GREAT EXPECTATIONS

October in Scotland - season of rain, more rain, armpit deep mud and hurricane force winds.  Also, by happy coincidence, the month we began our house build.

It’s been two years since we moved to the country from Glasgow.  It was a decision that surprised us – we’d talked about it for years, but a combination of great work and better friends had kept us far longer in the city that we’d intended. 

I was writing and making documentaries, Nichol had a thriving business in fine art, and we had close friends who were like extended family – we ate together, socialised together and our kids had grown up like siblings.  It was hard work and it was fun, and our dream of building a house in the country seemed certain to stay just a pipe one.

Then came a double whammy.  Art is rarely an area to make money, and when the recession hit, it hit us hard.  We spent as long as we could keeping the business afloat, paying our staff out of our savings and not taking wages ourselves, but it was soon clear that this was going to cost us all we had. 

Then, worse news.  Our best friends had got jobs in Ireland and were leaving within months.  We had a choice, we could stay and struggle or sell everything we owned, find a plot of land and create our dream home. 

We both knew what we’d always wanted.  My dream had been a hobbit hole, underground, with curved walls and windows and filled with quirks based on my favourite children’s books.  Nichol fancied a castle, or perhaps a stately home.  Then we looked at our budget; we could afford a box.  So the task began, to find a plot, agree with each other about anything, and fill our box with as much interesting stuff as we could manage. 

The plot part was relatively easy.  We found a piece of land in central Scotland, and started to think about what to make.  We definitely wanted an eco-house, something that we could run at the lowest cost possible, and which would sit naturally in the land.  It also had to be something the kids loved, so we enlarged the site plans to table top size, filled it with toy trees from a train set, and let the children ‘play’ in the garden. 

As they played, we moved our ‘house’ round behind them, keeping well out of the way of the ‘bike trail’, the ‘treehouses’, the ‘rope swing’ and the ‘unicorn paddock.’  Avoiding the ‘crocodile swamp’ was far trickier.

It worked though.  We quickly found a location for our wonderful new home.  All we needed now was an architect…

A HOUSE MADE OF BOOKS

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to build a house.  Not a sleek modern house crammed with the latest gadgetry, but a really imaginative house inspired by all the books I loved while growing up.

Ideally it would be in the country, preferably inside a tree or underground, and there would have to be secret rooms. Whatever it appeared to be on the outside, the inside would be different, as if simply stepping through the front door transported you to a whole new world.

Years passed and I got a job making documentaries, moved to the city and married an artist.  We lived in a flat that he had bought when it was near-derelict, and together we discovered something. I had ridiculously ambitious ideas for our home that I couldn't translate into reality.  Nichol was extremely skilled at making things and had a remarkable degree of tolerance.  And gradually, we transformed our home into a wonderful, creative place that reflected all of that - a home that we thought we'd probably stay in forever.

Nope.

Out of the blue, the chance came up to buy some land.  We wrote down what we wanted, hired an architect and drew up the plans.  Our brief was simple - or so we convinced ourselves.  We'd like a Hobbit House on a Weasley budget with as much room as possible for the stuff that we'd made.  Our budget was very tight, and so as much of the house that we could do by ourselves we would need to.  Given my previous experience of watching building projects go off piste you'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but apparently not.  I'm nothing if not optimistic.

So that's where we now stand.  Tether's End will chart the growth of our new project from start to finish, and hopefully the final cost will be less than £400 million.

So, to all those who partied, loved, crashed, missed the millennium, danced on the roof, painted, played chess, made films, held cricket matches and rode half-pipes in the hall, came to the poker, cooked banquets, were born, slept in the storeroom / roof / bath, wrote books, fell down the stairs, got up the stairs in the first place, drank purple passion punch and survived, didn't fall off the edge of the mezzanine, or smoked cigars next to the chimney watching the sun come up at our old home - we salute you.

We had a great time there.

Welcome to our next adventure.

A House made of Books

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to build a house.  Not a sleek modern house crammed with the latest gadgetry, but a really imaginative house inspired by all the books I loved while growing up.

Ideally it would be in the country, preferably inside a tree or underground, and there would have to be secret rooms. Whatever it appeared to be on the outside, the inside would be different, as if simply stepping through the front door transported you to a whole new world.

Years passed and I got a job making documentaries, moved to the city and married an artist.  We lived in a flat that he had bought when it was near-derelict, and together we discovered something. I had ridiculously ambitious ideas for our home that I couldn't translate into reality.  Nichol was extremely skilled at making things and had a remarkable degree of tolerance.  And gradually, we transformed our home into a wonderful, creative place that reflected all of that - a home that we thought we'd probably stay in forever.

Nope.

Out of the blue, the chance came up to buy some land.  We wrote down what we wanted, hired an architect and drew up the plans.  Our brief was simple - or so we convinced ourselves.  We'd like a Hobbit House on a Weasley budget with as much room as possible for the stuff that we'd made.  Our budget was very tight, and so as much of the house that we could do by ourselves we would need to.  Given my previous experience of watching building projects go off piste you'd think I'd have learned my lesson, but apparently not.  I'm nothing if not optimistic.

So that's where we now stand.  Tether's End will chart the growth of our new project from start to finish, and hopefully the final cost will be less than £400 million.

So, to all those who partied, loved, crashed, missed the millennium, danced on the roof, painted, played chess, made films, held cricket matches and rode half-pipes in the hall, came to the poker, cooked banquets, were born, slept in the storeroom / roof / bath, wrote books, fell down the stairs, got up the stairs in the first place, drank purple passion punch and survived, didn't fall off the edge of the mezzanine, or smoked cigars next to the chimney watching the sun come up at our old home - we salute you.

We had a great time there.

Welcome to our next adventure.