Cook one thing

The view that started it all.

New green paint.

I keep thinking the front door is open. The hallway’s filled with light. I’d forgotten how this feels.

This lantern house with its long windows has been dimmed these past eight months by the scaffolding which encased it. It meant I could only see the view of the harbour which made me fall in love with it in the first place if I craned my neck, or stood at odd angles. Then, when the builders began hacking off the old render, the scaffolding was encased in a bright green mesh, so hundred-year-old chunks of building didn’t cascade onto the pavement below, potentially killing someone and ruining tourism for everybody.

After weeks of work, where everything just looked like different stages of mess and the garden vanished under generators and tools and hulking pieces of machinery of indeterminate purpose, we finally got to the only part I am really interested in: the colour. The house is now pale yellow, the metal work of the balconies soft green. The stone is cleaned of decades of dirt. The house looks fresh, jaunty even. It’s got its best seaside face on now, and the hallway’s filled with light.

Before and after.

Potato and mussel salad in crème fraîche and tarragon dressing