Bryn Mawr – the debrief

I’m writing about the last host for the WW blog and we all felt the need to write a rather less public good, bad and learnt too so I’ll stick it here. I didn’t record that much of what was hard at the time and actually now we are out the other side and it’s all in perspective I guess none of it was dreadful but there certainly were aspects we all struggled with lots.

Davies:
Bad: Didn’t feel like I spent much time with Daddy because one of the boys there also liked Daddy and Daddy was the dog and the boy was the flea!
Good: We had some nice walks and I got to have a go at shooting the air rifle
Learnt: How to use the air rifle, any sort of land or terrain can be used for keeping pigs on; they can go on all sorts of conditions.

Scarlett:
Bad: The children were strange and quite a few ducklings died there and the cats kept catching voles which was sad.
Good: There were lots of animals – cows, pigs, chickens and chicks, geese, ducks, cats and a dog.
Learnt: I really enjoyed trying new foods, including various wild foods like comfrey leaves (deep fried), sorrel and pennyroyal.

Ady:
Bad: The feeling of being trapped, although we were safe I felt very vulnerable
Good: As always with the extreme experiences you learn so much about what you would not do yourself – both from what the hosts actually tell you about mistakes they have made and from what you observe, and the same applies to the things you would try and replicate
Learnt: Animal management is very important; seperating male and female pigs and cows is imperative if you don’t want huge groups of livestock.

Me – I did a bit of a debrief to some online friends already so will c&p that rather than type it all out again:
We learnt loads there, enjoyed some aspects of the extreme lifestyle but it was
also super challenging in lots of ways;
They had 3 boys (aged 11, 7 and 5) and they were REALLY hard work – very strange
kids, a really bad advertisement for isolated home ed kids and D&S struggled
with them lots. Hell I struggled with them lots! Even worse they, particularly
the older one, really attached themselves to Ady and Davies found that very
tough – it brought lots of father / son relationship stuff to the surface that I
have been aware of for years but suspect neither of them had really realised
previously. I *think* they are better as a result but that was tough for all of
us, not least me trying to help them work through it.

The standard of living was pretty much as low as it gets; dogs, cats and even
chickens roaming about in the shed they used as a kitchen, no real washing
facilities (for hands, plates, anything really) which twitched all of Ady’s
hygiene buttons, the kids (and actually the adults) had NO table manners –
plates were *licked* clean at the end of each meal. No shower or bath facilities
really, compost loos which were real fly havens in the heat.

The remoteness was crazy – they live at the end of a 2 mile long track off what
is barely a proper road in the first place – the nearest shop is a petrol
station four miles away, the nearest actual town is 17 miles – they only really
leave once a week or so to get basic supplies – remember we didn’t have an
operation vehicle so we were totally trapped. I did go out once with the host to
get some supermarket supplies and see other people briefly.

The lack of communication with the outside world was really challenging. I
walked up the hill each day to a place where there was patchy mobile phone
signal to check my voicemail to ensure I hadn’t had anyone trying to contact me
for emergency reasons. I had to go no mail on all my lists as my laptop crashed
trying to download about a 1000 emails (including loads from fp when you had
that mad weekend of chatting loads!) but it really did feel like our lifeline to
the outside world had been severed.

The dynamics of the host family were really disturbing – the woman was treated
like some sort of idiotic slave by the bloke and so the 3 boys were also
beginning to act the same way towards her. I spent some time with her telling
her how great I thought she was but she had suffered with PND and other
depression over the years and was just rather downtrodden and used to having her
‘failings’ regularly pointed out to her. Tough to witness and I didn’t always
manage to bite my tongue.

And finally the van – it had a few issues before we arrived which we knew needed
looking at fairly soon but the water pump gave up the ghost on the track up to
their land so we arrived with an inoperational vehicle really. We have breakdown
cover but timing will always be an issue on using that as taking the van away
renders us homeless! The host said he could look at it and probably fix it so we
spent the whole of the first 10 days waiting for him to do that and mentioning
it every so often and getting more anxious. Eventually he looked at it on the
last Thursday – we were due to leave on the Sunday – and sure enough it needed a
part removing and being sent off for reconditioning. He did that, it was sent
off, we had to cancel the next host we were due to and I decided to make a
positive out of that by arranging for my parents to come up and spend a few days
with us at the end of the week, as much to ensure we actually did HAVE to leave
at some point than anything else because I was starting to believe we may end up
trapped there forever! It finally came back on the following Wednesday, the host
did all the work and we drove away at quarter to midnight. Arrived at the
campsite we had booked at 130am, parked in their carpark and got a couple of
hours sleep before finally checking in at 9am when they opened the next morning.
A cooked breakfast in the tearoom and hot showers afterwards had never felt so
welcome!

Definitely our biggest challenge yet that one, glad it’s over but glad we did it!