Meet The Neighbours

I met my first neighbour on Thursday. At 9am the school bus pulled up at my gate and the driver came in. Her name is Linda and she lives further down the road in another cottage with her husband. We ended up chatting for three hours and she then invited me to lunch at her place. I haven't been in a bus since I was 14 so it was quite an experience getting in. It was interesting to see what the remainder of the road was like as it heads in further towards the mountains. Linda's cottage is next door to the farm where the Smedley manager lives so there is lots of activity going on there. There were a group of horses standing beneath a tree when we arrived- one lovely part grey one with large fluffy feet she told me is used as a pack horse.

We had a nice lunch in the sun in her sitting room with Linda's chocolate lab trying to sneak inside. She also has three tanks of tropical fish and two huge fluffy cats but only one was brave enough to come and say hello (unlike mine who all took off when she arrived at my place). At 2pm we headed back to my place in the bus before she headed off to pick up the kids from Tikokino.

Later that day my cousin Elaine called to tell me that she had ordered firewood for me and asked them to put in extra kindling and sawdust. This arrived the next morning at 8.45am. The truck driver tipped it off in the driveway before unloading two bags of sawdust for me. They gave me a bit extra wood (a cord and a quarter) so there was quite a pile there. I rang Elaine to tell her it had arrived while beginning to stack it in the car port at the back door. I spent two hours stacking that morning and another hour in the afternoon as I knew it was going to rain the next day.

Next morning I was shaped like a question mark. After spending two hours with a hot water bottle on my back I began stacking wood in the front car port when there was a break in the rain. I stopped for lunch and was just finishing this when I heard a car pull up in the drive. By the time I got to the back door Linda and her husband Hans were in the carport- they couldn't believe I'd actually stacked all that wood (I'd put away over half the pile) and they'd actually come to help me put it away. Within an hour the remainder was stacked and even the concrete swept clean. I'm not used to helpful neighbours so it was a shock to the system. I was so grateful as it would have taken me two more days to do it myself.

That night I lit my first fire in the Lady Kitchener Stove. Within half an hour the whole room was warm. The cats had never seen a fire before. Demelza took up residence in front of it, Piper stared in horror and the others ignored it completely. At least I won't freeze this winter- the first time in nine years.