News From the Hill

Archive for July 6th, 2009

I suscribe to the “small living journal” which is an American online magazine devoted to the idea of living in small economical spaces – the complete opposite of the Celtic Tiger sort of dwellings which have turned our Irish countryside into disturbia!

I particularly liked this article on Guerrilla Housing. It appeals to my ideas on housing in the countryside. I know of quite a few people who have had to compromise with the planners to build their home.

There have been cases of prefabricated log cabins being built in wooded areas of County Leitrim where the planners have insisted on the house being plastered in a white cement plaster to “suit the environs”.

In one of these cases the house was the only one for a two miles with nothing but trees surrounding it and yet the owners still had to plaster the already finished wooden house just to satisfy some twenty or thirty year old thinking in the planning department.

Not only do these houses stand out from the surrounding countryside because they are now bright white, they also are now prone to condensation and damp problems because the healthy breathable fabric of the well designed house is now sealed in a cement based plaster – really just like popping it into a nice big paster bag! How lovely!

It doesn’t have to be like this. There are alternatives, we can fight for healthy homes and build them ourselves. Eventually we will reach a tipping point where healthy homes are the norm.

Until then, roll on guerilla housing…

Small and Beautiful

I have been working really hard to practise some detachment.

They say that practise makes perfect – I have yet to find out!

I am trying to separate people from their actions.

When I see a child misbehave I find it easy to to know that I don’t see a bad child,  I see a child whose behaviour is not very good.

When I experience an adult whose behaviour is not very good I don’t find it so easy to differentiate their behaviour from them. I don’t find it so easy to know that there is a person who is behaving in a selfish way, I tend to think there is a selfish person.

It’s a struggle for me at the moment.

I am trying to look at the bright side which is that I do know there is a struggle. At least this acknowledges that I am aware of the difference.

At an intellectual level I do know that the person is not their behaviour,  I just struggle with knowing it at a heart level right now.