Today I am taking part in Random Things Blog Tours to celebrate Karen Wheeler's release, Devon and Hell, which was previously released as in four parts, Dream Cottage: Four Seasons in Devon.
One woman, one dog… and a disastrous move to Devon. Previously published as Dream Cottage: Four Seasons in Devon, this is the omnibus edition of a four-part mini-series. Shortly after moving back to the UK from France the author finds herself embroiled in home renovation hell. Meanwhile, her cruel and distant mother has just been diagnosed with dementia and the author finds herself reluctantly pulled back to her childhood home in the north of England. Fans of Karen Wheeler's writing will love this unforgettable and superbly written tale of relocation – and a mother-daughter relationship – gone wrong.
Devon and Hell is a year long account of Karen's life as she moves from France to England and purchases a cottage in Devon. There are many ups and downs in her journey to living in her country cottage and of course, as is life, there are many curve balls along the way. There are many heart-warming and also difficult times throughout the book and I enjoyed following Karen's year from hell.
The publishers have very kindly given me an excerpt to share with my blog readers. I hope you enjoy …...………..
The story so far: Karen Wheeler’s ‘idyllic’ cottage in Devon has revealed a host of unwelcome surprises. In this extract, the author – who has been forced to seek refuge in a nearby holiday park with her dog Biff – tries to deal with the escalating problems at Plum Tree Cottage…
Back in the chalet I make a fish finger sandwich, then slump on the sofa to watch Grand Designs. What better way to relax, after a day of domestic travails, than to enjoy someone else being driven to distraction by renovation gone wrong? Tonight’s episode is a particularly good one, confirming my belief that you have to be stark raving bonkers to try and build a house from scratch. And even if you’re not at the outset, you will be by the end.
The renovators in this
episode have squandered £60,000 on windows made-to-order in Bratislava, only to
find that when they arrive they are ‘a couple of millimetres out’. Three
different sets of builders have downed tools and walked off site. The husband
subsequently suffers a heart attack, after an issue involving exposed beams,
and from his hospital bed declares that he wishes he’d never embarked on the
project.
The wife, shivering in an
unheated campervan, gazes at the camera, her hair unwashed and her face filled
with angst. ‘It’s been nothing but problems,’ she declares, ‘I’m starting to
think the plot’s unlucky.’ The camera pans to the mud bath outside the window
and you’d be hard-pressed not to agree.
When Kevin McLeod returns
to deliver some poetic musings on the finished build, the owners have both aged
by a decade, and have gone from looking smug and loved-up to barely on speaking
terms. It doesn’t take a body language expert to know that once Kevin has gone
they won’t be sharing the master bedroom suite that ‘melds as one with the
surrounding countryside’. It’s now a question of who’ll be the first out of the
double-height front door?
There are, I reflect, some
advantages to renovating a house alone. My dog is not going to leave me if he
doesn’t like the kitchen fittings. And we are never going to argue about the
suitability of larch cladding or a concrete worktop. But the wife’s words
resonate with me. What if Plum Tree Cottage, like their building plot, is
unlucky?
I remember a feature I once
wrote on feng shui. According to the Chinese philosophy, a badly placed sofa or
a bed or cooker in the wrong place can screw up your entire life. I’m usually
on board with ancient beliefs – I’ll sign up to anything that’s firmly grounded
in centuries of superstition – but the idea that the position of your gas hob
could gobble up your luck? Like the mountain of plastic toys and cheap polyamide
clothing that is China’s other export, feng shui struck me as a load of
rubbish.
But that was before I wrote
the feature. After interviewing the lovelorn and financially challenged whose
lives had turned around after painting their (south-facing) sitting room pink,
adding a pot plant to the ‘love corner’, or stuffing statues of three-legged
toads under their bed, I came to the reluctant conclusion that there might be
something in it.
Perhaps the feng shui of
Plum Tree Cottage might be lacking in some way? It seems unlikely. For a start,
apart from the in-built cupboards in the guest bedroom, which I’ve filled with
clothes and boxes of books, the house is empty. There is no furniture, badly
placed or otherwise, to cause the dreaded ‘blockages of energy’ – or ‘chi’ –
that can turn your life into a disaster zone. Furthermore, when I first visited
the cottage – blissfully unaware of the problem proliferating in the drains – I
was struck by the lovely ambiance and nicely proportioned rooms. I particularly
loved the inbuilt storage cupboards – so useful – and how the front door
directly faced the rear door, giving a stunning view of the plum tree and
wisteria in the garden.
But now I’m wondering if
this could be the problem. As I vaguely recall from my journalistic foray into
the subject, it is ‘inauspicious’ feng shui to have a front door facing an
exit. I reach for my laptop and type ‘Feng shui – is my house unlucky?’ into a
search engine. If there is something I can do to optimise the ‘energy’ – a
judiciously positioned bunch of flowers here or a crystal there – I’d like to
know about it.
Up pop several websites
specialising in home décor and spatial arrangement. I find myself reading a
‘Top Ten’ of feng shui ‘afflictions’. They include living in a cul-de-sac, opposite
a T-junction, or next to a graveyard, none of which apply to Plum Cottage. But
number one on the list – I might have known – is a front door directly facing a
rear door. This means that good luck and positive energy come in through the
front door and then rush straight out the back – which is probably what I
should do if I had any sense.
The website belongs to
someone called Harsh Jain and he seems to have a large and grateful following.
I read on, intrigued by the advice he dispenses on everything from what to do
if you have a bathroom in the southwest sector of your home – basically rip it
out, if you don’t want to flush all your ‘blessings’ down the drain – to the
importance of a ‘good, solid headboard’ in your bedroom if you are looking for
love. ‘And never give in to the temptation of painting your entire house red,’
he advises, as if there were people out there actually considering it.
The queries on Harsh Jain’s
website range from the woeful ‘Help me, please! We’ve moved into an apartment
where the bathroom is in my love corner and my boyfriend now sleeps with his
back to me’, to the perfectly chilling, ‘Where in my property should I bury my
dog?’
Another unhappy soul,
Suleiman, writes: ‘Help me, sir; I am stuck in a quagmire! My kitchen is in the
southwest and it is a rental property so I cannot do anything about it.’
‘The worst house in the
world is one with kitchen in southwest,’ Harsh replies. (This guy really lives
up to his name.) ‘It is disaster for finances as well as relationships. You need
to create bedroom in southwest. If you cannot do that then please start
sleeping in kitchen. Only when you sleep there will you get good financial
luck.’
I picture Suleiman rolling
out a camp bed next to the cooker and feel a shiver of schadenfreude. Intrigued,
I click on the home page to find out more about Harsh Jain. ‘I am an expert in
feng shui as well as a master of vastu shastra,’ he has written.
Vastu what? I type the words into a search engine and discover that
vastu shastra is ‘a 5,000-year-old science of home building, architecture and
space arrangement originating in India.’ The left hemisphere of my brain (logic
and analysis) tells me this is superstitious nonsense. The right side
(creativity, intuition and, almost certainly, gullibility) asks Who am
I to argue with a 5,000-year-old philosophy and the wisdom of India’s elders? After
all, if I’d heeded the advice of my favourite astrologer and waited a week
before signing for Plum Tree Cottage, I wouldn’t be in this mess now. There
would have been time to wait for the drains CCTV pictures to come through, and
I would have taken one look at those awful, rodenty images and pulled out of
the sale.
I log on to my email and
type. ‘Dear Harsh, please can you tell me if a front door facing a rear door is
unlucky? And, if so, what I can do about it?’
Almost immediately he
replies, ‘Please sending me $100 and floor plan of your house. Then I send
these vital informations telling you if your place is unlucky or not.’ I think
about it… for all of three seconds. Then I log into Paypal and send Harsh $100,
and a link to the estate agent’s details and floor plan. I wonder if this will
be the last I hear from him. For all I know, his real name is Kevin Smith and
he’s sitting in a bedroom in Pinner, laughing his pyjamas off at my stupidity.
But no, ten minutes later,
an email pings back. ‘Are you already living in this house? Can you pull out of
the sale?’
My heart hits the
floor. Pull out of the sale? This suggests that the problems
of Plum Tree Cottage cannot be cured with a pot plant and three-legged toad. Dry-mouthed,
I type, ‘I have already bought the house.’
The reply comes back, ‘OK.
Please don’t panic.’
Like any sensible person, I
take this to mean, ‘You should totally panic! Run for the door and do not stop
to pick up your belongings.’
‘I will send report and
solutions soon,’ Harsh Jain promises. ‘But for God’s sake, please don’t be
putting anything in the cupboards in your bedroom.’
I drop my head into my
hands. The cupboards are the least of my worries. I knew it. Plum Tree Cottage is unlucky.
Thank you to the author and to Random Things Blog Tours for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for a copy of the book in return for an honest review.
thanks for the blog tour support Sarah x
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks so much Sarah. x
ReplyDeleteAll best, Karen
Very nice content I would like to recommend my friends thanks for sharing! Are you ready to sell Scrap car removal brisbane let us know we are excited to deal with you get different services check it now.
ReplyDelete