Fitting the furniture in

Well moving from quite a large 4 bedroomed house into a cottage was tricky, everything was too big and I had too much of everything. My neighbour Liz had said to me to not get rid of anything, just in case and shove it all in, so I took her advice and did just that, and also put some stuff in Holly's attic.
In the cottage of course there was no storage whatsoever, the attic was a bedroom and not even an understairs cupboard, so nowhere to hide anything. I ordered a gigantic shed to go at the bottom of the garden and then started to fit everything in.
As well as the furniture being too big, it also had to negotiate very narrow stairs with a door on them, and a 180 degree turn, we ended up dismantling all the upstairs furniture and re-building it, nothing seemed simple. I was lucky that Mike and Sally, my friends in Sussex were near enough to help me, as long as you supply Mike with coffee and chocolate he just works down the list, how lucky I am to have friends like that.
I saw an advert in the village for a handyman, he also needed coffee and chocolate, and to this day he has not completed my list either, he did put the shed up though and build some decking in front too.
I managed to get someone from round the corner in the village to widen the drive, and build some steps, he also recommended someone who helped me with some wrought iron gates; things were starting to take shape a last.

The Gardens at Kings Cottages

Kings Cottages are a row of 3 storey cottages built in the 1890s. They are set back from the road and raised up which is just as well as the area around Wateringbury is prone to flooding. They all have long thin gardens about 150 feet in length. Traditionally they had a narrow path down one side of the garden and all had those washing lines that look like they are a ship's mast. Each garden would have a small private section near the house and the rest was kept open and the neighbours used to chat and swap produce etc, Lovely I thought!
Next door on one side are Betty and Derek, who have become good friends.
The other half of my house belonged to John Wilson; he had a sign which said "Holler" as he was deaf, in his 80s and a keen gardener. He had been widowed in 1954 and spent his working life at East Malling Research which specialised in fruit tree grafting.His garden was overcrowded but amazing, full of apples, plums pears vegetables and even grapevines, you could hardly move in there.
The weekend I was moving in John was flying to Russia for a holiday, he used to fly to Moscow, catch a train and travel. Sadly this time he never returned; 3 hours from Moscow he had a stroke. He eventually was flown back to hospital in Bristol, but died there. I was very sad to lose my new neighbour and had been looking forward to geting to know him. After his death I did get to know his daughter Paula but thats for another time.

Before I moved in the builder had annihiallated my garden, removed everything and turfed over all the rubbish. Some of it was ok but some of it was dreadful, lumpy bumpy and dried out sods of turf. The job is still unfinished. Here are some photos of it when I moved in.

Moving to Kent

I moved here to Kent in 2007, living in a place called Kings Hill first. Kings Hill is a new housing area built on an old airfield so it's very flat. It had everything I needed and I was in a really smart new flat, but I couldn't settle there, it felt very unreal and plastic.

I looked around for somewhere to buy and found this lovely cottage on the market, it had a really good feel to it, but had several down points. It was on a very busy main road with a narrow drive and was dangerous manouvering off the noisy road. Also the windows are quite small so not as light as I wanted.

I bought it and decided to widen the drive and put some safe gates on to protect the grandchildren when they play in the garden.

The kitchen was also very small with a separate toilet outside; I decided to knock down the outhouse and extend the kitchen. I had to take out a second mortgage to do that!

I moved in at the August Bank Holiday weekend, what a job that was! Some of my belongings came from my home in the north west, some from friends houses, some from Kings Hill and some from Holly's. I thought I would never get straight ever again. Add to that I had been in Turkey the whole of August so I was ill prepared. Also I had to get rid of a lot of items when I moved originally, and then had to start buying all over again, nightmare.

I started my new job the following week so it was quite some time before my feet hit the ground. Ended up with a migraine on the second day of my new job too.