Little windows

Storm Doris was blowing on the day the movers came to take Clea's furniture up to Glasgow for storage. The front door was left open and the wind swirled through the house, catching the open window in the loo and slamming it shut. We heard a bang and the tinkle of breaking, falling glass, and rushed to the front door lest it be the lovely stained glass panels. Fortunately not ... but the glass in the little window was original to the house, about 115 years old -

Tom came along to fix it, installing a plain frosted pane -

 I have happy memories of the repainting of the loo. We were looking for the right shade of beige (again) and Tony, in jest, picked up a tin of a colour called Henna. "Perfect," sez I, "you are genius, that's just exactly the right colour!" He did look a little shocked as we proceeded to the checkout, and I could feel emanations of doubt as we drove home with the paint.

When it came to the repainting, a lot of reassurance was needed. "It's much too dark" - no, it's a bright warm colour; "It's too bright for a small space" - no, it's cosy and warm, perfect, and look how well it goes with the maps of old London that hang on the walls; "It's all wrong, this will never do" - let's try it, give it a few days and have a chance to get used to it. Of course he did get used to it - it was his choice, after all.

Another memorable small window is the stained glass panel that replaced the original wire screening in the pantry. The mesh allowed cool air to enter, keeping food in the larder fresh - the house was built before 1906, a time of few tinned foods, of daily trips to do the shopping. (Nor did it have a conservatory added on in those days.)

What's there now is a stained glass panel, made by Stewart, the local stained glass craftsman. He lives a few houses away and has a workshop near the railway station. As part of what he hoped would be a larger project of videos about local craftspeople, Tony made a video of Stewart making a little stained glass window, and he gave the little window to Tony.

The video - edited to 5 minutes from 15, no mean feat! - can be seen at https://vimeo.com/101200525