By

Craig Ennew

—

Twenty-Nine: Worth its Weight in Gold

This week: it’s time to leave the cottage!

Coastal Idyll: the cottage in Worth Matravers

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that our somewhat idyllic reprieve at Worth Matravers, draws to a close. Contrary to expectations, all three of us have acclimatised to Tiny Cottage Living. We’ve even welcomed guests in the form of my daughters and their other halves. Paring life back to the simple things has been both liberating and therapeutic: the overarching feeling of being on a perpetual holiday, enhanced by a lengthy spell of temperate weather.

Blighter Later

Over this time, we have found our rhythm. We have learnt that we can live without a huge amount of indoor space. This is just as well, considering that Percy the Cat – more of that little blighter later – cannot be swung in the space we have elected to move into. Now, our halcyon days are set to become memories. The moment will come when I raise my tankard in The Square and Compass no more. We know we have outstayed our welcome in this lovely little terraced house near Swanage; although we know that the kind owner who invited us to stay there back in January would politely insist otherwise.

So where is the grand reveal of our renovation (AKA ‘The Shack’) in West Lulworth, I hear you cry? Where is the part oft seen in Grand Designs, when Kevin ‘lizard-tongue’ McCloud steps into a triple-height entrance hall bathed in kaleidoscopic refractions of light, gasping: ‘Oh my word…’ when, twenty minutes earlier, he’d been telling the cameras that it would all go to shit?

Flimsy edges

As I write, The Shack has been dragged, kicking and screaming out of the 1930s. Finally free of its asbestos straight-jacket, the ‘first fix’ of plumbing and electrics have happened. We’ve been following Jim the Sparky around its flimsy edges, telling him where we want light fittings, pendants and plug sockets, only to glance at the subsequent estimate with horror, and hastily slash the requisite by half. Frames for stud walls have been erected and two out of a possible three ungainly holes have been made for various windows and doors. Granted, the windows and doors themselves have yet to materialise. As have any internal walls. Or floors. Indeed, the installation of a receptacle in which to defecate now seems an extravagance. ‘Flush? Hell, no. We got us some buckets out in the yard!’

So amidst all this mayhem, it has now come down to this: we need to be out of the cottage in a fortnight.

My wife, as ever, is remarkably sanguine. ‘It’ll be fine,’ she says, pouring me a glass of wine. (In his emails, Will the Builder has, until now, also camped with Team Sunny Side. I have noted, though, that recent missives have been more reticent, each one nudging the earliest possible moving-in date back by a week or so). ‘We’ll make do,’ she continues. ‘That’s what we do, the three of us do: we make do. As long as we have a makeshift bathroom…and electricity…’. Her voice tapers off. I stare back at her, my mouth opening and closely like an outraged guppy in a wind tunnel. ‘Make do?’ I squawk with disbelief. ‘You’ve been in there recently: there is no bathroom! We literally have no pot to piss in.’ I toss the wine down the back of my throat in disgusted outrage, trying my best to ignore her wounded face. ‘And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen much in the way of bloody wall sockets either.’ I’m in my stride now, as I round on her with my final riposte. I raise my finger in warning: ‘And don’t you dare come at me with that We could look at it as an adventure line…’

In my mind’s eye, I am taken back to the endless trails of grey cable that crawl across exposed floor joists and drape off roof beams like dehydrated garter snakes. I picture myself tentatively picking my way across the beams- rather like Mr Bean finding himself cast as contender in Gladiators – as I eye a naked candle flame in the distance as the sole source of heat for my Pot Noodle. Or perhaps I am tiptoeing sheepishly towards the nearest field in the darkness, loo roll in hand, praying I don’t encounter a curious sheep or randy fox.

Always watching: Percy the Cat

Blissful Acquiescence

Besides all of this, we have not talked about the real elephant in the room – an elephant that has whiskers, and pees in a litter tray. Despite the odd Shawshank moment, Percy the Cat has succumbed to his entrapment in the cottage at Worth with blissful acquiescence. This has been something of a revelation. Although a veteran in feline terms, he had been quite the cat-about-town on his Salisbury tour. He would spring into our bedroom in the early hours, walk over our heads, and castigate us loudly for not instantly providing breakfast. ‘I, Prodigal Puss, have returned, torn and ragged, from my call of duty out on Kings Road. Now get your lazy human asses out of this pit and give me my Felix As Good as it Gets! Now!’

A few months on, he is uber-affectionate, sedentary but still unequivocally greedy, even by previous standards. If Garfield the cat and a panda had procreated, Percy the Cat would be the result. Now, we take pride in keeping him contained in our temporary accommodation thus far: there is always one closed door between him and any avenue of escape and all windows are opened by no more than the width of two fingers. In a cottage that traps heat as zealously as a Kellogs pop tart, this has been decidedly uncomfortable during an unusually warm Spring.

Get thee to a cattery

So moving to The Shack in its current chrysalid state is only going to exacerbate this position. Think about it: we will, for the time being, exist in a space where it is not possible to close doors. This is because there currently are no doors. Instead, there will be one big space through which Will the Builder and his merry band will also move with gay abandon (and probably very little inclination to bother about the well-being of a miffed puss). So how on Earth will it be possible to keep Percy the Cat cabined, cribbed and confined before he has time to acclimatise to the excitement of West Lulworth moggy night life? Do we throw caution to the wind, let him roam and just see what happens? Or do we point Stage Right and scream, like The Dane: ‘Get thee to a cattery!’

Will everything else going on, it’s a topic my wife and I will continue to gingerly circumnavigate. As one of my teachers once said to me: ‘Ennew: there is a light at the end of the tunnel; unfortunately, in your case, it is the light emanating from a 250-tonne train.’

©Craig Ennew 2025

Please feel free to leave a comment on this post!

One response to “Twenty-Nine: Worth its Weight in Gold”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I bloody loves it, truth wrapped up in romantic illusions that somehow manage a gleam of reality and a we’ll make it!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Please feel free to leave a comment on this post!