It’s strange when you move to a new house and a new location, especially when the house is an old one and isolated – the sounds are different and particularly noticeable at night, all so unfamiliar – creaking for the most part, but strange sounds too – was that a thud, a crash, a door opening?

It’s weird, the first night, the first day, the first week. I’m on my own because my husband is back at our last house and still working in the city, so I need to deal with things alone (some things won’t wait until his next visit).

This house had been empty for months before I came here, and the garden (I’m told) has not been looked after for years. That would be why the wildlife crept in close and snug – foxes that live in the hedgerows and hunt or hide in our garden. There’s snakes too, the dangerous, deadly kind, so no, I won’t be picking them up for photographs – I’ve seen two of them right by the front door.

There are other creatures as well, rats and mice and birds and possums, under the house or in the ceiling. I had bees move into the chimney, and thus into the kitchen. One night one of the cats caught a bat and left it for me by my office door. That’s right, a bat got inside during the night.

So… I guess as I have nothing prepared on the Wonder and Joy of Writing, I can spend a few posts on what it’s like moving into an old house in the country. Let the adventures begin…

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