I found a decomissioned WINDMILL in...uh...second here..
WAINFLEET for sale. Wainfleet seems lovely but in a way like I would still be that newcomer with the harsh Maritime-Canadian accent* twenty years after moving there. Or that every building would give you a mini-history quiz as you walked into it and if you fail you get electrocuted at the front gate. It also looks like it floods a lot, often, actually and is almost four hours by car to London. Maybe too far? Maybe not far enough. I don't know.
Plus the actual blades are missing from the house and I don't know if I would find that charming or not, as I would much prefer to go to bed at night with the soft thwup-thwup-thwup overhead to lull me to my dreams.
Lochlan gave me a few names of towns I should look in, he said they actually would be enjoyable to live in and they aren't so remote as to become a daily hardship.
But what isn't a daily hardship at this point, if not life. It's not like I can find Chef-Boyardee at the store. We have four kinds of poptarts in this town. I have to order almost everything online anyway, wouldn't it be better if they drop-shipped it to me from a plane to my windscarred island near Scotland or off Ireland or whereever the grass looked greener before I packed up all my toys and realized it isn't? How many kinds of poptarts do you think you can buy on Anglesey?
(The answer is it doesn't matter. Duncan found them all on Amazon. Apparently also at Target just across the border since we don't have Target in Canada any more either. I just need to pick my flavours now holy magnolia.)
I think we should stay in Canada, Lochlan reiterates. Not like I get to pick in the end, anyway, right so I just daydream.
But look. You would see the Devil coming from five miles away if we lived here. I point to a renovated Friary on the Western border with Wales. You could make a gun turret out of this tower.
Or you could just be Rapunzel, there. I miss your hair.
I don't.The pixie cut is hilariously easy and I hate washing my hair. When it's long it's never ever down and it's heavy. My head feels so light and free.
Lochlan had Daniel buzz off all of his curls so that we would match. Lochlan looks so young with his flippy ends and close-crop, no beard and pale-green button down, sleeves rolled up, tattoos out and proud. His cargo pants are threadbare but he still wears them three days out of each week and his leather shoes are so soft he forgets he's wearing shoes and leaves them on in the house until given a reminder.
What if I miss your hair, Locket?
It'll grow back.
Exactly. Then you can be Rapunzel. And I will be the bad guy.
You're not the bad guy, Peanut.
Maybe I am.
You just always bite off more than you can chew.
Yeah.
And then you choke.
Okay, you can stop now.
*( Fun fact: after weeks and weeks of trial and error it appears Google still and forever cannot decipher my accent. Hilarious.)