Looking back at my 7 year-old self who wanted to be an ‘authoress’, a career change seems unlikely and not particularly desireable – but I still love writing. It gets my thoughts in order and leaves a written record behind to reflect on later. So, as my mind is especially scrambled at the moment, I will call this ‘therapy’.
Unlike the travel blog this was designed to be, this will document, not the anguish of moving itself (don’t want to revisit that!) but what happens next. So I guess the blog title is grammatically incorrect, but bear with me, we are still planning to finish our journey along the Vltava River next Easter.
So why move at all? Thinking back to my first year at university when I thought studying Economic History was a great idea (that lasted about two lectures), the push and pull factors can be identified:
The Push Factors
House too big now with us being empty nesters, expensive to run and maintain, feeling very surrounded (you could see a bit of sky out of the sitting room window beyond all the rooves and aerials), tired of the sitting room being a corridor and the garden behind what was the garage, out of sight of the house and . . . well, by now, you will have totally switched off, but you get the idea. However, these were necessary but not sufficient. The house had to have essential pull factors –
The Pull Factors
THE HUSBAND MUST HAVE HIS BOXES TICKED – full height dark room with space for wet and dry areas, workshop space for maintaining and storing numerous bikes and bike parts, well situated with good public transport links and not too far to cycle home from the pub on a Thursday night. Add in a dose of nature and nearby walks.
But am I really so self-less to have no list of my own? Well – no. A sitting room that is not a corridor and clear link between the house and the garden.
So how to afford this ideal property when we have opted for fulfilling jobs and a bit more time, over a decent pay packet? The answer is in the smoke.
Enter No. 45.
See that shiny gleam on the ceilings? A sort of faintly greasy look? That was a white ceiling in 1972 when the house was built. When we first looked round with the estate agent, we were hit by a wall of smell (it really is possible) which had presumably put everyone else off buying. We both could see what the house could become and we reckoned that ‘Location, Location, Location’ trumped the nicotine. So we could now afford the view, the neat garden with patio outside the conservatory, garage, workshop and wait for it – a lean-to green house and my very own shed. This would leave a very modest budget to sort out the practicalities of an EPC of E (really bad energy performance if you are not in the know), a south-facing wooden conservatory that is obviously baking hot in the heatwaves we now experience and a lot of hard work to make a darkroom out of the workshop. Rob, being a former signal engineer, has deemed the electrics bad enough to be the top priority and I have bought an all-purpose fire extinguisher.
And so this blog. This will chart making the house as sustainable with the lowest footprint on this earth that we can manage and as affordable as we possibly can. I will be back when I have neckache from washing ceilings.
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