We must realise other folk have far more cause for complaint than I do.
Something to snap me out of recent lethargy and I do still have the view and the woods and virtually everything,
just the porch gone, and the biggest sadness to me is that, by my carelessness with electricity,
I've been responsible for the damage to a 300 year old vernacular building.
Interior of byre the morning after
But when I began working on it it was in decline, and by the intimacy with it I gained the greatest respect
and love for the generations who had built it so well that it was still here three centuries on.
The stonework is still mostly OK, and is repairable where needed. I now have a much blanker canvas than the first time,
but no more ancient timbers with all the signs of hand-sawn, adze-finished workmanship.
The limewash in places is like onionskins with layer upon layer of thin coatings

laid on every several years when time allowed or need dictated it.
Stone is such a wonderful material and 100% recyclable, even the mortar,
which is mostly made of cockleshells, probably bonfire-fired on the local seashore.