CONTORTED PASTA

When I moved into this 500-year-old house, I knew it was going to be cold. At the time, daytime highs were in the low teens Celsius, and while that wasn't cold per se, it was cool enough that the draughts – mostly coming from the authentic leaded faux-medieval 1970s windows – were plainly perceptible. The heating had been programmed to go half an hour in the morning and evening to keep the pipes from freezing, and that was ample; I turned it off mid-May and, aside from a particularly chilly week in June, didn't turn it on again until mid-November.

The kitchen is furnished with an Aga, which is essentially a gas update of the old wood- or coal-burning cast iron stove. It takes ages to heat up, but when it gets hot it stays hot for ages. During the summer I would only run it on the coolest day in the 7-day forecast, cooking everything I could and then living off salads and leftovers for the next week. The only downside to this system (aside from spending an entire day on my feet) was that the Aga heats the water, so most of the time I had no hot running water. However, I had been hearing about the health benefits of cold showers for years, and decided I might as well give it a go. To my surprise, after a few weeks I actually got to like them, and the prospect of a hot shower seemed gross and feverish. Maybe the Victorians were on to something.

Now, of course, it is cold – in fact the last few days have been about as cold as it ever gets around here, freak Siberian high pressure systems notwithstanding. The same advice that touted the benefits of cold showers started with 'since central heating means we don't adapt to the changing seasons anymore ...' so I was determined to try doing it the old-fashioned way and see how low I could go. It wasn't just machismo: my house in Cambridge had been kept rather cool as well, and I discovered when I went on my sailing trip that this gave me superpowers of resilience compared to my comfortably-heated crewmates who were miserable all the time. If I could adapt to an even colder house then I could be even more resilient, and British winter would have no power over me at all! (OK, maybe there was a little machismo.)

And, I have to say, it has worked. I have been persuaded to increase the heating to a whole hour in the morning and afternoon, with a short booster late in the evening in case I'm working past 11, which is the case more often than not, but so far I haven't needed more than that. There were a couple of uncomfortable weeks as the nights got longer in October, but then we had a warm spell in November that felt positively balmy, and now that we're back to freezing temps I am finding them no trouble at all. In fact, it was only this morning (foggy, -1°C) that I finally pulled out one of the lighter merino base layers I'd taken to Antarctica, a layer I'd sometimes gone without in the dry cold down there, but wore pretty consistently through March back in the UK. This acclimation thing, it turns out, actually works.

I bang the polar drum a lot, but something I wish I had more opportunity to talk about is how the seemingly superhuman men of the Heroic Age came from a very very different everyday life than we do. The most privileged of them went to ancient stone boarding schools with unheated dormitories, where toughening up was part of the curriculum. They all lived in houses warmed by coal-burning grates which had to be re-lit in the morning, and they all had draughty single-glazed windows. Many of them spent most of their life outdoors, in all weathers. They appeared to be made of different stuff because, well, they kind of were.

I am pleased to discover that some shadow of that physical resilience is still available to us pampered moderns without having to leave the comfort and convenience of home. Having visitors would be complicated – do I tell them to bundle up, or do I pump up the heating to be stiflingly warm? Luckily the pandemic has cut the Gordian knot for me, this year – no visitors! And I don't have to worry about cold depleting my immune system because I don't see anyone to catch a cold from. I can be as mad as I want in my historic hut, unchallenged.

Not gonna lie, though, resilience or no, it's nice to have a hot shower again.

I was supposed to get a little work done today, as the last two days have been writeoffs in that department, but the 'morning job' of cherry harvesting turned into a whole-day thing. Turns out that picking, pitting, cooking, and bottling 2L of sour cherries, and then cleaning up, takes more than a couple of hours. By the time that batch was squared away it was nearly dinnertime, so I gave up on work and harvested another colander-full to get a headstart on the next batch. Sharpening my knife in preparation for pitting I sliced my left index finger open; it'll hurt while it knits but I think it'll be OK. There are still at least two batches left on the tree, so I will need to budget time for this enterprise rather than doing it on the fly. Next time I won't have to clean and soak the labels off a dozen old jars, or scour out the rust from the big pot used to sterilise them, so hopefully it will go faster.

When I moved here, I carefully packed a great big box full of glass jars, which I'd compulsively collected over the years for food storage purposes. They're transparent and don't hold on to smells like plastic does, so I prefer using them, plus they will seal airtight to keep preserves should the need arise. I had always had far more than I needed, but when a good bottle came along it was hard to pass up. Then I took custody of a garden with four fruit trees and was very grateful for the surplus. Imagine, then, my amusement when I started digging out the shed and found that my predecessors had also kept quite a large jar collection. If today's efforts are anything to go by, I may be making use of quite a few of them.

It is a big investment of time for what amounts to about three pies' worth of cherries. They are hardly going to keep me fed through the winter. But the cooked-down fruit, and the surprising amount of sugar necessary just to bring them to 'tart', smells exactly like a jelly doughnut, and somehow that made the whole day worthwhile.

Today's present was a dead blackbird.

I mean, it's really sweet, it was practically right on top of the compost heap and everything. It's a very kind gesture! Just, you know, in different context, involving a different person, might be interpreted as a bit creepy. I think perhaps the house may be a cat.

Anyway, I am no stranger to dead birds, and my heap could do with the protein, so in it went. I turned it over today and am pleased with how quickly it's turning into usable soil. I'm trying to follow recommendations of layering greens, food scraps, dirt, etc., and keeping it watered, which seems to be working. What I don't have is manure or, erm, 'night soil', which is supposed to be part of the mix. Turning it over today, though, it smelt distinctly of poo, so maybe the necessary bacteria are in there after all, digesting away? Are they a gift from the house, too?

I also need to burn some of the willow cuttings and add the ash (I think this will cut down on the poo smell, as my 1940s compost advice suggests sprinkling ash over the night soil) but that requires me to dig the hibachi out of the shed and scrub at least a little of the rust off, so obviously that hasn't happened yet ...

This is exactly the sort of house you'd hope would be haunted. Five hundred years of births and deaths and who knows what else ought to imprint themselves somehow, nevermind that my coming here was the perfect setup for a gothic horror story. Yet, if there are any ghosts, I can only describe them as helpful.

I moved from a house occupied by four people, with a legacy of communal household supplies accrued over the years. Pretty much anything you would need, could be found somewhere. I have moved into a house which, though amply furnished, has not been lived in for two years, and some things have been used or taken away in that time. I explored the cupboards when I first moved in, and reorganised some things, so I thought I had a pretty good grasp of what was on hand and what wasn't. And yet, several times over the past month, I have realised I have a need of something, and within the next day or two it will turn up. Cleaning supplies, cooking tools, even some garden essentials have appeared just when I needed them.

One thing I couldn't find was dishwasher tablets. I am only one person and it takes me a while to fill the dishwasher, so mostly I just hadn't used it, but eventually I realised it was a good way to clean a lot of dusty dishes at once and could be depended upon to get them sterile, so I decided to give it a go. But there was no soap for it. I waited for some to turn up: none. I looked in the utility closet, the bathroom,* and the little cranny behind the microwave where unsightly bottles and bags are kept for convenient access, and no dice, though the closet did have half a bag of dishwasher salt which I clocked for future reference. I checked the local shop** – plenty of laundry soap, no dishwasher soap. So I finally picked up a bag of tablets when I did my second big shop at the Co-Op, ran the dishwasher, Bob's your uncle.

Yesterday the dishwasher was full enough to run a second time. I reached into the cranny and pulled out a bag of dishwasher tablets ... but it wasn't the bag I had bought. The water-soluble film around the tablets was soft and slightly sticky, implying the bag had sat there, unsealed, for some time. And yet it definitely was not there when I checked the cranny thoroughly on my first search. Rather than feeling spooky, it felt like The House had realised it had been asleep at the wheel there and scrambled to make up for it.

So, my 1-month report is: I am very happy to be here, and I think the house is happy to have me here too.

UPDATE: Today's present was a left-hand leather garden glove. Is this an apology for the wounds received to my left hand from the thorny willow?

*The bathroom had been the hiding place for a number of cleaning fluids, and I had found some useful kitchen things in there, so it wasn't as illogical a place to look as you might think.
**For local people.

• Up early and not tired
• Overnight oven porridge turned out perfectly
• 2°C overnight low, but didn't feel cold
• Turned on radio just as Mozart clarinet concerto started
• Went for a walk just to go for a walk
• Found the grave of my time-travelling benefactors in the churchyard (thanks, Peter and Margaret!)
• Heard a cuckoo
• Smelled some laburnum
• Back by 8

All in all today is going pretty well so far.

The dates on the tombstone explain why the garden is more than one summer overgrown despite what people said, and why the stuff in the kitchen feels like a restoration project rather than a spruce-up.  Well, it's something to do.  Now I have to get enough sensitivity back in my fingers to shift them from scrubbing to drawing mode.  I did a bit of 'life' drawing the other day, and while my coordination is not what it could be, artistically I didn't feel like I was trying to push pudding through polystyrene, so I hope that means the juices are ready to flow as soon as I clean out the pipes.