Untitled, if there was a title it would be about the weather

No, no pub, the guy (my Dad) with the ‘man flu’ is not well enough, so hopefully tomorrow maybe? Hope so. This ‘man flu’ has been going on for almost a week now and it’s getting my mum and myself down. Every day, EVERY god forsaking day we go to the local town for shopping and it really gets SO repetitive, back for lunch, painting and then reading which usually sends me to sleep, though it’s a good book, the chapters are MEGA long, it’s “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt (unfortunate name) my friend Gemma recommended it to me one sunny day in Greenwich a few weeks back, oh happy days, with sun and blue sky!

Yes, the weather IS appalling. It’s mild, but wet, bleak, foul, disgusting and NOW there’s a heavy wind!!!!! Standing outside, smoking, listening to the howl of the gusts in the telegraph wires, it really is quite eerie. Even sitting here listening to the moan in the chimney, I can understand why Devon and Cornwall are brandished the most haunted. I can well believe them and tonight I’m going to tell you a local ghost story (or what I can remember of it).

Over the main road, that’s the A386 towards Torrington to the East and Okehampton to the West. This small part of the world is littered with old, ancient manors houses, most of them in ruins but this one I’m going to tell you about it still standing although it’s half of its former glory. Great Potheridge, an important place where the Civil War of Devon and Cornwall in the 17th Century took place. Days and days of bloody battle was fought around the fields of the cottage where I am now, I’m surprised there are not more ghosts. But on a night like tonight, maybe the howls of the wind are actually the cries of ghouls, slain at the battlefield?
Great Potheridge was a usual manor; a large, wealthy family filled its rooms and servants, kitchen maids, butlers, gardeners worked for them. I’m not sure when the house fell into disrepair, maybe it had a fire like most of these houses, but a whole section was demolished sometime in the 19th Century and a small fraction of it remains. Around 10 years ago, the present owners then (the original family had died out) had to repair the old roof because the rain was getting in. It had been in their possession for a number of years and most night’s screams were heard in the loft. On every occasion the owners checked where the sound was coming from, but nothing was found. Nights and nights and always on a cold, windy, wet night as this, these haunting screams were heard but no one could find an explanation why. As the roof was taken apart, oh horrors of horrors! What was found?! A guillotine, hidden in the roof for centuries. That’s where the cries were coming from, executions from long ago. Recently the old plans were found for the place, as now it stands as an Agricultural Training Centre, it was discovered the guillotine was used to execute the servants plus the disobeying soldiers of the Civil War.
No one is meant to live there. But on most nights, a small ghostly light burns in the window, whoever it is, I cannot tell you, but I believe, as do the locals, that it is not from this world.








Ok pictures today, dim, grim. View of the garden, the cottage close up, the fishpond and the MUD MUD MUD MUD MUD!!!!!!! Plus a picture of the cosy sting room with the fire, where I’ll be retiring too after this, note the painting on the wall done by me!

That’s it!

Emy xxx