There and Back

The unloading and turnaround had run like clockwork. The bed and mattress shop had delivered and assembled my new bed; the BT engineer had checked that the phone line was working and had installed broadband complete with BT Vision television service. The previous tenants had offered two big armchairs that they were about to donate to charity and I had earmarked a fridge-freezer, bedside cabinets, a chest of drawers, an office desk and chair and various other bits and pieces in local charity shops. The boiler worked, there was hot water, bulbs in the light-sockets and in the first 24 hours all the cartons and cases had been sorted and many had been unpacked. 

Eurotunnel - such a civilised way to cross.

The next stage was to head back fast across Europe, back to Caldarola to return the car. I am sure that for a holiday jaunt, this is probably a beautiful route, but when you have a tight schedule and are driving from dawn to dusk, all you 

Busy autoroutes across France

see is lorries, and I was thankful that I had thought of packing a selection of John leCarré audio CDs. 

I motored from Lincoln to St.Omer on the first day, annoyed to arrive after the proprietor had locked up and gone home, and I had to hang around until another guest arrived back after their dinner so that they could let me in. I picked up a key which had my name on a scrap of paper beside it on the unmanned reception desk and grumbled my way upstairs to bed.

Next day John leCarré kept me awake, alert and entertained as I hammered through the kilometres across France and down to the Swiss border. I had booked myself into a cheap motel: a very cheap motel in the Formule 1 chain. This chain is for small continental people, not for large Northern Europeans.  

If there are two of you,  don't think that the answer is to book a room with two beds, because Formule 1's policy is that there is always (like on the old London buses) room for one more on top. 
The second bed in a Formule 1 hotel room is a bunk bed accessed by a ladder alongside 

Room for one more on top

the double bed at ground level. 
To be fair, there are worse cut-price chains across France, and the development of such has given French sports clubs, hikers, skiers, students and the population in general the freedom to travel all over France at affordable prices. Hence the motto of all trans-continental drivers is "Well, it's only for one night." 

By contrast, I knew that a couple of days later I would be staying at the Heathrow Travelodge, which had cost me even less than Formule 1 (£25 with advance booking) and I knew I would have a full-sized bed, and an en-suite bathroom with endless hot water. 
In Formule 1 the nasty little shower room and the toilet were situated along the corridor. 
The low cost of my motel room gave me an excuse to find a pleasant little Alsatian hostelry for dinner, where I could eat and drink to the value of what I had saved, without feeling over-extravagant. 
I slept diagonally across the bed, setting the alarm on my phone for 05.45 in the knowledge that I would be back in Caldarola in time for dinner. It would by Autoroute, Autostrada and Superstrada for all but the last couple of kilometres, and it didn't matter when I arrived, so there was no pressure for this last leg of the journey - just the prospect of working out how much I could carry on the flight back from Ancona to Heathrow in a couple of days' time.

Perjury, Deception, Misrepresentation, Fraud...?

Lincoln Castle Prison - reopened for tourists

The prison is no longer in use, and its reopening in 2011 was as a tourist attraction, not for the detention of criminals. However, when nothing seemed to run smoothly for me in the events of April and May 2012, it did get me wondering whether someone thought this was where I should be headed. Everything seemed to conspire against me in a sinister plot, worthy of Wallander, but without the corpses.

It all started well. I had the brochure for the property, and had an overview of the conditions of the lease. I completed the paperwork, checked with the council about Council Tax liability and with BT about broadband, and I wrote to suitable worthies to request character references.

But then it all went quiet. After all, I was in Italy, so I wasn't likely to be rushing over to take a decision, and the agents said that there was another property that might be more suitable and might appeal to me more. Meanwhile, as far as I can ascertain, my paperwork sat in a filing tray until it needed attention.

 And it was in late April that I met the agents, and the brochure for Minster Yard was lying on the desk for discussion.

By this time they had almost persuaded me that another property was more suitable, but I decided to view both, so that I had a comparison. I looked around the other property, which was beautifully converted, but strictly "bijou" in estate agents' parlance and much too cramped for someone my size.

 It didn't take me long to make up my mind, and that same afternoon I confirmed my interest in 14, Minster Yard, and completed the bank reference paperwork. We agreed that if all the boxes were ticked, my tenancy would commence on June 1st.

I never discovered why my application had not been processed earlier, and I only found out in casual conversation with the previous tenants that the property had been offered to other prospective tenants who, it seemed, had failed to provide satisfactory references. Now it was standing empty and there was an eagerness to get the rent flowing again. But my problems were about to start, because of a genuine error in the customer records of Halifax bank. Nobody at the Halifax  could explain why there was an entry on their files stating that I had previously, fraudulently applied for a Halifax credit card, (which I most definitely had not done.)

 On the basis of their inaccurate records, Halifax furnished a negative reference and the Cathedral told me in the nicest possible way that I could not be considered as a tenant of a property in the Cathedral portfolio. I was shocked, to say the least. I knew my Credit reference score and it seemed inconceivable that the bank would not support me positively.

I almost expected to see my name on WANTED posters, or my passport photo screened in a story  on Crimewatch. There was a horrible sense of injustice and helplessness, especially when all attempts to contact a responsible bank officer ended up talking to a charming but disempowered young Arts graduate in Bangalore. It took a week to get to the bottom of the story and a further week to get a new, positive reference submitted. As a gesture of good faith I lodged a chunk of my meagre savings as an additional security deposit (to be refunded after 12 months.)  It was a very tense couple of weeks, and all this time I was back in rural Italy, packing my worldly goods into the car so that every cubic centimetre was utilised.

In that first run, I left behind all my books, CDs and DVDs as well as lots of kitchen equipment, clothes, bedding and my collection of about 200 wooden spoons. As things have worked out, I now have virtually everything back in UK, including my full-sized Zambian drum - which is of course, essential to my very existence. But that's what a home is all about - not the bare essentials that you would have in a full-service apartment, but the personal absurdities that create an idiosyncratic environment.

My kids and my friends would know this place was mine, just from a quick glance around, and from that quick glance they would immediately know that I am happy living here in Lincoln. Very happy.

Finding a place to live

Aerial view of Lincoln Cathedral and my new home

It is a spectacular location, looking across manicured lawns to the East face of the cathedral. If you look closely, you can see there's an island of lawn between my front door and the road, and unless there's been a real downpour, I make a point of walking on the grass when I am heading off anywhere, - to the Post Office, to the little supermarket or to the bus-stop. I walk on the grass, and on across the sward towards the Chapter House because it springs like no turf I have ever known. It's like walking on a pile of judo mats, or a trampoline, or even a bouncy castle. Every ten days or so the contract gardeners arrive with mowers big enough for Lords or Wimbledon, and harvest  a lorry load of grass-cuttings. The striped pattern is a matter of pride - even for the verger whose part-time job is to mow the lawn that we three tenants share in our secluded, walled garden. The Duchess of Cambridge would have been safe sunbathing here; nobody overlooks the herb-garden rockery or the overgrown border that will be my challenge in the coming weeks.

I fell in love with the property from the moment I saw the brochure. 

I'd been looking for weeks: dozens of 2up/2down properties tucked away in the back streets, with front doors that opened straight from the sitting room onto the pavement. 

Several had been thoughtfully and carefully modernised, but it was the size of the rooms that pulled my shoulders down in despair and sent shivers of doubt through my whole body. I could not imagine how I could ever entertain, or where I could shelve my books, or display my pictures, or sit at my computer and become a wordsmith once again. As for the kitchens... They were designed for normal people who buy meals, not a retired chef who buys only ingredients. The average tenant would simply want to pop something under the grill or into the microwave.

But this property had a generous kitchen, newly fitted out with space for a large fridge/freezer, a washing machine, a compact dishwasher and even an under-counter freezer so that I could cook my favourite dishes in quantity and have space to store portions for a later date.

As I pored over the property details, one thing stood out: there was space! The living room was 6.5m x 5m and the bedroom was 5m x 4.5m. You just don't get a 17ft sitting room in a 1-bedroom apartment, unless you are very fortunate and come across a property which quite obviously must have your name on it. 

And that's what I thought. But there are two parties involved in a tenancy agreement, and things didn't go quite as smoothly as I had anticipated.

. 

Living beside Lincoln Cathedral

The view from my living room

I don't think I could ever get tired of this view in the evening when the night draws in and the floodlighting illuminates the stonework that has stood here over many centuries.
The first cathedral on this site dated from 1092, but fires and an earthquake took their toll until the present building was completed in the 13th and 14th century.
Until 1549 this was the tallest building in the world, but in that year the central spire came down in a storm, never to be replaced despite local enthusiasm for the project as recently as the 1980s

It is a place of great peace, a focal point for the local community for concerts, exhibitions, graduation ceremonies for the local university and colleges, as well as place of regular worship. Every week throughout the year there are 34 church services from Mattins at 7.30 in the morning through to Evensong (usually choral) at 5.30 in the evening. There are three choirs; the male voices, the boys' voices and the girls' voices. The separation of boys and girls voices creates two choirs with slightly different tone and lends scope for a wider variety of music since they can share the Soprano/Treble and Alto workload and take turns to combine with the male voices in services. And, of course, the male voices have plenty of scope for some wonderful Plainsong chants with echoes that hang in the vaulting over the choir.

I was incredibly fortunate to be offered a lease on my apartment. The rent is fair and the terms are very favourable, but the best feature is the sense of community and the fact that the Cathedral's substantial property portfolio is managed by the Cathedral Works Department with everything properly maintained and all the safety checks carried out to the letter of the law.

I arrived with boxes of possessions (and, of course, all my pots, pans, ladles, knives and chopping boards!) but with no furniture apart from one very old and rather shabby pine blanket-box. Over the past three months I have started to make a home, and I confess that it is one of the happiest places I have ever inhabited.