A stranger has been sending me emails recently. A woman in her eighties who lives in Northumberland. Her messages are full of anecdotes of a life well-lived and reading them is like tripping and falling into the open door of a stranger’s world. These sporadic emails have sparked my curiosity. And yet I have nothing in common with her, except one thing. She once lived in my house.
Margaret is a friend of a friend, who asked to be put in touch with me when she found out I was living in the Long Barn. In the 1970s, the barn had been part of a farm and the building I now call home was a milking parlour. In the early eighties Margaret’s husband, John, converted it into the family residence, having lived in the farmhouse next door until then.
Margaret sent me old pictures of how it used to be. The soft light in the photos, a yellow hue, made me think that they were perhaps taken in the autumn sun. Or maybe they just capture the beige tone of the seventies. A blonde girl with pigtails in dungarees and wellies smiles as a line of ducks walk behind her. This girl is now in her fifties.
It’s been strange seeing these grainy photos of the place I now call home, its life before me. But they have also given me delight: it’s amazing to see the radical transformation my house has been through, from a milking parlour to a family home. When I’m home alone and hear a perturbing creaking sound, I now feel comforted by the thought that any ghosts that might exist would be those of cows and not people.
The Long Barn and the two properties beside it are almost unrecognisable in the photos that Margaret has sent me. But at times, I see familiar fragments and suddenly it all fits together, like a jigsaw: the house that Margaret sees and my home, overlayed on top of each other.
I have sent my own photos of the Long Barn to Margaret. We have renovated the property, and she says she wishes her late husband John could see how his original conversion is now part of a new story: my story. I told her that restoring the house was one of the ways I mended my broken heart.
The exchange has made me view my house differently. Both Margaret and I have pored over the images, finding joy in the familiar and when we can both proclaim, “It’s my house!”. It has made me think of the Long Barn as an instrument: a gong whose sound can be heard long after it has been struck and which resonates across generations. It’s also made me wonder: how much does the house need to change for it to no longer be the same house? Like the philosophical conundrum of the Ship of Theseus: if a ship is gradually replaced with new parts, is it the same ship?
I love that a stranger has come into my life and made me view things in a different light. In a world that feels divided, I have found an affinity with someone I have never met. Her emails provide a temporary reprieve from harsh news stories of polarisation and despair. And I’m also grateful that she and her husband moved the cows out of the Long Barn so that, down the line, we could move in.
In her last email, Margaret told me how she had saved a Red Admiral butterfly. It was resting on one of the paving stones. With her cat Georgie around, she thought it would be sensible to move the butterfly to a flower. A day later she found the butterfly on the ground again, untouched, but dead. “I couldn’t hold back my tears,” she wrote. I admire that Margaret still feels and cares with such intensity. That what’s it means to be fully alive.
