After Mr. Parker died and Mrs. Parker moved to live with their daughter, the cottage next to us became vacant. The agreement for Joe to rent it still hasn't been signed (which is why this is posted for friends only), but things are just beginning to move and permission has been granted to start work on the garden.
The boys have sprayed off Mr. Parker's nettle bed vegetable patch and spread on a lot of new topsoil to bring it level with the lawn. What Joe does next is up to him: Pa suggests a smoothly sloping lawn which is easy to mow, but Joe has more ambitious plans.
They have also moved the rubbish from all around the shed and put anything possibly salvageable into the little yard behind the house. The house itself is also full of rubbish.
At some point somebody has got in and ransacked the place so that beds, which I am sure the Parker family left neatly, have been turned over as though someone was hunting for money or jewels! Somebody has even stolen the coal!
There are some bits of furniture - wardrobes, sideboard, dressing table, windsor chairs - that Joe intends to keep. Father thinks that he should also keep the carpets and just paint over the wallpaper, but both are filthy and the place stinks of tobacco so Joe is minded to do a proper job. And - not unaturally - Joe doesn't want the beds.
Another thing Joe doesn't want to keep is the sitting room fireplace. The two larger bedrooms have rather nice cast iron fireplaces, but soemone replaced the one in the sitting room with a grey shiny tiled job sometime in the 1950s. It is somewhat damaged so it shouldn't be difficult to get permission to to change it. Yesterday Liz brought down (along with the cat) a fireplace I spotted on ebay and bought for £1 which she collected for me. (Actually she also paid cash for it and I forgot to give her the money yesterday.) The grate is missing, but by good fortune one which fits (and may even be original to the house) was lurking in the shed. Joe has cleaned that up and has started work on the fireplace itself.
Monday, July 21st
Now everything is signed, I have derestricted this blog.
