All Cheeses Great and Small: A Life Less Blurry

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Alex James. All Cheeses Great and Small: A Life Less Blurry

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ALEX JAMES

ALL CHEESES GREAT AND SMALL

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The house didn’t look in too bad shape. It was a typical rambling farmhouse with rooms and corridors everywhere, apparently at random. Plaster was coming away from the walls in places. Without the plaster, you could see that some of the beams were maybe a little bit rotten. Now I considered it, the roof looked like it probably needed replacing. The walls were good, mainly, apart from the damp, which made them smell. We’d more or less have to rebuild the whole house, I thought, as I stood there.

The picture was clearer from above. From my vantage point on top of the pile in the stillness, the wonderful whirring silence, I could take it all in. I suddenly felt slightly overwhelmed by my new life. I’d been here a few times but it was only from up here that the scale of the place became apparent. The red brick wall showed there must have once been a garden, as I thought. There were three courtyards of stone stables. The courtyards were all completely unexplored. They were kind of bundled in with the house. They’d all have to find some kind of use eventually, but for now they stood in ruin. I tiptoed over to the other side of the pile to check over the roofs. I knew the roof is always the first thing you have to take care of. As long as the roof is OK a building can sit there for years. The roofs were bad. I knew that anyway, I just thought I’d check. There were holes in all of them, except one stable with a clear plastic roof right next door to the house. It was full of plants and flowers. There was a pond in that room too, with goldfish in.

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