To be honest, I was hoping for at least one summer during that time, but at least we don’t get much snow... Oh, right. Yes, we do.
On this very day in 2006, we pulled onto the road into Arnside from Milnthorpe, in the kind of Biblical rainstorm that would have made Noah put the staff on overtime.
The previous occupants of our home had thoughtfully left the windows open, and with all their cosy furnishings removed, and ours not due to arrive until the following morning, we huddled together for warmth, and bedded down for the night on the floor.
Neither of us slept. My dreams were haunted by someone who looked just like me, leaning in so that their/my face was inches away from me, and bellowing repeatedly “What have you done? You haven’t even got a job!”
Unbeknown to me, my terrified wife was equally awake, listening to the wind and rain batter the 100-year old sash windows, whilst a fair bit of the former got in and had a bit of a waltz round the room, thanks to the gaps. The curtains would have blown in the breeze, if there were any. There wasn’t.
She was having visions of the removal lorry getting stuck under the railway bridge on the edge of the village. Fortunately it didn’t and, after I’d had my breakfast out of a plastic cup, I just needed to persuade the elderly neighbour to move her car, so they could unload. Alarmingly, she told me she’d need to have a shower and get dressed first.
Christmas was fun – I was unemployed (for some strange reason, there were no jobs in the paper that week) and the central heating would randomly turn off before the house was anywhere near warm. It was only when a bath was run to try and thaw one of us out that we discovered the whole lot turned itself off when the hot water tank was up to temperature. Useful.
My in-laws came to stay, based upon the fact we’d said they could come at Christmas, long before we moved. They enjoyed a chilly stay amongst the un-packed boxes, furniture that didn’t fit anywhere, and our complete lack of knowledge of the area, but at least they had 2 TV channels that were sort of watchable, if you pretended everything was taking place in a blizzard.
Trying to search for a job online with a dial-up connection only became bearable when I planned my day carefully – click on something, go off and try and work out why bits of the house didn’t work, come back, page hasn’t loaded yet, go away again and try and warm up, come back etc.
The roof still leaks, and we’ve spent a fortune trying to undo years of bodged-DIY, but I wouldn’t change things even if I could. Arnside is my home and I love it here.
Does that make me a local now? Thought not.
Have a Cumbrian weekend.
If you can.
This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday 7th December 2012. This is the unedited version - you can view the printed/online version here The paper actually went for "Cumbrian welcome has become warmer" as the title, which kind of implies I didn't find the inhabitants welcoming - far from it. For a softy Southerner, I was genuinely startled that people said hello to me on the street - for the first few weeks I assumed they'd mistaken me for someone they knew.
A fairly minor 39 words were edited out, which is pretty reasonable I reckon!
(Listening to a new CD tonight - Phil Harding's "Club Mixes Of The 80s". Not bad, but I really got it purely for the Agents Aren't Aeroplanes track. Remember them? No? Oh.)
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