Kate's Blog

Follow me if you will as I try to navigate through the ups and downs of my world.

I'm writing this blog to help me make sense of all that has happened - from my diagnosis with non-Hodgkins lymphoma while pregnant with my third child in May 2008
, through to my reflections on chaotic family life as I try to pick up the pieces of my life again.


The kids are so small, and I'm working hard to keep us all safe and to stay in remission.

Stay with me - it won't be all doom and gloom I promise!



Monday 7 December 2009

Our House

I'm tired today - you want to know why? Because I am so excited about our new loft bedroom that I can't sleep properly in it! Childish? Yes, very. But if you knew the blood,sweat and tears that have occurred over the completion of our loft conversion, you'd be excited too. It's all so glamorous up there at the moment - like a little oasis away from the noise of the rest of the house. And because we live in the city, we were short on views. But not anymore. Now, up in my lovely bedroom I can see over the rooftops to the purple Cheviot Hills beyond, the spidery wind turbines on the hills in County Durham as well as across the mosaic of the city itself.

Our house is coming up to its 100th birthday - and in a way I feel as if we have given it a present. It's a lovely, if tatty, Edwardian house and we've been here for nearly 5 years. Before that a family lived here for a short while and before that the original owners lived and died inside this house. But in all that time the loft has been waiting - the beams straining under the roof, the chimneys standing un-noticed sentinels - for some attention and loving care. And now the chimney seems to sway against the sky as I lie in bed and watch its silhouette, close enough to touch if I lean out of the window.

For the first time in this house we've enough room to move around each other without collisions and without stuff piled into every corner. We sort of plan to move into the country in the next couple of years; out of all my family, I'm the only city dweller. But it occurs to me that maybe we're beginning to turn this house into a home and maybe we're going to find it hard to leave.

6 comments:

Joanne said...

Your loft does sound charming! Older homes do have so much character, more so than new ones. Isn't it amazing that the longer we stay in a place, living our lives within its walls, it becomes so much a part of us, a real home? Enjoy!

Mummy mania said...

Oh it's so exciting when we get more space!!!!! and more inportantrly we feel we've really created something when you so something monumental like like. Is that your new writing spot??

Tim Atkinson said...

Oh yes, you've got to enjoy it for longer than a couple of years, surely? Sounds great! Sally (my daughter) sleeps in the loft and I write there... there's nothing like the top-floor. Except when the delivery man calls...

diney said...

It sounds like a little piece of heaven where you can write in peace? It would be a shame to move when you have spent so much time, effort and money creating it and making the house 'your own. And it's further to walk to the biscuits in the kitchen, so it's more healthy.!!

Kate said...

Ha! Very true about the biscuits!!

Tracey said...

Kate, I saw a comment you left on another blog, and when I saw your description of yourself, I though, "Now, here is a woman with whom I have a lot in common!" I was humbled when I arrived to here to read about your illness. I guess we don't have as much in common as I thought since my courage has not been tested in this way. But having found you, I hope you don't mind if I stay and look around a bit.

You loft sounds wonderful. Old homes have such soul.