A House with a Silver Lining

When pot-bellied pigs scratch their arse on your door.

After I posted a photo of the front of our place, with its ridiculous display of roses that has made seeing out of the living room window nigh on impossible, I promised I’d write about how we came upon this place and how it became a house with a silver lining.

Before we moved here, we had lived high in the North Pennines for fifteen years, having bought two derelict leadminer’s cottages and an acre of land in Upper Weardale for a song back in 1988. We learnt plumbing and wiring from books in the library, this being pre-internet and YouTube days, and lived as hippies in the hills, raising out three children, job sharing parenting and work. The views up and down Weardale were stunning, and life was idyllic.

1988 Low Burnt Hills, Lanehead before we renovated the cottages

1989 a curly perm and a caravan

Tim, c 1989 ripping up floorboards

The cottages were down a steep 1:4 track that saw us carrying kids and coal up and down in winter when it filled in with snow, and for eight of the fifteen years we lived there we had no neighbours. It was remote living, isolated and wild and it suited us just fine.

However, that all changed when the farmer sold one of the barns and the area where they used to dip the sheep. A mobile home was put up, and a couple moved in. So did their five dogs, pot bellied pigs, goats, and horses. He was a digger driver and would fire up his JCB at five in the morning, rattling the windows, even just to move a pile of kindling, or so it seemed. The dogs were chained up outside and barked incessantly, and the goats were tethered behind the house and could be heard through the baby monitor. You see, by then, we had kids. One day, I opened the front door to find one of the pot-bellied pigs scratching its arse on my front door. Tempers got frayed, words were had, but still the racket continued, and one day there was a knock at my door, which I opened to find a policeman standing outside.

‘Mrs Reed, I have had a report to say that you have been threatening and abusive.’

‘Threatening and abusive?’ said I, voice raised, ‘I’ll give you threatening and abusive!’

I then showed him a file, inches thick with paperwork where I’d tried in vain to get the neighbours to quieten down, but to no avail.

We settled into some way of living where we ignored each other. Gates were kept shut between the two properties and their two little girls were forbidden from speaking or playing with our kids. Ridiculous, but it kind of worked.

And then the house next door, the one joined to ours that had been empty for eight years was sold. With a large extended family who loved a barbeque we all got along just fine until one day there was a knock on our front door and there the new neighbour stood, fist raised and Alsatians straining at the leash. He wanted to fill my f***ing husband in! Those who know Tim will know he’s a gentle man, who, has never raised his fists in his life. It was all over access and where we parked our landrover. You see, although we lived in the middle of nowhere, the way the land and properties were divided up, meant that over time, everyone was criss-crossing everyone else’s patch.

This was the straw that broke this camel’s back. I used to shake coming home from work, dread going outside to hang my washing up, and what had been an idyllic place to live, and a gentle way of life, was now ruined. We were devastated. We’d renovated these cottages ourselves, and raised our family there, the kids having had a wonderful childhood, playing on the fells and in the river, but, we decided to look for somewhere else to live.

That was no easy task. Tim had said he’d only move if he found somewhere better than we had. We trailed property after property, my son with tears falling down his cheeks as he sat in the back of the car, because he didn’t want to move.

And then, a friend got in touch to say there was a property that had our name written all over it. It wasn’t for sale yet, but they were thinking of putting it on the market. We phoned them, and then went to see it. Driving though the nearest village, with its posh country houses, we thought, there was no way we could afford to live somewhere like this. It was a rural idyll. We looked around the house, and the garden, both huge, the latter with a babbling burn.

‘This is it!’ I said to Tim with a lump in my throat. Always a man to see the sensible side of things, and often the price tag, he said,

‘There’s no way we could afford this.’ He was right, of course. This was a six bedroom house, three floors, with extensive grounds, an orchard, stream, stunning views out of all windows, and detached - no neighbours!

‘So, where are you looking to move to?’ I asked the owner.

‘Oh, we want to downsize and move to Weardale.’

They looked at our house the very next day. I explained that we didn’t get on with the neighbours. That was fine, they were naturists, she explained, and kept themselves to themselves. (I must tell you the story of when the postman called with a parcel, one day.)

We got both properties valued by the same estate agent and then shifted the price tags down to keep them under the stamp duty threshold. We signed the deal over a glass of our homemade blackcurrant wine, and then, two months later with NO estate agent involved, we were moved in. We had done a house swap!

What had been a most horrid set of circumstances that saw us being forced out of the home we had built and raised our family in, serendipituosly turned into a cloud with a silver living, or rather, a house with a silver lining.

This new home, with no neighbours and down a very quiet country lane, was at river level, rather than being high in the hills. The weather is gentler, it is easier to grow fruit and veg and that in turn has given me plenty to write about. We have a little station just half a mile down the lane, and are near to a main road that goes between Newcastle and Carlisle. So our three kids, entering their teen years as we moved, they could have social lives and get out and about. Indeed, our eldest two formed a band, their mates could all get here and we had room here for band practices. How I loved it when, with the Velux windows open I could hear them play, and danced in the veg patch as I listened to them.

We have now been here for twenty-three years and it has been the best move, ever! I never get tired of the walk down the lane, never take this beautiful garden and burn for grantid, and thank my lucky stars that we were able to do a house swap.

So, that’s the story. I’m not sure what it is I’m trying to say, other than clouds or houses, can have silver linings.

Do you have, or have you ever had neighbour trouble? It can make or break a place.

If life is giving you lemons or pot-bellied pigs scratching their arses on your door, hang in there! Change can come. Even the worst situations can come good.

Thanks for reading,

PS. If you want to read some of my freelance writing, I have an article in August’s edition of Platinum Magazine which is out now, about how getting an e-bike super-charged my life.

In other news, my next novel, Molly McFlynn Goes Rogue, the sequel to The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn is being typeset as we speak, and I’m looking forward to opening pre-orders very soon. I’m getting some super endorsements from my ARC readers, including this one from lovely Katherine Livesey who writes here from Under the Alder.

"Molly McFlynn Goes Rogue is a heartfelt, beautifully crafted sequel that deepens an already captivating story. Rich with emotion and unforgettable characters, returning to Molly's story is such a joy."

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