More soot.

Soot trodden over the kitchen floor. Soot blackening the curtains. Soot GETTING ON MY FUCKING TITS.

The cottage was built in around 1750, but the fireplace seems older. The current theory is that the house was constructed around the remains of an earlier dwelling. It’s all terribly Time Team around here at the moment.

Two interesting discoveries:

Firstly, a pair of earrings. Seemingly deliberately bricked in. Non-precious, but clearly of value to somebody – perhaps hidden to remember a loved one who once lived and died here?

It would be great to find something else to help us piece together the story – a letter, a necklace, an old skull, etc.

Secondly, an arched vault that revealed itself to be an ancient bread oven.

They didn’t have Prima bread makers in the eighteenth century, not having power points and stuff. Me, Short Tony and the Cheerful Builder gazed at it in rapture. It’s incredible. I reckon I could get in Period Living magazine with this.

It’s odd how perceptions change with time. If I were able to whisk the house’s original owner forward to the present day, they would piss themselves laughing at our admiration for their simple oven, and the fact that their shitty dwelling is now considered a desirable place to live.

Actually, they probably wouldn’t. They’d be too busy being bloody terrified about three blokes turning up in a big flashing machine and abducting them into the future.

Although if I’m being realistic about it, that doesn’t work anyway. Had I been brilliant enough to invent time travel, the first thing I’d use it for would probably not be to snatch to order a filthy peasant for the purposes of showing off about my period features.

I’d go back and stick a few quid in a high interest account. Then I’d forward to Volvo Man’s eighteenth birthday party, and stop myself from asking Tracey H out.