Moving to Foxglove Farm

I’ve unearthed a diary entry from five years ago, when we moved from our former home in Yorkshire to Foxglove Farm in Lincolnshire. I’d forgotten just how stressful it had been and thought I’d share it in the blog to give you all a laugh.

Tony and I thought we’d done so well, our personal belongings and the contents of our business were safely stowed in two massive removals lorries which had driven off to their storage depot the previous evening, ready to drive over to Lincolnshire two days later. We actually congratulated each other on having everything under control as we sipped our bedtime wine Horlicks.

Just how premature were our self- congratulations?  The new buyers, who had seemed so pleasant and undemanding when they’d come for their three viewings turned into a pair of horrors at the final hurdle. At 10 a.m. we received a panicked phone call from the estate agents saying that our buyers were in their office angrily demanding the keys two hours earlier than agreed. Tony leapt into his car and drove into town to the estate agents to drop the keys off for the inexplicably irate buyers but, in the thirty minutes it took him to get there, they’d decided to drive to our house in a temper! All that meant was that the keys were as far away from them as ever.

A resigned Tony drove back to house with the precious keys and we rounded up our animals. We departed the house with the irate buyers’ eyes boring into our backs amidst a chilly silence because they’d now decided to send us to Coventry. Oh well, there’s nowt so queer as folk as they say in Yorkshire. We decided to laugh it off, packed the animals into their travelling crates, and set off in separate cars to our new place.

Our first job was to get the smaller animals settled in, so the dogs and cats were herded into different rooms along with their bedding, food and water bowls and the pond fish, who’d travelled in a large tank, were glad to have it placed on solid ground. Travelling in the car must have felt to them as though they’d taken to the open sea! We’d made the decision to re-home the geese before moving because the journey would have been too difficult for them, but the ducks and chickens coped well in their various boxes and covered dog crates and were quickly installed in their respective pond and runs. The horses were being transported from their temporary livery yard the following week so at least that was one thing we didn’t have to worry about.

As for us, because our cars had been full of animals and their belongings, we had nothing except the clothes we stood up in, our wash bags, some rudimentary snacks, kettle and a few tea bags until the removals firm (who had another job to do that day and not enough staff) brought our stuff over from Harrogate the following morning.

We spent all day happily pottering around inside and out and decided to do a final check on the poultry before going to bed at about ten o’clock. This was when we made our fatal error. We wandered into the back lobby together, letting the solid wooden door shut behind us. Realising we were both barefoot and neither of us had a coat, Tony tried opening the door to get back into the main part of the house, which is when we found out that the Yale lock had clicked down and we were stranded without keys or phones.

At first, we both pushed hard at the door, next we took it in turns to kick it and eventually ended up trying a shoulder charge (well one of us did) but it’s a solid, Victorian affair and we made no absolutely impression on it. Deciding we ought to break back into the house via some other route, we limped slowly and painfully round the house twice. Have you ever tried walking on sharp gravel in bare feet?  We tried prising open every single door and window, but nothing gave an inch.

Amazingly, on our slow hobbling walk round the house, I’d found a lump hammer in a flower bed that the previous owner must have dropped and, eventually, Tony came up trumps with an old metal shelf bracket he pulled off a wall and began to use on the door as a chisel, bashing at it repeatedly with the lump hammer. After two hours of this we finally made a hole in the door big enough to poke our fingers through. Tony got hold of the Yale lock on the inside of the door, twisted it open and bingo! we were back inside.

We’d planned to sleep on a borrowed air bed, but the stupid thing immediately sprang a leak and deflated underneath us with a steady hiss, so we ended up on the floor with our coats pulled over us.

Awaking bright and early (can you awake bright if you’ve only managed half an hour’s sleep the entire night?) we were grateful to see the removals lorries chugging up the drive. I immediately offered the four chaps a cup of tea and made it in my usual fashion – so a strong ‘builder’s tea’- which, to my amazement was rejected by all concerned and one chap actually made a point of pouring it all over the drive to illustrate just how badly I’d made it. Oops! It turned out that all four of them were on a fitness drive of some kind and wanted strong black tea with a quarter of a pipette of milk to be shared between them.

After seven hours hard graft between the six of us and with 28,000 steps recorded on my FitBit we were finished and gratefully, but exhaustedly, waved off the two lorries and their crew to their depot.

The remainder of the day in the new house proved confusing. Its two sets of stairs and various internal corridors meant that we often ended up in the wrong room and lost each other repeatedly. We briefly considered intercoms but decided simply to keep our mobiles on us at all times, which, in hindsight, was a decision we ought to have made on the day we moved in… I walked a further 30,000 steps as measured on the FitBit.

I’d always had a hankering to live in a haunted house and the next afternoon, as I was looking over an upstairs bannister, I thought my wish had come true. I could see a tall man with long brown hair vanishing along a downstairs corridor. I ran down towards him feeling equal parts excitement and trepidation only to find that my daughter’s boyfriend (now husband) had turned up, having taken his hair out of his usual man bun. Oh well, perhaps the longed-for ghost will turn up given time?

The following day I woke up unable to bear any weight on my feet which were pulsating with pain. It turned out that all the walking, on and off gravel, and carrying heavy boxes had caused plantar fasciitis – something I’d never heard of it before – but goodness, it was the last thing I needed with so much work still to do. Thankfully, I didn’t realise at that point that it would take two years to fully heal.

We’ve both agreed that this will be our last move but, given that we’ve lived in eight different houses in the last twenty years who knows if that’s actually true or not?