Unexpected New Beginnings

On pears (and puke) and following your heart home again

Last summer, on a warm August afternoon, Will and I were driving the short distance from my in-laws home - all the windows down, Leon Bridges’ playing - to view a house I never thought we’d buy.

‘View a house’ is generous - we had no appointment and were not invited, but the house had been empty for some time and Will insisted we go and have a walk around the garden ‘just to get a feel’. If nothing else, I agreed because it meant an hour or so together without small children in tow. A rarity.

But all was not well. I felt terribly sick, and as we approached, more and more unwell, palms sweating, the bright sunshine hurting my pounding head. Not a premonition about the scale of the thing would eventually do; just the quick on-set of some disgusting bug I’d caught from Quinn.

We pulled up, heaved open the old metal gate which was falling off its post and walked down the drive for the first time, the crook of Will’s arm tucked around my shoulders.

We were quiet for a while as we walked the perimeter... there was a lot to take-in. Truthfully, I still wasn’t taking the whole thing seriously. Our life is in London. We weren’t looking. We didn’t (/ don’t) have the money. And anyway, I was feeling so very sick and it was all I could think about. After a few minutes I slipped away around the back of some overgrown blackberry bushes to puke in privacy.

‘BABE!!! PEARS!...’ I crept back out from my cover to see Will pointing excitedly to the top of an enormous pear tree, branches heavy with fruit, wasps buzzing around the ground where at least twenty had fallen. ‘What do you think!? Tell me what you’re thinking? You’re hard to read.’

‘I think I need a minute’...

‘Can you see it though!? The potential?’

I could.. and I do.

The pro/con list we made over dinner the next evening is hilarious:

Cons: needs years (YEARS) of work and careful restoration, grade II listed = time + more money + constraints, requires expertise we don’t have, needs investment we don’t have, needs time we don’t have, would need project managing from 90 miles away, proximity to road and neighbours = ok but not the dream.

Pros: can’t stop thinking about it, feels right, Will’s intuition = a very sure ‘yes’ - n.b this is his/our personal compass that never fails (or hasn’t yet in the 10 years we’ve been together).

And so, after pouring over spreadsheets, receiving a few pep-talks from knowledgeable friends and let’s be honest, more than a bit of guidance from chat GPT, with a development loan secured, we decided to do it.

As of September, we own a 16th century former farm, twenty minutes from where we both grew up and from where my father-in-law’s family have lived for the last hundred years. We are the latest in a long line of guardians who have loved the very bones of this place. I definitely feel the weight of that responsibility and also deeply grateful to have the privilege of doing this; to restore and renovate the house, gardens and former farm buildings slowly, and do everything we can to make sure this place still exists in another three hundred years.

Eventually this will be home. This is the place our children will learn to ride bikes, where they will bring future lovers, where we will throw parties, share Sunday lunches and exist together with the inevitable challenges and joy and heartbreak that life will bring.

For the next chapter, life and work remains in London and we are lucky enough to have Will’s dad down the road and project managing, while we divide and conquer on nursery runs and dashes down the M40 to meet with roofers, builders and conservation officers to get things going.

I’ll be sharing the journey as much as time allows, through the seasons ahead - a record for us and all the detail for anyone that cares to follow along as we progress with the project.

Until next time.