It is hard to believe we are once
again heading back in to France to spring daffodils, having been here in
Scotland nearly three months. If last year was hectic, then this one has
started at warp supersonic, as we embark on yet another renovation project.
Plasterboard, cables, pipes and insulation: these are all the things currently
occupying our front room. Unfortunately the missing link to join this lot together
is tradesmen. OK, we do have a sparky working long hours on the re-wire and
myself and one other guy putting the walls and ceilings back in but, as ever,
it is the illusive pipe fitters that cannot seem to hold down an appointment. I
have come to the conclusion that I have employed the Fife branch of the ‘Scarlet
Pimpernel guild of plumbers’, such is the sporadic appearance of them on the
job. I swear that sightings of Bigfoot are more frequent than seeing an overall-wearing
man with blowtorch in our attic. So now, as we pack up the car and dogs this
week and head south, we leave behind a half completed job, suffering at the
mercy of hand-written timesheets submitted on trust.
We have a few reasons for going ‘home’,
not least that the ewes are due to start lambing in a few weeks and need their
midwife on hand for the event. We also have a few days booked on the ski slopes
although, having made a million trips up 3 flights of stairs carrying plasterboard,
I am not sure my ever-weakening knees are up to anything more that some
high-level après ski this year. But our main reason for leaving an unfinished
job is that the house we have bought, just around the corner from our Victorian
terrace in East Neuk of Fife is of identical age and size, but has somehow
managed to get itself onto the Listed Building Register. As anyone who has ever
attempted to get planning on a Grade 2 listed dwelling will tell you, by making
the slightest change to its layout or, god help us, its façade, you might as
well apply for a permit to go Polar Bear hunting, such is the audaciousness of
the request. Knock a wall through from sitting room to kitchen? Well, only is
accompanied by 47 architect’s drawings, a surveyor’s report, advice from a
plumber, electrician, Feng shui expert and priest, and, of course the
obligatory visit from some certifiably bonkers historian in sandals who is so
hell bent in preserving the past that he still eats gruel for breakfast. Fancy
changing a window looking out to the back yard into a pair of patio-doors? Be prepared
to hear patronising laughter echoing around the Ochills for at least 3 months,
before a septuagenarian civil servant gets around to rejecting your application
in red pen. After some research I eventually discover that the reason our
entire street has been ‘Listed’ is that it has behind it a row of shacks, known
locally as Net-lofts, which are quite unusual. Well, ours is certainly unusual
as it is half fallen down, with a big hole in the roof, but woe-betide me if I
attempt to modernise it in any way, using materials other than mud and straw. The
outside privy must also remain in situ, as does the coal-shed and apparently
even the nails from which once a fisherman hung his nets have some archaeological
merit. I am all for preserving the past but even Bruce Forsyth has to go at
some point, surely?
Anyway, enough of these sleepless
nights of stressful worry; time to put it behind me for a few months, as we
embark on a 1500 mile trip by road and sea. But, as we bid fair-the-well to the
glens, soon we are faced with yet more bureaucratic absurdity as we head to
cross the channel, as we are now no longer allowed to leave our dogs in the comfort
of the 4x4 while we get our head down in the small confines of our overnight
cabin. Seemingly, on most routes, the pooches now either have to go into a
rather unsavoury kennels on board or be shoehorned into the tiny cabin with us,
presumably for elf & safety reasons. They also have to wear a muzzle,
costing a few hundred quid, in case they decide to lick the P&O staff to
death! Just as well as we don’t have a
cat as I don’t believe there would be room to swing it in room 337 on B deck.
