Tales of Kuschty Rye – a Cockfield home full of music, memories and mishaps

An unassuming cottage in Cockfield is the star of a new book, written by David Abrahams-Edley.

The two-up, two-down has been transformed into a shrine to a shared love of music, complete with an impressive retro kitchen crammed with the sort of bits and pieces that inevitably prompt a nostalgic, “Eeeh, my mam had one of those!”

It’s no surprise, then, to find a couple of vintage bikes tucked away in the garage.

David and his wife Michelle reckoned Kuschty Rye, on Front Street, was perfect for their forever home and – at an age when most of us are thinking about retirement – took the plunge as belated first-time buyers.

An unusual starting point, and an unusual story, which persuaded Dave to put pen to paper and share the couple’s (mis) adventures as they started to do up the house.

“I had to take time off for an operation – I’ve been quite graphic about that in the book – and I was basically just writing bits on Facebook while I was recovering,” Dave said.

“Suddenly it was up to 30-40,000 words, so I decided to pull it off Facebook and see if I could do something with it.

“In the end I got up to 80,000 words and set up my own publishing company, Old Quack Publishing.”

The house is one character in the book, while Colin, a porcelain guinea pig, fluent in Welsh and blessed with a large social media following, also pops up with pointed commentary about the antics of his “owners”.

Humour runs through Tales from Kushty Rye.

David cites the likes of Tom Sharpe, Jerome K Jerome and Terry Pratchett among his favourite authors, and something of their light touch shapes some of his prose.

It’s a long way from his previous writing experience, a “dry dissertation” back in college.

A later, more creative foray cropped up a few years ago when a diary-like compendium – “mostly just political rants” – circulated as a flipbook in return for donations to the Saltburn Solidarity Foodbank.

Cockfield, and the wider dales area, also plays a big role.

For David, this was something of a return.

Twenty years earlier he lived in the village, and before buying Kuschty Rye he and Michelle rented in Barnard Castle.

Returning to Teesdale after two decades proved reassuring.

“Not much has changed, but Simpson’s Butchers has gone!” he joked.

“And personally, I’m in a much better relationship than I was 20 years ago.

“But these places are slow to change.

“When we first moved to Barnard Castle it was more or less exactly how I remembered it from 20 years previous.

“Things don’t change quickly around here and that’s nice in its way.

“Michelle had lived in London all her life, and really she persuaded me to move up here.

“She found this house and I told her how I’d lived in Cockfield before and liked it.”

Apart from a friendly village that still has most of the amenities on the doorstep, the glorious countryside is another attraction.

“We’re in the middle of it all, it’s beautiful,” David said.

“We’ve got the fell out back and we’ve barely been on there yet.

“With all that history, it could be a book in itself.

“I touched on it in the first one, and I’m really interested in the early history.

“Those Cumbric, pre-Saxon connections.

“There are lots of places round here with Cumbric names – Bishop Auckland, Eggleston, Cotherstone, Escomb.

“This place got a bit overlooked, between Rheged and Strathclyde to the west and the Northumbrians all along the east coast.

“It’s fascinating to look into that.”

• Tales of Kuschty Rye is available in ePub and PDF and traditional flip-book editions and can be read on phones, tablets, computers and e-readers. Copies are available from oldquack.shop and cost £3.99.