Isn't it wonderful! ...

Just for something different I thought I'd tell you all about the things I no longer have to deal with...

The rent in my last house was really cheap, but there was a reason for this... Don't get me wrong, I loved living there! Very quiet, peaceful, private, great views etc etc, and you could say that the rest was worth putting up with because of its location. Then again, there comes a time...

The old taigh, December 2010

Since moving I have experienced many advantages in the new house, mainly because it's been generally well maintained and it's not as old as the croft house.

• I have a shower! :) Baths are great, but they make you late for work as it's very hard to have a quick bath!... I also don't have to wait for the hot water to heat up first as it's an electric shower...
• I have mobile signal! I no longer live in a mobile black spot. In fact, \I couldn't even tune my radio...
• I have a fitted kitchen with proper flooring suitable for kitchens! Every single room in the old house was carpeted, kitchen and bathroom included...
• This is one from the Bodach. The kitchen cupboards don't make a noise when you open them... 
• I no longer have to put up with a fridge that freezes all my fresh vegetables! Which means I can actually but things like lettuce and cucumber and not have to try and eat it all within 24hrs... Also, I can use the whole fridge and not be concerned about frozen orange juice of cans of coke... (just to note, this was all with the temperature right down and after the electrician replacing the thermostat.) Basically it was a rubbish fridge...
• I actually have a heating system! :) All I had in the old house was the very very small open fire and plug in heaters. So when you came home at night in the winter it was just as cold inside as it was out...
• I no longer live in a damp house! Keeping your clothes smelling fresh is one thing, drying clothes when weather doesn't allow you to do so outside (most of the time) is another... There was also the incident last winter when we had a particularly damp winter and I was away for two weeks, which meant no heating during that period. When I came back, Skippy (my second fiddle, so named as she was found at the Inverness recycling centre) had come apart at the seams and her finger board had come unstuck... Luckly one of my violin repairer friends came to the rescue and brought her back to life :)
• I have to stand on something a good 3ft off the ground before I can touch the ceiling. Basically the ceilings are all of normal height...
• My oven is of a normal size i.e. I can finally use that pizza tray my mum gave me two and a half years ago... The other oven, although very good I have to say, was small...
• Nobody else's stuff but mine in this house! :) A two bedroom house with 6 beds and 7 mattress is just wrong... And why would I want the book shelves to be full of someone else's books?... And that's not the half of it! Over furnished and full of someone else's junk!
• I will miss the tree, but at least I won't be taking half of them in with me every time I walk into the house. As a rule I hoovered once a week, over wise I'd be hoovering 4 times a day and life is way too short for that sort of behaviour...
• The house doesn't smell funny... This was mostly because of the damp...

All in all there are lots of improvements, but I will miss Duisdale Beag and all it's charms...