Dairy. Mess about in my own room. Change door handle to wrong side. Deliberate. Look around at animals. Eeni is growing tusks. Other piglets still very friendly. New pheasant thing. Green shiny head. Lunch. Have clean bath. Washing hair. Not enough hot water. Smash my rooms window after painting if blue and pulling it off its hinges.
Notes. All this took place in the attic rooms of Appleby Castle. It’s odd how contrarian I was being regarding an unoccupied attic room that I painted and took the door off. Eenie, like Meenie, Minie and Mo were pot bellied pigs we kept. My father created various aviaries for birds turning the grounds into a Rare Breeds Survival Centre.
JV> The attic rooms had been empty for decades, maybe 50, even 80 years and had been the staff quarters. They had high windows with no view: sad brown or beige walls and moth-eaten carpets. My step-mother had encouraged me to go psychedelic, so I had six primary colours and painted huge diagonal stripes across the walls, ceiling, window and light fittings – fueled im sure, by cans of lager from the cellar.
I think I was doing to this room what I’d have loved to have done at school. On my last day, swap all the door handles around. Such antics were typical of leavers. Perhaps this was a practice run.
My brother had a motorbike that was kept hidden from my father with the assistance of the ground staff.
We’d got up in the middle of the night to see the piglets born. We knew them like family pets. Their skin was so tough, but they enjoyed being petted.
As an ornithologist, my father began collecting and breeding birds and animals: ducks, pheasants, geese, swans, and flamingos. I think this was a Lady Amherst pheasant, based on the description.
The family kitchen was separate from ‘our’ quarters, alongside everyday offices. The refectory and castle kitchens were down in the basement of the Baron’s Tower. Management is here, but Dad and is kids are in ‘our’ kitchen, where food is brought up for us and or prepared in the kitchen by our step-mother.
The bath in a pokey small room could have been in your average semi-detached. It was nothing special for a castle. There was also a large, sunken oval bath which was much more fun. (And a swimming pool and sauna).
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