When Lettice, my miniature sausage dog, rudely awoke me in my rented Cotswolds cottage a few weeks ago by leaping off my bed like a demented flying fox, I had no idea of what was to come.
She spent the next 20 minutes running in circles around and underneath my Victorian brass bedstead, making the most unearthly shrieking noises. Presuming she was in pursuit of yet another imaginary mouse, I ignored her, opening up my iPhone for a quick pre-breakfast scroll.
Before we moved here in 2021, she’d managed to dispatch several feral pigeons in my north London backyard, but she’s remained remarkably oblivious to Gloucestershire’s (actual) rural vermin. Until that Wednesday morning, it turns out.
I happened to glance away from my screen and promptly let out my own demonic scream. Lying on the carpet at the end of the bedstead was a rather damp looking and very dead black rat.
I’m used to house mice. I grew up in the depths of the English countryside where cats eviscerating mice was a common occurrence and then, as a very urban fashion editor living in red-brick terraces in London and New York, got used to live ones frequently scooting across my kitchen floors.
Sasha Wilkins with her dog Lettice (left) at her rented cottage in the Cotswolds
But dead rats at 6am in my bedroom were a whole new level of I don’t fricking think so. I burst into tears and messaged an incoherent plea to the estate manager, asking for the gamekeeper to remove it ASAP.
To be honest, this was just another nail in the coffin after several months of trying to get someone to deal effectively with the rat infestation in this externally charming, but inwardly decrepit and crepuscular, Arts and Crafts cottage on an agricultural estate in Gloucestershire.
Finding somewhere, anywhere, to rent in the Cotswolds is akin to The Hunger Games. Stock is low, desire is high, and rents even higher.
It had taken me a year to find this property back in 2021 while I was living in a short-term rental after I left London during Covid.
Although my sister referred to it as the Unicorn Cottage – given its Instagram-worthy exterior, spacious bedrooms, and ideal location just ten minutes from the barn where my antiques business is based – it soon became clear that the picture-perfect but insulation-free leaded lights and stone mullions of the 100-year old building made it impossible to keep warm and mould-free.
It also didn’t help that the upper hall window was jammed ajar allowing a vicious draught down the stairwell, and that the cheap plastic curtain rails kept falling down, meaning even less insulation along with no privacy.
Despite frequent pleas for their replacement, nothing was fixed. Last November the kitchen flooded due to badly maintained drains, and the landlord suggested that, as he was away in London at the time, I sweep the six-inch-high flood waters out of the front door.
Inside the Arts and Crafts cottage on an agricultural estate in Gloucestershire
I remarked that, as the boiler cupboard was in the hallway, blowing it up – and electrocuting myself – maybe wasn’t the best possible solution.
Which leads me back to the rats. Their ubiquitous presence since early summer (although I think they had been there longer, thanks to a hole caused by the flooding, nesting under the bath, behind the kitchen cabinet base boards and under the cooker) has meant that the cottage has been a no-go area for guests and I have been reduced to microwaving my evening meals at the antiques barn, often not leaving until 10pm, as I couldn’t face going home to do anything other than sleep.
As I said to the estate manager: if I had children I would have moved out weeks ago due to the health risk.
Last week it was reported that England is destined for a plague of rats this autumn as a result of the record-breaking summer heat. Take it from me, you do not want to live with them. Quite apart from the disease risk, to date they have bitten off the plug of my £350 Kenwood food mixer, chewed the cables of my laptop, induction hob, and the kitchen lamp, eaten the lid off a three-litre can of olive oil, and destroyed a wicker hamper I kept under my desk.
They also tried to break into the fridge by chewing through the door seal while I was working away, and I now have to keep the door wedged shut with a fire extinguisher.
It all came to a head last week when, after a second exterminator had finally banished the furry fiends while I was on holiday, I was handed an eviction notice with eight (thankfully rent-free) weeks to find a new home. A tenant connected to the landlord’s family wanted to move in, I was told.
I wouldn’t have minded quite so much if the landlord hadn’t just asked me to pick out a replacement cooker, and remove absolutely everything from the kitchen into a nearby barn to facilitate the post-vermin clean and post-flood refurb.
Yet in a way, even though I was aghast at the time, my landlord has finally done me what could end up being a massive favour.
The isolation that comes from living on a rural estate with a handful of dwellings had started to get to me.
Last week it was reported that England is destined for a plague of rats this autumn as a result of the record-breaking summer heat
Having previously lived in huge cities, I had thought I wanted to be in the middle of nowhere and that, in my 40s, I would relish the peace. But it turned out that, unless I went grocery shopping, I could go several days without seeing, let alone speaking, to anyone. Even for someone used to their own company, that’s not a good or healthy thing.
Spending yet another long, hard winter on my own in a cold cottage, where I go to bed with Lettice at 6pm each evening because it is the best way to keep warm, isn’t going to be sustainable.
Running my business single-handed takes all my energy. I’m at work for ten or so hours seven days a week and when I return home, I need my cottage to be a warm, welcoming and comfortable place, where I can entertain and have friends to stay.
So I am now frantically leveraging my social-media platforms and scouring property apps for another Unicorn Cottage.
Of course, the relentless fiscal assaults on landlords, combined with the (very welcome) provisions of the upcoming Renters’ Rights Bill, which is being returned to the Commons, means that it’s going to be even harder for me to find a place to live, let alone within my budget.
I was amused, in a very dry way, by the person who suggested on Instagram that I might like to look into buying my own place so I could avoid having to deal with the vagaries of the rental market.
As if. If they could please find me a lender who would be prepared to give a mortgage to a single small-business owner, with a tiny deposit, I’d be delighted to engage with them.
Meanwhile, if anyone knows of a sausage-dog friendly small cottage with parking and a garden in Gloucestershire which is in need of a tenant who treads lightly and is always at work, please do let me know . . . and strictly no rats as house guests.