sweasel.com

Now that’s a kick-ass house, Weas!

I especially liked all those bedroom toys you cunningly prop up by the fireplace when not in use. 🙂

Badger – you did good, Sir!

I am quite envious. It is absolutely lovely. My fingers are itching to see that neglected garden. The house being that old, how does it smell? Bottle in the roof, eh? Didn’t they used to put something dead under the hearth too?
And I was hoping to see mug shots of both of ya’ll, not your feets.

Very cool! Maybe you should put some sort of padding on Old Skullcracker though 😉

It’s just beautiful. Congratulations Weasel and Badger. I didn’t see any minion’s quarters, will that be your first renovation?

That is so cool!!!

Now that is some evergreen weasel class.
Only bad thing, there’s not enough photos.

BTW, is that located in south of England, west coast
or over East Anglia way?

Charming house. So that’s the stove. We all thought it was an Aga or its equivalent. Now I understand what blackening, uh, I mean bedarkening it meant.
Don’t you guys burn coal domestically in the US? On the ‘No idea’ photo, that brass thing with the galleon and the brass forceps-looking things are technically known as the ‘poker’ and the ‘fire scissors’/’fire tongues’/’fire grabbers’ (something like that) respectively. The poker is for breaking the the fused mass of glowing coals up (via the highly scientific process of pokimification) and the fire scissors are for turnings coals, wood, firelighters or whatever’s in the fire so you don’t either a) get your fingers dirty or b) burn your fingers. The other stuff, I’m clueless about (apart from that thing on the far left, which might be a device for carrying the ash tray out to the bin), but I suspect – even though they looks like medieval torture devices – that they’re for fire-making. It’s practically an artfrom over here. You can sort of tell by the fact that I’ve just written x number of words about the fireplace alone…
The location looks great too. Brooding skies, brisk sea air…crows. We have crows/rooks/ravens around here too. I like to think of them as harbingers of evil. They stand around in fields, these big, stocky, jet-black birds and watch you as you drive past as if so say, ‘What are you looking at? I dare you to slow down, motherfucker.’

Oh, and I bet you were disappointed that the chimney sweep wasn’t a Dickensian cockney orphan sent up the chimney by a stove-pipe hatted guy with a cane and an opium habit.

Thanks, McGoo and all.

I’m working furiously to scent-mark the place in Weasel’s absence, so that when she returns, it’ll smell just like home.

Old houses aren’t just impossibly quaint – they can be impossibly scary, too. Like yesterday morning, when I padded downstairs to find water on the dining room floor. An incontinent ghost?

Look up, old badger, up. Lo! a dripping beam. Impossibly quaint dry rot, or achingly picturesque ceiling collapse ever a possibility, I braved the two rooms I tend to keep out of (doorways at shoulder height, one with a floorboard that moves like a bouncy castle) to find the merry old leakynge pype (c. 2004, I’m given to understand).

One plumber, an exchange of money, and all seems well again.

As I write, the house dozes in the early morning sun, creaking softly while it warms up, shifting around to get comfortable, every bit as organic as Weasel says, and much like an old, friendly dog.

Think I’ll go and dig for worms. Nothing like starting the day with a full English breakfast.

Oh my gosh! what a lovely house!!! I really hope you get it.
I moved recently…. and am very jealous now!
Tip: I used moveme.com when I moved. It’s a free website for helping people move home in the UK, it may be of use to you 🙂
Good luck!

I wonder if you guys have a ghost. That would kick ass. Assuming it was the mild sort of ghost and not the angry vengeful sort, of course.

My great-aunt and -uncle have a house in Colorado, and they claim that whenever they go to stay in it, on the first night, they hear movements downstairs, then two people speaking, a man and a woman. The ghostly couple complains about strangers in “their” house again, then walks out, and isn’t heard from until the next time the corporeal couple visits.

Uncle B, did you have a bonfire and fireworks in the garden last night?

Badger – that’s the Ghost of Putz! He never could hold his wee. If you find a half-melted thurible around somewhere you’ll know for sure.

Was the Leakynge Pype running more-or-less north-south?

Isn’t there an English or Scottish meal that consists of some kind of worms? …Or was that a dream?

Hello, Mrs. Peel. No, instead I went to local public one (without giving too much away, they are quite a ‘big deal’ down here). It’s organised by a group of pyromaniac lunatics, in the bowl of a valley, so when things explode, they don’t so much go ‘Bang!’ as ‘KERWHUMP!WHUMP!WHUMP!’ Most satisfying!

What with that and the torchlit procession through the fields, it’s rather like being in a Hammer film.

Without the blood.

Usually.

I’d post a picture, but the arty weasel doesn’t ‘do’ colour (or ‘color’ as she will insist on typing) and, anyway, being a badger, I’m too stupid to know how.

As for worms, McGoo, no, nothing here (or in Scotland) that I’ve ever heard of has worms in it. Well, not intentionally, though a few pub pork pies I’ve seen might have been considering it as a career move…

I’m from York, the town where Guy Fawkes was born and raised. Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night was banned this year because of health and safety concerns. Imagine that.

Wow! Pretty amazing. I’m kind of jealous although I don’t think I’d wanna own a house that old. I’m having a hard enough time with the 110 year old thing I’ve got now.

You know, Gibby, until we start tarring and feathering these Town Hall scum, they’ll just go on until you need a license to fart.

And yes, I admit it: ‘tarring and feathering’ is a delicate euphemism for what I really have in mind.

If Answers dot com can be believed:
Tarring & Feathering …(W)as first used as a punishment for theft in the English navy, recorded in the Ordinance of Richard I in 1189, and by the mid-1700s had become mob practice. The figurative usage dates from the mid-1800s.

The reason I looked it up was to see if it was and “Americanism”, since the only time I ever saw it referenced was in Hollywood westerns. Nope.

Seems you Brits thought it up waaay before America was even a twinkle in the King & Queen O’ Spain’s eye(s).

Damn it! The reason your Euro-folks thought of all the neat stuff is ’cause…’cause… you were there first! Rats.

Lovely place. Reminds me of a quaint cottage in ummm England. Pip pip, eh what.

Having grown up in a draughty (drafty) old house, I envy you some things. Other things, not so much.

You know, I don’t know how I got the weasel all glowy in that picture, but I find the image disturbing. Like Stoaty’s going door to door asking badgers if they want me for their personal savior.

Hey, B. Check out the door. Does it look to you like it has one of those old-fashioned bell pulls on it, like the house next door? The picture is from the first crop you sent me this Spring, and I was sure it had a chain on it. I’m thinking the front door bell went the way of the painting…

my house-a comeon! I love that song 🙂 Very peppy and catchy.

My brother recently got the Sentimental Journey series, 3 discs of stuff from the 30s-40s and its all terrific.

Awesome. For some reason it makes me think you found Howl’s Moving Castle.

That was pretty cool until I got to the picture with the big clumps of dead animal hair stuck in the wall.

God forbid, but if that place ever catches fire, it’s really going to stink.

You know, I don’t know how I got the weasel all glowy in that picture, but I find the image disturbing. Like Stoaty’s going door to door asking badgers if they want me for their personal savior.

I kinda like the Radiant Stoat … luminous weasely absolution for thee and me! (“We accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us!” to return to the Freaks comment). Our Lady of Mustelidae.

Spot on, McGoo, a trebuchet. Maybe an Onager, or even a Mangonel, if we’re sticking to petrary.

Or, if only the biggest and best will do, a Great Turkish Bombard. Maybe Queen Victoria would part with hers. Might have to haul it from Portsmouth, though.

It’d make for a real celebration next Guy Fawkes Day.

This is cheap, but I’m a cheap guy, so I’ll say it any way:
I notice that Great Turkish Bombard was also known as the Muhammad Gun. I wonder if it went off around children…
It’s worth a few weeks in the Ministry of Love.

Sure it’s a beautiful house but has anyone ever questioned how Uncle Badger could afford the Country Property?

Now you know. Be sure to watch them all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jPbzSv2sEw

Love the new digs!