There is something about the seesawing between restoring the Tudor house and chasing after cattle during a summer drought that feels like one of those timeless human stories, one whose smells and feel will linger long after I've read it. The fields, the dirt between the walls, the eventual sogginess of the rain, the old beams ...
You brought back memories - sitting as kids behind a tractor on a transplanter, shoving wilting broccoli plants into the dry soil. Hopeless work, days covered in dust, laughing at our gross brown snot.
Ah, 1976.....that was the summer when we sixth form girls were told to cover our arms because we were "distracting" the male teachers. But at least we were spared ties and blazers.
How well I remember that summer, the hosepipe bans, the never ending battle of keeping animals - sheep in our case - where we wanted them and not where they wanted to be. And how strange that this week I have had similar battles with both heat, a dry well and escaped sheep - a forthcoming post no doubt, if ever I find a moment between carrying buckets of water and patching fences and survive these suffocating temperatures!
A wonderful read Jeffrey - I am lagging behind due the above but refuse to be ruffled!
Good luck with those sheep! My sympathy. If it happens once it's a hassle. But when it keeps happening, it can seem like an ordeal, can't it? Take care.
Thank you for your comment, Victoria. I remember visiting some of the sites associated with Tess of the d'Urbervilles while at school in Devon. This meant visiting the neighbouring county, Dorset. The fields where the dairy herd she worked with might have been our own farm. It felt then that Hardy had written about a life I knew, even if from the perspective of a century before.
I loved reading this, Jeffrey. It was like a YA adventure story. So colourful and vivid. My stand out memory of 1976, I was six years old, is mum sending me to the stand pipe on the street with a bucket to fill ☀️
So much rich color here, Jeffrey. How amazing to remember 1976 for its heat all these years later. Rich layers as always with Kafka, Muir, and the Sisyphean task (!!).
A great piece, Jeffrey. Having worked as a builder for many years, sometimes restoring some very old buildings, I related to your experience of being covered in filth no matter how much you showered. There is also that rewarding feeling when the building is complete, though. Which I felt on your piece as well. :)
Thank you, Michael! I remember your writing about your work as a builder, one of the first things I read by you I think. There was definitely a sense of achievement, but as you know, maintaining and heating old buildings can be a challenge...
Thank you David. I hadn't actually planned to write again on that house. But writing this has dislodged one or two other memories, so perhaps I will return to it.
Such an interesting and atmospheric story, Jeffrey! I love the detail of your white gym shoes being inappropriate for farming life. Your parents clearly had a great spirit of adventure, which doubtless passed on to you.
Thank you, Ann! I'm so glad that you enjoyed it. Yes, my parents, especially my father, were up for an adventure. But they were far more practical in dealing with such things than I have ever been. Many of my adventures perhaps stemmed from my lack of practicality... 🙂
Your story reminds me of my ex-. His father had restored an old barn and he did it wonderfully well. It looked like something out of Better Homes and Garden, but for his room. It was the coldest in the house, and so he spent his childhood in a very cold space. His parents thought he was complaining (as kids do) until they moved downstairs in their old age to avoid the stairs. Turns out, he was right 😅They had a woodstove put in!
What a wonderful story Jeffrey! These old homes carry so much story and history. I can almost hear her voice growing clearer by the day as you and your family restored those good bones. And all under the sweltering dry heat of summer when all you probably wanted to do was laze under a tree and read a different kind of story.
Thank you, Kimberly. I like your idea of te voice. The sound of the wind at night in the trees near the house during autumn and winter is one that has stayed with me. One of the trees was a “monkey puzzle tree” (Araucaria araucana). These trees are orignally from Chile but have a fascinating history in Britain.
Relate hugely to so much of this! In 1973, my parents bought an ancient cottage on the Isle of Man (a place my mum had never visited and my dad had not returned to since he was a childish "holidaymaker" many years previous) on the basis of a real estate agent's report. Completely sight-unseen. This seems incomprehensible to me now but we proceeded to move there from Canada when I was 13. (My parents were both Brits originally). Even as a child, I will never forget entering that cottage! I had been primed for months with promises of a new life that would echo Rupert the Bear's. And granted, the surrounding property with its crumbling stables and pathway down to the sea was breathtaking but the structure itself was neglected, wet with damp and the large flat pans of rat poison openly on display made my mother weep. We did not move in. But that's another story altogether! Your descriptions here are excellent, Jeffrey and you capture that sense of summer so well. And, the cold!!
Wow, that's quite a story, Sue. It also makes me want to hear more. Did your parents keep the place for long? The way you describe it reminds of another another old house (though only Victorian) that my father bought a few years later. That was full of damp, too (I wrote about it in a post earlier this year).
No, we never even moved in. A doctor purchased for his daughter and they apparently tore the old cottage down and built a new place. Some day I will write about this!
I was newly married in the summer of 1976 and working in Birmingham, sweltering on wards where the Sister wouldn't allow us to go without tights; sunbathing on the roof of the Nurses Home in the afternoon of split shifts; and sweating in thick uniforms
Is the farmhouse still there? Is it still restored and beautiful?
That sounds like hard work, June! I'm pretty sure sure it's still standing. When my parents sold it, the buyer was someone with money from London who was more interested in having a Tudor farmhouse than in farming. I don't think he had it for long. But I'm sure it's still the main selling point of the property.
You are very generous, Portia. Thank you for your kind words. I certainly think that Muir’s poem reads like an outline for such a story, as well as working so well as a poem in its own right.
There is something about the seesawing between restoring the Tudor house and chasing after cattle during a summer drought that feels like one of those timeless human stories, one whose smells and feel will linger long after I've read it. The fields, the dirt between the walls, the eventual sogginess of the rain, the old beams ...
Thank you for those beautiful reflections, Antonia!
You brought back memories - sitting as kids behind a tractor on a transplanter, shoving wilting broccoli plants into the dry soil. Hopeless work, days covered in dust, laughing at our gross brown snot.
I'm glad if the memories are happy ones, Sarah. “Hopeless work.” I know what you mean.
Ah, 1976.....that was the summer when we sixth form girls were told to cover our arms because we were "distracting" the male teachers. But at least we were spared ties and blazers.
Goodness! I don't recall that happening at my school. But ties and jackets, yes.
How well I remember that summer, the hosepipe bans, the never ending battle of keeping animals - sheep in our case - where we wanted them and not where they wanted to be. And how strange that this week I have had similar battles with both heat, a dry well and escaped sheep - a forthcoming post no doubt, if ever I find a moment between carrying buckets of water and patching fences and survive these suffocating temperatures!
A wonderful read Jeffrey - I am lagging behind due the above but refuse to be ruffled!
Good luck with those sheep! My sympathy. If it happens once it's a hassle. But when it keeps happening, it can seem like an ordeal, can't it? Take care.
What a life you’ve had— so rich in experiences. I love reading about them. This sounds like a Hardy novel— (to an American).
Thank you for your comment, Victoria. I remember visiting some of the sites associated with Tess of the d'Urbervilles while at school in Devon. This meant visiting the neighbouring county, Dorset. The fields where the dairy herd she worked with might have been our own farm. It felt then that Hardy had written about a life I knew, even if from the perspective of a century before.
I loved reading this, Jeffrey. It was like a YA adventure story. So colourful and vivid. My stand out memory of 1976, I was six years old, is mum sending me to the stand pipe on the street with a bucket to fill ☀️
Thank you, Victoria! And thanks for sharing that memory. It's astonishing the things that stay with us, isn't it?
So much rich color here, Jeffrey. How amazing to remember 1976 for its heat all these years later. Rich layers as always with Kafka, Muir, and the Sisyphean task (!!).
Thank you, Kate! You've arrived in Japan in a very hot summer, too! 😊
I don’t know how humid it is up there in Tokyo, but I feel like I’m back in HK! Grateful for AC :)
Humid here too and likewise!
A great piece, Jeffrey. Having worked as a builder for many years, sometimes restoring some very old buildings, I related to your experience of being covered in filth no matter how much you showered. There is also that rewarding feeling when the building is complete, though. Which I felt on your piece as well. :)
Thank you, Michael! I remember your writing about your work as a builder, one of the first things I read by you I think. There was definitely a sense of achievement, but as you know, maintaining and heating old buildings can be a challenge...
Ohh yeah, definitely. It’s not easy.
Thank you David. I hadn't actually planned to write again on that house. But writing this has dislodged one or two other memories, so perhaps I will return to it.
What a summer! I hope there's going to be more about this house.
Such an interesting and atmospheric story, Jeffrey! I love the detail of your white gym shoes being inappropriate for farming life. Your parents clearly had a great spirit of adventure, which doubtless passed on to you.
Thank you, Ann! I'm so glad that you enjoyed it. Yes, my parents, especially my father, were up for an adventure. But they were far more practical in dealing with such things than I have ever been. Many of my adventures perhaps stemmed from my lack of practicality... 🙂
Your story reminds me of my ex-. His father had restored an old barn and he did it wonderfully well. It looked like something out of Better Homes and Garden, but for his room. It was the coldest in the house, and so he spent his childhood in a very cold space. His parents thought he was complaining (as kids do) until they moved downstairs in their old age to avoid the stairs. Turns out, he was right 😅They had a woodstove put in!
Ouch, I feel for him! Fortunately, I was listened to! 😊
What a wonderful story Jeffrey! These old homes carry so much story and history. I can almost hear her voice growing clearer by the day as you and your family restored those good bones. And all under the sweltering dry heat of summer when all you probably wanted to do was laze under a tree and read a different kind of story.
Thank you, Kimberly. I like your idea of te voice. The sound of the wind at night in the trees near the house during autumn and winter is one that has stayed with me. One of the trees was a “monkey puzzle tree” (Araucaria araucana). These trees are orignally from Chile but have a fascinating history in Britain.
Relate hugely to so much of this! In 1973, my parents bought an ancient cottage on the Isle of Man (a place my mum had never visited and my dad had not returned to since he was a childish "holidaymaker" many years previous) on the basis of a real estate agent's report. Completely sight-unseen. This seems incomprehensible to me now but we proceeded to move there from Canada when I was 13. (My parents were both Brits originally). Even as a child, I will never forget entering that cottage! I had been primed for months with promises of a new life that would echo Rupert the Bear's. And granted, the surrounding property with its crumbling stables and pathway down to the sea was breathtaking but the structure itself was neglected, wet with damp and the large flat pans of rat poison openly on display made my mother weep. We did not move in. But that's another story altogether! Your descriptions here are excellent, Jeffrey and you capture that sense of summer so well. And, the cold!!
Wow, that's quite a story, Sue. It also makes me want to hear more. Did your parents keep the place for long? The way you describe it reminds of another another old house (though only Victorian) that my father bought a few years later. That was full of damp, too (I wrote about it in a post earlier this year).
No, we never even moved in. A doctor purchased for his daughter and they apparently tore the old cottage down and built a new place. Some day I will write about this!
I was newly married in the summer of 1976 and working in Birmingham, sweltering on wards where the Sister wouldn't allow us to go without tights; sunbathing on the roof of the Nurses Home in the afternoon of split shifts; and sweating in thick uniforms
Is the farmhouse still there? Is it still restored and beautiful?
That sounds like hard work, June! I'm pretty sure sure it's still standing. When my parents sold it, the buyer was someone with money from London who was more interested in having a Tudor farmhouse than in farming. I don't think he had it for long. But I'm sure it's still the main selling point of the property.
This post reads like an adventure novel. It's true that misadventures become exciting and riveting, when they're so well written and told.
You are very generous, Portia. Thank you for your kind words. I certainly think that Muir’s poem reads like an outline for such a story, as well as working so well as a poem in its own right.