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It was Spring 1991 when I first saw The Cooks' Retreat, although it wasn't called that then ~ it was "Foxearth" and included the cottage next door. Inside was a horrid moth-eaten fox's mask, hung in the place of honour over the large fireplace. I quickly threw it out when I moved in, and also changed the name.
My first impressions included a sea of shoulder-high cow-parsley, through which I had to push to discover the boundaries. Also, the house-martins' little mud hut stuck under the eaves, on the front of the cottage,
Water came through the roof onto the electrical wiring and there was a lot of work needing to be done, both practically and aesthetically. After I purchased my part of the divided up property and obtained a grant towards some of the repairs, work proceeded satisfactorily ~ until it came to renewing the guttering. The callous builder swept away the house-martins' family nest because "their droppings rotted the window-frame." I felt this was a small price to pay for having such charming houseguests. I wondered how many other window-frames had been rotted over the last 400 years, since this house had been built. Mine may have been only the second or third replacement!
The following year, I looked out for them again, eagerly, hoping they would come back. It took SEVEN YEARS before they returned. Perhaps they felt it was safer to live elsewhere, rather than risk having their next home smashed up! A bit like seven years bad luck after smashing a mirror, only it was my misfortune rather than the builders'.
It delighted me, once again, to watch their joyous, swooping flight patterns, backwards and forwards, while they built themselves yet another home with me. They built it exactly on the original position.
The mud came from the edge of the brook on the opposite side of the road, from which it is very likely that mud was also taken, along with cow dung, to make the daub for my own house walls. I enjoyed the idea of that continuity, and sharing it with the house-martins, also. A further continuity lies in the fact that these marvellous little birds always return, each season, to where they were hatched in order to rear more broods.
House-martins stay in the UK from late spring to mid-summer and usually rear two sets of young, before travelling thousands of miles overseas. This year, they managed three broods. If it is true that they do, in fact, always return to the same place, then maybe they will need to built yet another mud hut to accommodate them all!
It is my proud priviledge to sweep away their mess from my window-ledges. It is mid-August and they have only just flown away, and I am greatly missing them. They catch their insects on the wing, which is the reason for their swooping flight. They were always exceptionally busy in the evenings and much better to watch than the TV summer programmes.
As for the cow-parsley, it remains dominant. I remember seeing it all over the countryside in the film 'Akenfield', (about the way of life in this rural area between the two World Wars) which was shot locally.
One other thing that I remember from that film was my first sight of a baptism by immersion in a specially built tank in the local Baptist Chapel. It showed a woman wearing a long, white lace gown, like a wedding dress, which had a weighted hem for respectability. I little thought then that, two years later, I too would have a similar baptism (but in black trousers and not in the same Chapel!)
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