Turning back the clock

This weekend in the UK we have turned our clocks back an hour and are now on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). For me this weekend has coincided with reminiscences of the area that I grew up in, which has been prompted by the recent success of Hull City football club, who are at present the talk of English football. On Saturday evening, after a fairytale beginning to their first season in the Premier League, they were equal on points with Chelsea and Liverpool.

I was born and brought up in East Yorkshire. Hull, or to give it its' full name Kingston upon Hull, was the nearest town. It is not a city - it does not have a cathedral. The centre of Hull was badly bombed in World War II and rebuilt in utility mode so was never very exciting. Now, after the demise of its' trawler fleet and the decline of the docks, Hull is being regenerated.


Each year in the second or third week in October, Hull Fair takes place. It always used to be the week of my birthday and I used to think how lucky I was to go to Hull Fair as a birthday treat, not realising that every other child also went, regardless of when their birthday was.




The gateway to Hull is the Humber Bridge which when it was built was the longest single span bridge in the world.





The landscape to the east of Hull is flat but to the west and north there is some stunning countryside. In recent years the Yorkshire born painter David Hockney has exhibited a series of water colour paintings of the Yorkshire countryside, which are instantly recognisable to anyone who knows the area. Going north from Hull you come to the attractive Georgian market town of Beverley then it is off to the coast to Bridlington - a fishing port which is as attractive as any in Devon or Cornwall but unfortuneately does not have the weather. Further up the coast is Scarborough which has a beach to rival any in the world but again is let down by the weather. Further up the coast again, is the pretty fising village or Whitby and the picturesque Robin Hood's Bay. Then going inland there are the Yorkshire Moors.

This is just a taste of what the area has to offer.

Living in someone else's house

When we moved to Chester we were only able to spend two weekends house hunting, before we were due to move, so decided to rent, initially, rather than buy. Renting, we felt, would give us a better feel for the area. After viewing a handful of properties we settled on a small four bed roomed detached house, on an estate built just outside Chester, about 20 years ago. A detached house makes it sound rather grand but it was a shoe box really, as were all the houses on that estate. The fourth bedroom was only big enough for a bed, a small cupboard and a chair. What we were renting was a black and white, half timbered, mock Tudor house, in the aptly named Tudor Way. When giving the address to some one over the phone they said how grand it sounded. They were probably in a call centre in India and were just making conversation.

The business of renting itself was a bit of a culture shock to us. We had both owned property, albeit with a mortgage, for about 20 years. For me it was a bit like being a student again but my husband had never rented before, having lived at home until he moved into his flat. Any problems, and there were several, had to be channelled through the letting agent who would then contact the landlord, who was living abroad. We had been used to fixing things and sorting out problems ourselves. In a way it was nice to have someone else sorting out the workmen and paying for the repairs but it meant that we were not in control of things and some problems took longer than we would have liked to get fixed. Then there was always the possibility that we may have been responsible for the damage rather than it being wear and tear.

The first morning there my husband went off to work, leaving me to have a bit of a lie in before setting about organising the kitchen. About the first thing that happened was when I pulled back the shower room curtains and the pole fell down. The agents got it fixed but after that I do not think that I pulled those curtains over again. A week later I had gone outside to put some washing on the clothes line when the back door shut behind me and locked itself. I was locked out. Luckily one of the neighbours was at home and let me phone my husband who had to come home from work to unlock the house for me. The neighbours were very nice about it. They had had the same problem themselves when they first moved in. The locks were a bit flaky. Not long after that the front door lock became so stiff that we could not unlock the door. Again the agents got it fixed but they took their time about it.

For a few weeks everything went smoothly until one evening when I was grilling pork chops for our supper. Suddenly there was a bang and a flash and the house was in darkness. The grill element had fused all the electrics in the house and the oven no longer worked. I think that we had to go out to eat for a few days until the agents got a new oven sorted out for us. Thinking that we had had a hand in the demise of the grill element the suspicious landlord insisted that he old oven was left in the garage for him to inspect!

Not long before we moved out the curtain rail fell down in the living room when I pulled the curtains over. Really the whole house needed an overhaul. Nothing much had been done to it in the 20 years since it had been built, apart from the occasional coat of paint.

One problem that we did not manage to get sorted was the central heating boiler which heated the water up almost to boiling point and guzzled gas like there was no tomorrow. Even when it was switched off the boiler used gas. We had the biggest gas bills that we have ever had while we were living in this small rented house. I was just grateful that no elderly relatives or young children visited us whilst we were living there as I was afraid that they might scald themselves on the hot water.

We lived in the rented house for eight months until we moved into the cottage that we are now living in. And guess what - the cottage had been rented out before we bought it.

Addendum

As requested by imbeingheldhostage. Here is a photograph of the house that we rented. I think that she will be disappointed as it is more of a folly than the black and white, half timbered, mock Tudor house that I described but I can not think of any other way to describe it. The landlord had the outside painted a few weeks after we moved in which improved its' appearance.

21 again

According to my reckoning today is my birthday. To be honest I am not keen on birthdays and I would be happy to give the whole thing a miss but usually I am not allowed to.

When the subject came up a few weeks ago my elderly mother managed to get the date right but admitted that she could not remember how old I am. So I told her that I was 21 and that seemed to satisfy her although I am sure that she knows that I am more than 21. I thought that dementia, which she has, affected the short term memory. I would have expected her to remember the birth of her first born even though it was 21 plus years ago. Never mind, I know my place. My brother is the blue eyed boy I am the green eyed monster. Yes, I do have green eyes.

At the beginning of October my husband's bachelor uncle died. Once it had been established that he had made a will, but not given any directions regarding a funeral, my husband and his sister arranged the funeral for today. When I was told of the arrangements I said to my husband - 'doesn't that date ring a bell?' ' No' he said. I then reminded him that it was my birthday and he would have to re-arrange the funeral as I was not going to it on my birthday. So after much deliberation the funeral has been re-arranged.

No sign of a present yet, which is not surprising as I have not decided what I would like, but my husband has suggested a pair of secateurs. He ran the lawn mower over my last pair and after we had fished the remains of them out of the innards of the mower, they ended up in the dustbin.