Living in parallel lines, never to meet but destined to be joined by a commonality that is a house and a home.

As I write this I am watching a Top of The Pops retrospective, you know the ones where half way through the song they put up a few interesting notes about the artist. It has occurred to me that most of these songs were actually being heard for the first time when the previous owner of the house was purchasing it, slap bang in the middle of the 70's.   

I have no idea if the retired vicar that moved in here was into Bowie, the Kinks or Marc Bolan, my guess would be to the contrary,  and it seems odd to think that he was just starting his retirement whilst I was just finishing secondary school. Then to realise that he and his wife moved into this place and lived here for the next three decades whilst Alison and I left school, got a job, I moved to Birmingham, Worthing, met and married Alison, moved to Littlehampton, West Hoathly, had kids, crashed cars, went on holidays on canals and to Dorset yearly, Wales, Scotland, Barbados, just about every county of Britain, most of western Europe, drove down to Venice and back, Ireland, Miami, Brussels, Amsterdam, New York, London, Paris, Munich, Everybody talk about pop musik!

We've had 5 cats, the kids have all grown up and got themselves degrees and stuff and been an absolute blast to have been with, proud of them both, throughout we have both worked, seen Petrol, bread and petrol shortages again and again , miners go on strike, Firemen too and the Green Goddesses come out go in and come back out again. We have seen things sent to Mars and Saturn and the Berlin wall fall, our country has been to war and Concord has crashed out of existence. Through all of this turmoil and for the majority of our 'informed' years the previous owners lived and were part of this houses history. That my friend is a long time and I feel a great sense of respect for the 30 plus years that they put into this place.

This respect is further enhanced by the knowledge that a five times distant uncle (I think), appears to have lived next door to this house in the 1800's and even more crazy than that there is an extremely high probability that we have a family connection to the people that bought this place and built the windmill and actually started the first Bakery business in this very property!

Yesterday evening I was sitting in the back garden contemplating the co-incidence of us buying a property that 'family' had owned some 160 years earlier. We (Alison, Claire & I)  had been sitting on the swing seat facing the house and watching the bats carry out an acrobatic display of excellence. I had pulled Alison and Claire out to watch as the bats were putting on a particularly spectacular show, speeding towards our heads then swooping out of the way just at arms length from us. The sky was late dusk and so it highlighted the silhouettes of the little creatures beautifully as we sat, like an audience at a show in the deathly hush of the evening all that you could hear was the flapping sound of the bats wings.

The view from the swing seat last night as we watched the bats.

Claire and Alison left me to watch the bats and as I sat there watching them flutter past I mused about this house, what we are trying to do with the place and wondered how long we will stay here. We may have stayed in the same house in Sussex for about 25 years ourselves but I am pretty carefree about the future, I know that I should be more concerned about the pension and security of retirement (when I get there!). But I am ever aware of the many that were so concerned about the future they forgot about the here & now and the only true certainty I have is in the now. So I intend to live it, strive to make this business self reliant and supporting but at the same time enjoy what I've got 'cause you never can tell what destiny has got tucked up his sleeve.

And now Abba are belting out Waterloo on the Top of the Pops, stunningly beautiful the two ladies could really sing couldn't they, even more remarkable then that they could not even speak English when they sung their first few hits in English! They just learnt the lyrics and that was it. As this footage was recorded they could only dream of selling more hit singles but could have had no idea just how many and how big their career would be. They sold, so the note on the screen tells us, over 375 million records, who knew?


Watching the bats was, and is always, really cool. I may romanticise things though sometimes. For today I have been whinging to Alison & Claire for most of the day as whilst I sat out last night in my T Shirt and Shorts some little #@****@ds were biting me and I have gained several very large and itchy bumps around my body. That is the reality of life I guess, but hey, worse things happen.....



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