This is not just an ordinary wall...

OK, so I don't want to play too heavily on whose wall this is, but actually, I was pretty damn impressed when I walked past this well known store in the centre of Norwich last week.

Green architecture (as in, literally, green) is something that really appeals to me - I first read about it in National Geographic a year or so ago, but I never really thought I'd see it in Norwich.  This one is truly beautiful, a real patchwork of different plants, and I'm really dying to see how it changes through the seasons.  Will it flower in the spring / summer?  What a treat for the bees that would be!  So I have to give credit where credit's due, and say well done to M&S for a really great addition to Norwich's city centre.

Another piece of fab Norwich architecture I spotted, this time in Eaton Park.  I don't know if it's real, as in genuinely usable, but it's a great idea for high-rise living for the city's bird population.  From the back bedroom at home, I can look out on the end wall of my neighbour's house.  I'd love to cover the whole of the upper part of the wall with hundreds of bird boxes just like these - it'd be like a hotel!

I haven't mentioned this to my neighbour, and I don't suppose I will, but it's a great thought - I wonder if he has the same thought about my walls...

Simple pleasures

When you blog for three days in a row you are meant to develop a kind of theme. Well I never do normally but today I will contrast my angst of the last two days with the upsides of transitioning.

For me this is the simple pleasures that come with it all. So for this time of year there is the blackberry picking, jam making and pickling. Of course I haven't actually DONE any of these things but I know people that have so that sort of counts. I tell a lie, I did blackberry pick and got wrong with my ex for trying to steal his click and lock ( that's Tupperware to people my age) to take them home in. That is the trouble with click and lock. Its so LOUD that you can't steal it without people hearing you do it up.

Where was I? Oh yes so I was foraging on the way to work. Rather pleased with myself for grabbing a small apple from a tree on the way (between the Archant car park and the BCTV managed woodland). Unfortunately it was so sour I couldn't swallow it but had to hold it in my mouth until I got round the corner into Ber Street because several office workers had seen me pick it and I had to maintain my 'urban forager' persona.

Last week I held a lovely bunting workshop in the 4 women's centre on Colgate to help decorate the street for the Magdalen Street Celebration. We spent a lovely couple of hours cutting up 1970's duvet and discussing whether the tree outside was cherry or crab apple. There is something very relaxing about a joint task done round a table with no machinery involved.

Last week I was really pleased with myself because we had 6 lemons and 20 eggs in the fridge (don't ask) and I decided to make a lemon meringue pie.

It took about three hours and looked like something from an old sci-fi movie but was absolutely amazing and lasted nearly as long.

The other day I learnt to play happy birthday on the piano for a party. If you are thinking of doing this though do bear in mind that as the cake is brought in you will be playing in the dark!

I hope I have inspired you to some simple pleasures, I realize these are mostly about behaving like a 1950's housewife but I am sure you could do your own rugged bike mending, home brew drinking, tree climbing version.

Addicted to love

There is a song where the words go 'whenever I'm alone with you I feel young again, whenever I'm alone with you I feel fun again'. This is all very well Adele but how do you know it is really love and not just some need you are fulfilling? Perhaps even an addiction.
Well I have a love that makes me feel this way, sexy and carefree.
But should I give her up? She is rather, um, 'high maintenance'.
I have been saying I will because I know I should but everytime I plan the end I think 'not yet, just a bit longer, wait til the spring'. Is this the pre-contemplative excuse of an addict?
I spend a day without her just cycling and visiting friends. I feel relaxed.
I look for signs as to the right thing to do. I find a sign and I know it's not time yet.
She passed her MOT

On being an eco-worrier

When I first got into the whole green thingy I imagined myself as protesting in trees and having a cool name like swampy. Obviously that has been taken but perhaps urban forager. However, being middle aged, middle class and generally living in fear of arrest I have only managed to be an eco-worrier.

This involves analyzing everything you do and weighing it up against cost to the planet, my health, my purse, my family and my spiritual self.

So for example, I am in my old watering hole from my youth. No longer packed with six formers but now frequented by families having a 'traditional home cooked pub lunch' printed on an impossibly large menu with a specials blackboard that is too far away for me to remember everything in one trip.

Mum has memory problems so while she and dad are still slowly reading out the starters I begin to peruse the mains and play the Green Game.

So first I think green. We have taken the car to the local pub (go back one square)

It is independent ( go forward 1 square)

Shall I have a cheese salad? This would be healthy and more environmentally friendly than meat. But what's the point of going out for a meal and having a salad?

The fish looks good. Healthy and tasty but its really expensive and dad will insist on paying and we are running out of fish in the sea.

I carry on down the menu to the 'beef and ale pie made locally with seasonal vegetables'. This looks good but still meat, mental note to come back to this.

Pasta bake. This would be veggie so more green but they are always a lottery are pasta bakes. Mum is still on the mains now but the waiter has been back twice already. I start to wonder if i shouldnt have something that mum could have if she doesnt like the curry she has chosen so we could then swap.

The waiter patiently returns, I panic and plump for the beef lasagne because I just really fancy it.( go back six spaces)

p.s in case you are thinking of going to the fox and hounds in Peterborough you will find that the picture of this girl on their website most misleading.

This is the House Transition Built

What is the house? Is it a dream we hold, a fairy palace, a shelter from the storm, perched on a hill, overlooking the sea, somewhere down a farm track or a long drive edged with lime trees? Or is it a nightmare, the haunted house, the house of childhood secrets we fear to reenter, the slum and the council estate we long to escape from, the little boxes on the hillside we are loathe to see?

This week the house is a practical place, a building in Transition, in cities and villages where property is valued more than people and everyone is assessed by their address and the colour of paint on their front door. As the Government is poised to relax planning laws that will make it easier for developers to tarmac the green fields of England, while the Green Deal gets pushed back and low-income city dwellers pushed out of the smarter neighbourhoods, our relationship with the House is changing.

No longer a place of exclusivity and security, it has become a liability. The economic downturn and soaring energy prices have made our homes the highest financial burden most of us carry. And, as we come awake to peak oil and climate change, also a burden on our conscience. To change our relationship with the environment we need not only to consume less we need a different attitude to the shelters we build and inhabit. Including those in our imaginations.

How can we create an aesthetic of downshift in a culture of aspiration?

I once spent my working days visiting people’s swanky apartments and villas for magazines like World of Interiors. I styled photographic shoots of heritage chintz curtains and designer chairs and unwittingly upheld the aesthetics of Empire. I had grown up in London’s Bayswater district in a Victorian white-fronted house, serviced by a crew of professional builders, carpenters, interior decorators, window cleaners and dailies. And yet I always longed to live in simple vernacular spaces - artist’s studios, rough Greek interiors, thatched cottages. When I sold my city flat and went travelling I got to live in a series of palm-leaf cabanas, wood cabins, yurts and adobe roundhouses and eventually settled in a cottage that resembled the one in the Kent marshes I had loved as a child. It doesn’t belong to me and yet it feels like home.

So when it came to my turn on the blog this week I wanted to look at two Transitioners’ houses that reflected this personal and contemporary downshift: a retrofitted house in Norwich owned by Stefi, one of the movers and shakers behind the Magdalen Street Celebration and the innovative Café Conversations, and a straw bale house, designed and built by John Preston and Carol Hunter from Transition Downham Market and Villages.

Transition has its foundation in permaculture and natural building. The upcoming The Transition Companion was inspired by the seminal text on environmental architecture, A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Many Transitioners dream of cobhouses and passive houses set amongst forest gardens and friendly communities. And yet we live within old walls, constricted by planning laws, by expensive green technology and by a lack of skills in the basic arts of living. How do people work with those constrictions and yet make steps to live within their principles? I stepped out of my door to find out:

House on the edge of Mousehold Heath

Brought up in an airy 1930s suburban house in Los Angeles and having just returned from India Stefi stepped into her 1900 NR3 terrace two-up two-downer and wanted immediately to bring space and light into its narrow and dark British dimensions (it is 9 foot wide). She was influenced by two streams, she said. One was an aesthetic made of the space and light she inherited from her native California and the simplicity she found living in an Indian one-room dwelling open to the elements. The second stream to do with ecological living and energy reduction.

Inside the rooms have wooden floorboards and bare plastered walls and simple furniture ("primarily sourced from the rich pickings of Magdalen Street's dozen or more charity and antique shops! So the embodied carbon is very low"). Light has been introduced by opening up a skylight in the kitchen, making a glass front door and a device known as a solar tunnel which amplifies and bounces light into the recesses of the dark back bedroom.

“The sun tunnel costs £200 to buy, £150 to have fitted. but could be done DIY - it's an easier fit than a roof window. Even situated on a north facing roof, there is no longer any need to put on the lights in the room during the day. You need to figure out a way to shade it on summer evenings or you'll have daylight coming in until 11 pm and again at 4 am!"

Meanwhile the double-glazed K glass fronted door (£150) and large window bring both light and solar passive heat to the front room, along with its underfloor insulation (£600). The woodburner in the “winter” back room uses wood from her pollarded sycamore tree:

“While warming the rooms, I also warm water and put it in a thermos for the next morning's tea (just needs a few degrees heat up in the kettle). I can also pre-cook pulses and rice for a super-fast finish off in the pressure cooker.”

Her energy bills have fallen dramatically as a result of these steps. Inspired by Chris Hull’s model she has also installed a rainwater loo outside and is presently constructing a Japanese-style handbasin where the grey water feeds into the cistern, meaning there will be enough water in the drought times without having to use mains water. Further into the narrow, immensely long garden rainwater feeds the pond and this summer at her birthday party people brought succulents for a new sedum roof.

“This helps insulate the outhouse, improves the view over the garden, preserves the tar roof which would otherwise slowly breakdown under UV exposure. It also adds to the biodiversity of the long terraced garden, which borders on Mousehold heath and hosts many of its flora and fauna.”

The undercover materials include a recycled woollen blanket and a quality pond liner. Some things you just can't skimp on.

House in the Quarry

I met John and Carol at the Greenpeace Fair where they had just finished a set on the cycle-powered stage. John and Carol sing a sharp-witted contemporary slack rock as The John Preston Tribute Band. They are also about to finish building a straw bale house after five years hard labour. The last layers of the cob floor are being laid this week and with luck (and warm weather) they are finally moving out of their caravan and into the studio with its wood-fired stove, living roof and hand-made, hand-plastered walls, surrounded by a permaculture garden.

The derelict land John bought was in an old chalk quarry that housed a neglected but mature walnut orchard. Originally they designed and planned to build a house and a studio but soon learned that more space means more time and more money.

"Where this fits with Transition is that all these are learnable skills," John told me as we riff about busting through the mystique of the professional builder and not living in house “where the woman is trapped in a kitchen and a stupid room dominated by a TV set.”

“Oh, I thought you were a builder,” I say, dead impressed, it has to be said, by anything to do with DIY.

“I have an O level in Woodwork and Technical drawing, “ he corrects me, “And a degree in Music. I’m a music therapist. I didn't even have any interest in DIY before this misadventure.. Building is all about confidence and getting intimate with the materials. You can learn to lay bricks in a straight line, but you just won’t do it as fast as a bricklayer."

The skills to do with constructing your own house are many, not least dealing with planning permission and building regulations, along with learning about U-values and how to make your own paint (lime, borax, casein, natural pigments). What has stood them in good stead is instinct and persistence. For example where other houses built on this historical backfill of chalk have brought in massive machinery to build expensive high-impact concrete piles as foundation, John and Carol put in a simple low-impact trench (for £1500). They took a risk it would pass the geological tests.

“It’s scary building because you have to spend money. And you have to undo things if you want lovely results.”

"And you don't have the same level of energy when you are in your early 50s," added Carol ruefully and laughed.

John and Carol have deliberately worked alongside people who were prepared to teach them – from green build designers to plumbers. (“The work will show you the way” as one Polish builder told them). Everything in the house has been installed with peak oil and carbon emissions in mind, which is how we ended up sitting in the rain discussing oil-based insulation materials and sourcing ecologically-sound door frames from Estonia, while everyone else was in the tea tent eating cake. Ah, Transition!

Straw bale under construction at Stokes Ferry; hand-made paints on plaster; Stefi's house; rainwater system; skylit kitchen; sedum roof; the Studio almost complete; building the walls; laying the cob floor; talking green build at the Greenpeace Fair.

Opening Up

The TN bloggers below demonstrate the same level of determination that I have witnessed in many a householder over the years. It’s a certain steely look that comes into the eyes when a fuel bill drops through the letter box and a quiet satisfaction in seeing the bottom line gradually reduce, month after month.

This, of course, comes after the homeowner has been busy improving the energy efficiency of his home, often with the meticulous rigour of a scientist. Watch out for a certain obsession with thermostats and energy monitors and an ability to sense a draught at a 100 paces that would have bypassed us lesser mortals.

But I take my hat off to these pioneers. For although they do it for their own conscience, self-sufficiency and, eventually, their pocket, they lead the way for the rest of us. The research they have done, the lessons they’ve learn't and the contacts they’ve made, can give us all the confidence to follow their lead. Which is why, every September, CPRE Norfolk politely asks these homeowners if they would open up their doors so that hundreds of strangers can come by and ask their advice. And wonderfully…they do!

Here’s the link to the event - you need to book, so don’t delay. There are all sorts of homes taking part, throughout the county, including terraced houses, farmhouses, bungalows, cottages, barn conversions and off-grid smallholdings. You can see examples of solid wall insulation, wood burners, cob and straw bale building, as well as many types of renewable energy technologies in action. We’ve also included a few pioneering business premises and community buildings for those looking to invest in other areas of their life.

Although the Green Buildings in Norfolk – Open Days event was the first of these ‘open eco-home’ style events in the country, similar schemes have now sprung up in places such as Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Oxford, North London and Stroud. Surveys from around the country show time and again that these events lead to action, giving people that extra bit of confidence to spend money or do things differently to save energy. To quote a statistic, 83% of visitors said that after attending events in Norfolk, they then went on to apply measures to their own home or to change their energy usage habits. Pretty impressive!

It is this kind of evidence that has made the Government look seriously at how open eco-home events could link with the ‘Green Deal’, the nationwide scheme to be launched next year, whereby all householders in Britain will be able to access funding to apply energy-efficiency measures to their own homes. The Sustainable Energy Academy (SEA) has also now launched a network of SuperHomes - existing homes which have already reduced their carbon emissions by 60% and will be regularly open for visits all year round. I imagine some of the homes featured on this blog will be well on the way to that kind of statistic ... I can hear the calculations taking place as I write.

See you on the Open Days - www.cprenorfolk.org.uk/opendays James Frost

Welsh Sheep in the Suffolk Cottage Loft

When Chris decided to lead this week of posts on buildings in transition, my primary reason for signing up was because there were 18 rolls of Welsh Black Mountain sheepswool loft insulation lining up in the hall upstairs and crowding out the spare room. And looking like they might be there for a while longer yet.

So I thought if I have to write about it I’ll make sure we get them up into the loft. Which is what we did yesterday afternoon.

I live with Charlotte in a rented late 19th century tied Suffolk cottage, originally a two-up-two-down with an upstairs sunroom and a conservatory added a decade ago.

There is double glazing on the windows, oil-fired central heating and a woodburning stove in the downstairs front room. Until yesterday there were a few inches of fibreglass insulation in the loft. There is no cavity wall insulation - the house is too old (1884).

Before I get to the laying of the wool (sounds almost like a ceremony, doesn’t it? The Laying of the Wool) I’d like to give some context.

I first got involved with Transition Towns in 2008, and experienced more than one Peak Oil moment. Then in 2009 several of us in Transition Norwich decided to reduce our personal carbon emissions to half the national average over the coming year. Using a selection of carbon calculators we decided on a figure of 4,500 tonnes. Each month we would meet to examine a different aspect of our energy consumption and how we could practically reduce it: household (we brought our bills to show each other), transport (car, train and plane), food, waste and ‘stuff’ (including clothes).

I’ve written before on this blog how this year of living differently radically altered my approach to energy use. First by paying attention to what I was using. And secondly doing it as part of a committed group working together.

The first thing we did in our house was decide on a drastic reduction of our oil-powered central heating use. This was September. The house gets cold in the winter and we watched the thermostat steadily drop after November down to single figures, whilst we piled on more and more layers of clothes. We used the log fire several times a week.

The winter of 2009/10 was cold and it was quite tough. That’s where being part of TN-2’s Strangers’ Circle (so named because it was made up of Transition Norwich people living outside the city) made all the difference. It kept our spirits up. There were those meetings to look forward to.

By last Winter the year was up and the group no longer meeting. Charlotte and I reduced our central heating use even more and it was easier. I think we must have toughened up as our bodies got used to colder conditions. Overheated buildings both private and public began to feel stuffy and airless to me. I also began to cut logs from local dead elms for the log fire. It would be nice to find a low carbon, low cost way of getting the thermostat into double figures, though.

Back to this year and the Welsh Black Mountain sheepswool. At July's All Under One Roof environmental day in Bungay, we picked up an application form for the council's Greener Homes DIY scheme and put in our "wish list" of some sheepswool for the loft and a second rainwater butt. Under the scheme insulation (hemp, sheep's wool or recycled plastic) and other items such as draught excluders were free of charge though you had to pick them up and install them yourself.

And this is where Eloise and the Old Post Office Van came in. Eloise picked Charlotte up in Bungay on the 18th August and they packed in the water butt and the 18 rolls of insulation and brought them here to Reydon.

It took about an hour to roll out the insulation in the (empty) loft, which went straight on top of the old fibreglass stuff. It was much easier to do than I had imagined (I'd been thinking complicated scenarios with builders). And Lesley from Sustainable Bungay had recently done hers and said it wasn't difficult.

Warning: Proper masks of the correct grade should be worn over the face (handkerchiefs will not do, Lesley told me) - we got ours from the local ironmongers, they cost about £1 each. This is not because of the sheepswool, which is perfectly safe, but because the old fibreglass insulation is not good to breathe in.

Now all we have to do is wait until winter and see if our house's woolly hat will keep us warmer (though the cat preferred the pre-loft situation).

Back of the cottage; chopping wood; insulation in the corridor and getting ready for action; Charlotte Lays the Wool; Eloise and The Red Van; cat keeps warm on the sheep's wool.