Background

I've always wanted to live in the countryside. There are some beautiful places all over the UK and one of my favourite places is where my Grandparents used to Live in Mid Wales. They lived in a very small place called Dolanog. They have both died now, but about 5-6 years ago after my Grandfather came to live in a nursing home about 10 mins away from us (rather than an old house unsuitable for his needs about 80 miles away) it was entirely apparent that he was never going to live there again and we spent all our holiday entitlement and most bank hols/weekends there filling skips and sorting out not only a house full of generations worth of stuff, but a small business and post office. (My grandfather was known in the village as "Newton the post office"!) There was lots to clear out. Regardless of lovely incidents such as hunting for and finding an old rusty service revolver (we had asked him where it was... he told us "its in the Hampshire"... helpful? - not really!) wrapped in newspaper in my grandmothers sewing box and assuming because we knew what my Grampy was like, it was loaded (it wasn't) ringing the police and asking how we should dispose of it and them turning up to collect it! oh and a suspicious substance (I shan't tell you what) which necesitated my father getting a police escort to the nearest small town! (oh the fun! - and it was!) Well about 10 skips, a ripped out kitchen, bathroom, shop, store, two garages, a large garden, a piano, three piece suite and sooo much rubbish later we sold the house. We did however save this as a momento, it is a picture of the house when it was two houses and a blacksmiths many years before my grandparents bought it.


I'd loved to have seen it then, I wish we'd kept it, but times change and I'll just have to keep my fab memories of clearing it out, taking mallets to piano's (to this day I'll never know how they got it in...) scrubbing old quarry tile floors, having baths with the window open whilst watching the cows and sheep in the field opposite, sewing and playing cards with the others by dodgy electric and sometimes candlelight, calling Dad to remove the MASSIVE spiders that sometimes chased you out of rooms and eating breakfast sitting on the wall outside the front door.