Minimalism & multi-tasking

I hear reports that minimalism* is on the way out. This is of no consequence to those of us who have never hoped to embrace such style. I think it is perhaps only a possibility for those who have grown up in the age of the Kindle, and so don't have any books, and certainly is hardly possible to the kind who collect wool and/or fabric. There are some people who make things as I do, who just buy enough for the project, and chuck out any remaining material. Others, like me, tend to say 'Oh, give me an extra yard of fabric in case it

Just a few of those extra bits of fabric

needs mending in the future'.

*Minimalism has an interesting relationship with the old idea of 'a place for everything and everything in its place'; but I think the latter idea is more conducive to creating a house with room to collect those empty jamjars that I crave.

Multi-tasking is not getting a good press either, and I saw some report showing that it actually causes us psychological harm, and also makes results from all the tasks juggled less likely to be successful, which is fairly predictable. You are more likely to burn the bread if you are also writing an article at the same time, especially if you can't remember where the oven timer is and you can't find it because it is hidden in clutter because you are not a minimalist.

So the best life is maybe one in which you sit surrounded by your many possessions, concentrating on one thing. This used to be what men did when they got home from work: they would sit reading the paper in an armchair with dog and slippers while dinner was cooked, then they would go and eat it. The woman who cooked it was perhaps reasonably happy in the kitchen, secure in the knowledge that she was at least doing what society expected of her. (Fulfilling expectations can be a source of satisfaction that can rival making the most of one's talents, I think; I speak as one to whom fulfilling expectations matters quite a lot, whatever it looked like from the outside on a Wednesday afternoon when I had gone to windsurf on the lake [those were the days!] rather than cleaning the vicarage, going out lecturing, or whatever else people thought I ought to be doing.)

I'm not advocating such rigidity of life & demarcation of roles, but sometimes I envy it, the feeling that one might at any moment feel to be 'doing the right thing'. (Oh yes, I stand in need of some high-strength Zen to make me feel I am doing the right thing in the present moment at least, tortured soul that I am).

Bathroom with previous wobbly
plastic bath side

Lovely real wood bath side

But this is suppose to be my house-moving blog, so I will tell you about one thing that is good here, and thoughts of minimalism made it come to mind as it would even look right in a minimalist house, and I'd say it has something of the no-nonsense qualities that minimalist things have to have. As for the multi-tasking theme, it also fits with that, as the bath is a place where the only kind of multi-tasking to take place is deciding whether to take a snack and a drink and a book, and whether I can carry them all up at once. I find I take all of these just in case, but then I just shut my eyes. (And don't give me any of those glass doors bordering the bath, as these really do get in the way of my beer, and no, this jolly shower curtain will not be left behind.) When I get out of the bath I don't have the irritation of one of those flimsy plastic bath sides that makes a Rolf Harris noise if your knee rests against it and gets so much in the way, particularly when trying to bath the grandchildren. So please, admire the half-inch marine ply bath side fitted according to my own wishes, and finished by my own hand with Danish oil, by far the best treatment for wood. There's nothing fake or flimsy in this house now, and I only hope I can move to something I can make as good.

Good news on beige

I say, a reprieve! I had feared that my house was going to be the victim of some of the guidelines issued by those in the house-selling business, things like Tidy Up (difficult, & so boring), Mend Everything (oooh dear - but I did mend the errant door catch that resulted in me running round the block in my jamas to try to get into my own living room), and above all Slap on a lot of Boring Innocuous Bland Colours, which seems not to be necessary, as a very pleasant young woman from William H Brown's has been round and given my green the

The green paint is saved for the nation.
Hang on - isn't that far wall just a bit... beige??

green light! So I don't need to go out and get a huge tin of beige paint, and merely have to keep the place in some kind of order in case of viewers.

Double bed, but one of you must climb over the other to get out
of it (not shown)

I was of course wondering whether I could sell the place by means of this daft blog, but you will admit, as even I do, that it seemed unlikely. So it looks like this blog will just continue its merry way a the diary of a house-seller. Its fangs have been drawn, so to speak, and it is now just a cuddly pussycat and not the roaring lion it began as, what with me fulminating on the terrible taste of the British house-buying public and the wickedness of the market in its promotion of bland, bland, bland.

I did however learn something of the art of deception involved in all this, and found myself arranging just one side of a room to look good, so that a photograph from a favourable angle might be taken. Thus the pic of
the Pink Bedroom (which I inherited from he previous owner) doesn't show that the bed is jammed right up against some ancient bookshelves from the era when things Habitat were more affordable - from around the time of the original chicken brick really - (click here for interesting article about the chicken brick) and these shelves are full of that unclassifiable material in everyone's houses called Stuff. The limiting of Stuff has really become something of a necessity these days, and I have browsed many a 'de-clutter your house' website, but obviously not with nearly enough sincerity. This is one of them: How to de-clutter I'm going to study it right away. G'night!

The promised morning post

"Joy cometh in the morning" which is one of the lovely ideas in the psalms, and it wouldn't be so striking if the psalms were all full of sweetness and light. Perhaps their writers had someone at their elbow saying, 'Do you think you ought to put that, darling? It looks so angry', and he would reply 'Well it's how I feel; read on to the end'.

So I thought I'd start the promised 'morning blog post' by remembering that just round the corner is this lovely view of a path that will take you straight into the hills, or down towards Shore and its lovely pub the King William IV, the 'King Bill' as it's known. King Bill

Another thing that brings me joy in the morning is that I head straight for the cupboard under the stairs as soon as I wake up, to the electricity meter to check the reading, and after a few experiments with setting the storage heaters at various levels, I find I can afford to run this house on my modest income, and believe you me it is modest, which is not to say I'm not very thankful that it is there. So I put the kettle on, and come back with my 2 figures and enter them into my book, then back to bed with coffee to contemplate the day ahead. As for my swipe at readers of the Readers' Digest, (a pile of these would appear out of nowhere at my parents' house, and I was glad of it) I confess to being somewhat addicted to that long last article that always appeared in there, typically some gripping yarn entitled 'Rattlesnake in my rucksack' and often involving cutting off one's leg to survive, and I think I've been shaped by these into hoping for some adventure in life; now it seems that merely selling and buying a house has elements of it! But let's hope my leg stays on.

I tried to fill in a form online to describe my house, one of these with a lot of boxes to tick, and I felt so cross that I had to say 'No, the property does not boast central heating throughout, nor even partially', as I believe storage heaters in most rooms doesn't count. This is a shame, because they are such a good way to heat the house, and combined with the multi-fuel stove that appears in quite a few blog posts, you have the perfect heating system, economical, totally quiet, and with no central boiler to go wrong. Those big brown things you may remember from your youth are nothing like the modern slim versions. Since they take in oomph
overnight, they are marvellous for standing a clothes horse next to, and a box of wood too, for getting the wood for the stove bone dry. If you have them on at a low level to get you through the getting out of bed stage - which would be very low and economical - you can go out to work and know that in the evening you can come home to some background heat and light up the stove for a warm glow to sit round. I even warm up my dinner on the stove if I have something frozen that just needs re-heating. It's a Dunsley Hilghlander 5 Enviroburn, and I don't think you'll find anything better.

Look, I'm not really a morning person myself, and I just wrote this mostly before 8 am, so I think this house is having a good effect on me, as I usually wake up feeling much better than the night before, and certainly yesterday's rail journey involving four rather cold trains and a windy cold 40 minute wait in the open air at Mirfield (so not like Adlestrop) didn't do my mood any favours as you will see from the previous post.

Contact details

You can contact Viv at:

spanishviv@yahoo.co.uk

A machine for living in

Le Corbusier famously said that a house is 'a machine for living in'.* Well you can Google that and find out what he meant, but just now I'm in the mood to tell you what I think it means. It means that a house is not meant to be something put on the market and described as 'beautifully presented'. It means that me sitting here, slightly pissed (oooh drinking alone, yes!) by my fire, thinking how beautiful it is, and how I'm not going to destroy this scene just for the sake of some bl**dy estate agent's blurb of 'beautifully presented' (PLEASE say that in a silly voice, if you will: it deserves it). It means something like 'the house was made for man, not man for the house', and really you wouldn't know that if like me, you kept on reading estate agents' blurb when you ought to be worming the cat or whatever.

It's de rigueur to take issue with what le Corbusier said, as his stuff certainly led to a lot of cheap crappy things getting built in the wake of the revolution in house style that he had a lot to do with, but we ought not to hold this against him. He wanted to sweep away a lot of over-ornamented Victorian stifling stuff so that
people could live closer to nature, and I certainly go along with that. He'd surely be appalled at the nasty little over-ornamented things that have in subsequent years been marketed as 'starter homes', and which have everything to do with economics, meaning that people who are starting out on the housing market will not mind being forced too close together in a cramped little bijou pretentious little thing, with the thought that they might be able to afford a few more square metres next time; well, they can see it as an extended honeymoon I suppose. It helps that books now are on Kindle etc, and exercise is in gyms, and food is something you don't cook, but watch people doing it on the telly. Everyone knows, or ought to know, that British housing is the most cramped in Europe, and having said that I'm feeling that I will not get rid of anything from my treasured collection of books and furniture; I'm a woman in crisis, and I need the comfort of my familiar things around me, allow me this please, anyone with a 'clear out the clutter' gene: it's just that I haven't got it, and when I do, I regret it.

Great ale thanks Joolz!

*I suppose a church is 'a machine for praying in'? I can go with this description: some work better than others. Take a look at this new one, where I lived for a couple of years: Cuddesdon chapel

Le Corbusier would have been appalled at the idea that a house was basically an economic thing, designed around the economy, and not designed around the people who live in it. Of course, the British will never warm to what he said, because many of them will be put off by that word 'machine', and when it comes to houses retreat into words with cottagey associations. Well I would like to suggest that the English 'cottage' (whatever it ever was) was a brilliant 'machine for living in' if it was warm in parts and stimulated conversation by the fire, and so is my 'quasi-semi' (??? as I think it can be called, meaning that it's in the middle but thinks it has some of the qualities of a semi, the kind that people who read the Readers' Digest would like).** Oh heck, I'm going to have to put a pic on here to show you what kind of excellent beer it is that is making me so frank tonight. So I will be franker still.

** Sorry! That just slipped in. I've read many a copy myself in waiting rooms etc, and it's not all bad, given that it is written by the CIA.

Let me say to all you lot out there:  this house is for sale, yes, and if any of you turn up your nose and say it is 'not well presented' then you are absolutely right! It's a house I tweaked so that it would be good for me to grow old in, for me to sit by the fire in and get silly when I've had some beer, to tell my worst jokes over and over, for me to sit here weaving and letting my grandchildren help and do it a bit wrong and me not mind, (which is an achievement given that I'm a terrible perfectionist). It's a house for my family and friends to come and sit by the fire and learn that real things are the best, that a fire is meant to  teach us how to grow old and ill and finally die, a lesson you will not learn if all you do is go to supermarkets and listen to the relentless upbeat jingly music and eat food out of season, having forgotten what is in season, and even what season it is, and longing for summer, or perhaps you will just jump in a jet and go off to somewhere warm. But you could be here, warm by the fire, and perhaps I won't be soon, I even hope I won't, and I will mourn this fire

Lovely summerhouse reduces value! No 'off street parking' now!
Yes, I am seeing to the garden; I used to look after half an acre remember.

forever.

Whoever ends up in this house after me, may they never say 'the house boasts' anything at all, and may they ever sit here in the evening and warm their pyjamas and their wine, and may they think that someone put this fire here for herself, and that she left it for love of her sons and their women and children, to be with them, which is the only good reason to leave a fire behind, or maybe there could just be one other good reason, but that one has not happened to me.

If my ex were here now, he'd be starting to recite the bit from Beowulf that is best seen here: The drunken bit from Beowulf

I know - awful blog post, how can she do it! Surely she will delete it in the morning! But no, let an evening blog post stay, and then let there be a morning blog post where she will list things, and tell you how much things cost.

Minimalism & Magnolia

Enjoy the views on these posts, as it is likely that things will not stay this way, and I will be forced to be realistic and paint the place mostly in magnolia to satisfy the would-be home-owners of today who like things to be (or at least start off) rather bland. It's very sad, but there you go.

There will be some posts coming up which will take you on a tour round the various rooms of the house and tell you all the usual things you get from an estate agent, and maybe I'll even get to use that word 'boasts', as in 'The property boasts a 7-piece bathroom suite' (something like that, whatever it is). I'll photograph each room as it is, probably tidied up a bit as I'm a right-brainer and that means hoarding and liking things I'm working on to be left out in decorative heaps (WHY do people find this so hard to understand and refer to my 'untidiness'?) It's going to be a hard few months, a bit like a cat pretending to be a dog because it's living in a dog-lover's house. Awkward. But left-brainers seem to rule the world, so I will have to comply in this short-term exercise.

Then I'll put up some pics with the place made to fit the world I have to live in.

Eventually I might have a house again that I can live in properly, as I was starting to do here.

No pictures with this one, I'm being minimalist.

Nestling

"The property nestles....".
Now being a frequenter of estate agents' websites, shop windows etc, I am noticing the kind of blurb they write to talk up the property they are trying to sell. One term I have noticed is 'beautifully presented', and that's what was said about this place when I came to look at it. It may not qualify for that description any more, as I think it means that it is all clean and tidy everywhere, with nothing looking unfinished or out of place. I can't claim that for here now at all.

A term that seems to go back years is this thing about 'nestling'. A property gained points if it could be said to 'nestle' in the hillside or at the foot of something, and there are some aspects of this place that could be said to fit this description, and maybe in these troubled times it's good to nestle again. It's a mid-terraced townhouse kind of house on a small estate built in the early 1970s, so it doesn't sound promising, but if you look at the map of Wardle you will see that the village itself 'nestles' in the foothills of the Pennines, and for anyone who likes a wild walk on the moors then it's a brilliant location. This house is just about half an inch to the right of the beer mug you can see towards the southern part of Wardle, and to get an idea of the scale, I can walk up to and round the reservoir in about an hour. I could wish I were staying here, as this reservoir is used for windsurfing, and what a fabulous backdrop there must be when one glides silently across, as the reservoir really does 'nestle' in the hills, with the distinctive Brown Wardle hill to the west. Watergrove reservoir & Brown Wardle Look out for Watergrove reservoir if you fly overhead, as its distinctive shape is visible, I am told. There's a yearly fell race round here, and here's the map: Wardle skyline it makes a great 7 mile walk for those who are past running.

The estate itself nestles just beyond the hills you pass between if you walk up the path from Shore which is to the east. I never tire from looking towards here from the railway line in Littleborough and thinking 'My little house is just behind that hill', which is Birch Hill, as there is a distinctive gap that can be seen from a long way away. Now I'm starting to think of the Pied Piper,

"He never can cross that mighty top!
He's forced to let the piping drop
And we shall see our children stop!
When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast."

and I mustn't, because this hill is totally positive in its associations!

The house itself goes deeper into what I call 'the Wardle bowl', and so it has a very sloping front garden;

Look carefully and you can see the old 'For Sale' sign between lamp posts.

perhaps the front path is a little too steep for comfort, but this is easily rectified, and I may have an alternative solution on the way. I did worry that there might be a flooding or drainage problem as a result, but the man next door but one has done prophylactic work and fitted a pipe to a drain, so even in this wettest of winters, there has been no hint of a problem.

This house had a 5 ft very square golden privet hedge at the front, which I have now removed as looking out from the living room, I felt to be in a bit of a prison; now I can watch life go by a little, which I need to be able to do, as having lived in a vicarage for decades, I didn't find it easy feeling quite as cut off from human life as living on an estate seems to entail. In estate agents' blurb, we will say that it is 'a quiet cul-de-sac', though you can walk through to the centre of Wardle from here, with its 3 useful shops (butcher, baker and all-purpose newsagent/off-licence) and library. You can actually live here with very little need to venture further, if the weather gets bad.

The price? I haven't decided yet. All this will appear in due course, so please be patient as I am having to be with my rebuilding life.

On-street parking, a hedge that isn't there any more, and the previous 'For Sale' notice.