In denial about the weather: the best approach to a summer holiday at home

Yesterday was Day Eight of the Hann family’s summer holiday in Northumberland and two-year-old Charlie was simply in denial. “No, not rainy” he announced firmly as I helped him to update the symbols on his stick-on calendar, ignoring the audible evidence of yet another shower stotting off the conservatory roof.

The Boy's is blue, naturally

He would not even concede that it was cloudy, despite the fact that we were eating breakfast with electric lights and heaters going full blast. The worst he would admit was that it might be a little bit windy. “We go beach, build sandcastle,” he asserted, as he has done every day of his vacation without a single new turret arising anywhere along the coast.

Partly because his enthusiasm, like that of Craster our Border terrier, tends to wilt once he gets outdoors and is confronted with the reality of determined precipitation. I once went out with a Westmorland lass for whom driving rain merely added to the joy of hillwalking. “Come on, you won’t melt!” she would announce in the tones of an old-fashioned hospital matron, adding that the dog needed his exercise whatever the weather might throw at us.

Unfortunately the dog did not see it like that, and used to dig his claws into the back doormat when I tried to take him out under inclement conditions, fixing me with a look that clearly said “Have you finally gone completely mad?”

Walks? Who needs them?

To be fair to Northumberland’s reputation as a holiday destination, there was one absolutely glorious day last week that would have been perfect for the beach, if only I hadn’t arranged to spend a large chunk of it in a gastropub in Newcastle with a couple of other elderly men, putting the world to rights.

Then there was the day that would have been bearable if we had wrapped up and invested in a windbreak, plus a Primus stove on which to heat up reviving mugs of tomato soup. (My father always considered this essential kit for our summer excursions to Druridge Bay half a century ago.) But sadly I found myself chained to my desk writing something for a client until it was too late to head for the coast.

I mainly blame Caroline “Jonah” Spelman, the Government’s forestry expert and weather supremo. Have you noticed how it has chucked it down pretty much every day since she stood up in Parliament and officially announced that the country was suffering a drought?

She brought us the wettest drought since records began

All we can do is clutch at small pieces of consolation. There is no need to worry about a ban on garden hoses or automatic car washes. Arriving in Alnwick on Thursday afternoon to find the town centre full of ambulances, we could only share the general relief that torrential rain had kept so many people out of the market place when that car ran out of control.

Perhaps, as you read this, we will finally be out on the sands with our bucket and spade; the forecasters seem to be unanimous that Tuesday is going to be the best day of this week.

And surely things can only improve from the nadir of the local TV news on Sunday night, when the story of a tragic cliff accident in Seahouses was followed by one about a walking party being airlifted off Cheviot, apparently suffering from hypothermia. Mrs Hann fixed me with a beady eye and asked if there was any good news hereabouts.

Well, I observed, there had been no rioters burning down shops in Alnwick or Rothbury, attractive though they might well have found the resulting heat. And I was pretty sure that no one anywhere in Northumberland had yet been attacked by a polar bear. She graciously accepted these points for the defence, though I could sense her thinking that it was surely only a matter of time.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Not the toughest of choices

The most famous pronouncement of the celebrated modern architect Le Corbusier is that “a house is a machine for living in.” Although the man is actually celebrated only by other modern architects, I do sometimes wish that I could achieve a similar sense of detachment.

I admit that I am prone to falling in love at first sight. Nevertheless, one of the most memorable and intense instances of this phenomenon occurred shortly before Christmas 1987, when I first pulled up outside the then semi-derelict cottages which have been my home ever since. The first thing I took in were the views – of Simonside to the south and the Cheviots to the north – which I found breathtakingly lovely. I knew at once that I wanted to live there, and the property was very much a secondary consideration. Frankly I would have bought a corrugated iron shed in that location.

As it was, there were two listed stone cottages which I had knocked into a single house and subtly extended without, I hoped, detracting from their essential character. Because the prudent Victorians had filled the south-facing walls with windows and placed none at all looking north, I added a conservatory where I could sit and admire the green hills rolling towards Cheviot; still, to my mind, one of the very finest views in the country.

Since early February an estate agent has been industriously trying to sell this treasure on my behalf, attracting about as much interest as the Facebook page proclaiming Gordon Brown to be the greatest Prime Minister of all time.

On the rare occasions I have shown potential purchasers around myself, I have been struck by their total indifference to what I consider the best features of the place, and their eagerness to rip out listed fixtures and fittings. This reached its apogee on Saturday when I was proudly showing my conservatory to a man whose wife had previously toured the place, and he said “Oh, this. We thought we’d knock it down and just build a porch.”

I felt like a father asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage by a notorious wife-beater.

This followed some pretty rude remarks from my visitor about the half century’s worth of accumulated possessions that do, I admit, clutter the place up a bit. Perhaps, like cricket, house buying has become infected by the practice of “sledging”, intended to soften the vendor up for a ridiculously low offer. Clearly I must work on my witty repartee so that I have answers to it more readily to hand.

In my day the accepted form was always to find something polite to say about another person’s home, however hideous it might be. I remember that I even managed to praise something with a straight face when looking around a particularly ill-favoured Lincolnshire farmhouse, which its owners had remodelled in the style of the particularly ill-favoured Spanish hacienda that was clearly their dream home, and in which every room reeked powerfully of damp Rottweiler.

The idea of selling up was rooted in Mrs Hann’s desire to live rather closer to what she deems to be civilisation, either on Tyneside or in Cheshire, where she has a well-paid job awaiting her at the end of her maternity leave. Ironically, the only well-paid employment I have been offered for many years is in precisely the same place.

So there we have the choice. Prosperity in the North West, albeit saddled with a mortgage that will not be paid off until I am 80 or, more likely, long dead. Or relative poverty in the North East, in a blessedly paid-for place I love, with fresh spring water on tap and probably the best view in England from my conservatory. As choices go, I am beginning to feel that it is not the toughest I have ever faced.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.