We've had a good few visitors this summer and have spent an obscene amount of time sitting around our kitchen table drinking tea and quizzing guests about their lives. At first we enjoyed friend and family visitors, but as the summer progressed we became increasingly booked up on airbnb (See website here). By August we found ourselves inadvertently running a mini hotel. Most mornings we woke up tended to the goats and cats, baked bread, made porridge and chatted with our guests over a prolonged and leisurely breakfast. After this we often showed guests around the vegetable garden and poly tunnel. The cats and the goats usually appeared at some point to further charm the visitors and we became very adept at talking them through what we were doing, our veg growing project and our interest in sustainability. We often got lot's of praise with some people telling us how brave we were for following our dreams, but after a while it started to feel increasingly false because the airbnb was taking up more and more of our time. After the initial drive to get the beds dug and everything planted out the veg pretty much grew itself and required minimal maintenance. We spent the majority of our time washing sheets and cleaning the house in preparation for guests who most often arrived in the evening. Thankfully some people stayed for a number of days and this was a lot less intense. Most made us dinner and we even received some goat inspired artwork as a thank you gift. The question, however, of what we were doing still remained and it was hard to shake off the falsity of the image we were projecting. This led to some long discussions between me and Laurence and I think that we both questioned whether or not we really cared about all the things that we said we did.
Last year before we started this journey and were still living our comfy lives in Stockholm, I had an idea about living a completely self sufficient, off-grid, 100% eco friendly life away from the constraints of modern society, free to forge a new and alternative way of living. I was at odds with the pressure to have a career because I had never really known what I wanted to do. Modern society seemed like a huge and pointless machine to me and I could never quite bring myself to close my eyes and slot in. I thought that by living off the land that I would find the purpose that had eluded me for so long. It was with this in mind that we quit our jobs, said goodbye to our friends and left Sweden. Just over a year has passed since then and we've had the opportunity to pad out our dreams with a little reality. For me the main thing that I've come to realise is is that I cannot divorce myself from society and I really don't want to anymore. Since I have been living in the countryside I have certainly noticed a different mentality and have been enjoying a more relaxed pace of life but I am not completely separate. I still use the internet everyday and I still speak to my old city friends and family on a regular basis. We still need to go to shop to buy food and tools and, would both still like to travel from time to time to visit the people we love, so we still need money. When airbnb guests come or when we meet new people one of the first questions they ask is what jobs we used to do and this still produces the same angst in me as it did when I lived in a city. The purpose for which I have been searching still eludes me; we're growing our own veg - so what? And all of the questions about life that I had before have simply changed form. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have not quite discovered the meaning of life.
In response to the questions created by these perplexing realities Laurence has decided to build a stone wall. The project came about because we've been needing to build a structure in which to store our winter fire wood. We chose to build it beside a small stone storeroom in which we currently keep our bikes. The back wall of the storeroom stretches out beyond the parameter of the building and we thought that it would be economical to simply extend the existing structure with a third wall and a roof. We had the good fortune of having a Australian carpenter staying for a few days so Laurence picked his brain and he gave him a simple plan to build a wall using some old pallets. We spent a day clearing the ground of undergrowth and dodgily removing some old asbestos tiles that had been sitting there for years. Just as we were about to start considering the pallets, Laurence stopped and looked wistfully at the newly cleared space. "We should build a stone wall" he said (or something like that anyway). I have hated stone building since we spent a day doing it back in March when we were WWOOFing at Annie's place in Coomhola. I had spent all morning carefully sorting through and arranging stones into a pillar. I'd really gotten into the swing of it and was feeling the joy that comes with discovering a hitherto undiscovered natural gift. When Pete - who's project we were working on- came over he took one look at my pillar, shook his head and proceeded to dismantle the whole thing. This would have been bad enough but he then proceeded to praise Laurence's pillar and berate me for not doing as Laurence had done. In the end I got very angry and had to be given another task. I now experience a grating sensation in my head every time that stone building is mentioned in conversation (which is surprisingly often). Sufficed to say that I was not overjoyed at Laurence's proposal but seeing as we're here and we have the materials and opportunity then I suppose we must. It's probably an opportunity for me to overcome some deep seated aversion. I seem to be struggling so far because every time I go to help Laurence I always end up wandering off and finding something else to do (like writing a blog). So we'll stay here muddling through our perpetual existential crises and - who knows - we might find The Answer underneath a colossal stone.