Stone haven castle.JPG)
This is the back entrance to the cottage that we were living in, there was no front entrance, there was a front door, which did not have a lock on the door and was kept closed with 2 screws.
The back entrance was below the level of the ground and when it rained water poured into the kitchen. when we moved into the house 5 years ago there were no shelves, or cupboards in the kitchen, or the bedrooms. we had to supply our own, the kitchen was very tiny, with hardly any space to move around, and no place to put a stove, I was able to fit my fridge into it, and my deep freeze and the wall units I had were used to store our essential in the kitchen, my Bar had to be used to store our groceries.
In the Bedrooms, I had to erect long poles across the walls so that we could hang up our clothes.
The floor of the whole house was raw concrete painted yellow, the same colour as the walls throughout the house. But it was some where to keep us safe and dry from the bitterly cold winters and boiling hot summers. In the yard there were 5 Avacoda pear trees, and all gave a good amount of fruit throuout the years that we were there.
We had water problems, as living in Shongweni the main water pipes came from Hammarsdale, and were old and decayed, often bursting underground and not being noticed untill suddenly a huge fountain of water found its way to the surface, when it would take the municipality water department a few day to come out and fix it.
We also had electrical problems in the house, and if we switched the kettel on, then we would have to switch everything else off, many a computer part was blown because of this shortage problem. But the land lord was not interested in fixing the problem and would not allow us to call and electrician in and the job had never been passed by the housing department. I think the whole cottage had never had plans and had been built first as a cattle shed, then the servants were allowed to build on to it, eventually it had a bathroom built on {that was the best room in the house} The ground was very uneven, and full of devil thorns, a nightmare if you walked out on to it in bare feet. Many a time I had to sort out abscesses on my dogs paws, because of these thorns. And the ticks, so many horrible little creatures, that had to be destroyed daily from my animals. Then there were the snakes, Large Black Mambes these killed 5 of my dogs, and one of my ducks, Zena one of my very brave chows killed 4 large spitting cobras, before her untimly death. We grew our own vegetables, in the garden and had Ducks and geese for their eggs. So we were pretty self contained in what we did.
I worked 2km from work and that is why I walked there every day, I enjoyed my job and my boss David and I got on very well. We worked from his home, which is called Stonehaven castle.
The photo above our cottage is a picture of Stone haven Castle in Shongweni Natal
Well I think thats enough for the day will carry on with this blog and all its heartache another day.
