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.