Our week started abruptly when we were startled awake by an
absolutely humongeous crash which I swear shook the house! Was it World War 3? Had
aliens landed on the roof? No, neither of those. It was the sound of one of our
overloaded camping-style wardrobes giving in to gravity and crashing to the
floor. Fortunately none of the supports were damaged at all and having disentangled
the clothes and the parts of the wardrobe, we could re-erect it again with much
less in it. Later that morning we attached it to the wall and made sure that
the second one was leaning against one of the beams. We are not into early
mornings at the best of times, and being shocked awake has got to be bad for
us, surely?
Although we emptied the last box in the house last week, I
did mention that there were still quite a few down in the cave so this week we have been concentrating on those. In fact
there were rather a lot down there and many of them said ‘Books’ which I just didn’t
believe. As it turned out, I was half right. Photograph albums, postcard albums
and cookery books are also books but in my mind I had thought only of reading
books. It made a lot of heavy carrying to get the books that we had space for
to their rightful homes.
Because we have had to reassign our available storage space
to accommodate our needs, we have suddenly found ourselves with rather more
possessions than we can deal with and most of it gets sent down to the cellar.
I am loath to just pile stuff in there though, so believe it or not, we trotted
off to Emmaus, a shop which sells donated goods of all sorts, for charity, to
look for an old wardrobe. However, we were out of luck and came away empty
handed. Some of the stock moves quite fast though so we will try again in a few
weeks’ time.
Also this week, we finally got the hand rail for the front
steps which had been made up for us by a light engineering works not far away.
We discovered that the rail around the veranda is a standard design as are the
scroll ends. All we had to do was buy a suitable length of rail and two scroll
ends and they would weld it together for us in no time at all. Haha! I think it
was such a small job that it kept on getting shelved because no time at all
ended up being nearly three weeks. But it is here now and has almost been
fitted. Getting it here was a whole other story! The entire rail is just short
of three metres so it had to be carefully posted through the back of the car
and out of the front passenger window well wrapped with towels to protect the
paintwork etc. Said passenger then had to hang on to this thing all the way
home as it threatened to take off if not held down. Thank goodness it was a
short trip! The brackets have now been fitted and it has been painted to match
the existing rail and I hope, will be an asset to anyone attempting our somewhat
uneven front steps.
We seldom get out and about in the early mornings but in the
evenings when we are about, we often see deer grazing in the lands around here.
There are small patches of woodland between the fields and we think that is
where they hide out during the day. It is always a delight to see them and to
know that wild animals are tolerated alongside the farming. While we were
staying in our friends’ gite, we saw rabbits quite often when we had been out
at night, and that too, was a delight.
We finally got the grandfather clock going, after Neels had spent
a lot of time trying to find out what was wrong with it. In the end, he
discovered that the packers, in an effort no doubt, to silence it, had stuffed
bubble wrap right up into the chimes and had distorted them. Fortunately it
could be fixed and now we once again have the wonderful mellow sound of the
chimes in the house. It is really
beginning to look and feel and sound like home. We have hung up two of our many
pictures, but there are a lot more to go.
Last night, for the first time since we have been in the
house, we did not make a fire. Could Spring be on the way? Probably, although
tomorrow is forecast to be cold and rainy again. The daffodils are out and making
a fine showing and the fruit trees are just starting to have a simmer of pink
or white blossom, so all is not lost. No doubt the temperature will do as it
does in South Africa going up and down, up and down, until it eventually settles
into the next season. Spring is so lovely here that I feel that South Africa is
in some way deprived for not having four definite seasons.
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