Natalie

Arundel spices 

 

On that February night we first moved into the cottage, we sat on blankets on the floor, leaning against the icy walls and soaking the cold in through our backs. We ate takeaway curry to keep warm.

 

But the walls soon warmed up. Out went the grubby old sofa that smelt of wet dogs and in came the green cotton couch draped with wooly multi-coloured blankets, flowers on the windowsill, and a hundred books which we added to over the next five years.

 

Arriving home and walking into that kitchen was always one of the best parts of my day, especially in winter when the fairy lights were hung above the window frame, the garden shrouded in black behind the steamy glass. The sound of a knife chopping garlic, the smell of tomato and spice sizzling together on the hob. A large black dog with skinny legs too long for his body pacing about the kitchen.

 

That house was drafty and damp with its hundred year old windows and a kitchen door that swelled up in the rain and wouldn’t shut properly, but it turned out to be one of the warmest places I’ve ever lived.