We hit the six month mark last week! After six months of Winter and depressingly high use of fossil fuels in what have, in any event, proved utterly vain attempts to get and stay warm, Spring, or is it Summer, has arrived in Monmouth.

Firstly ,the Snowdrops dared raise their heads with just a hint of a promise that the weather might turn, then, the garden burst forth with a blaze of yellow daffodils scattered randomly and beautifully about the place and now it seems we are in the midst of daily blooms as the Horse Chestnut, Apple and Pear Trees, Walnut, Meadow flowers and more all leap to prettiness.

We hit 21 degrees this week – that is 36 degrees higher than January…the windows are open, the useless-anyway heating is off, as are the jumpers, hats and gloves. So, what now? Well, now, when it is hard to imagine that we could possibly be ‘that’ cold again, the quotes for preparing ourselves for next Winter roll in…and in…and in….

However, let the mounting (Biomass boiler installation at £30k has tipped us at over £100k at last reckoning and we had a budget of £25k..) quotes for insulating and coming off oil not stand in the way of our current sense of utter jubilation. We survived a Winter that much hardier than us ex-Surrey types found testing and our friends who visited us in throes of the arctic conditions have been back for BBQ’s and still love us. Finally we feel that the long and very cold slog of a Winter move is being rewarded daily and that we are truly blessed with our home…albeit one that we no longer share with the mice, but do so with…Death Watch Beetle….more on this little 8mm subject to follow.

I read an article in the Sunday Times yesterday that hailed the often ‘victimised’ 4×4 drivers as unsung ‘heroes of the snow’…I am not a generic 4×4 driver-hater, but this article really did  make me nauseous.

The article, clearly in defence of the townie  and suburban 4×4 driver, was smug and self satisfied as it detailed an occasion last week when a Doctor who had previously been open in his disdain for the City 4×4 , asked a neighbour for a lift through the snow in his in order to get to work.  Having given the Doctor a lift, the 4×4 owner was keen to be smug about having done so. What is wrong with people?

4×4′s are, like it or not, not usually neccessary in the cities or suburban world. They are dangerous in the school playground due to their appalling visibility from the on-high driver position and moreover, they emit enormous amounts of CO2, which, I hasten to add, has been widely hailed by the worlds scientists as a major cause of climate change  and extreme weather events. The snow, rather than justifying the 365 days per year driving of enormous gas guzzling 4×4′s, is testimony as to why we should not do so, unless we live somewhere that actually requires one more than once a year. They are in part the cause, not the solution and year round emissions from a tank driven on the school run, cannot be justified by pulling a neighbours Mini out of the snow once a year. This is not a 4×4 ‘get out of jail’ card!

Here in the country I cannot pretend that a 4×4 would not have been of far greater use to us than our automatic Passat estate which lacked some serious va va voom in the snow. The Clio, being lighter and manual, faired a little better, but even so…The preceeding floods follwoing the super-melt would also have been better met with a higher-rise vehicle.

It may indeed be inevitable that out here up a farm track and where today fields are well and truly submerged, a 4×4 may be neccessary at some stage. However, a 4×4 does not need to be a BMW X6 or a Porsche Cayenne. It can be a 2 litre but taller and 4 wheel driving equivalent of the car that we have already.

I am sad to see that enquiries into 4×4′s ,after a period of sharp decline, have risen rapidly since our short spell of snow. This is testimony to the short-term-ism that has landed us where we are. So, yes, let’s all get enormous 4×4′s so that we can take our children to schools that will be shut when it snows anyway and let’s feel smug that the Doctor’s out there, committed to saving lives, are not too proud to put their disdain for the 4×4 aside and to ask for help… shame on you for your lack of grace and shame on the Sunday Times for its evident lack of a balanced and responsible view.

The thermometer outside this morning read -13 degrees… being an ex-southern-softy I find this far below freezing point, outside of a Canadian ski adventure, almost incomprehensible and what is more staggering is that the inside temperature is now one which would have, in Surrey, had us blasting the central heating 24/7, climate change or no.

The odd thing here is that James and I, snowed in as we are with little prospect of getting our Passat or Clio down the farm track and even less of getting it back up, are wearing thermals and salopettes, but the heating, by day, is still off! Crazy? Driven by extreme principles? No, not really. It is just that,  given the heroically poor insulation properties of the house (Emma is sleeping in a -10 sleeping bag designed for Snowdonian adventure sans tent..) and the fact that the Rayburn is always on, belching oil and making the kitchen almost tropical at around 14 degrees, we see no value in even trying to heat the rest of the house. Instead, we have opted for the ‘more clothes’ approach to heat. Effective, but deeply unglamourous.

The challenge we face when it comes to heat is that, in spite of my best efforts to make a plan for a way forward, the waters get ever more muddy! We are now firmly caught in the confusion which is ‘too much advice’ from too many sources and guess what? It all conflicts!

Can we/should we go Ground Source Heat? or Air Source, or would that in fact mean losing 6 inches off our floor for the all important installation of optimal underfloor heating (‘oh no, you would need radiators 4x the size of Monmouth to be effective here madam…’and the consequential decapitation of my husband who already needs to duck when entering rooms? Would it work anyway on a house like this? Opinions are firmly dvided although HRH Pronce of Wales has installed such in some of his properties at Highgrove and to great acclaim…. we continue the research on that one.

Log burners have been toyed with as a ‘quick-fix’and willow trees in mind, but do we need 2kw, 8kw or 11kw? Opinions are divided, as are they on the inclusion of back boilers, or straight forward wood-boilers housed in the garage/stable. Will they work, won’t they, are they really, to quote one advisor ‘as much hassle as a third child might be’? I cannot comprehend such!

How about biomass or wood pellets? Well, the thing here is that a number of installers have confessed that they share a concern re stabilty of supply and would themselves not fit to their own homes…hardly encouraging. Is the choice really to switch from one dependency to another or can we not have some sustainable heat from our local sources of sun, air or wood?

Solar Photovoltaic volts and water heating seem like a no-brainer – all simple by comparison, however, there is a catch – a quote for £26k to re-roof in order to a) insulate the house to a point that would make any new heating option viable and b) take the solar panels… oh, and on the subject of insulation, we need new windows too….

However, we are not at all depressed, dismayed or deterred. If the renewables challenge was easily faced the planet would not be in trouble and there would be oil and gas surpluses in the world wouldn’t there? We have some nice people (we hope) coming to do a full audit of land and house, throw the data into their computer model and then give us the options, the grants attached and the best way of spending the money we have yet to find. And, excitingly for us, our neighbours from the farm above us popped in post sledging for a hot choc yesterday and they too are looking at options for heat and power and have agreed to have a survey done alongside us. Wind seems a possible option for them and maybe us too. They own another farm and are looking at Hydro there. So nice to learn that there are some share visions locally.

And, on another note, the highpoint of January will have to have been seeing Max and Emma drive the neighbouring farmers JCB up the track in attempts to snow plough it clear… now that would not have happened cosied up in front of a DVD in Surrey!

Stay warm

Lx

It’s been a while since my last posting as a)I have been waiting for my fingers to thaw out and b) for BT/Virgin/TalkTalk/anyone at all to enable broadband at the igloo, aka house…

Yes, 8 weeks it has taken to establish a (and this detail is crucial) working (rather than the 6 fictitious ones we have supposedly had…) broadband connection and we are many promises, 0845 calls, grey hairs and exasperated conversations on from our proposed go-live dates, but finally, just as I was on the verge of arrest for curb crawling outside local closed cafes with wi-fi, we are go!

Finally and in the nick of time I can work and finally get on with our plans for renewables, a new and insulated roof  and permaculture – Hurray! And this newfound connection with the outside world  is all just as well as I need the exercise my fingers in order to stave off the chilblains.. bedrooms on the top floor down to 5 degrees and that is with the oil central heating on and a roaring, wood-wolfing and evidently inefficient super-sized log fire ablaze. Let’s just say that I have re-discovered a love of long-johns and our weekend guests were sleeping in the arctic sleeping bags designed for outdoor winter camping!

Anyway, much as I am enjoying the hardening up of this particular southern softy, Christmas is already proving magical. We took a trip to the Caves at Clearwell, paid our £7.50 per head and expected little more than the usual polystyrene grotty grotto and plastic toy that would head straight for the bin. However, it was nothing short of magical, no detail left to chance, decorated trees (no carbon footprint spared I am afraid) and sparkle and an amazing theme of the 12 days of Christmas which had Emma and her friend Rosy singing and beaming with that childlike wonder so often absent now. The only glimmer of the world we had left behind outside these magic ex-iron mines, was when Santa, asked if 1-year-old Issy could sit on his lap, replied ‘I shouldn’t, but I will, I have been CRB checked.’….

Where is everybody? Here I am marooned in the ever-deepening mud, fighting my way past 60 escaped sheep and contemplating the building of my own ark and when I finally make it to a broadband connection (BT and Virgin have failed me…again) I find that I am the only one left who has not gone to be part of COP15.

So, what is happening over there? Will we reach a global deal on climate change? do most people know, care? read it and glaze over? I wonder… and I hope….

Ah ha, a friend has levied the criticism I expected to hear sooner or later… She says that she feels the content of my blog to be both ‘elitist’ and ‘sad’.

My friend, I would say, comes from a position of relative privilege, however, what she suggests, quite rightly and nicely, is that not everyone has the luxury of problems that involve private nurseries (not that there are any other types for the under 3’s to the best of my knowledge), or ‘eco’ising’ a big house in the country. Fair Point. This is all true, but then the reality is that we are middle class and we do use a private nursery (albeit a State school currently) and I am simply telling it like it is.

I don’t mean to depress nor to preach. I just mean to accurately reflect our reality and I do accept that our story will not necessarily appeal, or be relevant to a very broad spectrum of society. I certainly do not intend to belittle those with more fundamental and immediate concerns and far greater day to day challenges than us. However, I still hope that our story is worth telling for those who wish to follow it and, as for our doing so being elitist, well, we are not suggesting that anyone should copy us. It may well be an utter disaster, we have no crystal balls or guarantees of any kind of success at all. We are simply trying to do what we feel we can. That is all anyone, big or small, rich, poor or those like us who are in between can really hope to do isn’t it?

As for the content being ‘sad’. Well, I am not sad about the content at all. I think it would be naive to think that our goal to come off grid, off oil and grow much of our own food and fuel could be achieved easily and without some degree of 2 steps forward and 3 back. If it was easy then more people would do it. It is precisely because (well, excluding the climate change deniers and total inertias) it is complex and hard and because no one (including us!) is sure what to do for the best, that many of us do little or nothing. For many of us, our intent is great, but is so hard to know where to start.

We are not holding ourselves up as examples, we are simply trying things, flagging the dichotomies and questions that we meet along the way and exploring the options and decisions we have to make to balance the here and now with the future we hope to build around us. I do invite criticism and feel that a debate is good – if we all agree then we are not reaching those who do not or who have questions.

However, at the end of the day, people will either read the ‘warts and all’ account, appreciate that it is honest and want to engage positively, or they will use it as an excuse to justify their own lack of action with a smug ‘see, I told you so…not so green now are you’ bent as we fall at a hurdle or two along the way. I am not trying to change the world with the blog, or with our plans. I just hope to allow those who are interested to see the highs and lows of our trying to make some changes.

The same friend also suggested that we look at the use of a bus to take Emma to school. I have of course already explored that and I am sadly confident that public transport for Emma’s school journey is not an option. I believe that Monmouthshire council has the (or one of the) largest school transport budgets in the UK, but, as the local good schools we were happy to send her to are full, she is at school in England and as such car pool /bus not options at all. This, as with Max’s nursery, is short term. They will end up schooled closer to home when we can arrange such at a sensible juncture in their education. However, I would say that again, this serves only to highlight the dilemma -We will not send Emma to a sub-standard or overcrowded school just because she can get a bus there. This is what the blog hopes to explore, the short, medium and longer term choices that sometimes are running counter to one another. It is a big question: Does one put ones child’s immediate education ahead or behind its future habitat – as we know, the urgent often displaces the important. We are not immune from that.

I am thinking of sticking a series of blank cheques on our fridge and inviting the trades people of Monmouth to help themselves…

3.5 weeks in and we have had various (albeit, on time and amazingly friendly) tradespeople in to give their own brand of ‘good news’ regarding the house. There has been a good deal of mutterings under breath so far as to; the frequency with which the boiler has been serviced, the degree to which the roof is actually watertight, the lack of insulation provided by the roof and ailing windows….then there is the rodent issue….for which we are now (I can hardly contain my excitement) on a ‘Monthly Pest Plan’ (covers all manner of nasties..) and finally, the latest harbinger of joy who has just advised that our soil pipe is asbestos…and needs urgent replacement…

To rub salt into the wound, we have only just managed to get a landline and I still do not have Broadband access here. We can put men on the moon faster than get a broadband connection to Wales it seems. Had I not been in possession of an iphone, albeit with a somewhat restricted signal, I would be in a communications abyss and I can now confirm that it is unfeasibly hard to call in a plumber using smoke signals! However, love the iphone as I do, one finger typing has its limitations and I feel the need for full laptop connectivity. To me, after 4 weeks in the land of the have-not broadband, the arrival of BT’s Home Hub on Monday will be celebrated like the return of a long lost relative! I can finally stop skulking around on double yellow lines after closing time outside the one cafe in Monmouth that offers free Wi-Fi!

Anyway, back to the challenge of the house… Needless to say that remedial works aside which have included speedy roof repairs (‘you need a whole new roof really and it is Welsh slate…’ to keep the frequent rains outside’, we now need to move forward with the bigger picture and this is where we are at: The building is 300-400 yrs old and stone built. We already know that the loft is poorly insulated and windows need replacing, along with radiators and new floors, possibly with underfloor heating. The question is: Should we go for Ground Source Heat options at all given its knock-on requirements for internal overhaul? Air source has also been mentioned to us although no details have been provided to date. Ground source will likely necessitate the building of a side extension utility due to the lack of suitable space for the internal parts.

Further to the energy debate, we are on a water meter here and our usage since we moved in on Oct 20th is 9 cubic metres to date. I understand this to be low for a family of 4, but we will consider rainwater harvesting esp given the high rainfall here – one wet beacon of light at least….

What we need advice on now is the relative merits and feasibility of the various energy alternatives; Wind (sometimes gusty, sometimes not..), hydro ( we have a small stream on the property with a drop, but we are unsure as to feasibility of it generating anything of significance), solar (we have a south facing aspect but the roof is in need of replacement and is, as previously noted with horror, currently very expensive Welsh slate…), Ground Source, Air Source, Wood Pellet/Bio-Mass (here we need to factor in the likelihood of ongoing secure supply)… the list goes on..

Critically, we are now need to understand the grant potential for installing a solution/s based heavily on renewables here incl not just for the kit itself, but for the then required additions such as re-roofing and windows which are required to maximise efficiency.

We have thus concluded that it is time to call in the experts… they are booked for a full feasibility survey later this month

A good friend has pointed out that he is keeping score of the carbon or ‘love’ miles travelled by friends now visiting me 2.5 hrs from London. The thought had occurred to me also.

However, it is, as I have said to him, a difficult one to accurately calculate. So often we seek simple conclusions to the complex questions of the climate change debate. A popular one is that ‘solar panels consume more energy in their making than they save’. Such ‘facts’ as these are readily gobbled up by those of us wanting to be excused the responsibility of doing something about man-made climate change. However, such arguments are invariably little more than an urban myth hastily constructed and based on very loose scientific fact, in order to provide someone with a carbon excuse. What is more, they are not true, damage progress and insult the incredible and climate conscious brains who have dedicate their research and careers to the pursuit of viable energy alternatives. When you think about it, it really is incredibly arrogant for us lay people to think that the scientific community might have ‘missed’ facts such as these and to then defame their work with such nonsense.

Anyway, I digress from the London to Monmouth love miles debate…but this too is quite complex rather than the simple equation it might seem. In order to know if we are causing our friends to have greater net carbon footprints now that they visit us here in Monmouth we would need to look, not just at the miles they travel to visit us, but at the other relevant but less visible factors too. For instance, some friends are now visiting us for a weekend away instead of heading off with easyjet on a mini Citybreak – there is a clear carbon upside to that equation of course. Others are driving 2.5 hrs which is the same in time and at arguably more efficient speeds than they did when they crossed London and hit gridlock for the 13 mile journey from East to West.

Once they are here they will, eventually, I pray, be spending their weekend off grid, off oil and with the joy of harvested rainwater and compostable toilets – surely this lowers the footprint of those who would otherwise be luxuriating in a posh hotel with baths that fit a football team in? Once we are up and running (and I am still clinging to my John Lewis Partnership Card and its Waitrose reward points for the foreseeable..) visiting friends will be eating a fair proportion of food that will have come to their plate with zero food miles, whereas had they stayed in London and dined out, or in, that food miles figure would doubtless soar.

Then there is the knock-on effect, the ‘I will if you will’ idea that started this blog…Research has shown that most of us feel that whilst we perhaps ‘should’ or ‘could’ do more to help the ailing planet, the effects of climate change are not so evident to us (yet!) here in the temperate climates, that we are experiencing the fallout. There is therefore a very significant gap between feeling we could and should do more and our actually doing it. Most of us feel there is little reason why we should make any changes or sacrifices whilst our friends and neighbours carry on flying/driving/heating their homes to sub-tropical highs in mid Winter. There is the ‘what can little old me do’ effect in action. However, I wonder, is there, or could there eventually be an osmosis taking place which affects the lifestyle and travel decisions of our friends as, over time, those friends see what is possible and realise that for us ‘living responsibly’ does not mean a return to utter drudgery ( I hope..), they feel inspired in small or large ways, to make some positive changes themselves?

I am not pretending that there are not impacts of our move. In the short term, staying in Surrey would have been far easier on our own footprints for sure. But what about the medium and longer term and what about the lessons we wish to teach our children about life outside of that unsustainable one to which they were becoming accustomed? We are not doing this to be holier than thou planet savers, more for the infinitely more selfish agenda of protecting and preparing for our children’s future.

Either way, it requires a propensity model, some data over time and a whizz with excel to answer the seemingly obvious question as to whether love miles will stop the world going round. And, of more immediate importance, just 3 weeks in, we have no new friends here and love miles or not, we relish the Friday night arrivals of our dear friends in whatever their  guise of gas guzzler!

As the song goes, ‘Nobody said it was easy…no one ever said that it could be so hard’…

It seems that in a bid to come off oil we will be consuming barrels more of the stuff in the short term! The oil powered aga is our only source of heat, give or take a 4ft wide and tall open fire…and it is Winter so no hope of changing either of these for a few months yet…

Then there is the need for a second car to complete the 62 miles in a day to get Emma to school and Max to nursery, me home, and then back to collect them both… it may be temporary, there are closer educational establishments for our future schooling needs, but nonetheless, the irony is not missed on us.

On the upside, our second car is a seriously low emitter. Those who have already visited will vouch for the fact that our 3/4 mile muddy and pot-holed farm track drive is the best excuse anyone could have for a 4×4, but we have not succumbed and have instead opted for a Renault Clio. We have to try and make amends for the un-insulated loft, ill-fitting windows and newfound commute – I used to walk Emma 5 minutes up the road to her school in Surrey…

It is Autumn turning Winter and I am sat on one of the last remaining chairs as the final vestiges of our life in Surbiton are packed into an enormous, and yes, undeniably gas guzzling, removal lorry and the journey begins…    

It was back in February of this year that I first mooted the idea that perhaps we should consider our future and since then our rationale for our very own ‘escape to the country’ has attracted mixed responses that have ranged from excitement, confusion and ridicule to abject fear and denial.

Leading us to this point was the fact that around 5 years ago my work moved away from conventional Business and Marketing strategy towards Climate Change related work with some leading corporations and not-for-profits – all of whom had identified or were being nudged to acknowledge that they had a role to play, a responsibility for and a clear stake in the planets future. Working in the area and undertaking the Bath MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice, it becomes hard to ignore one’s own role, responsibilities and risks when it comes to the planets health. Our own familial journey had started.

As we mused on my concerns and suggestions of how our parental responsibility may, eventually, require us to make some changes to our life, B  and I became increasingly uncomfortable with our growing knowledge that the suburban lifestyle we were happily living was, however charmed, inherently unsustainable. We grew increasingly concerned that the education our children (Emma  just 5 and  Max, 20 months), were receiving, whilst academically strong, was practically still very narrow and that it might in reality not provide them with the life skills their own futures may depend upon.

B  is from a farming background but now is a soft handed finance man and I, originally from Norfolk, I had also lost my rural roots and lived my adulthood firmly in the London footprint. So in a generation it looked like some laws of the land and increasingly relevant and valuable ‘how to’s’ might be lost.

Working with some of the leading climate change voices in the commercial, Govt and NGO sector, I asked them: ‘if you were me, what would you do to prepare your children for an adulthood in a post oil, over-populated world, with its evidently and increasingly precarious food supply chain?’.A few even replied that, knowing what they do, they would not have children at all now! However, in acknowledging that for us that was not of much help, they suggested that a more rounded and life-skills based education might be the best legacy we could offer them in equipping them for a doubtless changed world ahead.

Ignorance may be bliss and in this case I can confirm that a certain degree of knowledge is perhaps far from liberating; for James and I it has compelled us to take stock of the ‘always on’ and 24/7 ‘Ocado delivers all’ consumer culture that our children were inevitably starting to see as the norm. In a comfortably off middle class family in a Surrey suburb, our children were experiencing a reality, a normality, that in our heart of hearts we believed it would be impossible for the world to sustain into their adulthood…. and thus our change of life and necessary move plans began…. But where to?

We needed some land – I wanted to learn more about Permaculture, grow food without oil and work towards some small level of subsistence food for ourselves. I don’t really like animals…but we were going to need room for some. We needed to look for high land that was not exposed to great flood risk, we needed affordable land, thereby eliminating home counties and all of this needed to be in sensible proximity to both friends and family as well as being fairly cosmopolitan to smooth our transition from town to country…Oh and I needed a Waitrose nearby for as long as that food supply chain held good! This early wish list eliminated many places and led us to Monmouth, Wales, where we head today…the question now is, how fast can one ordinary family come down from an oil high?