Our West Sussex 14th century Wealden Hall house in the heart of the village of Billingshurst was bought by an RAF man and, after a three week hiatus - on the Sussex coast - and - from all internet contact-ability, I found a lovely Victorian house built in 1870 in the heart of open landscape being sold by another RAF man.
Trading the wooded hills of Sussex for the open skies of Lincolnshire also levelled our debts by enabling us to rid ourselves of our mortgage without downgrading the quality of our home at all, indeed, adding one bedroom, living room and bathroom and increasing the garden to 1/3rd of an acre while reducing our neighbours to one.
I now have a study / music room in the house as opposed to at the end of the garden (a mixed blessing) and even a separate hand-drawing studio in an outhouse (when I can reach it through the piles of as yet unpacked boxes).
This interlude has postponed any attempt to create an iPad version of my Curd the Lion book and miss the London Book Fair (as I had nothing to show).
Ironically, while twiddling my thumbs in limbo, my publishers also twiddled theirs (not commissioning) but, once I started our final move, they immediate produced a series of urgent commissions to create maximum disruption to the mechanics of house-moving.
To add an element of chaos. curiosity has led to a stream of visiting offspring (6) and their spouses and offspring each weekend since that will continue to the end of Easter at least. Two giggling grandchildren appear to have been left behind when my daughter left last Sunday, serious hampering my freedom to work (if such can be counted a freedom).
