The haunted house

Well I'm not really saying it's haunted, but these old stone houses creak and groan all night, and any noise that your neighbours make that is loud enough to come through the foot-thick stone walls sounds pretty eerie as well. Unearthly graunches, thumps and metallic shrieks. And last night we had strong wind and rain, with all the accompanying bangbangbang scrape of shutters and outdoor furniture, well, it's a wonder any of us slept at all. Even the trees round here - there are lots of them and they are BIG - in the wild wind it sounded like we were in the middle of a waterfall. But strangely I did sleep well, very well - normally I am woken by the 7am church bells (which go off at 6.58) but this morning I slept through it all and woke up with a rude rush to the alarm clock.

The electrics are a bit odd as well. The TV turns itself on, usually in the early hours of the morning. Suddenly you will wake in the pitch dark to the sound of motorsports blaring up from downstairs, or .... aaaargh! .... James Blunt .....The radio in the dining room decides when it will play as well. Yesterday during lunch with friends it turned itself on 3 times - just didn't want to be left out of the conversation I guess. We unplug them from the wall when we aren't using them now ...

Em and Al reckon the gate in the picture above leads to Frankenstein's mansion. On walks they entertain themselves with spooky stories about it (it's not far from our house). It's probably the residence of a prominent wine-making family (the front yard seems to be full of grape plants) with no laboratories at all. Or maybe there's a lab for testing the wine.... definitely no creepy half-men ... ok, now I am scaring myself ....