Window out on the second floor
We have now been back in the UK for a little more than six months - and it looks as if it will be at least a couple more months before life gets back to something approaching normality. The picture above shows the view from the first floor of No. 8 Tackleway, aka the Matchbox, when the old window-frame was removed. The back of the house is of a timber construction, hung with tiles: and when you see it exposed, it's decidedly scary. We keep on saying "Well, it's stood for a couple of hundred years so it's not going to fall down now", but it's difficult to be quite so sangine when a gale force wind is hurling itself at the building, straight off the sea.
In All Saints Street, which runs parallel with Tackleway lower down the hill, the houses nearest the shore are half-timbered, and I found myself looking at them on return from the dog-walk this morning, thinking that they were miracles of solidity by comparison with what the Georgians put up. Not - it appears - that the Victorians in Hastings were much better: our next door neighbours say that the bricks their house is built from were cast-offs from the construction of a railway tunnel, having been found not to be up to the grade.
At dinner with new acquaintance the other night our hosts said they were planning a move from their listed home up the road to a new-build, with energy-efficient heating, triple glazing etc. It does seem tempting: but then I catch the views of the sea and the Old Town from the windows and think we'll carry on in our matchbox and shoebox for the moment...
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