The Orchard Tales and the Orchard Toils of the First Few Days of Two Thousand and Nine ...

AS THE OWL in the barn hoots and stirs himself for a night of hunting I sit here in the Bedford a few yards from him, warm and dry with nostrilsfull of harissa-spiced chickpeas almost ready to eat and connected via a little plastic thingamyjig to the whole world outside this orchard. The people in that whole world are amid such different experiences and live in an alphabet'sworth of different dwellings, and yet they all share the same need and yearning for warmth and home.



In these last few weeks I have learnt to think quite differently about those warm home comforts which we never really give a second thought. Living in a wooden vehicle parked in a field means that nothing comes in or out of our home unless we physically bring it about. Water must be collected from somewhere (at present a tap for watering flowers by gravestones in the churchyard down the lane), and waste water emptied. And warmth too must be collected ... we have spent much of our time since being here walking with rucksack and saw to nearby forests to find fallen branches and bring them home in great quantities so as to keep ourselves warm. This, I know, sounds romantic and perhaps a little obvious... but actually finding enough dry, uninhabited wood and carrying it back again is a constant occupation of ours in this cold weather. We have been lucky down here in this southern foot of England to escape rainclouds, but instead the sky has brought us thin blankets of snow and frosts that freeze last night's bathwater to crackling.

So we bought some bags of coal to augment the logs and it burned hot and fierce for two days. Then the stove began to smoke.. and not just out of the chimney. It smoked from the door, from the all the seals and bolt holes and from the collars at each flue joint. We coughed and coughed and opened windows. Freezing cold with streaming eyes we realised the stove couldn't be used any more. So for the next two days we had a fire outdoors, where the smoke could escape. We watched the stars and made hot water bottles to warm the twoquilted bed which we ran to as the embers died. The next evening the gas ran out! So that night we cooked dinner and boiled hotwaterbottle water on the outdoor fire and in the morning (after heating a precarious cupful of water for tea on an upturned camping-gas heater) I trekked out to find a new calor gas bottle while Tui stayed at home and dismantled the fire and re-fire-cemented all the joints before putting it back together again. I won't go into long boring detail about my day of gas hunting except to say that it wasn't unlike Frodo's journey to Mount Doom, but with more disappointments and train cancellations and refusals of busdrivers to take me due to "hazardous chemicals". A final arm-achingly arduous trek brought me back to a delightfully warm and smokefree Bedford! Our home is wonderful, but with no fire it is very much less so.. and in these modern days of central heating, it is no longer appreciated how very important warmth in the winter is. The next day we cleaned the chimney and found that the coal had left such a thick black sooty residue that there had been only a couple of centimetres of air left for the smoke to escape. Now we burn just wood and little nuggets of smokeless fuel.

In all these days of tending to our daily basic needs, neither of us has had time to create anything. I have begun but not finished a drawing by daylight, which begins to fade around half past three. We have bought a little generator to power laptops, a phone charger and a desk lamp, and now at long last have the internet too. Soon we'll be more established and I'll be able to reopen my shop and begin making clocks again. Town is not far away and my family is much nearer by than before, so we have had lovely days walking between the sunlit appletree stakes, and drinking cups of tea.


We have felt very much more outdoors than you do inside the walls of a house. Nature is right there. You don't have to go out into it, you are already there. It affects you more directly for good or ill. I have weathered cheeks, twig-scratched arms and dirt beneath my fingernails. The skies are beautiful and the blackbirds tiptoe their little threetoed birdfeet across our roof in the mornings. It is freezing in the night when we climb down from the luton bed and run outside to wee; and the low sun and the cracking of forest underfoot and the smell of woodsmoke from the chimney make our hearts soar.

Our first wheeled cup of tea

LOOK! Our home is being born! In between the raindrops Tui has been hammering and sawing and building and chiseling and cursing and fixing and making our nest. Here for you to see are some moments from our recent doings. The truck's tailgate has been removed entirely and replaced by the front door and another little welsh chapel window. The windows have latches, the floor has beautiful wooden floorboards, the back of the truck has expertly built wooden walls, and most excitingly of all, our home has a fire! The flue pipe needed a little encouragement to fit but is now elbowing its way nicely up through the roof.

We had our first cup of tea on the stove yesterday whilst imagining the next stages - kitchen and seat building, pictures on the walls, cupboards galore and bookshelves.... Somehow lighting a fire in our truck-home makes it really seem like we are getting there. For someone who hasn't ever built anything with wood before, Tui is doing a superbly superb carpentry job and is thoroughly enjoying it too. He has taken gentle care over every last detail and trundled round to the truck every wet day, slurping through puddles to work away at making our lovely home, while I join him in painting breaks for cups of tea and sandwiches and the odd little accordion serenade!

And don't you think our bedford-nest looks beautiful? :)

A barrel stove day

OUR WHEELED HOME is growing bit by little bit into itself. While I sit at home in the animation attic moving little bits of paper and making paintings in between, Tui spends his days down in the sun and wind and horsebox, sanding and sawing and hammering and building and making a home.
Since the acquisition of this Bedford, we have been collecting some lovely ebay finds for it, including the recently fitted round window, a copper kettle, a little belfast sink, some lovely old leaded windows from a demolished chapel in Wales, and a brand new barrel stove!
So yesterday was spent admiring Tui's lovely new door and "seasoning" the new stove outdoors with a little fire made from the offcuts of wood.
It is lovely to finally have this vital ingredient, every home needs a fire! You may notice that we have no chimney yet... we need to put down the floorboards before we know the length of stovepipe needed.
This is a long slow process, and expensive... each time we make a little money, it goes on wood and screws and silicone sealant and sandpaper. But bit by bit, it is feeling more and more like ours. We've developed a little rather old-fashioned routine where midmorning I bring a pot of coffee and two cups down to the spot where Tui is working and we sit on the tail gate discussing our mornings' works, and looking down the hill towards the stream where goats peck and chickens bleat.



PS .. the spiders have blown off!!

Also today, I was pleased to catch an interesting programme on Radio 4 about one of my favourite albums: Just Another Diamond Day by Vashti Bunyan, who made it whilst on a horse-drawn waggon journey to the outer Hebrides in the 60s before choosing to disappear into obscurity. For me her wobbly gentle songs and guitar tell lovely tales of a simpler life with a strange warmth that obviously comes straight from the feelings that went into making it.