The Seat Stays Up

Week Two: Sunday 8 – Saturday 14 October

Sunday is the traditional day of rest: despite any religious leanings it is a maxim that I like to embrace wholeheartedly, and my wife is right behind me on that one. So although there was still much to do in our new home, we decided that a home extends beyond the bricks and mortar of the walls and includes the surrounding area, the town where the home is based.

Sunday, then, was a day to get out and about to check out Falmouth and find out what treats, and tricks, lay in store. Besides, experience has shown us that your home takes shape regardless: all in good time. And we should know as the house we now find ourselves in is the eighth we have lived in since we married four-and-a-half short years ago.

We should learn to pay the rent more often! It’s actually nothing as sinister as that. We sold our flat in Edinburgh just after we were married and moved to Portugal, where we planned to set up a business and settle. A combination of an unexpected pregnancy and a lesson in Portuguese business brought us back to Scotland sooner than we anticipated; but not soon enough for house prices to have climbed beyond our means.

The lesson we learnt, the hard way as all the best lessons are allegedly learnt, in Portugal was that the only way to make a small fortune in that country is to make sure you start with a large one. You don’t so much learn it as get told it once your meagre savings have been dwindled away trying to get your business off the ground. And why would the Portuguese allow ‘strangerros’ to waltz into their beautiful and sunny country and start making a fortune instantly?

The truth is we would have returned to the British Isles anyway for the birth of our child; with house prices rising and our desire for our child to have a full-time mother for the first three years of life, renting was the only option.

Despite me getting a full-time teaching job in the local FE college, we quickly knew that Lockerbie would not be a long stay destination. It seems the town is known only, and universally, as the place where the plane exploded in the sky. It is a legacy anywhere would struggle to recover from; experience tells us that Lockerbie hasn’t, and may never.

A few months into my new job convinced us that not only Lockerbie, but also Dumfries & Galloway would not be a long stay destination. Lovely as the area is, work is limited and FE does not, as popularly believed, stand for Further Education, but Fucking ‘Ell. Ask anyone who knows anything about FE today.

Various circumstances contrived to force us to rent four different properties in Lockerbie in less than three years, twice as many as we rented in our two years in Portugal.

And so we find ourselves in home number eight. Each of our previous rented properties have eventually become a home and a happy place to be. There is no point rushing it. Better to get out and about. The first few journeys to and from University College Falmouth offered enough insight to suggest that our new town of residence has plenty to offer. My wife’s escapes from boxes, cleaning and organising told her the same thing.

The treats appear to be the friendliness of the locals and the laid back vibe against a backdrop of hustle and bustle; and, of course, the seascape and general location. The tricks are definitely the myriad of winding streets that would mislead a skilled orienteer. Cornwall is known as a place of smugglers, hiding their booty in the numerous coastal caves; they could have just as easily have hidden it in the labyrinth of streets as far as I am concerned.

The rest of the week saw more of the same for my wife, looking after our daughter and sorting our life out in our new home. For me, it brought another week of student life to digest and the redirected post full of bills to be settled; a stark reminder that bills need to be paid, whether you have an income or not, and a sobering thought as to the finances for this year of study. It looks like nursery beckons for our daughter and a full-time job for my wife.

There was also a sign above the toilet that read, ‘One out of eight ain’t bad – this seat stays up. Forget at your peril’.

I’ve been warned!