Ravendale House

Think I can’t spell? Read on.

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In the UK we seem to be obsessed by property. If you’re in any doubt, just look at the TV listings for any night of the week, and you’re bound to find at least one property programme.

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There’s a ‘phobia’ for everything these days. Xanthophobia – fear of the colour yellow, turophobia – fear of cheese, we’ve all heard of coulrophobia – fear of clowns, and my personal favourite omphalophobia – fear of the navel. Well, I might have a new one for you.

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The bungalow we are in the process of buying was built in 1933. So while we’re waiting for the legal stuff to happen, I thought it might be quite fun to find out what was going on in the world the year it was built.

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‘Well, hush my mouth’, I found myself saying, as I read the e mail estimate from the builder. After what I said previously about self-doubt, here it was manifesting itself before my very eyes.

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You know when you make a decision to do something and just when it looks like things are working out as you planned you become overwhelmed by self-doubt? Are you doing the right thing? Could you do it different or better?

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Do you remember when there were only 2 TV channels? Now there are more than you can shake a stick at, and most of them show end-to-end rubbish. Thank goodness therefore for ‘Coronation Street’, the world’s longest-running TV soap opera, which started life way back in 1960 and is still going strong.

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Isn’t it funny what strange things just pop into your head from time to time for no apparent reason? I often find myself getting unexpected flashbacks to places we have been, and yesterday I remembered something that happened over 20 years ago, which I haven’t thought about in years.

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They say that history often repeats itself, and this is a story to demonstrate that on this occasion, ‘they’ are right.

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Asbestos, “an extremely dangerous, highly heat-resistant, fibrous silicate mineral that can be woven into fabrics, and is used in brake linings and in fire-resistant and insulating materials“. Not the kind of thing I expected to be writing about in a gardening blog.

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