I had always wanted a house of my own. The grandchild of an architect -- dead long before I was born -- I had always thought I wanted to be an architect as well. All the time I drew houses. Houses down the road. Houses my parents' friends lived in. Houses I saw in books or traveling. Houses I made up. Many were houses I thought I wanted to own. They became, for a time anyway, my house, the house I would live in… until I saw something I liked better. Keep Reading
In what looked to have been the smaller front parlor, the fireplace had been bricked up, a toilet put in where the hearth had been, and a bathtub installed against the end wall. But we found it charming, or I did certainly with its old windows and mantels, splendid random-width oak floorboards. I even thought the old gnarly radiators were charming. Keep Reading
At the bottom of the hill we turned onto Ferry Road, and then as we came around a corner and over a rise, Whalebone Cove opened out in front of us. Mostly it was frozen, but there were still open channels crowded with busy, flapping ducks, numbers of geese landing, seagulls and a pair of swans, heads held high, gliding among them. Keep Reading
“Go away. You're early,” said George. “Go have a look around and come back around sunset.” He shut the door. Not a very auspicious beginning, I thought. But I said to Christian, “let me at least show you where we are,” and we headed back the way we'd come, and onto the road that leads up the east side of the river. Keep Reading
