Big J

We just had a momentary power cut

We're flying from Stansted tomorrow and expect everything to be running OK. The wind is picking up here now. To peak in a couple of hours.

Informally yes. I kind of need three harvesters to work behind. Most of the operators in that area who do first thinnings use Rottne H8s, as they are very good machines and Rottne is only about an hour from us. They typically produce 12,000 cubic metres a year. I would like to extract 10,000 cubic metres a year. So with three to work with, I'd be pulling a little over a quarter of their individual outputs, and I think I can do this comfortably on 3.5 long days per week (Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri one week and Wed/Thurs/Fri the next week). This gives me more time at home with the wife and kids and more time to enjoy life and the income is easily sufficient to live comfortably. My wife (an architect by training) is going to spend the first 6-12 months doing SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) as she hasn't picked up the language as quickly as me, but she's also training at the moment, doing a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) so that she can teach English there. Most likely at the school in the village. We're moving the last week of July.

Well that's a bit of a thread derail ... 🙃 All good. We're there next week. Looking forward to some snow, trying skiing for the first time (ever!) and maybe finding a bit of time to collect some furniture, buy a car and possibly test drive a machine or two.

I think that's the issue though. Because the English have so precious few access rights to the countryside, they bitterly hold onto the ones they do have, and with unreasonable possessiveness. They forget that it's not their land. With open access, all land is accessible, and then no one place sees constant pressure, no one landowner constant hassle. Perhaps people even start to learn that universal access is a privilege that comes with responsibility.... It made work a little easier in some respects in Scotland. If you had to close a route, it wasn't so much of an issue because the member of public had dozens of other options. Down here, you find that the public get tremendously irate if you restrict the little access that they have, and kick up a much greater fuss. I don't know though. I appreciate that it's a difficult and emotive subject and that a significant proportion of the public are total f*ckwits. Perhaps an amended right to roam where if you abuse your access rights then you're immediately shot?! 😁

The right to roam works well in many countries. There are obvious exceptions for people's residences, arable land and areas of special sensitivity. It was a colossal culture shock for me moving back to England (from Scotland) seeing all the 'private property - trespassers prosecuted' signs.

England could just have the right to roam. It would be simpler.

That's just not good for anyone. Fingers crossed it doesn't hit as badly as forecast.

Potentially the strongest storm since 1990 for these parts.....

Friday is looking very serious for the south of England. Windspeeds of 80-85mph inland. Not good at all.

I’m really excited for the amateur autopsy club I just joined. Tuesday is open Mike night! I’m starting a flight company exclusively for bald people, I’ll call it… Receding airlines. My boss asked me why I only get sick on work days. I said it must be my weekend immune system. Whoever stole my antidepressants: I hope you’re happy. What did the shy pebble wish for? That he was a little boulder. Lost my job at the bank on my first day. A woman asked me to check her balance, so I pushed her over. I was researching about Atheism. Turns out it’s a non-prophet organization.

Dries quickly and burns well, albeit slightly quicker than some other firewoods. As ever though, dry wood good, wet wood bad, free wood best of all 😁

I'm not enjoying the tone on this page at all. Not funny. Just misogynistic.

Yep. Very much agree. I do think that part of it is that we just don't really realise how shit our housing is here. This clip from Alain de Bottain's Architecture of Happiness is really revealing, showing how much we conform to traditional ideals of house ownership in the UK: Full episode:

Nail. On. Head. My wife (architect) was involved with a couple of builds in Scotland using Brettstapel, which is an Austrian method of using low grade timber in massive structural walls. They did a house in the Scottish Borders and also a school on the West Coast of Scotland. The buildings were mostly erected by Austrian master carpenters who spent about half their time furiously supervising the local contractors (that had to be included on site) to prevent them from puncturing the air tight layers or bodging aspects of the fit-out. The buildings are passive standard, something that still appears to be witchcraft to UK builders.

Very much agree, especially on the taxation point. Fundamentally, a decent and efficient home is a basic human right. To commodify the provision of that human right is degrading. It's obviously accepted that there is an implicit cost to any build, and the higher the specification, the higher the cost. What doesn't tally though is that a house that costs less than £1500/square metre to build is selling for £4000-5000/square metre. That is standard in unexceptional parts of Devon. And this is where the pressures of second (and third and so on) home ownership comes in, as well as the corrupt and unfit for purpose planning system. To prioritise the mass house builders at the expense of self builders only serves to reinforce the culture here that homes aren't something we build/create ourselves, rather they are an off the shelf commodity that serve to accommodate us for a prescribed interval until such time that we feel we can afford to hop up to the next rung, or we can sell to capitalise on the mysteriously acquired increase in value, I just don't understand why or how such shit houses are still built. It's like having the technology to build Teslas but resolutely sticking to building Ford Sierras. My brother has a new built Persimmon home in Exeter and it's really cold in winter and unbearably hot in summer and is functionally too small for a family. The rooms just aren't big enough. Bah. I can't see it changing anytime soon as those with the most political clout are the ones with the most to lose if housing became more egalitarian.

Mostly good days, but some bad days now. Has collapsed a couple of times (from which she recovers really quickly) with her heart. I still take her to work most of the time, but I can't do longer distance extraction work now with her, nor anything too hilly. I had her with me for 4 weeks of stay away work in Wiltshire. It worked really well, as the site was flat and after 4-5 hrs I could just put her in the caravan to rest. That I think was her limit though. Had it not been for the endocarditis and the resultant heart damage, I don't think she'd have slowed down much at all yet. She's still fitter than most nearly 12 year old dogs, but we've had to adapt slightly to work around her heart condition. I'm not wrapping her in cotton wool though, and I fully expect that one day she'll just collapse in the woods and she'll not get back up again. But in all honesty, that's the way I'd want her to go. She gets miserable if she's left at home, so what would be the point in extending her life if she doesn't have a life?

Quality construction is entirely possible (see most of the rest of Europe) but the housing lobby is very strong here in the UK and any regulation that enforces better building regulations is bitterly resisted. The other fundamental issue is that we (as a nation) don't have a track record of valuing efficiency and quality in our houses. We treat them as investments, not homes, and whereas spending £30k on a house to save £50k in bills over 30 years makes perfect sense, it's not realised in the market value of the home, so it's rarely done. Many green technologies need a bit of space too. So geothermal boilers are a bit bigger, well insulated walls are thicker and external heat exchangers need a suitable location outside the property. The way that new houses are packed in, it doesn't allow much space for these things. But you are right though. The cost difference between a well constructed house and a typical British house isn't that much. Until planning laws are completely overhauled so as to advantage self builders and people stop treating housing as an investment, we're doomed to living in the smallest and least environmentally efficient houses in Northern Europe.

Here too. Hard to think of suitable superlatives for horizontal rain. I bloody hate it.

An interesting angle, but I'm not sure it'll work. The vast majority of houses in the UK are so badly insulated that getting them all to c rating or better is like trying to modify a Landrover Defender to do 80mpg.

No, but it's obviously still a concern for anyone here. I'm not entirely emotionally divorced from the UK yet! 😁

This might seem like a daft question, but what is the link between the very high rate of economic growth (that's made the headlines today) and the very high rate of inflation? I'll hold my hands up to having no idea about the correlation between the two, but surely if everything costs more in an inflating economy, then the overall size of the sum being spent (ie, GDP) is greater? It's marvellous luck for the government that the cost of Brexit is being wonderfully masked by covid. I've got some replacement wheel chains coming from eastern Europe for the Vimek. They cost about £1250 to my door, of which £60 is cost of clearing customs and another (circa) £70 increased cost of haulage due to customs delays. So more than 10% more expensive thanks to Brexit. The increased costs for smaller spare parts is much more severe as urgent deliveries hugely up the costs.

That article is a month old. They have effectively been cut in half since then. They don't (as far as I'm aware) have a price cap, which means if you're on a flexible tariff then you're exposed. But the severity of the price increase was sufficient that the government stepped in to provide assistance. So unlike the UK government, which is seeking to claw back over half the assistance given, the Swedish government will pay up to £165/month for the three months from December to assistance householders. We are living in an inflationary society. Energy particularly. This is why we are very keen to generate as much as we can with our own house. Frustratingly, the time when we really need a lot of electricty is mid winter, but given that the part of Sweden we're moving to receives 40% more sun than where we are in England, the payback time period on solar is quite short.

Very much agree. I cannot imagine what it must be like on a lower fixed income at the moment.