This weeks blog sees us relocating to an actual house and dog sitting our old friend Cali van dog whilst Jackie's sister is on holiday. We take advantage of all the amenities a house offers, particularly an oven for baking our Christmas cake and mincemeat- Christmas is coming!
Dog sitting & joys of a house
We have enjoyed a lovely week in Nottingham, living what you would consider a more normal life in a house. As much as we want to extol the virtues of campervan life, there are many positives to having a house. Hot showers on tap, the joys of being able to cook food in an oven, the capacity to find our own space at times, an indoor loo… the list could go on.
All of these simple things, that in the past we may have taken for granted, we now value in our lives and are really grateful for. You cannot believe what simple joy we have taken from having an oven to use…we have pretty much lived off oven dependant meals this week and have absolutely loved it!
The dog sitting aspect has not been too challenging, compared to our summer adventures with Cali when we were confined to life in a van. Cali has been really settled in her own home and she has been showing us the ropes. We have learned all about where and when she likes to go to pee, how we should spend our days lazing on the sofa and exactly what time dinner is served each night! In addition, she has been most insistent on trying to sleep in our bed each night…it has been like looking after a determined toddler, desperately trying to find ways to keep her out of our bed. It is fair to say that Cali was victorious on most nights.
On more surreal notes, on our daily dog walks we randomly bumped into a couple who follow our blog- which was just lovely to meet people that share our passion for adventures in early retirement. We also randomly bumped into someone we went to university with over 30 years ago. Fate is a wonderful thing for bringing people together and it was so lovely to catch up with Nicki and reminisce about the past in a most unexpected way.
Xmas cake & mincemeat rituals
One of the advantage of house and dog sitting this week was that we could maintain our annual tradition of making the Christmas cake and mincemeat during the half term break. For us, this has always been the week to start the thinking about Christmas. For years we used to make our own mincemeat as Jackie has an absolute aversion to peel in shop bought mincemeat. Once you have made your own mincemeat once, there is no going back- it is just amazing! Likewise, Dad always used to make the Christmas cakes for the whole family. I am not sure how he fell into this ritual, as he never really cooked or baked anything else in his life. However, the Christmas cakes were firmly his domain, following a closely guarded family recipe that we have used for at least all of my 51 years.
When Dad passed away last year, the mantle of Christmas cake making passed to me and I am now in my second year of production. It is a really sad reminder that Dad isn’t with us, but it is also really joyful carrying on the tradition that he was so proud of. Every step of the bake I could feel Dad’s presence and imagined the words of advice as he looked over my shoulder. How can something as simple as baking a cake be so spiritual and emotionally rewarding?
Just for your information, I think that you will like this poem by Donna Ashworth that I came across on social media that really resonated this feeling.
House frustrations
Another week and another week of house purchase frustrations! Things came to ahead this week after a couple more weeks of little progress. We tossed a grenade email to our solicitor on Sunday and it seemed to get things moving Monday morning. The problem is seemingly that our sellers solicitor is not particularly keen on details or accuracy and feels that he has done all that is required for the sale, despite 4 very clear enquiries from our end still being outstanding. Our frustration is beyond belief, probably magnified by the fact that we had lots of time this week to sit and stew on the lack of progress.
Our solicitor did the right thing and finally picked up the phone to the other side and made his exceptions clear. Our sellers, armed with the information we provided, also raised hell with their solicitor at a mid-week meeting. By the end of the week, we may have made a little progress, but still no exchange date in sight…hence us making the impromptu decision to book a one way ferry ticket to the Outer Hebrides on Sunday! ***k them all, they can now wait until we are ready, we cannot waste any more emotion sitting around and waiting for something to happen.
In sharp contrast, we had some ace plans from our architect for our renovations- the plans for the lean-to kitchen look really exciting. We just want to get going and start knocking down some walls…or more precisely, getting a building company to knock down some walls for us!
Escaping to the wild places
As we mentioned above, we made an impromptu decision to escape to the Outer Hebrides for our next adventure- just because we can. How long will we stay? Who knows. Where will we go? Who knows. What will the weather be like? Who knows and who cares. We just want to get away from all the emails and phone calls and get back to the reasons we early retired- to get out and about and have amazing adventures. Looking at the ambient temperatures, sadly it may be time to pack away the budgies for another year…but who knows…
We have the van packed with all of our gear for all of the weathers, we are fully stocked with food for a week or so of wild camping in the back and beyond, and surprisingly have packed very little alcohol for the week- we both decided that we needed a dryer week after the rather heady week gone. Who knows how well that decision will go, but there won’t be many corner shop options on the Islands if we change our minds!
So there you have it, another week gone. As I type this, we are sat at windy and desolate Uig ferry port on the Isle of Skye waiting for a crossing to the Outer Hebrides. We are so excited to get away for a week or so, and the impromptu nature of the trip makes it even more exciting. We look forward to lots of adventures and lots of photography this week.
Have fab week,
Richard & Jackie.
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