A Room with a view

“Home is the most important place in world.” – IKEA motto

The Bell ringers are practicing as they do every Monday evening at St. Peter’s Church. It is a sound I have come to know, love and cherish living here. The sound is steady, strong, and clear. It is the sound of normalcy, of all things being well, and as they should be in blessed Barford. It is a sound that touches me deeply, comforts and soothes me.

Here in our new home, I am even closer to this wonderful sound. Our new home is just over the road (across the street) from St. Peter's.

From our new bedroom window, the D.E.B and I have a perfect view of that sweet little church, where we were married just over 8 months ago.

So, this is home.

I know at last how “Home” feels. All my years of wandering, striving rootlessness have come to an end. Playing on our penchant for Merchant-Ivory films, the D.E.B. joking suggested we call our new home “Howard’s End” – as I have now bid adieu to that chapter of my life.

I do feel a sense of ending, and wonderful new beginning. I have never had a place to call my own. And, now, feeling so settled and complete, I realize how unsettled and unfulfilling my past truly has been.

My heart breaks a little with sadness for that girl, the former me. I wish that there were some way that I could go back, speak to her, hug her and tell her everything turns out tremendously in the end. 

“Just wait and see,” I would say to her. “One day, you will live the life you imagine!”

The D.E.B. and I have been in our cute, little house only a very short while. We are still up to our ears in boxes, but things are coming together slowly.

I discovered the incredible pleasure vortex that is IKEA UK in Coventry this weekend. I will never be the same...

The D.E.B. has done an absolutely amazing job of assembling stylish Swedish furniture, for our snazzy “Scandiwegian” house. (For some reason, Barford seems to have more than its fair share of sassy, Scandinavian designed houses that were a rage in Britain in the late 1950s-60s.)

The exterior is not much to write about, very functional, practical. But the inside is pure magic. True to the Nordic artistry, the house is all about light, height and open space.

I feel like I can breathe in this house.

This weekend, I also finally, finally began unpacking boxes that arrived with me from New York over 18 months ago. When I first arrived, the D.E.B. and I were living in a rented house, and so there seemed little point in unloading all my worldly possessions in a place we were only going to pack up and leave eventually.

What joy then, over this past weekend, to re-discover the treasures of my life! It became very clear to me, while perusing these objects and trinkets of days past, that I have been collecting and accumulating my entire life for this very moment.

So many things that I had completely forgotten I owned have now at last re-surfaced to claim pride of place in our new home.

It also a wonder, a joy and a blessing to have found a kindred spirit who shares, enjoys and adores my aesthetic.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. – John Keats 

Breaking news!

The DEB and I have put in an offer for a house here in Barford, and our offer has been accepted!!

The readiness is all

Property. 

As a New Yorker, the very concepts of property and real estate have always been incomprehensible. No one I know owes property in Manhattan. NYC is, and will always be, a city of renters. 

I lived in New York for nearly five years, and at the end of each year, what did I have to show for it? As my father, god bless him, was always so swift to remind me, nothing. Nothing but a "receipt book." According to him, the goal of the game is acquisition. Acquiring property, equity and so forth. In the end of course, we can't take any of it with us, but, while we are here at least, capital and real estate are king.

The D.E.B. and I looked at a property here in Barford last week, and there is not much to report beyond that. We looked, we liked, we left.

We chatted about it incessantly after, dreamed about it, and even had a chat with a mortgage office at a local Building Society on Monday. Then...nothing. The house has not been mentioned since. I have tried to bring it up casually, to no avail.

As a rootless New Yorker, I am desperate to have a place to call my own. A kitchen that is mine, a garden that is ours, and etc. The D.E.B. seems, well, indifferent. Which quite unlike him, to be sure. Perhaps the current financial climate is the source of his cautiousness, or perhaps he is just feels the need for us to focus on one thing at a time. (Boys are like that, aren't they?) We are neck-deep in the midst of wedding planning at the moment, maybe another big move would be a bit much to take on just now. (As a side-note: I once had a friend who managed, rather fearlessly, to graduate from University and get married in the same day! How's that for multi-tasking!)

At any rate, I just don't want this cottage to get away!!! It could be years before another such property comes on the market in Barford. There is very little turn over in locales like this.

Okay. In true English cottage fashion, the house we looked at--built in 1820--is tiny and narrow. But it has the benefit of being bright and cheery, with lots of 19th century charm and character. A working fireplace, a cellar, small conservatory--perfect, perfect writer's space--and a sweet, little garden. 

The master bedroom is a good size, the second bedroom is only so-so. Again, in true English fashion, there is precious little storage space. I actually asked the woman of the couple selling the place: "Where do you keep your clothes?" Her reply: "I downsized." (Yikes!)

So, okay, less than perfect, but far from a write-off. I think it would be a great start for us. 

Especially as we are keen to start working on a family soon.

I have to gauge how much and how far to push on this. A part of what I am feeling is fueled by the overwhelming nesting urges I have that are completely in over-drive at the moment, but also by my deep-set sense of the pointlessness of renting.

The D.E.B. comes from a different mind-set. This is the first time in his adult life that he has lived a renter, and I think he relishes the new-found freedom that non-property-ownership brings. I just fear we are going to look up one day and see a SOLD sign in front of that cute cottage over the road...