A Busy Few Days In The Office

The sun shone on us here in Framlingham over the weekend and the castle looked stunning against a backdrop of powder blue sky and fluffy white clouds as we headed to the market on Saturday to stock up on provisions.

Sadly we weren't able to spend much time lazing in The Crown, the Lemon Tree or The Dancing Goat as we were finally able to get into the garage and start to move the furniture and boxes that have been stored there since early January and carry them out into the garden office. We were also able to empty the small bedroom and start preparations to make it a room for the grandchildren.

By Sunday afternoon we had managed to carry all of these boxes and all of this furniture into the garden room. It was hard work lugging all this - we are not as young as we were and we spent much of the time cursing the suppliers of the original office. If they had done a proper job our removal people could have carried this lot out into the garden for us in January. 

On Monday we spent the day in Rochester looking after our granddaughter Catherine while Paul and Josephine went to the filming of Josephine's latest 12 Yard Show for ITV. Catherine was an angel. We took her to her swimming lesson and had a fabulous day with her. 

Today it was back to the hard graft as we moved around all the the furniture we had carried and set it into position. We had to rebuild some of it and also empty all the boxes of books.

We've not quite finished but It's a lot straighter than it was and, when we've sorted out the iPod dock and ten months' worth of filing tomorrow, the office should finally be ready to be used.

If we're lucky Tony will finish the decking outside the office soon. He's made a very good start on it.

Welcome Visitors

We had hoped that we would have finished the house before we started to entertain visitors here but at this rate (snow cancelled the gardener again yesterday) it could be Christmas before that happens. So we were really pleased to see our old friends Janet and David Wareing who stopped over here in Framlingham en route (sort of) to a wedding in Hampshire. I used to sit next to Dave at school and we've been firm friends ever since. Although they didn't manage to make it here until well after five we still managed to fit in a quick tour of the town and a beer in The Crown before heading home for a good meal which was made pretty merry by Dave and Janet's housewarming contribution of a vintage bottle of Dom Perignon.

We had a brief look around our fabulous church this morning before heading to Southwold where the conditions could be described as "bracing". We had planned to walk down to the ferry and cross to Walberswick but, despite reports in the Suffolk magazine that the ferry was open today, it was closed and we had to drive to Walberswick where we had an excellent lunch at The Anchor. It was quite an eye opener to make us realise how useful that ferry is. A crossing of no more than perhaps twenty yards was replaced by a drive of maybe six or seven miles.

Dave and Janet had to get back on the road by three but, although they were with is for less than twenty four hours, we crammed a heck of a lot into the time and it was a very enjoyable stay.

In my last blog I was fairly optimistic about the landscape gardening progress - before it started to snow again. The fences are finished and the borders and lawn are being prepared. But the decking is not quite complete and I think that Tony's estimate of everything being done by the end of the month still looks wildly optimistic. He started on January 7th so that means that by Monday he will have been working on the garden for three months and by the time that the front is done it will be four months. 

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

I suppose that I'm really tempting fate with a headline like that but the sun shone today and that meant that Tony, our near live-in landscape gardener, was able to make some progress with the never ending garden job. We went for a walk to keep out from under his feet and the town looked lovely in the sunlight (even if the wind was cutting through us like a knife).

Here's how things looked when we got back.

There's a lot more decking in place although it's not all screwed down yet.

And things look a lot tidier now that much of the heavy equipment has been moved out of the way.

The idea is for the garden to blend in with the lounge and you can just about see the effect starting to take place in this photo. Tony thinks he'll be finished with the back garden this week and the planned planting can start on Monday and he can get cracking on the front but I still think that he's being unduly optimistic.

We had a lovely Easter weekend with family visiting us in Framlingham for the first time when Paul, Josephine and Catherine came to stay. It was fantastic to see them and we enjoyed a great lunch at The Lemon Tree on Saturday as well as an excellent roast dinner at home on Sunday. Sadly the stay was over all too quickly but it was wonderful to have them and fantastic to see little Catherine developing so quickly - she's a gorgeous little thing. 

He Called Us Scum

Don't worry I haven't had another run in with the neighbours over the work going on (although that wouldn't be a surprise as the hammering and banging continues and we'll be into month nine next week). No, it's a reference to a line spoken by an actor in ITV's ghostly drama Lightfields the other day.

"He called us scum???" I said to Marion puzzled by this out of character line from a 1940's farmer's wife. "His call up's come!!!!" Marion explained. And that's when the extent of my hearing loss hammered home.

It's been going on for some years now. I had a problem with a jet of hot water into one ear in the shower about fifteen years ago which left my ears ringing ever since and I've struggled to hold conversations in noisy venues for a few years and simply blamed the sound levels in the pub or restaurant rather than myself. I've found myself asking shop assistants to repeat themselves and merrily driven up the motorway oblivious to the clicking of the indicator until I've noticed the light flashing (I still can't believe that it clicks but passengers assure me that it does).

When friends Dave and Jane visited us in Scotland a couple of weeks ago Jane asked me to turn the TV down - I could barely hear it. I put that down to Jane's perfect hearing but I have to face the truth now. I'm a bit deaf (or maybe even a lot deaf) and I've put off seeing anyone about it for way too long. I suppose that, along with haemorrhoids and failing eyesight  it comes with the territory of retirement and is a reminder of one's mortality.

There's a much acclaimed private hearing centre in the area so I'm booked in for an appointment soon. I suppose there's an element of pride and vanity that's prevented me going before. One tends to associate deafness with doddery old age and wearing a hearing aid to be equivalent to wearing a pair of comfortable slacks and a tweed jacket and taking up crown green bowling. But I've checked out the website and there are some hearing aids today that are all but invisible. Fingers crossed they'll sort me out with one of those.

Have a Happy Easter. 

By George She's Good!

When we started doing up a house five hundred miles away from where we were living, sorting out the interiors was always going to be something of a challenge. It's difficult enough when you know the area where you are living and have experience of local curtain makers, kitchen designers, flooring experts and decorators but when you are a stranger there's a huge risk of getting things wrong. In addition, whilst we like to think that we're pretty good at interior design ideas, we are not professionals and a good interior designer keeps abreast of all the latest developments and has experience of what will and won't work in a wide array of situations. Coordinating everything by ourselves from five hundred miles away would have been a nightmare.

So where to start looking? Our architect and builder are both great blokes but don't tend to work with interiors and I get the impression that they think interior design unnecessary so we had to turn to the old fallback of Google. "Interior Design Framlingham" was not going to turn up a wide choice so we searched "Interior Design Woodbridge". Woodbridge is an upmarket little town and a number of designers came up in the results. We checked them all but one stood out head and shoulders above all the rest - "By George Interiors And Lighting Design". The website ( click here) was easy to navigate, the photos of design projects were stunning and we got a good feel for the business.

So we made an appointment to meet the proprietor Jemima Withey. When we turned up at her studio in our filthy Prius piled high to the roof with all our worldly goods and looking like a couple of tramps we felt like turning around and driving away; her property looked to have come straight from a Sunday Supplement  (and indeed featured in a two page spread in one a few weeks later) and our little house was going to be too small a project. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jemima was charming and passed no comment on our heap of a car sullying her driveway. She ran through her services and we told her what we were planning. She sent us a quote and I made a feeble attempt at negotiating a discount which was declined in a very professional and confident manner that cemented our decision to use her business.

The project snowballed. From an initial agreement to design the interior colour scheme downstairs, we added our bedroom and dressing room, the kitchen and dining area and both bathrooms plus the lighting for most of those areas. And what a great choice it turned out to be. 

Jemima is a highly professional interior designer who listens carefully to what you like and steers you in the direction of what will work. She comes up with enough alternatives to make you feel that you have been involved in the design without overburdening you with too many to make a decision. She thinks about costs and works to your budget. She knows all the people you might need to carry out the work and liaises with them to do it. She keeps you in the picture all the time and does things when she says she will and her contractors turn up on time and work to the highest standard and clean up after themselves. And what's more, she has a great sense of humour and a very upbeat personality (the perfect foil for Marion's pessimism). Her ideas for us were simple but classic styles and we think that the results speak for themselves. We could not be more pleased with the job that she did for us and can't recommend her highly enough. 

Here are the mood boards that Jemima came up with as we developed the project.

And here are some of the finished results. The photos were only taken on my phone and don't really do justice to Jemima's work.

Fabulous curtain ideas.

A Kitchen That Both Looks Great And Is Perfectly Lit

Neutral Colours And Perfect Lighting For The Dining Area 

A Lounge That Is Stylish But Homely

More Curtain Ideas 

A Perfect En Suite Shower Room

Making The Very Most Of A Small Master Bedroom

Luxurious Handmade Cushions

If you are planning interior design or lighting design in London or East Anglia you really don't need to look anywhere else.

Progress Of Sorts

Our mammoth home improvement project is still dragging on. It's more than two months since we moved into the new house (two months behind the original schedule) and we still feel like we are living on a building site. When we got the original quotes for the landscaping, replacement garden office and Marion's beach hut style potting shed we were expecting a completed job (bar planting) by early March. Things were running fairly smoothly and I posted photos of both the garden buildings nearing completion on this blog on 7th March.

In fairness to all involved, the quotes were based on the work being done in Suffolk not flipping Siberia and nobody could have forecast these conditions in late March. The completion of the buildings inevitably suffered a setback.

However, Paul from Anson Timberworks came today and added the final finishing touches to my garden office and Marion's shed. Anson have done a very good job and the new office is built to a far higher standard than the original (built by another company) which was finished in September and removed a month or so later after leaking badly. The new version seems to be more solid and, in addition, has a decent floor, LED lighting and some exterior weatherproof electrical sockets which were missing on the original. The only problem now is that we can't get to the office to put in the furniture and all our books that are intended to go inside and are still clogging our spare bedroom and the garage. 

As for the landscaping? We have finally got some decking installed (all seven runs of it). Unfortunately there still looks to be an awful long way to go and I wouldn't bet on it finishing before May despite Tony from DNA Landscaping's assurance that "there's not much left to do now".

Heading Back

Weather permitting we're off back to Suffolk tomorrow. I say weather permitting as I'm hearing horrible things about what's in store between Fife and Cumbria tomorrow and as I write there's a near hurricane blowing outside the caravan and the trees alongside us are swaying to a precarious degree. 

When we set off northwards two weeks ago I envisaged a fortnight of walks, perhaps a cycle ride to Tentsmuir Forest and maybe a few hours out with the metal detector in balmy spring sunshine but none of those was forthcoming.

I did manage a few hours detecting yesterday and found these three nice old buckles and a Charles I Scottish twopence but with hands in danger of frostbite and my lightweight XP Deus detector becoming increasingly heavyweight from the coating of mud it was collecting from the bumpy ploughed surface it was more like an arctic trek than a springtime saunter.

That's not to say we have had a bad holiday. We've spent lots of time with the family and it has been wonderful seeing Rose who is a real character with bags of personality and a wicked sense of humour - we'll miss her and her mum and dad but we're sure to be back fairly soon.

Bad weather has given us plenty of time for reading and I've read these two. Gone Girl has been a sensation with rave reviews and I can understand why it has been so popular as it is a whodunnit with a difference and written in two very distinct voices. Sadly, although I appreciated the clever style of writing I found the story totally implausible and improbable and if I can't believe a story or believe in its characters it doesn't matter how well written it is, I can't recommend it.

On the other hand Ben Elton's Dead Famous, which was lent to me by a friend, is totally implausible and improbable but, being a satire, that's what it's meant to be. It's another whodunnit but it's so much more than that being a send up of the television industry and today's thirst for fame above all else. It's a damning exposure of the world or reality TV and, although it takes a while to get into the book, stick with it and you'll enjoy it.

We also managed to get to Dundee to see Jude Law's latest Side Effects. This is a very good if somewhat old fashioned thriller which reminded me of some of the old Hitchcock psychological movies. It's a clever plot which I won't go into to avoid spoiling it and it manages to keep the viewer guessing for most of the film. Gone Girl  (which is also being made into a film) attempts to do the same but falls down by making too many outrageous plot turns whereas Side Effects remains credible and feasible throughout. I don't think that the big screen is essential for this one and you may well want to enjoy it when it comes out on Sky or on DVD.

When we get back to Framingham tomorrow we'll find out what progress the landscape gardener has made. I've got a horrible feeling that, if he's had anything like the weather we've had, we're going to be disappointed.