Wednesday

I have been working on my 'Lillie' patchwork the last few days, there are yelps of exasperation as I once more stitch a row of motifs upside down, think I am completely spatially deficient sometimes, trying to get owls, flowers rabbits the right way up  but I persevere.

Now that we are post Xmas, people are coming to see the house, some are interested and I realise the move to Yorkshire will happen eventually,  I have fallen in love with the countryside there, not sure when it happened though going back the last few years and the sudden excitement as we left the 'plain of York' behind and motored past the great Horcum Hole and on to the moors that  have always fascinated me.  Also the people, so direct and friendly and of course my family are located there. But with the measure of time  LS has also become attracted to this Northern part of the world, he is the one that does the house hunting on the net, and follows everything with his usual precision.

So we may end up at Church House, next to the graveyard, and small pub on the other side of course!.  My thoughts on this house has been somewhat muted, modern,' magnolied' and rather large for our requirements with its four good sized bedrooms.  But there is also a lot in its favour, an excellent working kitchen, the Newton on Rawcliffe house did not have anything in the kitchen, but one awkwardly placed Belfast sink encased in a wooden cabinet in the centre of the room, and a shared driveway with a distinctly difficult place to park the car.

Church House on the other  hand has a large long sitting room, which needs breaking up to some extent and being separated from the kitchen, but it does have another decent sized room downstairs which we will use as a shared study.  I have already begun to plan the garden here, there are plenty of plants in the front but there are no gates or fences anywhere, even the old brick wall on the church side is low, I can just see my dog and hens flying over into that extended 'garden'.  The first thing I noticed when I wandered in the church yard was the birds in the yews they flitted around, happy in their private space, and there is a window at the side of the sitting room that they can be watched from.

The village itself  Normanby is what I call the usual makeup of houses, no shops, I am reading Blythe's Akenfield at the moment, and the stark contrast of what villages were like, and forget the romantic image of countryside dwelling, in the 19th/20th century is often the time when people lived in poverty and hunger. The transformed villages of today of course require a car to travel to the nearest shops, and hospitals, doctors, etc.