Another day, another agonising round of decisions and talking stuff over.
Babs, Ben and Rachael headed off to church this morning to get ash put on their foreheads 🙂 It’s very interesting seeing people give things up for lent, hence my friendfeed post earlier.
Kirsty, Marcus and Alex came over for the day so the kids were all off playing in various combinations. It’s been great having so much time with friends for Davies and Scarlett – a nice concentrated chunk of friend-rich time to keep them going until people start visiting us on Rum 🙂
The grown ups mostly chatted about all sorts of things but with a fairly heavy bias towards Goddard related stuff – we are so appreciating the input of friends and the chance to discuss things and toss ideas about, get some different perspectives and just talk things through. Our conclusions led me to ring my parents later in the afternoon and talk some stuff through with them. We are in a corner really with regards to when we can move to Rum as it will require some money to ensure we have somewhere to stay – moving Willow up there would still cost money (she would need tax, insurance, MOT, petrol for the £600 mile trip) and she would not make it onto the croft land anyway. We would then still have costs attached such as bottled gas and would need to find somewhere to have showers etc. I also feel quite strongly that while Ady and I are happy to ‘rough it’ for as long as it takes Davies and Scarlett have spent enough time squashed into the bunk with only a small cupboard of space each. Our current agent (who is on borrowed time already) is pushing us to drop the price of the house but we feel it is realistically priced and don’t want to sell quickly at a knock down price and have considerably less in the fund to make stuff happen.
So I have asked my parents to lend us the money to buy a static and get set up on the croft – a generator, maybe enough for a polytunnel and chicken shed etc. This will mean we can actually move onto the land, get first crops in, start rearing some livestock and then once we are working the land we can start applying for grants and funding to get cracking with the next stages, buy extra stuff as and when we can afford to and start becomming part of the community and be around for the first tourist season. If the house sells they get their money back, if it doesn’t sell within the next couple of months we’d decide the market is not right and rent it out again instead in which case Mum & Dad can collect the rent and in less than a year they will have had all the money they loaned us back anyway. In an ideal world it would sell quickly or we wouldn’t need to ask but I can see no other logical way of getting things together. We can’t live in Sussex, we can’t live in Rum without a house and really we just want to get on with living our new lives.
Two hours later (it was like another interview!) they agreed and we have emailed Rum to say ‘yes’ to a start date for the croft tenancy of April 1st (no jokes about fools please ;)), found a static supplier with experience of delivering to the islands (thanks to Kirsty and her Proper Googling skills xxx) which Ady and the kids can visit while I’m at my crofting course next weekend as it is not far from Inverness, emailed Rum and the local planning office to check what permission, if any, is required to put a static on the land, emailed a couple of WWOOF hosts with permaculture and self build knowledge and experience to give them our news and ask for some help / advice / input about things as we go along.
This new plan will potentially leave us with just a couple of weeks in Sussex to pack everything up, make decisions about what to bring, what to get rid of and what to leave behind for a future move up, say goodbye to family and friends there and then make the long journey north yet again, this time Home.
I feel like we now have a proper starting point to start leaping from and both my parents said some nice things on the phone which is always good to hear. They don’t want us to go, they don’t get our motives and they think it is a mental idea really, but they have said they can see it is what we want and what we think will make us happy and as such they will support us and help us in any way they can. As my parents go that is a pretty big step in the right direction so I’ll happily take that and be thankful.
Wow, that’s a lot of progress in a day 🙂
Comment by Jan — 23 February 2012 @ 9:23 am
Oh fab! That sounds like a great step in the right direction for everyone!
Comment by Ali — 23 February 2012 @ 9:47 am
Having a tenancy date set made my heart leap! I am so excited for you 🙂 🙂
Comment by Em — 23 February 2012 @ 10:54 am