffling it's because I can.
The other day, something happened that was both completely out of character and weird; I also think it was something of a watershed moment. I was driving into Newton Stewart to pick up something from the Argos collection point (the closest Argos is 25 miles away, so they have a 'relationship' with Sainsburys to distribute their wares). I was on the A714; it is the main arterial route for Wigtownshire. If this road is blocked there are ways out but many of them have cows or sheep or both on them. Up ahead of me, about 3 miles out of Wigtown there were roadworks; it looked like they were filling potholes - YAY! - there was a bunch of workmen and two lads holding Stop/Go signs. I got the stop sign and sat there while the oncoming traffic filed past me and when they finished the lad holding the Stop/Go sign gave me a little wave and I waved back, smiling. At the other end, the older lad holding his sign also waved at me and I waved back and mouthed 'Thank You' at him and he put the thumbs up...
100 yards further down the road, I burst out laughing; almost hysterically. The only words that escaped my gob were, "What have you done with the real Phil Hall" before laughing even more hysterically. In Northampton, I would have been sitting in my car HATING the workmen, the fact they were out when I needed to be somewhere, hating the council, hating people - HATE HATE HATE APOPLECTIC HATE!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!!
Gone. It isn't there any more.
My brother Ron has phoned me three times in the last two months; that's twice more than he usually phones me a year. He asked me, in a genuinely loving way, last time, what I'd done with his brother.
I laugh a lot. We have no income at all; we've both put weight on (and I'm still suffering with a bad back over two weeks since it popped) - and yet, I'm... really fucking happy.
I miss my mates. It's been six months since I saw any of them. But I wouldn't swap this for them. Sorry guys, I love you all dearly, but this is home for me now. It feels right and I've stopped frowning and started smiling. I've had a shitty couple of months health wise, but the pros up here outweigh the cons by such a margin it isn't even worth contemplating.
When I drive to Newton Stewart, this is my view:
I can't really imagine finding that boring.
I might never be able to climb one of these hills without taking a week and oxygen canisters, but I can sit and look at them until the cows come home and long after that. Driving to the beach I get awesome views; at the beach I get awesome views; go to the Machars get awesome views; drive down through Bladnoch and get a view that could be Trumpton in Switzerland on acid ... Views don't pay the rent (well, they might), don't put food on the table and you can't have a good conversation with them, but I wouldn't swap them for anything.
We've made some friends. A few of them are great, a few of them are a bit weird and probably wouldn't be friends if we were in Shoesville and a few of them are barking mad... actually, we're all barking mad, because we moved here. You need to be a little insane to give up your old life for 1970.
While Scotland has been buried under snow, we've been wet with a hint of sleet every so often. In fact, I've been a reet nerd and have spent the last six months comparing the weather in DG8 with the weather in NN3 and, do you know, there's not been a lot in it. A couple of degrees in temperature some of the time; but NN3 has had a shit load more snow than we have in Wigtown. Those swings and roundabouts get all over the place...
I need to get well enough to feel confident to get a part time job. The wife needs to do the same because inactivity is worse for her than it ever was for me. We are still waiting for general work to be quoted on, let alone done, and there is a worry that should a pipe burst or something life threatening happens then we might struggle to get a local tradesman out before we've started decomposing, but, you know, there's less people living in this entire county than there is living in Northampton. It's not really an excuse, but it is a logistics issue.
I like the A75 - the main trunk road from the M6. From the Gatehouse of Fleet it is possibly one of the most picturesque routes I've ever travelled. It has a total WOW factor, especially from Carsluith, where you get to see my town, less than 3 miles as the crow flies, but still another 17 miles by road. You have Wigtown bay on your left and the southern uplands on the right, oh and lots and lots of trees. It is nature's way of calming even the angriest of souls.
Wigtown is 100 miles from Wigton in Cumbria. It is 338 miles from Fullingdale Road in Northampton to my new front door. It is 55 miles from Dumfries - the county town (that is about the same size as Kettering). Because it's in the bottom left hand corner of Scotland it is one of the remotest parts of the country that is technically not remote at all; we're just a long way from anywhere and Stranraer - the closest 'big' town is smaller than Daventry. My new chum Ian calls it 'Bedford by the Sea' and the fact it has a crappy one-way system, lots of empty shops and a drug problem means his description isn't far off being 100% accurate.
There's an Indian restaurant in Newton that is now run by Asians. Rather hilariously, the old 'Indian Kitchen' was run by a local Scottish guy, who used to buy his curry sauces from Aldi - apparently this isn't an urban legend or a tall tale. There are two Chinese restaurants there as well, but one is apparently much better than the other. There's an Italian cafe; a new-age hippy cafe and a posh restaurant owned by a man whose house we viewed in February.
That's our local proper town; here in Wigtown we have a garage and another garage that only does repairs. It has a Co-op. About a dozen book shops; a community charity shop; three antique shops; four bespoke cafes, plus a further half a dozen hiding in the back of shops and hotels. There's a bar which caters for the Tenants loving locals, and a hotel bar that caters for beer snobs like me. There's a butcher's, a library, three churches, a Masonic Hall, a golf club and a defunct harbour. There's an engraver, a chemist, a PO, an expensive hippy gift shop and public loos. There's a doctor's practice that you can almost touch from my back garden (when it isn't under water) and there was a bank that is being transformed into affordable housing units for young people. It also has an award-winning primary school, a closed pub - The Grapes - and if you drive into Bladnoch - like a suburb of Wigtown with some fields and a hill* dividing it - there's a pub that sells good beer and does reasonable food, a service station with the most expensive petrol you have ever seen and a whisky distillery, as well as an industrial estate with local businesses.
I really expected to know if it was a good decision moving here inside 6 months and I can quite categorically state it was the best decision we have made in the last 20 years. If you want a career then this isn't the place for you unless you're an expert in ferries or wood. If you can vet or can supply a needed service that isn't already catered for then you have a fighting chance. You need to come here with a wad of cash in the bank and not treat it like a holiday - we're still remarkably frugal, even if I've allowed myself to get fat. If you own your house in London, you can buy a three-bed detached Victorian town house for about £130k and have enough cash in the bank to mean you will only really need a part time job to pay your council tax and food.
* The hill, which is part of the golf course, is called Phillip Hill.
And there you have it. The first six months verdict. If I had to score it, I'd be fair and give it 8 out of 10 with much room for improvement once shit is out of the way. Huzzah!
Now, go and do something with your life that's exciting or you'll regret it.
I said that to Paula in November 2016, shortly after her mum died. Being two intelligent people prone to stupid, almost reckless, actions at times this was not an uncommon desire - to escape society; whether we'd have the balls to go through with it was another matter entirely.
If you'd asked my four closest friends in Northampton during my last few years there, only Phil (One El) seemed to genuinely believe we could do it. Roger barely entertained the idea outside of a kind of fanciful 'what if we won the lottery' way and Tony was the only person who said he didn't know if it was a good idea and would be sad to see me go. Jones, our 'joint' bf friend, was happy to look after the dogs when we came up here a year ago to see if we could do it; and she talked about it in an excited way, but you could tell from the last few weeks we were in Northampton it was something she kind of didn't think was ever going to happen... And I think that's the weird thing. I think we became this 'fixture' in Shoesville; yeah, we might not have been the party animals we once were and we hardly saw anybody any more, but Phil and Paula up sticks and fuck off to Scotland? Really? You're having a laugh? They're part of the fittings.
I still have to pinch myself. I said to the wife on the way back from the beach last week that sometimes I have a double-take moment where, like some acid flashback, I go, 'Wow. I actually do live here!'
The fact I was driving up here less than 12 months ago - February 13, 2017 - with the intention of buying a house almost seems like a fanciful load of nonsense; a waste of money; an exercise in nothing apart from having our first weekend away from dogs in over 25 years. The fact I'm writing this from the inside of my house, in Wigtown, in Dumfries and Galloway, in Scotland, says so much more than Mr Verbosity here ever could.
Yes, it was reckless. Paula gave up a 30+ year 'career' with HMRC; I gave up being unemployed and on the verge of incandescent rage for a more laid back unemployed chill. The wife sleeps a lot - she likes sleep; it's acting like some Tax Office detox. We've barely had a cross word. She's a wee bit weirder than I ever thought she was, but I know what I'm like and I'm gobsmacked she hasn't killed me yet; because this is pretty much the first time, apart from holidays, we've spent 24/7 in each others' company.
I am never ever going to say, "The scenery is getting boring". I'm probably never going to really moan about the beer, even if I may never have Oakham or Newby Wyke again. Of course there are things I miss about civilisation, but the longer I go without them the less I care. Availability is the only hurdle here, most things not in shops are obtainable via mail order, if you want to trust the internet with your shekels.
It rains here. Not yer average rain; but rain that seems to like ramming it home about how bleedin' wet it is. It's windy too and as a vegetarian I know a few things about wind. The thing is... begonias are perennials here. I don't know if that's a scientific thing, but in Shoesville if I left my begonias out throughout the winter, the first frost would turn them into some kind of brown sludge, never to be seen again. Up here they're so hardy they pop up every year unaffected by the cold.
The previous paragraph is not an obscure euphemism.
Buzzards! Birds of prey. Herons. (non-flying) Deer. (avoidable) Vet's bills. Foxes, woodpeckers, kingfishers, feral sheep, great egrets... fuck me it's like a zoo up here with no cages and pragmatic medical practitioners. It's an animal place, just keep your eye on your long dog because it doesn't pay for it to be a wanker up here.
It also doesn't appear to be as dark as I expected. A lot of this has to do with living near the sea - flat horizons, you see - so light hangs in the sky much longer than it would in the Midlands. As a result, despite dawn and twilight's dreariness, I haven't felt like winter's dark glove has enveloped me this year. This might have to do with my ... comfort with living here. I don't know if 'comfort' is the word I want. I do feel comfortable, but I also feel at ease and 'at home'; that might have something to do with the fact that my father's family originated from this neck of the woods, so in a existential way, I have come hame. I can't help hope that May, June and July will be well worth experiencing - I like daylight and I expect to see a lot of it.
'Everything is bigger here.' Says the wife, often.
'Yes, but it isn't Texas...'
I am of the opinion that germs are harder and considerably nastier up here - all that deep-fried Irn Bru. As a result, in six months I've had two nasty viruses and the wife, who simply doesn't do 'ill' has been ill twice as well. A lot of this is down to the 'holiday' factor - you relax and your body becomes a target for every nasty bug - and some of it is to do with new and countrified germs (like starting work at a school) that town germs simply are outclassed.
Christmas was awful. I hate admitting it because it wasn't supposed to be. You know; it was supposed to be great - our first Scottish Christmas and New Year in the adopted home of festivities. But the wife got ill in the lead up and I got ill once the main day was history. Since then it has been more like lurching from one day to another rather than recovering. A good day was followed by a bad one and then I slipped a disc. I'm not sure how I did it; I think it might have been getting out of bed. Then, in what might be seen as a foolhardy thing to do, we both dragged ourselves to a pub quiz and the half of the team that hadn't succumbed to germs caught up with everyone else and left me thinking I'm never going to recover this time around...
I'm pretty convinced I would have been ill in Northampton and I may have been worse factoring in various things. The thing is, I had a mild cold that took me off my feet for a fortnight back in October. This new thing has already lasted three weeks and has only recently shown signs of letting up. The best advice we've been given this winter is 'get out more' and we had massive intentions to do just that, but at the moment taking the dogs down the beach has become like mobilising for war and subsequently we still haven't got out except for shopping and the pub quiz. It should be pointed out that we wouldn't be or aren't any different than we would have been back in Shoesville - geography is just a thing in this case and not a factor.
If I'm waffling it's because I can.
The other day, something happened that was both completely out of character and weird; I also think it was something of a watershed moment. I was driving into Newton Stewart to pick up something from the Argos collection point (the closest Argos is 25 miles away, so they have a 'relationship' with Sainsburys to distribute their wares). I was on the A714; it is the main arterial route for Wigtownshire. If this road is blocked there are ways out but many of them have cows or sheep or both on them. Up ahead of me, about 3 miles out of Wigtown there were roadworks; it looked like they were filling potholes - YAY! - there was a bunch of workmen and two lads holding Stop/Go signs. I got the stop sign and sat there while the oncoming traffic filed past me and when they finished the lad holding the Stop/Go sign gave me a little wave and I waved back, smiling. At the other end, the older lad holding his sign also waved at me and I waved back and mouthed 'Thank You' at him and he put the thumbs up...
100 yards further down the road, I burst out laughing; almost hysterically. The only words that escaped my gob were, "What have you done with the real Phil Hall" before laughing even more hysterically. In Northampton, I would have been sitting in my car HATING the workmen, the fact they were out when I needed to be somewhere, hating the council, hating people - HATE HATE HATE APOPLECTIC HATE!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!!
Gone. It isn't there any more.
My brother Ron has phoned me three times in the last two months; that's twice more than he usually phones me a year. He asked me, in a genuinely loving way, last time, what I'd done with his brother.
I laugh a lot. We have no income at all; we've both put weight on (and I'm still suffering with a bad back over two weeks since it popped) - and yet, I'm... really fucking happy.
I miss my mates. It's been six months since I saw any of them. But I wouldn't swap this for them. Sorry guys, I love you all dearly, but this is home for me now. It feels right and I've stopped frowning and started smiling. I've had a shitty couple of months health wise, but the pros up here outweigh the cons by such a margin it isn't even worth contemplating.
When I drive to Newton Stewart, this is my view:
I can't really imagine finding that boring.
I might never be able to climb one of these hills without taking a week and oxygen canisters, but I can sit and look at them until the cows come home and long after that. Driving to the beach I get awesome views; at the beach I get awesome views; go to the Machars get awesome views; drive down through Bladnoch and get a view that could be Trumpton in Switzerland on acid ... Views don't pay the rent (well, they might), don't put food on the table and you can't have a good conversation with them, but I wouldn't swap them for anything.
We've made some friends. A few of them are great, a few of them are a bit weird and probably wouldn't be friends if we were in Shoesville and a few of them are barking mad... actually, we're all barking mad, because we moved here. You need to be a little insane to give up your old life for 1970.
While Scotland has been buried under snow, we've been wet with a hint of sleet every so often. In fact, I've been a reet nerd and have spent the last six months comparing the weather in DG8 with the weather in NN3 and, do you know, there's not been a lot in it. A couple of degrees in temperature some of the time; but NN3 has had a shit load more snow than we have in Wigtown. Those swings and roundabouts get all over the place...
I need to get well enough to feel confident to get a part time job. The wife needs to do the same because inactivity is worse for her than it ever was for me. We are still waiting for general work to be quoted on, let alone done, and there is a worry that should a pipe burst or something life threatening happens then we might struggle to get a local tradesman out before we've started decomposing, but, you know, there's less people living in this entire county than there is living in Northampton. It's not really an excuse, but it is a logistics issue.
I like the A75 - the main trunk road from the M6. From the Gatehouse of Fleet it is possibly one of the most picturesque routes I've ever travelled. It has a total WOW factor, especially from Carsluith, where you get to see my town, less than 3 miles as the crow flies, but still another 17 miles by road. You have Wigtown bay on your left and the southern uplands on the right, oh and lots and lots of trees. It is nature's way of calming even the angriest of souls.
Wigtown is 100 miles from Wigton in Cumbria. It is 338 miles from Fullingdale Road in Northampton to my new front door. It is 55 miles from Dumfries - the county town (that is about the same size as Kettering). Because it's in the bottom left hand corner of Scotland it is one of the remotest parts of the country that is technically not remote at all; we're just a long way from anywhere and Stranraer - the closest 'big' town is smaller than Daventry. My new chum Ian calls it 'Bedford by the Sea' and the fact it has a crappy one-way system, lots of empty shops and a drug problem means his description isn't far off being 100% accurate.
There's an Indian restaurant in Newton that is now run by Asians. Rather hilariously, the old 'Indian Kitchen' was run by a local Scottish guy, who used to buy his curry sauces from Aldi - apparently this isn't an urban legend or a tall tale. There are two Chinese restaurants there as well, but one is apparently much better than the other. There's an Italian cafe; a new-age hippy cafe and a posh restaurant owned by a man whose house we viewed in February.
That's our local proper town; here in Wigtown we have a garage and another garage that only does repairs. It has a Co-op. About a dozen book shops; a community charity shop; three antique shops; four bespoke cafes, plus a further half a dozen hiding in the back of shops and hotels. There's a bar which caters for the Tenants loving locals, and a hotel bar that caters for beer snobs like me. There's a butcher's, a library, three churches, a Masonic Hall, a golf club and a defunct harbour. There's an engraver, a chemist, a PO, an expensive hippy gift shop and public loos. There's a doctor's practice that you can almost touch from my back garden (when it isn't under water) and there was a bank that is being transformed into affordable housing units for young people. It also has an award-winning primary school, a closed pub - The Grapes - and if you drive into Bladnoch - like a suburb of Wigtown with some fields and a hill* dividing it - there's a pub that sells good beer and does reasonable food, a service station with the most expensive petrol you have ever seen and a whisky distillery, as well as an industrial estate with local businesses.
I really expected to know if it was a good decision moving here inside 6 months and I can quite categorically state it was the best decision we have made in the last 20 years. If you want a career then this isn't the place for you unless you're an expert in ferries or wood. If you can vet or can supply a needed service that isn't already catered for then you have a fighting chance. You need to come here with a wad of cash in the bank and not treat it like a holiday - we're still remarkably frugal, even if I've allowed myself to get fat. If you own your house in London, you can buy a three-bed detached Victorian town house for about £130k and have enough cash in the bank to mean you will only really need a part time job to pay your council tax and food.
* The hill, which is part of the golf course, is called Phillip Hill.
And there you have it. The first six months verdict. If I had to score it, I'd be fair and give it 8 out of 10 with much room for improvement once shit is out of the way. Huzzah!
Now, go and do something with your life that's exciting or you'll regret it.
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