A history of our life from 40,000 feet
1999-2004 London
2004-2008 Manchester
2008 on Dubai
2019 on Herefordshire
We Have exchanged and are now set to complete on 28 February 2019. It has taken a little over 20 years since Jane and I met to find our final home. It’s a converted 150 year old stone built barn set in a little over 4 acres of land split between garden and a mature deciduous wood.
It is a long time since I watched River Cottage on Channel 4 and then bought a copy of an old book called “Your Few Acres” in an antique bookshop in Hay on Wye. Since then we have never owned much ground or had the opportunity to garden or grow food at any great scale. While I have a while to go before I can hang up my laptop case and leave the Gulf for good there is a lot of work to do to make sure “the dream” is up and running for retirement. For now though I am going to chronicle everything we find, try, make, and grow on the land and photograph and record everything that flies walks or crawls or wants to share a small space with us. This is what we have been working towards for 20 years. It is now time to build the home and life we wanted away from concrete. I am going to work on for another 5-7 years and will be working full time in the Gulf. Dubai is our main home for now and we are both residents. Jane can spend more time in the UK than me though and I am able to spend a couple of weeks a year. The boys are boarding in Shropshire but the eldest is poised to take his A levels and then will be teaching in Thailand during a year off. It feels like a time of change.
So with the time I do have in the UK I will be focusing on getting the house ready for when we stop for good.
A colleague at work asked me “so you are going to be just another smallholder then from suburbia”. Maybe so but I am sure that Herefordshire will be as good a place for us to spend our money as Manchester or the South East. Jane has plans for a garden that will take the next 20 years to realise. I have hardly begun to articulate all the things I want to do. I have photographed a great many birds all over the world. I now want to make a home for some in our wood. I want to keep bees, lay out a small meadow, plant heritage trees, make an outdoor kitchen, grow asparagus, grow cut flowers (I have a thing about Dahlias) - even just watch the same patch of ground in every different light the seasons have to offer.
Time and Space are the last two great luxuries left on this planet and especially when you get to our age - I am fifty in about 10 weeks. The list of things we want to do is almost endless. I have been thinking a lot about essentialism. I am a very lucky man and I will make the most of what we have with the time and space we have carved out. For now though it’s Dubai and work - a plane on about the 26 th for me ! Jane has spent 1 hour at the property about 3 months ago ! This is a huge leap for us. Excited doesn't begin to describe how I feel.
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