It's Cold Inside

"It's so cold my face hurts," moaned McColleague as she returned from the freezing conditions in the Great Hall to the relative warmth of my office.

It is very cold in there. The old circa 1970s storage heaters stopped working a couple of years ago and curatorial debate over replacement heating is still in progress. (For those of you familiar with the Lord of the Rings, Ents make speedy decisions in comparison with those responsible for deciding what light fitting or heating system should be put in place in our historic buildings.) In the meantime McColleague and I plug in electric heaters (and lamps) where we can and put on several layers of clothing before venturing into the showrooms.

"I don't know how our volunteers are going to manage when we open in a couple of weeks time. This cold snap isn't forecast to end anytime soon. They're likely to freeze to the flagstones."

We ponder for a while.

"I'm not lifting the ban on hot drinks in the house," I assert. "Not after the coffee ring on the chest incident."

In the end we decide to let the volunteers keep the front door closed and stay in the Parlour, the warmest room in the house, emerging only to meet and greet visitors as they spot them coming up the path. That and as many trips to warm up in the staff room with a cup of tea as they like should help keep hypothermia at bay. And possibly taking it in turns to wear the Stately Moans fleece (budget restraints mean I can't buy one for each individual, sadly. I'm happy to share mine though, if people don't mind the fact it has paint on it and biscuit crumbs.)

"It's all moot though if the cold snap continues and the drive stays icy."

This is true. The drive down to the house is two miles of twisty-turny, slippy-slidey ungritted ice when the temperatures drop to below freezing. Getting down is a scary yielding to gravity and the patron saints of bobsleigh teams. Getting up is impossible. I spent two weeks back in the January snows dependant on Lovely Warden bringing in supplies over the fields on the Gator and what I could wrestle off the cows in the barn.

"Ah well, it's all beyond our control. Now give us that fleece and I'll go back and finish the bat covers."

The Return of the Doris (Again)

I am returned, with so much to update upon it is a little overwhelming. In the meantime, while I get my hilarious stories in order, I shall give you a brief, visual summary of the intervening months.

November
It is a sad day for me, after Halloween, when our amazing creature creations have to be taken down and put back into storage. I was immensely proud that several visiting families told us that ours was the best Halloween trail in the region. I can believe it. No crappy paper ghost flapping forlornly in the corner for us! We do Halloween properly. Full-sized monsters and spooky sound effects abound. Still, all good things must come to an end and, reluctantly, I put away the rubber spiders and turned my mind to other issues, such as the water leaking into the house every time it rains.

It isn't a new problem. I have been flagging it up for quite a while now. Still, at long last, shortly before Christmas, some buildings department people and an architect came to see the problem for themselves. Of course, as is the nature of such things, it wasn't raining. It was a glorious winter day with not a cloud in the sky. We would have to recreate rainy day conditions if they were to try to pinpoint where the problem lay. No problem.

"Up you go," we said to Lovely Warden, issuing him with a ladder and a hosepipe. "Try not to fall off, but if you do, try to roll with it."Afterwards, while I was mopping up the subsequent indoor water features that resulted from this experiment, the architect came to show me the water ingress points he had marked on his drawing.

"So, that's pretty much all of it."

"Yes."

"The entire front of the house."

"Yes."

"Almost every timber and every panel needs attention."

"Yes."

"And when can we start work on this?"

"March."

"When we re-open?"

"Yes."

I have been on a course. I know that this is not a disaster. It is a challenge to be met.

December

Time to prepare for the annual Christmas event, which entails much joyous gathering of foliage.

Lovely Warden McColleague and I duly donned our foliage gathering hats and wellies, climbed into the Gator and set off up the road, singing festively.

"Why's it making that noise?" asked McColleague as the Gator thwup-thwup-thwupped its way along.

It turned out that a knackered tyre was making that noise and Lovely Warden had to remove the entire wheel and take it into town to be repaired.

Undaunted we set off on foot to gather whatever we could carry back to the house. We wanted an enormous ball of mistletoe to hang as our centrepiece in the Great Hall. In one of the many old orchards on the estate we found just the specimen.

"Up you go," we said to Lovely Warden, issuing him with a saw and a pair of loppers. "Try not to fall off, but if you do, try to roll with it."


It was an impressive size once Lovely Warden cut it free. Almost as big as McColleague. We used double the rope we would normally to hoist it aloft in the Hall and even then I had a nagging concern it might plummet onto an unsuspecting visitor and flatten them, festively.


It was an exciting walk back across country with the fruits of our labours. Lovely Warden has a habit of taking shortcurts which involve fording streams and scrambling up near vertical slopes of mud. It all got a bit Blair Witch Project for a while. Which I liked, being a Halloween queen.

The Hall was duly decorated and set for a medieval feast. Sadly the public can't sample the food, but the re-enactors are happy to feed it to me. They have lots of interesting spiced alcoholic beverages to pass around in wassail bowls too, which makes for an entertaining evening.


January

Ah, back to work after the Christmas break. The moat froze solid and the flagstones in the Hall developed an alarming mould. I phoned the curatorial department for advice on the best way to tackle it and was informed to brush the mould carefully before vacuuming it up via a special filter and to wear face masks of the correct specification, to avoid breathing in spores.

Ten minutes later Lovely Warden appeared with a broom, McColleague fetched the Dyson and we all pulled our jumpers up over our noses for safety. It was fine.

February

So far this week I have missed the Spring Conference, a training day and a staff meeting due to the heavy snow. While I am obviously deeply disappointed I am making the best of it. Luckily McColleague and I only just re-ordered toilet rolls and biscuits last week so I think I may survive until the thaw.

Snow Day! Snow Day!

This is the view from my bedroom window upon waking yesterday. It was a wonderful moment of fulfilled expectations. I'd have been mightily naffed off to find no snow after the panic buying of the day before.

Even though I have no real excuse not to go into the office, seeing as though I don't have to leave the house to get to it, I still get to enjoy time out since nobody else has made it into work. I have donned my special hat, my gloves, my boots, my coat and spent as much of the past two days as possible outside. The dog has been happier than ever, bouncing around excitedly and eating snow.


The cows are safely ensconced in the sheds, their desire to escape somewhat reduced at present. The farmer arrives on a quad bike each morning and tends to them, so they are quite content to stay where they are at the moment.


The sound of breaking branches keeps reaching my ears. Those brittle damson trees are cracking under the strain of the snow. None of them have fallen on any ramblers, however. Yes, despite the four inches of snow and the impassability of the track, we have still had people climbing over the gate and interrupting our snow fun. I should have spent my time building some kind of fort and stockpiling snowballs, thinking about it.

The ducks, meanwhile, are forced to congregate together in the one part of the moat that isn't frozen. Fortunately they know there is grain to be had from our woodshed, and arrive, noisily, at dusk to demand feeding. Much like me, really.