On the train on the way back from Redhill tonight, the scales have lifted from my eyes and my world has returned to ‘vivid’ mode, from the dull grey it’s been in my heart for the last two days. The grass and new growth on the plants is extra bright green. The animals, both wild and farm, seem full of the joys of spring. We have fields full of lambs and calves by the side of the railway line, so many rabbits I couldn’t count as well as two foxes, half a dozen deer and many, many birds. I sat on the station platform in the warm sunshine and watched a courtship between a pair of blackbirds. A pigeon was trying to get amorous with another pigeon on the platform with his puffed up feathers and head-down strutting. It is spring!

We’d got our act together for a change and managed to be packed and ready to go to Cornwall by last night so DM, a laden car and two excited dogs picked me up at Blackwater Station, then got straight on the motorway. We started the journey in broad sunshine, progressed through heavy rain and came through it to grey sky and then ultimately cloud.

I’m sometimes accused of having my head in the clouds in my home life. I suppose that it is true in a sense. I do have so many personal ambitions that I am striving towards and they probably seem like pie in the sky to many of my friends.

So, tonight, I do have my head in the clouds, literally. We’ve come for our fix of a better life, here in Cornwall. We’ve climbed the hill to our little moor top cottage and found as we’ve climbed up from the river valley, we’ve literally climbed into the cloud. It’s so ‘foggy’ we found it hard to find the road way as the light failed just before we arrived. There is nothing quite so disorientating as fog/cloud. It seems like another place we are arriving in.

There has been building work underway while we’ve been away – partly the reason for staying away so long. As we open the front door, we realise that the house is basically pretty close to uninhabitable. It’s thick in plaster dust and the other debris that comes when the house is being plastered. Our trusty work team has done its best to clear up by washing the floor, which has at least dampened the plaster dust and stuck it to the floor, where there is a nice little line of bare human footprints through it! There is no way to use the fireplace because it’s been sealed to keep the bulk of the dirt out. It’s great to see progress but for a fleeting moment, my heart said ‘we shouldn’t have come, we should have waited for it to be finished’. That’s the first time I’ve felt like that since we started this project.

David was dragging around furniture while I was changing sheets so we didn’t have to sleep in a bed full of plaster dust.

The kitchen was stacked up with light fittings, furniture and other stuff, thick in dust. I realised the food I brought for supper wasn’t going to get cooked tonight as I can’t see to prepare it (no lights for some reason) and anyway, the work surfaces all need detoxing before I can prepare food on them.

I decide that the only thing for it is to ‘cook’ the type of meal I abhor – frozen pies (Linda McCartney), frozen peas and tinned sweetcorn. This is from my emergency food supply that I keep in case of siege, nuclear war, contagious disease or other major disaster. When I served it up, I nearly wept. I doubt I’ve ever fed DM such a dreadful meal. I told myself that it was going to taste better than it looked. It didn’t. It tasted every bit as bad as it looked and quite probably worse.

We resorted to beer. This bottle of ‘dreckly’ comes from a brewery only ten miles from here (if that) and the name comes from the Cornish equivalent of ‘manyana’ – dreckly means ‘I’ll do it dreckly’…… ‘after I finish sitting here looking out at the view, drinking my pint and watching the world go by. We drank it, watched a bit of telly, which was propped on a chair with a makeshift connection to the aerial and we sat on the futon dragged back into the centre of the room, with a cloth thrown over it.

Then we decamped to bed……..aaaaahhhhhhhh luxury!

Last year I was working late with the lovely Ewan and two years ago I was bemoaning Jo's absence.....these days, I'm glad of new help who shows up when she says she will and does what she says she will do. Mind you, I still wish I knew that the crazy Jo was still aloive.