New

Today is the first day.  I love this day more than the night that precedes it.  Hogmanay can be built up, and sometimes the need to feel you are having a great time and making the most of the last moments has a slightly desperate tinge to it, but that's just me.

We had no plans, save playing a board game with the Smalls, but had the pleasantly squishy experience of a caravan full of impromptu guests last night, which was the best and most perfect way to see in the New Year, surrounded by the friends and neighbours who have helped us so much in the past six months.

After so much merry making, we decided to have a slow day spent being together, doing what small jobs were needed and resting.

It has given me space to walk the land, and dream a little more, plan a little more, see a little more.

We know where the house is going to be sited.  It isn't exactly where we would have liked, but councils don't like little houses being built on a visable hilltop, even if there is no one else to see it, and there is the practicality of being a pensioner, climbing a hill with bags of shopping.  So, the house is to be nestled into the side of the hill, not so far from the track.

With this certainty we've been able to start marking out other things.  A pond, a line of stock fencing, a barn and a woodland.  It feels good to have a solid plan after many months of switching things about.  I feel we've been flexible enough and now, armed with a little more knowledge of where the sun sets and rises in the darkest months, we are able to stick to a plan.

So, weather permitting, foundations will be put in for the house in March, and the frame will follow from that. We may have a shell in time for my middle boys birthday.  Just six short months away.

For now I am enjoying the feeling of new. New hopes, dreams and plans.

Living temporarily

Nothing is permanent.

Nothing stays the same.

We all know this, and yet days can pass and they can feel similar, so that you don't notice the changes because they are so small, and then you do notice and perhaps you wished you'd paid more attention. 

This is how I am finding our temporary living.  I hope that we won't be living another year in this little space, but at the same time I don't want to wish it away too fast.

A few big things have happened in here . My youngest lost a baby tooth, we had our first ever game of monopoly where everyone played independently.  We got creative with Christmas decorations, making the most of limited space and decorating vertically and outside more.  

I love that I can stand and cook in the *kitchen and be involved in the conversations in the living space.  I don't always love that I can be in the living space and have a conversation with children who are in their beds and not supposed to be listening.  I know that this will change, and that one day my husband and I will be able to hold private conversations within a building, instead of opting to walk outside in order to not be heard!  This is how most of our Christmas gifting decisions have been made as the walls quite literally have ears.

In a surprising twist, having started this post about how things change, the architect drawings arrived today.  Although we are building our own home, we needed the expertise of an architect to get Planning off our back and our detailed application to be approved.  This seems to be an expense worth paying out for, because the council have left us alone and are satisfied that the architects have it all in hand.

So, with the arrival of the drawings, I am reminded once again that our current living arrangements are not permanent, and that with the arrival of Spring we will see another change, and this makes me happy and keen to embrace what will be an unusual and unforgettable festive season in our wee caravan.

*the kitchen is really nothing more than a corridor joining all the rooms together, but I'm making the space work.  Some days it works better than others.

This picture has nothing to with the post subject, but my dearest drew it on my favourite chipped coffee cup, and it made me smile, not just for the comedy face but for the effort he put in to draw it in secret.  It has washed off now.  Which proves my nothing is permanent statement, so maybe it is related...

(Honestly, these blog posts are really not very well thought out, so please give me some credit for managing to get that creative link in there.)

When is an Eco house not an Eco house?

I had big dreams when we got this place.

Actually, I had big dreams before we got this place.  I wanted to live gently on this planet of ours, in a Zero waste, carbon neutral bubble of happiness.  It would be a house made from recycled everything and we would be pioneers in this buynowpaywithtearslater world that we currently live in.

But I am coming round to Kermits way of thinking.  It is most certainly not easy being green.

Put aside that most everyone thinks we are bonkers for giving up a normal life to live in a field, and so therefore greet everything with a certain amount of prejudice/ trepidation, there is also that delightful inner voice to contend with.

Take grey water for instance.  You would think that wanting to dispose of waste water in an environmentally sound manner would be welcomed but the architect we are working with explained to me - very patiently - that, actually, councils like expensive chemical treatment solutions that nearly clean your waste completely and then pump it into a nearby water source.  It was the "chemical" and "nearly" that put me off.  

When I - equally as patiently - explained that we will have an indoor composting loo, I was asked to provide design details.  Apparently saying the shit goes down the back and the pee section is at the front is not good enough.  I need to draw a diagram.  I kid you not. 

Now, I like our architect.  I didn't actually want an architect but the council pushed us and so we had to seek advice.  They are on good terms with the authorities and know their stuff in terms of legalities, so in this respect I feel we are in good hands. They are also experienced in offgrid houses, although I suspect they apply this term to houses supplying their own electrics and water, not to the extremes that we are trying to do.

We spent an evening designing the house we would like.  It isn't a grand design by any stretch, but it is practical, sympathetic with the landscape and ecologically sound, but it might be out of our budget and experience comfort zone.

So we are at a crossroads, where budgets bad ethics meet.

I realise that this is my second moany post in a row, so I better sort myself out.