1. Last night I didn’t really sleep all that well. My head was churning and my mind cranking with thoughts of Corncrake Way. I want that house, but at the same time I fear that its not big enough. Over breakfast Em and I revisit our list of properties looking for either two bedroom houses with convertible garages or three-bed houses we can afford. A house in Stratton Audley rears its head again. Previously dismissed as a terrace, it is a three-bed and with an huge garden in a village location. We fail to make an appointment to view but do go for a village visit. It’s very nice. And the house looks lovely, and quiet, and, we love it.
2. Visiting Quadrant in Bicester to make an appointment to view the house in Stratton Audley, on the way, we go for a walk around New Langford Village†. Still very nice; still cute; still adorable. We then take in Garth Park – I’ve never been there – and its nice, surprisingly so for me. It reminds me somewhat of Kensington Gardens on the cliffs at Lowestoft. I do feel sorry though for the house, now council offices for the upper floors do look beyond repair. I remember reading in the local paper how they don’t know what to do with it. They can’t pull it down because of being listed, but they can’t afford to restore it.
3. In amongst the yew trees at the far side of Garth Park we find them. The dog graves that Em remembers from her childhood. We wonder who’s dogs they were, and decide that they must have been hunting hounds as most of them had grand names, including the royal family of Prince Edward, brother of Princess Arabella and father to King Henry and Queen Matilda. It’s nice that these things are still there.
4. Over a cup of tea, and on into night we prepare Em’s CV, using mine as a base. It is quite long and tiring work but also quite good fun and amusing too. And we get a good two pages out at the end of it!
5. Now, Em has gone home and I am left with the washing up our spaghetti carbonara dinner, and tidying up a bit. All this CV writing, house-hunting and cutting up furniture does seem to make a bit of a mess… 😉
†An Aaggghhh moment occurs when we see a hulking great milk float parked on the verge outside the house next door to the one in Corncrake Way.
