You Need Friends

We just had a very happy weekend. Friends came from London to visit us at our Somerset hideaway. These are special friends. They appreciate our Airstreaming ways. Wayne and Lotts lived on a boat for several years and they understand the charms of living in a compact and mobile space. They love the Airstream. It reminded them of their boat.

A while back we did think about living on a boat ourselves after we had been on a couple of trips along the Thames with Wayne and Lotte. Admittedly we were joining them on their holidays and the pace could not have been more easy-going. We would chug along the river, watching the world go by very, very slowly, being overtaken by cyclists on the towpath. We started to do some research on barges and narrow boats but didn't follow it through. I do think though that in considering it as a lifestyle we were probably on our way to where we are now.


In a perfect world we would be pitched in a field next to a river where our friends are moored.

It is like a tonic to spend time with people who understand your choices. Don't we all need a big ol' thumbs up now and then? I know I do.
T

Don't Delay

I keep getting absorbed in indoor tasks and projects like setting up my new blog, for example. Consequently I sometimes end up doing the outdoor chores later in the day. Yesterday it was dark before I got around to doing the fetch, carry and disposal jobs. I ought to know better. I skipped the worst of these, the chore which dare not speak its name, because it was dark and windy and there's a big deep hole in which to empty the unmentionable. These are not ideal conditions.

Once, during our first week ever in the Airstream, I had to negotiate a septic tank buried in the ground, on a farm in Cumbria, in the pitch dark, with a torch clutched in my armpit. That was tricky. Never again.

Today I became sucked into laptop world again, into the realm of lost time. I was saved from fumbling with waste products in the dark because my attention was captured by the sun sinking beautifully behind the trees. It cast an irresistible golden light on our aluminium home, tempting me outside with the camera. Only the light was warm, fingers, frozen.


Does it sound like I do everything around here? Not usually. Pete went to visit friends in Wiltshire for a few days and he made sure I had a stocked up refrigerator, a full can of gas and a box of latex gloves before he went.

Did I mention that I have a new blog? It's for my increasingly non-Airstream ruminations. There's a link on the right.

T