On the move ............

This week we begin the business of moving into our new home.

The house is welcoming. From the outside it looks austere, almost unwelcoming. But once you are inside all that changes. You feel the house welcoming you. It is obviously a house that has been lived in well, the atmosphere tells you that.

There is a strong sense that it has been and will be a great house for parties.

The heart of the house will be the Rayburn a warming sense, wonderful cooking smells and a kitchen that will be lived in.

Outside the outhouses, the garage, the wood and coal stores enclosed in a sheltered courtyard all speak of a house to be lived in as a home.

As Bob Dylan sang in the Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest:

What kind of house is this, he said
Where I have come to roam
It's not a house, said Judas Priest
It's not a house ....it's a home.

And that's what we will make it.

Our plan is for an open door and an open table. A place of welcome. There will be dogs, there will be chickens and there will be books.

Removal men always complain about Vicars, Vicars and ..... not Tarts as you might expect, but Vicars and books.

Boxes and boxes and boxes of books.

When the indoor critic and I moved house, which happened numerous times, it was always the books that caused the problems.

Books on shelves are wonderful, the comments were usually, It feels like a Library! Have you read all these books?

I found that if I sat quietly in my study the books would whisper their stories to me.

But books out of their shelf context, books in boxes, are simply piles of boxes waiting to be opened and the contents restored to their true place, shelved and in Alphabetical order, writer by writer, by Dewey Decimal Classification.

Moving from my last parish, the indoor critic and I downsized from a five bedroom house to a deceptively spacious two and half bedroomed retirement home.

Now Elizabeth and I are upsizing, moving our two homes into one.

I retired at sixty two, now after eleven years I am starting work again, my next retirement may well be some five or six years ahead (Deo Volente) and I imagine that we will then be downsizing again?

But that's in the future.

For now, Charity Shops, eBay, Skips and what we have managed to hang on to over the years will furnish our seven bedroomed Vicarage just perfectly, a bit weather beaten, a bit frayed at the edges but relaxed, comfortable and dog friendly, above all dog friendly.

So this week there is a Chicken Coop to be built.

When we were shown around the house by the Archdeacon he wondered what the newly delivered boxes were and whose they were.

Oh I said they are Elizabeth's, it's a Chicken Coop. A Chicken Coop? He rejoined and where is that going?

In the Orchard, I said. There's an Orchard? He responded. Why isn't this the Archdeacon's House?

Well I replied, I'm not at all sure, but once the Coop is built the next thing we are looking for on eBay  is a Cider Press.

A cold Shotley Fields Cider straight from the fridge on a warm summers evening, now that's a treat in store for 2019 ......


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