730 things — Day 126 of 365

 I like tiny houses and caravans. I would dearly love to live in one; but I have come to accept that that will not now ever be so. In our time the cost of accommodation has risen so very steeply, while the level of wages has not, that it has absorbed such money as I had in the service of helping my admittedly large family house itself.

In my heart of hearts I am not in favour of second homes, and am quite certain my marriage partner would be appalled to actually live in a caravan or a tiny home. Though I love them, I love him more, so I have reconciled myself to the reality that this preference of mine will remain a dream only.

To be fair, I have, twice, lived in a caravan. Once when I was eighteen and had just left school, living with monks in North Devon. I lived in a caravan in a cabbage patch behind the Post Office (the monks ran it) and adjacent to their little whitewashed chapel (in what was intended, I suppose, to be the garage). North Devon is hilly. The lane passed the front of the Post Office and the hedge fringing the cabbage patch, then cut round in a hairpin bend, going back on itself onto a much higher level. So at the back of the caravan was a bank stabilised by plants, and above it the road.

That caravan was definitely vintage, and had that prized item — a solid fuel stove. Most modern caravans are deficient in that (unlike tiny houses) they overlook this crucial necessity of life. Without a fire to sit by, what's the point?

Later, at university in York (I met my children's father in the first year of my degree course and married him at the end of the second) I lived with my husband in a twelve-foot touring caravan — oddly, in another field of cabbages — at Acaster Selby, a village on the outskirts of York. We had one of those ex-GPO vans, a Morris Minor overpainted a dull green, to get in to lectures and seminars. It was old and rusty, we could see the surface of the road passing by beneath our feet, and on frosty mornings one of us had to turn the engine with a crank shaft to get it going. The ignition key was so very worn with age it could be pulled out as we were going along, which it amused us to do. That van wouldn't go over fifty-five miles an hour, as we discovered on the one occasion we had a long journey down a motorway to the Midlands. My husband, a musician, was booked to play the organ for a friend's wedding, and courtesy of the slowness of our van, we arrived only just in time to stop outside the church, my husband scrambling into his wedding clothes on the lane alongside the van, then legging it up the church path and flinging himself onto the organ bench. No time to verify with the clergyman exactly how things would go. So he hadn't realised what an eternity they'd be signing the register , and ended up having to play the whole of Widor's very difficult toccata for the recessional, instead of just the first page as planned. With no one to turn the pages.

After York, we lived in a barn on my parents' land for while. We sold everything we had to buy a gypsy vardo, affordable by virtue of being in parlous condition and painted all over with pale yellow emulsion (why?) but we were too fainthearted and inexperienced to do any more than begin the painstaking work of stripping it all back. Plus we had a baby on the way and threatening to miscarry, and all our cooking to do over an open fire and needed to earn money somehow, so we never did get to live in the vardo.

Since then I've lived in all sorts of places, all of them shared — even the one-bedroomed apartment — but never a tiny house or a caravan.

In the house we live in now, my husband (not the one I first thought of, he took off long ago and the second one died) made me a dear little tiny house at the bottom of the garden, and I was meant to be living in that but found to my surprise that outside the comforting aura of the people I live with, I was terribly lonely. I hadn't expected that.

So I live in my little room which is 9ft by just under 7ft.

When I was a student at York in the 1970s, I had a small single room in college. I was reclusive even then, and for the first three days I didn't emerge from my room at all except to go to the lavatory (handily next door). I ate muesli and stayed where I was. 

My mother visited me there on one occasion, and glancing round she started to laugh. She said most people just have their room as a bedroom, but I seemed to have got an entire house in my narrow accommodation, cooking stuff and everything. This was true. I always had this yen to live quiet and tiny and retired.

And so here inside this shared Victorian villa up the hill from the sea, I experiment with tiny house possibilities in my little room.

Here's its present state of incarnation.

My store cupboard is under the bed.

I have a dining room of sorts — or sometimes it is a study; my little table can be a desk as well as somewhere to eat.

Tony made the little table for me. It can be a seat as well, when visitors come to my little room, more than will fit on the bed — which Tony made for me too, at sofa height at my request.

Next to the bed is my kitchen and bathroom which run seamlessly into one another (and my chapel above). 

Under the unit there is my washbowl and small box of bokashi bran. In the main body of it is where I keep my china when not in use, and my thermal bottles for chilled water and surplus heated water from making my cup of tea (handy to wash in on summer days when I've had no hot water bottle the night before). If you have eagle eyes and a long memory, you may observe one of the water bottles (the green one you can just see behind the orange one) is a thing I posted as being sent away. I changed my mind and swapped something else out for it and kept it. This is why you should always practise a pause, unless you are a hoarder, in which case don't, just hire a skip.

The Berkey filter is good for either rain or water from the spring down the hill. The little stove takes those biofuel blocks made from vegetable waste that burn without making toxic chemicals.

Next to my loo, under the wardrobe (that Tony also built for me) is my laundry system — two buckets and a large bowl.

I wash my clothes every two or three days, and only use the machine when I do my bedding — which I confess is not often.

Inside my wardrobe I have my filing archive, my clothes, my toiletries and my supplements.

I was keeping my clothes in packing cubes, but released them because they said they felt squashed and couldn't breathe.

I did buy some dresses this summer (yes, I swapped out other belongings in exchange), which I am very pleased with and hang on the door next to my wardrobe so they don't get creased.

This is my favourite.

I also hang my (USB rechargeable) lantern on the bamboo pole that suspends the curtain in front of my wardrobe. I lift it down and have it on the floor by my bed at night.

Then the only other thing is a bookcase. Fi, who lives in the attic when she's here, was using it, but got rid of some stuff so it became surplus to her requirements. So I have it in my room now, to house the Cauldron Makers Guild, and my books.

When evening falls, the Cauldron Makers gather in the shadows to plan the revolution. 

So that's as near as I can get to a tiny house. I think it works okay. The only other thing I'd have is a fridge. I do have one, but it's down in the main house kitchen, which is more convenient for the way I live — but I could fit it in my room if I wanted to. It is silent and small.

Meanwhile, leaving my life today are . . . er . . . Oh, yes — two — what are these? Wrenches?

Adjustable spanners? I don't know. They will be in the DIY tool kit I'm making for Freegle.