Darling Buds

 I have a shepherd’s hut! It was bought as a celebration of my 60th birthday and arrived two weeks beforehand, in the middle of October. 

Here it is, before I started painting it a gorgeous dusky rose pink colour. I need to complete the painting - I managed to get two coats of paint on before the weather turned, but a third is needed, and as soon as the weather dries and warms up I shall be out with my paintbrush finishing the job. What I like is that when I’m driving home along the road from wherever I’ve been, I catch a flash of pink through the trees and I think, ‘That’s my little hut!’ 

I’m still arranging the inside of the hut. It takes time to settle into a space, I think, to get the vibe right. Soft furnishings, pictures for the walls, where to hang the bunting.

The little sofa was a bargain buy from a furniture warehouse. It is high backed, which is lovely because I can use it to meditate and to read and it props me up in a just right posture with no danger of whiplash. It cost 99 of my fine English pounds and Andy asked about delivery because it wouldn’t quite fit into the back of his big car.

‘Oh, you don’t need delivery,’ said the cheerful shop lady. ‘We’ll tie it the roof of your car.’ 

And she was quite determined that tie the sofa to the roof of Andy’s car we would do. She produced a huge ball of baler twine and we spent fifteen minutes creating a complex web of knots and stringiness to secure the sofa to the roof bars. Every now and again, the shop lady would give the whole structure a push and a wiggle, and finally she declared it was good to go. 

‘Drive carefully!’ she said, waving us off. ‘Stay away from the police cars!’

Luckily, we live only twenty minutes from the furniture warehouse and we took the back roads home. We felt the sofa shift only once when we were thirty seconds from journey’s end. It was all larks and giggles! 

My desk sits nicely at the other end of the hut. I write well there. It is peaceful and calm. There are views from the windows of oak trees, hedges, fields and, currently, sheep. 

I have tea making facilities, of course! And underfloor heating which I leave on a low thermostat setting all the time to keep the hut warm, dry and toasty. Book shelves and a cupboard are the only built in parts. This means I have flexibility to move furniture around if I fancy a change. 

It’s a lovely space and I am lucky to have it. I shall have a house sign made, to be sited on the door. It will read - ‘Darling Buds.’