The weather has broken here today. I woke up this morning to discover about 3 inches of snow and a temperature of minus 0.5. So first job before breakfast wa to climb up on the roof and clear the solar panels. We were promised a day of scattered cloud (which also means intermittent sunshine) but apart from a patch of blue that I noticed out of the corner of my eye while I was cleaning off the panels, it was just miserable, grey and depressing.
And cold too. The temperature continued to drop throughout the day and it’s currently (or it was an hour ago) minus 4.2 degrees. It’ll warm up slightly tomorrow and then collapse down to minus double figures.
I’ve been working on the area under the stairs today and I reckon I’m going to go with this idea about having the kitchen in the living room. As you know I’m planning to capture my rainwater in a subterranean tank but in order to do this if I put the kitchen in the lean-to as originally planned, I’m dependent upon the local council selling me a piece of ground. If I put the kitchen the other side of the house – i.e. under the stairs, the tank can go next to the lean-to on that side – on my own land. Furthermore, I can put the big freezer that I have in Brussels (I have a centrally-heated apartment standing empty in Brussels you know, and here I am struggling along in sub-zero temperatures! It says a lot for Brussels that I’d rather freeze to death here) in the lean-to on that side of the house and it will be right next to the kitchen.
So what will I do with the lean-to in which I lived for 2 years and in which I planned to install the kitchen? well, I reckon that will make an ideal place for the office. It’ll be on the ground floor with access via the verandah which means that people don’t have to trail all the way around the house and up the stairs to get to it, and also it’ll be close to the living accommodation and coffee-making appliances.
And so what will I do with the attic that I was planning to use as the office? I could turn that into a guest bedroom or something – not that I have guests but then you never know.
The good idea about having plans is so that you can divert from them and go off and do things that are totally different. And the way my house is starting to take shape, I have no idea at all how it will end up. And that’s what I find so exciting.
And in other news, remember me talking about Yemen the other day? Well, the west is starting to up the ante. Remember – you heard it hear first. And in other other news, the body-scanners are on their way. I told you that too, didn’t I? The entire news output of the western world is becoming more and more predictable. I’m getting sick of it, I tell you. It’s not the world that I ever voted for. The problem is though that the UK and the USA have so alienated the rest of the world that things have gone too far for the clock to be turned back. And with a population of about 450 million, it’s not a lot to take on an entire culture consisting of a couple of billion souls – especially when “the others” are much more committed to the cause than anyone in the UK or the USA – imagine trying to drag one of them from in front of the TV to confront an invading army. Of course, forget all about Kamikaze bombers and the like as being something from an alien culture. Churchill was planning to exhort the British population to launch suicide attacks against German soldiers if the invasion had taken place and had already prepared the slogan “you can always take one with you”. That kind of leadership wouldn’t work today – most Brits wouldn’t care who was in charge as long as they still had 500 channels on the TV and 24-hour drinking.
You know, I’m not sure how all of this is going to end as the Bushbaby’s crusade simply isn’t sustainable in the long-term. Even when the mighty USA was confronting Asian peasants armed with World-War II-era surplus weapons in South-East Asia they couldn’t keep it up. And the Russians were defeated by logistics in Afghanistan. What will happen when the steam runs out of the western offensive, which it surely will?
