The clatter of cow bells as a family of 4 or 5 of the beautiful, big eyed creatures  is prodded slowly past our front door still has me running excitedly outside like the ice-cream van  did when i was a kid.

We’ve been in the house for almost 2 months and the work
rate has dropped from ridiculous to constant but quite enjoyable. After more
than 10 years living in drippy, middle of the road functional rented accommodation,
on Friday I painted the living room a bold petrolly turquoise blue and was the happiest
I’ve been since moving in. It was like breathing out after years of minding my
manners in somebody else’s place, years of perching awkwardly  on the end of somebody else’s sofa making
small talk, so- this is what a home feels like.( All I want to do now is sit on my
sofa and look at the walls, preferably with a large glass of red.)

On Saturday we had friends over for lunch- the kind of lunch
I’ve always wanted to have- lots of people; adults, children all talking at the
same time, eating with gusto- where people enjoy the food, but that’s only part
of it. We laughed and talked and 3 hours went by before I looked at the clock: I
didn’t feel stressed once. At one point, there were no Spanish people in the
room and I was talking to 2 friends about missing England- would you go back,
why, why not, do you love living here… ‘I miss having a personality’ said my
friend, meaning that all his effort is spent trying to communicate with people,
that there’s no flesh to his conversations in Spanish. It’s true- what must
they think of us? There is something priceless about having people that you don’t
have to make an effort with. That’s why immigrants stick together-I get that now.

If you stand on the back balcony and look down and far
right, the compost heap, built by my father-in-law and still standing despite
the fall and rise of the garden (although now inaccessible) is alive with
lizards, big fat ones like baby crocodiles sit with their prehistoric heads in
egg shells licking away, growing before my eyes, scattering with pregnant waddles
when I drop a new load on their heads. Yesterday a stoat skittered around outside
the front door in broad daylight, and the two month old kittens, put into the
adjoining barn to catch whatever might try to wreak havoc in the hay will grow
up with our children. We talk to the sheep (although not the one that was tipped over the
low roof of the restaurant across the river by an over-zealous but unrelated
sheep dog) and horses and goats and chickens but, for the last two nights we’ve
been woken by the sound of something, bigger than a mouse, that is inside our
bedroom wall making a noise that can only be described as something bigger than
a mouse gnawing single-mindedly on wood…