As ever, this is brought to you from yet another train journey. And yet I'm finding something immensely satisfying about my current predicament. I'm at Preston with my 50 minute wait for the train through to Hebden (a staple of journeys from Morecambe to Hebden – unfortunately the services from Lancaster get in mere minutes after the previous hour's service has gone) and although I sometimes find this a veritable pain, today, it's almost pleasurable. I have a rucsac of stuff next to me, along with my intrepid Tardis Bag, and, most amusingly, I am now using the laptop bag from a Compaq the Gardiner clan had years and years and years ago as my laptop bag – because it's the right size! Means the gorgeous black and orange fluffy “envelope” my Mum & I made for my Accenture laptop will probably be retired for the foreseeable future, but it was just a rather happy coincidence. Anyway, it now means that I can slide my laptop in and out of said laptop case while it's still inside aforementioned rucsac – which may not sound much, but I find immensely satisfying. Along with just a general feeling of calm as I sit here surveying a rather quiet (and yet still with plenty of trains passing through) Preston station on a Sunday evening. Maybe it was the homemade houmous pitta I have just eaten. Or perhaps, the glorious week long English Summer Holiday I've just had...
And so to the blog title: my holiday this year was spent in Morecambe it was outstanding. I was there for a week (including 2 weekends) and there was glorious sunshine pretty much every day – there was only one day that stands out as really not being sunny, and even then it was pleasantly warm. I remain utterly blown away by Morecambe Bay – even more so now I have a growing interest in the band of kite surfers who go out from the Battery. I had friends visiting throughout the week and they all loved it – both Chez Tigs and Morecambe as a whole. The days when I was on my own I pottered around the house, sat on the beach in the sun reading, or went wandering across the sands (near the coast, I'm not off on intrepid / stupid expeditions across the sands on my own. That'd be crazy) or rollerblading on the prom. Even when it rained I was out on my blades – and somehow ended up at a roller disco at the infamous Carleton on Saturday night. Next challenge: learn how to go backwards!
Point being, there was loads of sun, sand, sea and just a fabulous place to spend time. I had more sun on this holiday than I remember having in France on family holidays when we sometimes ended up resigned to another day playing cards in a soggy tent (not that said days weren't enjoyable in their own sweet way, but the key point here is the sunshine factor). I'm probably more tanned after some short reading sessions than my colleague who spent a week “in the sun” earlier in the month. It was just brilliant. The simple pleasures of a beach holiday combined with being in my fabulous house made it marvellous marvellous and marvellous. And had I wanted it, I had historic Lancaster on my doorstep to amuse me with cultural heritage and the like – but all I wanted was sun and beach and Morecambey goodness. Good times.
I've also had a lot of success creating more patchwork curtains for some of the rooms in Chez Tigs, most notably in the front room bay. All the windows in the house (except in the basement which doesn't count) have curtains at the moment but some are curtains I inherited with the house which I'm not particularly fond of. Until about 6 hours ago that included the front room bay window curtains – they were OK, but had no fullness, were bit faded and just somehow didn't bring the funness to the room I wanted. Now, when I started my epic mission to get curtains I liked throughout the house I had various options – including buying lots of fabric and the agonising decisions of what fabric to buy. Having a large quantity of fabric already, just not sufficient of any one pattern / colour to make “matching” curtains I opted for patchwork curtains – with large chunks of different fabrics sewn together to make the size I needed. The same went for the lining fabrics too occasionally, but thankfully not too often. Not only has this meant I now have wonderfully colourful curtains which combine fabrics I've bought, inherited (some of which I remember being curtains when I was growing up) or otherwise acquired, it also means I've made significant headway in reducing the Fabric Mountain which I've been carting around with me for the past few years. I think I'm almost there on the curtain front now – next on the list? Patchwork bedspreads and / or quilts. Hurrah!
The week also found me spending some time clearing out the basement – I've a long way to go but there's now one room which has been cleared, swept and sorted. As well as giving me the satisfaction of clean and tidy space, it's also got me thinking about the bits and pieces in the house that I just don't need – and so I've started Freegle-ing them (same principle as Freecycle: an email list that you can tell people about stuff you are giving away for free, folk who are interested get in touch and then you arrange between you the best pick up time etc.). Some fishing kit I had in the basement was immensely popular, as were some baby items. Some furniture I offered up had more mixed responses – one piece proved entirely undesireable and the other I had 4 “yes please”s for, 2 of which I offered it to and they never got back to me. Ho hum – shall try the third and, if necessary, the fourth and see if they fancy a collection next Monday when I'll be back...after an exciting adventure in Barrow in Furness where I'll be learning how to kite surf! Woo!
More basement shenanigans came in the form of having 3 different builders come round to get an idea of some jobs I need doing – and to give me initial thoughts on basement conversion costs. Which in itself got me thinking about a whole host of possibilities which would require the services of an architect – but could be really fun and could bring the basement back into use with a vengeance.
And overall I feel like I've started making headway on how to make Morecambe work for me. I've loved it for well over 2 years now, and Chez Tigs has been in my life for 2 years next weekend, but other than a somewhat unexpected and unexplainable love, it hasn't made much sense. Now I find myself discovering Morecambe-specific fun to entertain myself with (rollerblading on the prom, the potential of kite surfing) and really settling into the house. Which only leaves...working out what I can do in Morecambe which means I can actually be there for a larger chunk of time. Thoughts so far: start my own company / co-operative so I'd be working in a team doing....something. Perhaps some kind of consultancy for businesses in Lancashire / Cumbria so Morecambe wouldn't be an entirely crazy place to base myself from, but at the moment that's where the idea ends. It's definitely not setting up a massage business, although there will likely remain elements of that in my life generally. And it won't necessarily happen overnight – in fact, I don't expect it to happen for a couple of years, but it really feels like a seed has been planted and now it just needs nurturing.
Watch this space.
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