Feel Better:Complain About Anything

Originally posted by Joannie: ↑

I am glad that you enjoyed my story
This girl moved into our village as a nanny when she was 18, I was 28. She was working for a very snooty air hostess.
I met the said air hostess when I took my daughter to playgroup when she was just 3 and her son was the same age. But she was a much older mother.

She seemed enthralled that I and my ex husband had a small farm with chickens, pigs, goats, a house cow, ducks, turkeys etc and asked if she could bring her "mothers help" to visit. I said yes, of course.

What she didn't count on was that it was an instant friendship between me and her nanny. People often thought we were sisters.
After a few years, said nanny fell out with bossy air hostess and came to live at our farm for a year, helping me on the plant nursery. We had so much fun together, it was a wonderful time. Then she went back to The Highlands to go to college and we visited many many times. Oh the wonderful ceilidhs, she had her family and they wanted to stay up all night and join in.

Then when we moved here, we paid for the 4 of them to come over, they stayed 3 months and her partner, who was a stonemason and my husband faced the outside of our new house with granite, from the farm.
Again, it was party time Her husband has built many castles in Scotland.

When they went home we or I would go up there every year during our annual trip home to England.
Sadly now, she has the big C. It breaks my heart.
Here is a little pic of the stonework. None of it was cut, it was all hand picked to fit.
Hopefully this will be here long after we have all passed on.

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Hi @Joannie - beautiful story and beautiful work - I have two homes where my husband had done some incredible work - the last one has been taken down totally - I haven't had the heart to go back and look at it all. He wasn't a builder, just clever with everything he touched, even built a circular staircase from Canadian (and second-hand) pine wood - - had to be cleaned - staircase - and it fitted precisely - no uneven heights of steps (as I recently encountered in a friend's place) - we both cleaned the large wooden front door (double) - it was a salvation army citadel, hence the heavy large door - it took 50 hours to get rid of the paint to reveal beautiful light wood underneath. The whole family helped installing a heavy sliding door once and I fainted, because I hadn't had breakfast - it's a wonder the door didn't come crashing down as well.

You might find a handyman who can make a beautiful feature in your new (old) home - I actually thought it looked pretty good myself and once you live there, you can let your imagination go wild and change a few things. It only takes a bit of imagination - and I think you've got oodles of that - and a bit of money () to make something special of your new home.
atm I would like more 'white' in my living room, but know it won't happen - too much work, but it is beautiful as is, I am only unhappy about the floors (lino with nomad rugs), but to try and change that is too much work, too much shifting of heavy furniture etc.

I have just watched a wonderful program about Napoleon - I did not know that it was Napoleon who 'renovated' Rome to its present splendour, introducing even the lighting of all its architectural features, which is now such a wonderful sight to behold. One of my favourite British actors did a lot of the commentary (Jeremy Irons).
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