Mindy Hammond spends her weekend doing a bit of DIY

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SUSAN HELLARD

This didn’t seem like the best moment to knock down a wall, but maybe it was in the nick of time

Isn’t it quiet when the kids go back to school? No more daytime TV or shoes all over the hall, no more cooking three different meals at lunchtime. Richard’s gone off abroad and life is steadily getting back to normal – except it’s very, very cold in our house. Flump the Aga is red in the face, with every oven and hotplate going at full tilt, but even he can’t cope with a hole in the wall.

You see, after many, many months of to-ing and fro-ing with the planning department, we’ve finally started realising our dream: putting an outside door in the kitchen. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But this house has a way of turning small jobs into civil engineering projects.

When Thomas, who owned the place about 250 years ago, decided to add a new wing in the style of a medieval castle, many alterations were made. I’d always been convinced that one of them was to block in the old kitchen door, and  Iwas sure I could see a change in the colour of the bricks where it must have been. But the planning authorities needed proof before we were allowed to wield the big hammer, so I embarked on a Who Do You Think You Are?-style search for ancient drawings of our home.

Eventually I found one, with the door where I expected to see it, and just before Christmas a team of craftsmen and a very clever engineer came together, scratched their heads and decided that no, the house would not fall down if we reinstated the door, but there would be a lot of work.

We’re very excited by all this, but the draughts are ferocious, the toes are blue and the dogs are holding their ears. Izzy and Willow are lucky to be at school, and Richard is somewhere boiling hot, but I daren’t go and make a warming cuppa in case I bump into a polar bear. The whole house seems to jump with fright each time a hammer hits the wall and – worst of all – the clock is having a hissy fit.

Regular readers will know that in this house, the past makes its presence felt via all sorts of ghostly manifestations. They’re always benign but they can be rather unsettling, and the clock on the kitchen wall is especially attuned to the feelings of previous inhabitants. When there’s any kind of upset, its pendulum (normally motionless) starts a bit of a wobble and its movement (normally silent) begins to tick.

Well, the builders got to work on the wall and what happened? Furious tick-tocks, the pendulum wearing a groove in the wall and the hands standing stock still. This was not a good sign.

“It’s going to be OK, isn’t it?” I said to Dan the builder. “I mean, I know you know what you’re doing, but nothing’s going to go wrong is it?”

“Don’t worry, it’s all going to be fine,” he said.

The next morning, more of the hole had been made and a timber had been revealed at the top.

“Turns out it’s not a bad thing we found this,” said Dan.

The old lintel was in pretty good shape, but having been exposed for its early life and then encased in stone for two centuries, it now needed a helping hand, so a special support was put in. When I went back indoors to make coffee for everyone, I thought it seemed quieter.

Then, as I handed them their drinks through the dust sheet, I noticed the clock. The time was right, the ticking was soft and the pendulum was slowing down.

They know, you know.

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