A Week In The Life Of A Caretaker

Keeping a row of 300 year old cottages running isn’t as easy as it sounds. A row of 300 year old converted cow sheds (which is what this place actually is) is even harder.

Almost overnight I had no choice but to become a handyman, to quickly fix leaks, an a gamut of other problems that constantly spring up. Everything from no tin opener to no electric is my problem, and I have to think fast when someone knocks on the door complaining that their Kintyre retreat isn’t quite as it was sold to them.

More often than not, I’m expected to fashion a repair using what limited resources I have up here, made all the worse to by an owner who often doesn’t like buying anything other than the cheapest of equipment. My toolbox is poorly stocked with screwdrivers that bend and buckle, and a drill that struggled to drill holes in anything except plasterboard.

Painting is made tricky because of cheap brushes that shed their bristles (it’s viewed as more cost effective to buy cheap brushes and throw them away, rather than spend money on cleaning materials), and the endless supply of twenty year old paint tins with an inch or two of crusty paint in their bases doesn’t make the task any easier.

Never the less, always up for a challenge, I’ve been plodding on with tasks over the past two months, to hold up my end of the deal. And I’ve learnt to make do with what I have, often with fairly pleasing results. 

This week, I’ve:

• Built and fitted a DIY kitchen
• Removed the old kitchen to the local tip
• Laid a new lino floor
• Painted two park benches
• Painted three external windows
• Painted an interior wall
• Mowed the (extensive) grass
• De-weeded the gravel driveway
• Removed a dead Starling chick 
• Removed the tail, hind legs, and lower torso of a brown mouse

Me and my little pal build a new kitchen

Rhett takes control of the hammer

Ways to wear your own car out

Not my choice of colour!

I’ve also arranged an electrician to fix a broken hot water timer after complaints from guests that their shower was cold, and arranged a roofer to check out the leaking ceiling in another cottage. Not easy when you don’t speak fluent Scottish like the local tradesmen do. Directions to our cottages are my Achilles Heel; even Google lists our postcode as being two miles south of where it actually is.

Juggling repairs around guests being on site is all part of the challenge, made especially hard when we have a full house, as we did last week.

And keeping track of the keys isn’t easy either. I have a bunch that quite literally makes me look (and often feel) like the head jailer - this week alone I've managed to lock two German guests out of their cottage twice. I think they think I’m rifling through their things when they’re not here, but a lifetime of living in the city has brainwashed me to check doors are locked at all times, even if people have very deliberately left them unlocked. Of course, up here, the only people likely to wander past usually have four legs and a sheepskin coat on.

Generally speaking, because the place is in such disrepair, jobs can, and often do wait. If the sun is shining, or the son is crying, I tend to drop everything, and head for the nearest beach. Life, after all, is short.

The owners seems pleased with progress - I've worked my way through nearly everything on their list - and besides, I guess the real reason we’re here is to keep the place occupied, and see guests in and out.

The Grass Is Always Greener

My mum does the lottery each and every week - she always plays the same numbers, religiously watches the live draw on the Beeb, and without fail rolls her eyes and toots as her numbers fail once again to come up.

Money, she thinks, will make life so much better. If she gave me a pound every time she said ‘When I win the lottery...’ I’d be rich enough to buy her a house. And a speedboat for that matter.

Money, so they say, makes the world go round - the more you have, the easier life is.

I can vouch for this to some extent - I used to have a job that allowed us a fairly good standard of life. We had a beautiful apartment in the centre of a bustling city, went to restaurants whenever we wanted, and bought more new clothes than a family of three could ever need. I even used to have my hair cut by someone who used to massage my head for 30 minutes prior to pulling her scissors out. Life indeed was good.

So money wasn’t our problem. 

Time, I felt was the main issue, hence exchanging wealth for a clock with more hours.

Now, with all the time in the world, and nothing to spend our money on except food and diesel, logic would suggest that I’d be as happy as a pig in shit. 

But no, it’s now inspiration I crave - the one thing I don’t have here, yet the one thing I need so desperately to make it as an Illustrator. The call of the big city with its rich tapestry of inputs is very tempting compared to the endlessly boring hills of the Kintyre Peninsula. 

So, to help me work through my latest dilemma of disappointment, I now try on a daily basis to live by this fabulous quote I recently read:

If the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, maybe yours needs a little more tending

Too Good To Be True?

Rent free.

Two little words that would make most people's ears prick up in view of suddenly being a whole lot richer than they are currently. It's a bit like a free bus ride, or fiddling the electric meter. It sounds good in theory, but there must be a catch, right?

Get caught dodging a bus fare, and you'll land yourself a fine. Get caught fiddling the electric company out of your hard earned sterling, and you'll land up in prison. But what is the catch with (legally) living rent free?

Rent free is what it says it is - you simply don't pay rent. And that can save you tens of thousands of pounds each year. Often, there are other perks too, like no council tax, free phone calls, and free power. We pay for the electricity we use, and for broadband, but everything else is free.

On the upside, our arrangement offers us a life without annoying neighbours, 4 other fully furnished cottages that we can (and do) use, our own large field - great for spontaneous games of football, kite flying and the like, and endless usage of the farmland on which we're located.

But probably the biggest upside is no boss on site, essentially leaving us to our own devices practically all the time. We can work when we choose, and only work one day per week, leaving the majority of time for our own endeavours.

But surely, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Living conditions clearly weren't ever going to be the Ritz, and we certainly didn't walk into this project thinking we'd be living like Lord and Lady of the Manor. But until you arrive at a property in view to a long term sit, you really have no idea what you're walking into, except for a few honest, or not so honest chats over Skype with the owners.

We've had chats twice now, with the people that own this place, and with Angelika in Italy. In both cases, the truth does seem to have somewhat been glossed over. It's not that there were blatant lies told, more that the honest and open truth wasn't quite told.

Because if the truth be known, the truth would probably put most people off.

So, expect the worse.

We didn't, and have been hugely disappointed since first arriving here almost exactly as we were in Italy - you'd think we'd have learned from our previous mistakes!

Constant dampness

Press once for washing up, twice for a shower. Ready in 30 minutes

1950's heating in the bedrooms

Gutter Gardening

All mod-cons

Last tested in 1997

Expect there to be shocking furniture and decor, poorly maintained interiors, windows that don't close, roofs that don't keep the rain out, peeling paint, damp, mould, rodents, poor equipment, and a general living condition you might not have been expecting.

Twinkle perfectly summed this place up after a couple of days of living here when she observed we were suddenly living like students. That's exactly what it's like - a student house, poorly furnished and extremely poorly maintained. Well, certainly that was the case in at least 3 of the houses I lived in whilst studying all those years ago.

But remember, the moral of this story is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Ever.

So, if you want to be your own boss, and do very little work in exchange for a roof over your head (albeit a not so dry one), and importantly, you don't mind living like a scabby student, his house sitting gig might just be right up your street.

So, Mission Accomplished?

Since departing Australia more than 3 months ago, jobless, homeless and living on our savings, we've come a very long way.

It seems like forever and a day since I resigned my post at Loop, packed up my desk, and boarded that plane, and almost just as long since I shook hands with the man who sold us the car that Rhett now loves to pretend to drive on a daily basis.

But, the question on our lips is 'are we done?'.

How long will it be before this lifestyle comes to a grinding halt, and we return to the real world?

To answer that, it's simply a case of knowing if each objective has been achieved or not, or indeed if it is achievable here in the middle of nowhere.

So, here it goes:

Spend more time together
Probably our top priority. We spend every day together, and often help each other out with tasks around the house and the workplace. We all hang the washing out together, we eat each and every meal together, we play together, anytime we want. It's a bit like being The Waltons (but with only 3 of them).
Verdict:
Mission Accomplished. Life is very short, and seeing us together like this will stay with us all forever. Working all the hours God sends for the corporate monster seems like a thing of my past currently and I truly hope to hang onto at least some of what I've had in the past 3 months if and when I return to the real world.


Be More Creative
Another core reason to do this was to engage my true inner talents and turn them into a commercial success, thus stepping away from design. Whilst I always knew becoming a full time illustrator wouldn't happen in such a short space of time, I should have a feel as to whether I'm on track to succeed or not. 
But the biggest downside here in Campbeltown is the lack of inspiration - something I probably didn't even consider before we arrived. It is truly the dullest place I've ever visited, and coupled with the lack of ability to buy materials, or sit in a cool coffee shop to get the motivation levels firing on all cylinders, the creative process is proving to be somewhat harder than I've ever experienced before. 
Verdict:
Evens. I do feel like I'm getting into the swing of my true inner self, and I do scribble more often than not, but I'm frustrated on a daily basis. Gone are the days of being able to change the surroundings to stoke the flames of creativity, and I'm totally unsure currently which train I need to board to get to where I'm going. A real worry.


Don't go broke
We entered this project with a bag of cash, and we still seem to be in the black. But with nothing to spend money on here, there is a constantly nagging voice in my ear saying 'you need a treat' - which usually leads directly to the cream cake section in Tesco's. Not good for my arteries. 
Verdict:
Mission Accomplished. I'd imagine the biggest reason people don't take a sabbatical is financial, and yet with a couple of small freelance jobs along the way, we seem to be in the same financial position we were when we started back in January. Certainly we could easily keep going if it were down to cash alone.


Take a breather
After clocking up so many hours in the real world, switching off for a decent amount of time was also a key reason for doing this. As Ferris Bueller once said - Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 
Verdict:
Well, with my last post 'The Joy Of Pottering' I think this has to be Mission Accomplished. I certainly don't currently feel the stresses and strains of life that I used to feel, and I do feel ready for the next big fix - whatever that is. Our close friend Carly said recently our that one of our biggest problems was our inability to 'relax', and I think she's right. But equally, I do seem to have become far more lazy since being here, a trait I really don't want to develop further.



Overall, the decision to take a sabbatical is one I'll never regret. It's shown me so much about how you can just give it all up and hit the road, and that when things don't go quite to plan, there's always a way. Isn't that ultimately what life is anyway?

I've learnt that you don't need huge amounts of money to keep the stress levels down, and I've also learnt just how much money I used to waste. I've learnt that children are easy if only you give them your time, and I've learnt that the most important thing in life is not work. I've learnt a huge amount, most of which I probably don't even realise yet.

I've learnt that I really do love pencils, and that I hate pens, that practice does make perfect, and that a little each day keeps you in much better shape than huge pushes followed by huge lulls. I've learnt that I like drawing people far more than animals or cars, and that I feel naked without my sketchbook or camera, even if I'm only popping into town to buy milk.

But can we continue to live like this?

Its not so much a question of 'can' - it's more 'do we want to'.

The funny thing is, I truly miss work - something I never thought I'd say. Whilst I don't miss the politics, I do miss people, and the challenges they throw up. I miss the banter, and the plastic crap all over my desk. I miss being in a city and having a home that doesn't smell of damp.

I miss much about my old life, and I'd like much of it back.

But there are also many aspects of this new life I equally don't want to lose.

Mission Accomplished? I think the mission has now changed to 'get the perfect balance'. We never had it in London, nor in Sydney, and we sure as hell don't have it here. Finding it might prove mission impossible, but I think its ultimately the next big fix.