Homemaking at Highfield: a toy cupboard

I’ve never thought of myself as a real homemaker

Surely one of the great joys of making a house move is the pleasure in making a new home?  A house is a building which shelters you from the elements; a home is a place of warmth and welcome.  To create a home is to alchemise the essential structure of a house into the very personal experience of a home: making it unique to your wants and needs, to the personalities of those who abide beneath its roof. Continue reading “Homemaking at Highfield: a toy cupboard”

First Footnotes

…the feedback, when it came, was warm and positive

When we first arrived here and I started scribbling,  with tentative thoughts of turning my scribbles into a blog, A Corner of Cornwall was to be called The View from Here.  But when I actually screwed up my courage and looked into it, someone had beaten me to it and a name change was required.  Drat.  Continue reading “First Footnotes”

Birds on the Balcony: woodpecker wars

Now I know what a woodpecker in a bad mood sounds like…

“The whole world is a series of miracles but we’re so used to seeing them that we call them ordinary things.” Hans Christian Anderson.

Last Saturday was a day filled with ordinary miracles.  Here’s the first: Continue reading “Birds on the Balcony: woodpecker wars”

The View from Here: the world crashes in

The view from here is clean and simple … and very much in the present

A week since I last wrote here. I’ve missed it; I’ve been wanting – needing – to get back to the View almost daily.  It seems that writing here does need to happen in the early morning, before the day starts.  And there have been no really early mornings for a while.  B has woken early several times this week – before me – and we’ve got up together, after a leisurely read and in my case, a cup of tea.  It’s been nice; we are spending so much more time together since arriving here and it’s lovely.  But I’ve missed these interludes. Continue reading “The View from Here: the world crashes in”

The View from Here: wuthering and rainbows

The view from here is magical, mysterious and multi-coloured

Today has been a touch frustrating.  We still have no phone line and the mobile signal is not great.  The internet is so intermittent that it seems to dominate everything as we monitor it in order to catch it when we have the chance.  It has taken all day on and off to research and source a fridge/freezer and I still haven’t been able to contact the company and check delivery.  It occurs to me with our access issues that I should check what size vehicle they will deliver in.  And we’ve both been tired.  I’ve still achieved a reasonable amount but it feels like a wasted day somehow.  Perhaps because of the early morning highlights: maybe everything had to be downhill after that…  (Apart from our driveway of course 😉 ) Continue reading “The View from Here: wuthering and rainbows”

The View from Here: four seasons and memories

And I think she would have liked the view from here.

A four-seasons-in-one-day kind of day.  Grey, brooding clouds before seven this morning, then the palest of blue skies, building to sky-blue vistas and sunshine sweeping across the valley.  By nine we had rain.  And wind.  It’s been a breezy, blustery, showery, sunshiny sort of day.  Exhilarating. Continue reading “The View from Here: four seasons and memories”

Birds on the Balcony and bats in the garage

I was much too busy giving silent thanks that it hadn’t been me who surprised the bat.

Locking up here is a long-winded business.  Every door, internal and external, locks with a key.  Three doors on the ground floor, three on the first, plus the garage door.  Hopefully that’s everything covered.  I’m glad B seems to look upon this as his job!  Continue reading “Birds on the Balcony and bats in the garage”