Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

Some problems had developed with the council house. Brother Julius had (understandably) become very bitter about my ‘setting up home’ with his former wife and daughters (although he wasn’t officially married to Iona, and the two girls weren’t actually related to him by blood). He expressed his bitterness by spreading a series of malicious rumours against me and the children: that I had formerly lived in a castle (ludicrous! It was just a stately home with a couple of turrets!) and had acquired the council house not through right but by cunning; that I was a wife-stealer and notorious lesbian (Iona and I were actually ‘together’ for a brief span, but it didn’t really work out in the end, since neither of us is remotely bisexual); that Jared was a persistent thief etc. etc.; and this, coupled with a number of small fires (very small fires — Poppy was merely going through that whole ‘fascinated by flames’ phase) and some ill-thought-out DIY (Iona knocked down a supporting wall on the ground floor to try and make the place feel a little more ‘open plan’, then one of the upstairs bedroom floors collapsed!) meant that we were evicted from the house and obliged to move on again (Iona had already left at this point, to pursue her dream of attending Clown School in Orpington, near London).

As luck would have it, Jared was working out his community service in the beautiful, picturesque village of Burley Cross where he was employed collecting litter from moorland paths. During this time he was operating under the guidance of local councilman Baxter Thorndyke, who gradually began using him to do small jobs about the place, e.g. washing his 4×4, raking his path, gathering leaves in his garden etc. I turned a blind eye to it, initially (thinking that Jared might even benefit from a positive, male role model and mentor), but after he came home one day, deeply traumatized and covered — almost from head to foot — in filth (the councillor had made him clean out his septic tank!), I decided that enough was enough and made an official complaint.

Thorndyke then responded by making counter-complaints (I won’t go into them here, but given that the bathroom was on the second floor and Jared is uncircumcised, his wife really didn’t have a leg to stand on).

During his time spent in the village, Jared had made the acquaintance of a lovely boy called Lawrie, the son of a local farmer, who, when he heard of Jared’s predicament, stepped in on his behalf (there was apparently already a feud between this Thorndyke character and the farmer, based on the farmer’s support of a local publican in a minor planning dispute). He offered Jared a job on his farm (which satisfied the probation people), and then, later on, when he discovered that Jared and his family (that’s us!) were currently living out of their trusty VW, took pity on them and gave Jared free accommodation in an old prefab.

Coombes Cottage (Madeline renamed it!) is where I currently sit — and write to you from — today. It’s a tiny, scruffy old place, but it’s home and we all LOVE IT!!!!

Since coming here we have been blessed in so many ways! The people of Burley Cross have been enormously kind and generous to us! Last week we had a slap-up meal in the local pub (all of us, for only £10!). It was a truly wonderful occasion and honestly made me feel as though we were turning a corner and entering a new phase in our fascinating journey together (the only thing that soured it was that Hayden — who’s very technical by nature — got a little too ‘involved’ in the interior workings of a large grandfather clock that sits in the snug and managed to destroy the working mechanism. The bill to fix it will be over £100!).

In an attempt to scratch some money together (Wincey, the landlady, has been very good about it, but the clock was a twentieth anniversary present from her late husband, Duke, and I felt I really should try and contribute something towards the repairs) I decided to take Ramsay’s mother’s blue glass decanter to a local antique shop to see if I could raise any funds on it.

That very morning, Poppy had come down with the measles (a particularly vicious strain, caught from Hayden, who’d caught it from Dylan, who’d caught it from Jared, who’d caught it from Lawrie) and had vomited all over me (I was in my customary pair of frayed denim hotpants, teamed with some stripy woollen tights — the only clothes I currently own!!). The prefab is unheated, and it would’ve taken hours for them to dry properly, so I threw on a skirt (generously donated by Helen, the farmer’s wife, although the last time I wore a skirt was circa 1989!!!) and jumped into the van.

Well, I hadn’t been driving for much more than ten minutes, tops, when, completely out of the blue, a bee flew in through my window (which was propped open to stop the windscreen from getting too steamy) and flew straight up my skirt!!! Nooooooo!

I didn’t even realize bees were still around so late in the season (Global Warming Alert!!!). In fact I was so shocked that I took my hands off the steering wheel for a second (to protect my Lady Garden — I wasn’t wearing any knickers), the van swerved, and I crashed straight into an oncoming car.

Luckily nobody was very badly hurt, but the van was pretty bashed up (and the car was quite a mess, too).

This is the incredible part, though: I’d only managed to involve myself in a serious collision with an expert from the BBC TV series the Antiques Roadshow (on his way to do a reading in Ilkley from his latest book!)!! And, better still: he was their glass expert!

WHAT AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE!

I naturally showed him the decanter (after we’d exchanged insurance details — his insurance details, since I’m not actually insured: I just made a few up) and he was able to tell me that the decanter was actually very, very rare!!!! It was Norwegian and dated from around 1890. He said it could be worth in the region of £1,700!!!!!

He picked it up to inspect the hallmark properly (all excited!), and then the thing just FELL TO A MILLION TINY PIECES IN HIS HANDS!!!!!

‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘I never much liked the damn thing anyway!’ and we both absolutely howled with laughter (he was great fun, really up for the craic — even with a torn shirt and blood dripping from his ear)!!

There’s so much more I’d love to tell you all (about Poppy’s first word, Dylan’s round-worm infection, Hayden’s incredible, new talent at online gaming and the like), but there simply isn’t the time or the space to do so here…

All there’s actually the time and the space to do is to wish you all A WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS, AND A VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!!!

With HUGE love and hugs from us all:

Paula, Jared, Hayden, Dylan, Madeline and Poppy

PS Madeline just won the talent contest at her local school, armpit-farting God Save the Queen while standing on one foot! Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that Mr Nolan stole her beloved fiddle after all!

PPS Aunty Jinny is still diligently researching our family tree (on Mother’s side). Turns out that I’m distantly related to William Huskisson, who was a famous British politician in the 1820s! He was apparently in charge of the expansion of the railways (perhaps that’s where I get my itchy feet from!), although it seems his career was cut short after he was unlucky enough to topple under a slow-moving locomotive…

PPPS I’ve just got off the phone to Ramsay’s old accountant, Denton Wade, who has recently uncovered some ‘hidden’ investments which he thinks might be worth a ‘serious’ sum of money!!!!! He told me not to get my hopes up too high, and that (because of various legal wrangles to do with the Estate, Death Duties etc.) it might be necessary to leave cashing them in until later on next year, but we’re all wildly over-excited in the meantime (so please, please keep all your fingers crossed that in 2007 there will be bumper dividends at Kwik-Save and Leeds United FC!)!!