It feels as if the pests in our garden – squirrels, rats, pigeons, parakeets – are taking over
My oldest son and I are sitting at the kitchen table when my wife walks in, looks out of the window and sighs. It is the middle of a long, dark afternoon. Rain drops begin to hit the skylight.
“Today I found the dog barking at the hose caddy,” my wife says.
Continue reading...It feels as if the pests in our garden – squirrels, rats, pigeons, parakeets – are taking over
My oldest son and I are sitting at the kitchen table when my wife walks in, looks out of the window and sighs. It is the middle of a long, dark afternoon. Rain drops begin to hit the skylight.
“Today I found the dog barking at the hose caddy,” my wife says.
Continue reading...Buying or renting a new house can be stressful enough without nasty surprises such as a poor credit rating slowing things down, especially when it may be easy to improve if you know about it in advance. When choosing to rent, letting agents and landlords want to know you are credible and can pay your […]
The post Why you should check your credit score before searching for a new home appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.
It has entered the 21st century – but only just
What’s going for it? There’s a photo, an actual physical photo, of me – aged what, five? – standing atop Gold Hill in Shaftesbury on some roasting, golden afternoon in what, 1976? This was peak Shaftesbury season. Gold Hill had been beamed into everyone’s living room for years thanks to That Hovis Advert, directed by Ridley Scott (recently resurrected for the digital age), and everyone wanted to be seen there. These days it would be selfies and photobombs ricocheting through people’s Instagrams. In the 70s, we queued up quietly with our Polaroids. Odd, isn’t it, how an advert for bread seared itself on to the collective psyche? We didn’t have TikTok and billions of platforms to divert us back then, of course, so it was impossible to avoid. But there must also have been something reassuring, calming, medicating about the sepia-tinted sight of cobbles and thatch in the mid-70s, when Britain, like today, was going through yet another of its periodic, post-imperial nervous breakdowns. Shaftesbury, high on its hill, was ignored by the Industrial Revolution, bypassed by the railways, so its streetscape to this day has an air of the feudal, even Saxon past. It has entered the 21st century, but only just: shops such as Box of Allsorts take me right back to my childhood. Perching at the top of timeless Gold Hill again, gazing over the countryside below, however cheesy, is just the pulse-cooler I need in these feverish times.
The case against Off the beaten track but, perhaps, in an appealing way. Pricey. But everywhere’s pricey in Dorset.
Continue reading...It has entered the 21st century – but only just
What’s going for it? There’s a photo, an actual physical photo, of me – aged what, five? – standing atop Gold Hill in Shaftesbury on some roasting, golden afternoon in what, 1976? This was peak Shaftesbury season. Gold Hill had been beamed into everyone’s living room for years thanks to That Hovis Advert, directed by Ridley Scott (recently resurrected for the digital age), and everyone wanted to be seen there. These days it would be selfies and photobombs ricocheting through people’s Instagrams. In the 70s, we queued up quietly with our Polaroids. Odd, isn’t it, how an advert for bread seared itself on to the collective psyche? We didn’t have TikTok and billions of platforms to divert us back then, of course, so it was impossible to avoid. But there must also have been something reassuring, calming, medicating about the sepia-tinted sight of cobbles and thatch in the mid-70s, when Britain, like today, was going through yet another of its periodic, post-imperial nervous breakdowns. Shaftesbury, high on its hill, was ignored by the Industrial Revolution, bypassed by the railways, so its streetscape to this day has an air of the feudal, even Saxon past. It has entered the 21st century, but only just: shops such as Box of Allsorts take me right back to my childhood. Perching at the top of timeless Gold Hill again, gazing over the countryside below, however cheesy, is just the pulse-cooler I need in these feverish times.
The case against Off the beaten track but, perhaps, in an appealing way. Pricey. But everywhere’s pricey in Dorset.
Continue reading...Even the smallest pocket of time can be made to count in the fight against clutter, as the cleaning experts Rachel Burditt and Aggie MacKenzie explain
So, you want a tidy house, but feel too busy? Even the smallest pocket of time can be made to count in the battle for a calm living space. We spoke to two cleaning and decluttering experts about how you can make spare moments count – and how to maximise longer chunks of time to create the serene home of your dreams.
Continue reading...Even the smallest pocket of time can be made to count in the fight against clutter, as the cleaning experts Rachel Burditt and Aggie MacKenzie explain
So, you want a tidy house, but feel too busy? Even the smallest pocket of time can be made to count in the battle for a calm living space. We spoke to two cleaning and decluttering experts about how you can make spare moments count – and how to maximise longer chunks of time to create the serene home of your dreams.
Continue reading...