Susan's Changing The World slides

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Who Wants to be the Alpha Male? Not Me!

Hiker Cafe, Hengistbury Head

Last Friday Susan went for a windy walk down in Dorset, and I, not being as spry as I once was, stayed in the Happy Hiker cafe talking to my new friend, Pat.  I enjoyed the talk, and I especially enjoyed it being one-to-one: I tend to go silent in a group when the numbers get to four or above (unless I'm the group facilitator).

Dwayne Johnson, my alter ego

I was talking about how I relate to a group that I'm a member of and Pat asked me whether I was competing to be the Alpha male of the group, and I protested that that was the last thing I wanted to be.

But it got me thinking.  I'm 6'4" and about 22 stones (1.93 m, 136 kg, 300 lbs).  I'm white, male, reasonably well spoken, middle class, reasonably intelligent, reasonably well educated.

I have noticed in the past that many people seem to automatically assume that in any group I'll either be the alpha male, or will compete to gain that role.  And that is absolutely not me.  I neither relate to the role, nor do I want the role, and nor do I relate to typical alpha males in popular culture (although if some maleficent witch insisted in waving a wand and transforming me, I'd chose Dwayne Johnson, because he's always seemed like a really nice guy).

Tyson Fury, Heavyweight Champion

Jacinda Ardern - Soft Power

I'm writing this on Sunday 23rd February and it's interesting that there are two pieces of relevant news this morning.  One is that Tyson Fury won the world heavyweight boxing championship yesterday, and the other is that New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is featured on the latest cover of Time Magazine, with an article about "Soft Power".
I did read a few paragraphs of the Tyson Fury story, because I'm curious, but I read the Jacinda article in Time magazine all the way through, because she's a real hero of mine, whereas I couldn't care less about Tyson Fury (or any other "sporting hero" if it comes to that!)

In the Time article author Belinda Luscombe writes:

"Ardern’s real gift is her ability to articulate a form of leadership that embodies strength and sanity, while also pushing an agenda of compassion and community”, (she) has “infused New Zealand with a new kind of soft power” and doesn’t have to request meetings with world leaders anymore, they are now lining up to be associated with her."

She's my kinda gal!  The article is a long read, but really worth it.

On the way home from Dorset I was talking about this with Susan and she asked why I don't want to be the alpha male.  After all, she said, if I had that sort of power in a group it would be easier to pursue my agenda and get things done ... the sort of things that I want to get done.  It was an interesting question, because Pat had seen through me enough to get me talking about the sort of things that I write about in this blog and said that it seemed to her that I had a passion about these things, and wouldn't I want to see them come to fruition?

I found that very interesting, because I've pretty much withdrawn from the group, apart from having coffee with people and writing this blog, precisely because it is complete anathema to me to get involved in the sort of peacock posturing that "real men" seem to enjoy.

Susan still wasn't convinced, and I suddenly remembered something that happened years ago, back in the days when I was very involved in co-counselling (both as a practitioner and as a facilitator).  It was a meeting of our local co-counselling community, the first meeting following the end of a course I had facilitated, and some new co-counsellors had joined our community.  We were sitting around, chatting about this and that, and one of the new members, a woman in her mid-forties, came up with an idea and said, "somebody ought to ..." (I forget what her suggestion was).  We all sat silent and after a few minutes something seemed to pass across her face, her eyes lit up and she looked round the circle.  "Oh!" she said, "I suppose I could make that happen".  It's moments like that that I live for, and that's why I don't want to be a steam-rollering Alpha Male, all out for power and glory ... but ...

Surprising alpha males

... at that point in writing this I went searching on the Internet for a picture of, say, a silver-back gorilla as a prime example of the alpha male, and I stumbled upon this totally fascinating TEDMED talk by Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist who knows more than a little about Alpha males (and females).  I heartily recommend spending 15 minutes enjoying this video.  I learned an awful lot!  By the end you will understand why I might choose Dwayne Johnson as my alpha male role model, and why, maybe, I wouldn't mind being a true alpha male after all (I still don't think it's a role I'm cut out for).

I think that Jacinda Adern embodies all the positive traits of alpha females and males that de Waal discusses in his talk.

So, where does that get us?  Well, when I got home on Friday this Quora question was waiting in my inbox.  Ordinarily I'd just dismiss that as a silly question, or answer it in a very sarcastic way.  But it seemed germane to what was going on for me just then.  Was I shooting for global domination, and if not, why didn't it matter?  I think this post so far has already answered that.  Had I answered this Quora question I think I would have said, "because we have finally grown up" (although recent UK political shenanigans give that the lie).

I think in future, when confronted with some sort of question about how I might behave in a group, I might use a new meme of mine:

What would Jacinda Do?

I think my next blog post might be about the work of Dr Meredith Belbin on "Team Roles".  Watch this space!

Stuck with some computery thing? Look no further!

Computers are complicated things, and I know whereof I speak.  I first had a job working with computers when I was 18 and I'm 72 now.  I worked for IBM for 20+ years, ran my own IT company for 10 years, I have an M.Phil degree and professional qualifications in this stuff ... and I still frequently sit in front of my laptop mystified.  I also worked in the field of computer usability for many years, so I know just how unusable many computer things are.

So let's say that you need help, and you call me on the phone--you figure that with all my experience and qualifications I must be able to help.

But there's a problem.  These days there are so many ways of setting up your computer that when I tell you to look at the top right of your screen for the button to click, or the box to type in, because that's where it is on my screen, we may be way off, because on your screen it's probably down left, or not on the screen at all.

In frustration you suggest unplugging the whole thing and bringing it round to my house, but who knows whether it will do the same thing in my house?  Besides, I haven't got out of bed yet: I'm working in my pajamas from my bedroom!  We need a way where I can look over your shoulder and see what you are seeing.  Maybe even waggle your mouse and type on your keyboard.  Or where you can look over my shoulder and watch me demonstrate how to do it on my computer, while saving on both blushes and travel costs.

And there is an answer--it's called Teamviewer and it does everything I just said.  And it's free.  And it works on PC, Mac, and iOS (I just downloaded it to my iPad, but haven't learned to use it there yet!)

It's a good idea to get TeamViewer on your computer before you need it: you don't want to hve to learn TeamViewer at the same you're struggling with something else.

How to Get Team Viewer

Here we go.  Go you your web browser and enter

www.teamviewer.com


and hit enter ...






and when this screen appears, click the

Download for free 

button as shown here.







When it's finished downloading you should see this at the bottom left of your screen.

I'm very slightly nervous as I type this because I can think of some very rare cases when this DOESN'T appear ... if this happens for you, call me, we'll fix it, and update this blogpost!

Double-click that, and fairly quickly you should see ...



... this box appear.

Make sure the "Personal / Non-commercial Use"
thing is clicked (that's what keeps it free to use)







and click the Accept / Finish button.





Hey presto and TeamViewer is installed.

Now click the Sign In button.

It will take you through all the normal nonsense of typing in your email address, making up a password (at least 6 character, upper and lower case, and some numbers) and then going to your email and confirming by clicking a link in the email they send you, and then confirming something else (I forget what!)

Using TeamViewer

From now on using TeamViewer is pretty straightforward ... you have one simple decision to make.

We are about to link our two computers together, and there are two possibilities.

1. You want to control my computer, so that you can demonstrate something.
2. You want me to control your computer, so that I can demonstrate, or complete the task for you.

First thing to do is to establish person-to-person communication with me--phone me, message me, WhatsApp me, email me--whatever is your thing (or if you're Susan maybe shout up the stairs).

If you want me to control your computer (so I can see what you're doing, poke around, have a look at things, show you how to do it) you send me your ID and password.

Note that every time you use TeamViewer you will have a different ID and password, so I can't take over your computer without you knowing.

If, on the other hand, you want to take over my computer, you ask me for my ID and password.  You type my ID in the box on the right, and type in my password when asked for.

How to Actually Use TeamViewer

Establish Communication

So, it's installed, you've created a userid and signed in: we're all ready to go, and you've got a problem with which you'd like help ... or, someone else is asking for your help.  You don't need to be a great computer whizz to help someone out, just be someone who knows how to do something that someone else doesn't know how to do.  In fact, those who are just one step ahead are usually better at helping than those who have been doing it for years.  But that's another story.  Here's what to do.

1. Find your helper
2. Establish communication with them, via phone, WhatsApp, text message, e-mail, using two tin cans joined together with string, carrier pigeon.
3. Both of you start Teamviewer.  If you have a screen like the last one above, which shows Ids and a password, you're all set.  But if you have a screen like the one on the right, click the place on the left that says "Remote Control".
4. Now you're both looking at the same screen.  You both have Ids, and one of you can see your password.
5. Decide who is going to take control.  Usually that will be the helper.  To make this easier, I'm going to describe what happened when Susan and I tested this out.  I was the helper, Susan was the person being helped.  Susan told me her Id and I typed it in in the Partner Id box under Control Remote Computer.  I then hit the big blue CONNECT button and it asked me for Susan's password.  Hey presto, we were connected.

I captured this from the screen of my computer, but the desktop we are seeing is Susan's desktop.  My mouse moves her mouse pointer, and if I (say) open a file and type, my keyboard types on her computer.  If I save a file--it saves on her computer.  And she can watch it all happening.  When we did this just now we were sitting next to each other on the sofa, but if you're in different places it can seem sort of spooky, sitting there watching things happen on your own computer screen.

It sounds pretty high-powered, but its actually very straightforward.  Give it a try with someone in the family (if you've got two computers in your house).

TeamViewer Meetings

These are rather like Zoom or Google Hangouts, but are great if one person wants to run a training session for several people.  Let's say that there have been several people who have joined recently, and someone wants to show them how Google Drive works.  Instead of  clicking the Remote Control button, as above, you click the Meeting button.  The next steps are fairly obvious as you invite people into the meeting (TeamViewer will give you some stuff to send them, probably via email), that looks like this:

Hello,
Please join the video call, by clicking on this link:
https://go.teamviewer.com/v14/m97399799
Meeting ID: m973-997-99

Regards,
James Hardiman

www.teamviewer.com - Easy online meeting & screen sharing

They just click on the https line, and you're in a video call together.

This box appeared when Susan and I were in a meeting together and I had clicked the "Share my Screen" button, which meant that everyone in the meeting could see my screen, and I could demonstrate to everyone.  I had control of everyone's microphones (to stop the strange "feedback" effect).

You can also use TeamViewer to transfer files, if you've tried something that didn't do what you expected (perhaps you were trying to make a spreadsheet that isn't doing what you want).

That's it, I think.  I think that this can be a brilliant technology for educating everyone about the technology they need to be active in the community.

One last thing ...

Recording a TeamViewer Session

Imagine that you have something that you will need to teach people over and over again ... for instance, every time that a group of new people join up, you need to teach them several things.  So you teach one person ... and you record the session, and then upload it to YouTube.  Henceforth you don't need to worry newcomers about TeamViewer--you can just send them the link to the YouTube video.

How you do this is just a little bit techy, so I won't document it here, but if you want to do it, just ask, and I'll show you how.

In true Blue Peter fashion, here's one I prepared earlier.  It's me showing Susan how to use Notepad to create a txt file that I saved to her desktop.

(Note: there's no sound on this video--I think that's something we can fix.)

Sustainable, Regenerative, Circular, and all that. Part 1, the Land

There are a lot of buzz words that float around the ecological blogosphere and I'm sure that we all relate to them one way and another, if we have time to think them through.

Probably the grand-daddy of all these terms is "sustainable".  The implication of something being sustainable is that we could go on doing it forever, without running out of anything.

Here is a great hero of mine, Rebecca Hosking talking about a project that's  key to her heart, PlasticTides.  Rebecca realised that our use of plastics was not sustainable.  We were producing more and more plastics, we use them for just a few minutes, they last in the environment for thousands of years, and they are made from a finite resource.  This isn't sustainable, and she started a small project in her local town to persuade people to start cutting out plastic.

And quite a few years ago Rebecca realised that they way we produce food on our planet (well, in the western world) wasn't sustainable, not least because it relied heavily of fossil fuels (oil).

She made a video about that (A Farm for the Future), which is well worth watching (over and over, in my not-very-humble opinion).

She not only makes a case for the non-sustainability of current farming practices, but also introduces a number of people who are farming and gardening in ways that seem to be eminently sustainable.




This video still brings tears to my eyes when I watch it!  It also introduces some other heroes of mine, Charlotte and Ben Hollins of Fordhall Farm in Shropshire.  I'll be writing much more about them later on!

A Farm for the Future from Kromwell Gardens on Vimeo.

Read about the UN's SDGs

So important is the idea of sustainability that everyone and his granny is jumping on the sustainable bandwagon.

If you Google "Sustainable", and look at all the logos, you can see that you can have sustainable just about anything.  Even the United Nations has published the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Which is excellent, and much to be lauded.

But is it enough?

Is Sustainable Sufficient?

No, I believe not.  The thing is, Sustainable implies not making things worse.  But what happens if we've already gone too far beyond sustainable?  What happens if there's not enough oil?  If we have depleted the fertility in the soil to far?  What happens if the oceans contain too much plastic?  Or the atmosphere contains too much carbon dioxide?

If our planet is dying, then we don't want to sustain that position, we need to start doing something that is remediative.  And that brings us to the idea of Regeneration.

I was first introduced to the ideas of regeneration through the work of Allan Savory.  If you haven't watched his TED talk, then you need to do so immediately(!).  It's called "How to Green the World's Deserts and Reverse Desertification".  If that title doesn't turn you on then maybe this project isn't for you!

That's sort of where it all began, but the ideas of Regenerative Agriculture have really taken off, and not just in huge cattle stations in Australia (but a lot of really advanced--and I don't mean industrial--developments are happening down under.  As you watch this next video, look out for where you can see a fence that divides a farm where they are practising regen ag, and where they aren't.  It's there in the colour of the landscape, and the trees (or lack of them).  And towards the end of the video they say what we urban or semi-urban dwellers can do.  But local and use these ideas in our back gardens, too.

I've more to say on this subject.  Later additions to this post will include links to farms in the UK doing this stuff, how this relates to organic, bio-dynamic and so on, and the local food movement.

For instance, if you're a vegetarian you may feel that you can buy some lettuce from a supermarket, or even a green grocer on the high street with a clear conscience.  But did you know that most of the salad stuff that we eat in the UK comes from Almeria in Southern Spain.  On that map, above left, all that white is plastic greenhouses.  And they are staffed by slave labour from sub-Saharan Africa.  People who arrive in rickety boats to escape war and famine, but who then live in appalling conditions, work for a pittance, and have no chance of ever getting home.

Spain's 'Sea of Plastic': Where Europe gets its produce, migrants get exploited

Oh, and, those lettuces, once picked and packed, face a 1400-mile journey in a refrigerated lorry, at an enormous cost in diesel, before they reach the shop where you buy them.  I suggest that this isn't sustainable!

But more of that later.

In part 2 of this blog post, I want to talk about recycling, the Circular Economy, the Restart Project, and Buildings as Material Banks.

Saving the Planet, One Community at a Time

Recently I wrote about my two key design principles:

• Achieving the lowest possible cost of living, along with the highest standard of living (and being environmentally and emotionally comfortable).
• Saving the Planet.

My last blog was about cost of living, so now we're on to my other key design principle: saving the planet.

I’m assuming that anyone who is interested in this project falls, more or less, into the “progressive, green, environmental” camp, rather than the “climate-change denying, nuke-the-bloody-whales” camp.

But even in the "green camp" there are quite a range of options. I suspect that Susan and I might fall towards one end of some scale: we have solar PV, a solar battery, all our light bulbs are LEDs (our electricity costs with 4 people in our house are less than £20/month). We have insulated walls and roof, we have 12 rainwater barrels, we grow vegetables, we keep chickens and have already ordered our bee-box. And of course we recycle: most vegetable matter is recycled via our chickens.

I could go on (and on!).

The Principles of Permaculture

A few years ago we went on an expedition round the UK to visit communities, permaculture gardens, regenerative farms, all sorts—and our journey took us to the Lake District where a lovely friend of ours offered to put us up while we were there.

On our first evening we sat in her lovely kitchen, chatting while she prepared a meal for us—and we were silently horrified as she prepared the vegetables and threw the detritus into the general rubbish. It turns out that she doesn’t even have a compost bin: shock, horror!

But then, why would she? She doesn’t really do any gardening. Her house is rented and has a small strip of grass between the house and the boundary. She hasn’t done any of the things that we have done (it’s not her house)—the focus of her interests lie elsewhere (she runs her own business as a business coach).

Tips for Living Green

I suddenly realised, sitting there, that there are are thousands of people who would be green, or more green, if it was more convenient.

And that’s my second focus. I don’t care if you want solar PV, or to be connected to a micro grid, or an energy efficient house,

I want it to be that, simply by living in our “village” you’ll be living a green existence, whether you want to or not.

We will have an efficient energy system, efficient waste disposal, water recycling, good transport. If your interests focus on “ecological stuff” as do Susan’s and mine, then fine: join in. But if you want to focus on your web-design business, or your coaching consultancy, or your horological interests—do that, knowing that all the green stuff is taken care of.

And now on to the third leg of my two leg argument: the rest of the world.

The Centre for Alternative Technology

Have you ever visited the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth in North Wales?

I’ve been going there for so long that I can not only pronounce Machynlleth, but I can also spell it without looking it up! It’s a great place for learning about straw-bale construction, Walter Segal houses, and all sorts of interesting ideas, and if you have leading-edge interest in all this stuff it’s a great place to visit.

But when you’re there (especially during the summer holiday season) keep an eye on the other visitors who are there, who have dropped in as one of the highlights of the North Wales tourist trail. Take a wild guess as to how many of these people will change any part of their behaviour, even by the smallest jot, as a result of their visit to the CAT. Not many is my estimate.

We in NFCH can build our village in such a way that we embody the latest “green everything” and know we’re doing out best, and yet our efforts will not delay the climate Armageddon by as much as 30 seconds.

What I want is a village that looks as near to a "normal" housing development as possible (except that it should be harmonious and comfortable) . I don’t want to give people even the slightest possibility that they can look at what we do and say, “that’s all very well, but it’s not for me”. I want them to say, “that looks nice, I could see me living there”, and then we tell them what a house in a village like ours would cost. What the rent or mortgage payment would be, what the lifestyle would be, and have them clamouring for something similar. 

Only when all the Mr and Mrs Ordinarys clamour for what we do will things change. At the moment there are thousands, probably millions, who would live a more ecological, sustainable, regenerative life, if only it wasn’t so difficult. And boring. I want to show people how easy it would be.

But, I believe, that means, for instance, no straw-bale houses. You can totally snow me with all the advantages of straw-bale houses: I know them all already, probably more than you, but I can just hear Mr and Mrs Ordinary’s response to the idea that they should live in a house of straw. They can already hear the big bad wolf huffing and puffing.

Whereas Beattie Passive can build their PassivHaus standard houses to any design our architect can come up with, with or without our actively putting in sweat equity, and have already completed and have people living in close to 300 dwellings. And those houses have a close to zero heating cost, are easy and cheap to build, and look like whatever you want.

So the purpose of this whole blog is to explain which of the things I've encountered over the years are most likely to lead to housing that many people want, and will positively contribute to saving the planet.

I've got a lot more to say in the building technologies post, including what makes a Passiv Haus, and why you would want one.

Building Technologies

Precisely how we build our buildings is a very important subject, and I will say a lot more here, including why Wikihouse didn't work, and why the technology that I want to champion is Beattie Passive.

The National Self Build and Reconstruction Centre

There is a whole movement, both around the world, and here in the UK, to support "self build".  Self build encompasses everything from people learning all the building trades, grabbing a trowel and starting to lay bricks, up to people deciding what they want, but employing professionals to build it for them, and everything in between.  If you're even remotely interested in taking some control of your dwelling I can't recommend highly enough a visit to the National Self-Build and Reconstruction Centre (NSBRC) right by J14 of the M4.  And it's free (as are most of the NSBRC training events) provided you book online at least 24 hours in advance.

Just how woke do we want to be?

I heard a rumour today that one of our members got their wrist slapped for being racist.  I personally know both the slapper and the slappee and even the reporter.  All three are lovely people and I know that the accused is probably as shocked to be called out as the caller-outer is to have to do it.

For me this raises a whole host of questions about what we stand for, what we allow, and what we deprecate.  So, being somewhat opinionated I thought I might throw in my three-pennorth.

Should we let Muslims join our community?  Obviously, yes!

The sinner, in this case, was heard to mention (as I later heard it) the words "Muslim" and "terrorist" if not exactly in the same sentence, at least close enough.  That is bound to step on some people's toes, even if they're not Muslim.

This raises the question of whether we would want to let Muslims join our community ... and the answer, obviously, is yes, because to ban them would be racist, hurtful to them, and almost definitely illegal, not to mention losing us the the opportunity to widen our own horizons.

Personally I don't particularly hold with any religion (if I come across the question on a form I usually put "Taoist", but mostly because I know it will just confuse them).  Actually, I'm Jewish by birth (my mother was Jewish) but was Christened as a baby (I'm still angry that they didn't ask me first) and have some very good friends who are Sikhs.  I'm probably closer to being a secular Humanist with more than a touch of Huxley's "Perennial Philosophy" than anything else (I have a very good American friend who is a secular humanist who studies the Kabbalah).  And there are any number of very orthodox Jews who are involved in the Three Principles community, which is important to me.  They all enrich my life.

The word "fundamentalist" was raised at the same time as "terrorist" and I think it's a huge mistake to confuse these two terms.  My orthodox Jewish friends could be described as Fundamentalist, as could the Amish in Pennsylvania, or any of the Christian brethren sects (we used to have a brethren family living next door: they were excellent neighbours--very quiet and thoughtful).  But none of these are terrorists, by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact I find them all significantly less frightening than Vegans--but that's a story for later on.

In the USA statistics show that you're far more likely to come to harm at the hands of a Christian terrorist than a Muslim one, but the Christians would probably argue that the terrorists aren't really Christians.  I'm not a student of the Quran but I think that the Prophet  (عَلَيْهِ ٱلسَّلَامُ) wouldn't be happy with the activities of the terrorists, either.

In fact I would propose that if this next picture makes you smile, then you're welcome in our co-housing project, whatever your religion or philosophy, provided you're happy to let everyone else believe whatever they want.

What do we Tolerate?

Which raises the question of what we do tolerate and of what are we intolerant?  Where do we stand on smoking, drugs, drunkenness, violence, dietary choices, religious observances, sexual choices, gender tolerances, strange haircuts?

Karl Popper, one of my favourite philosophers (how much of a name-dropper does that make me?) said:

• If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them

Popper argues for the creation of a tolerant society, but not affording that tolerance to those who are themselves intolerant.  And I think that that idea is all we really need.  We needn't label anyone as a terrorist: we merely note whether any group to which we offer tolerance also offers that to others.  If your Muslim family is happy to live amongst Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Humanists, or people who tick "none of the above" then you're welcome.  If you feel the need to convert others, then we start to be suspicious.  If you start to get at all pushy about that, then you're probably on your way out.

How about smoking, drunkenness, drugs, etc?  Well, I think UK law pretty much takes care of that.  You should be allowed to do what you want as long as it doesn't inconvenience others.  Personally I don't smoke (I stopped in 1974) and really dislike smoking, but if you observe  "No smoking in public spaces", including outdoor public spaces, then I guess what you do at home is no business of mine.  And the same for drunkenness (which doesn't include a glass or two of wine or beer, or a gin and tonic at a community dinner).  As for recreational drug use; well, I don't personally care what you do in your own home, but I'd be mightily pissed off if we were raided by the police.  So definitely no dealing!

How about dietary choices?  Well, I class myself as an Ethical Omnivore and of all the groups in the world of which I am intolerant (downright bigoted!) Vegans come top of my list.  Never mind our community, I'd have them all rounded up and sent to St Helena!

But if I'm true to my Popperian philosophy I guess I'll just have to tolerate them--provided they respect my beliefs, too.  No letting the chickens out of the hen run, or "liberating" the worms from the wormery!!

So, in summary, I suggest:

• smoking: not in public places
• drugs: keep it legal
• drunkenness: keep it legal, and not disturbing others
• violence: no.  Just no.
• dietary choices: yours are up to you, mine are up to me.
• religious observances: just keep the noise down!
• sexual choices: keep it under the duvet.
• gender tolerances: is this even a question?
• strange haircuts: Ah!  There's a whole separate blog post!
• Politics, ecology, green stuff: now that really will need a another post!

Standard NFCH Hairstyle?

Low Cost of Living and High Standard of Living: My Dad's Onyx Art-Deco clock

When I thought back over my interest in co-operative living I realised several things. Firstly, I have been thinking about and studying different forms of living since the late 1960s: well over 50 years.

And that interest has followed me around a number of communities spread over many different situations (like old manor houses, groups of tents deep in the woods, converted cow sheds, straw-bale constructions in the mountains, new-age constructions with Trombe walls in the Catskills—you name it, I’ve probably long-since sent the T-shirt to Oxfam).

And along the way I have had a number of epiphanies that have led me to investigate all sorts of aspects, from the politics and sociology, to the geography, town-planning, ecology, building science, physics of heat transfer, economics—again, name a subject area and, somewhere in a box in the attic, I probably have a notebook full of jottings, or designs stashed on a hard-drive, or lists of experts whose brains I have mined.

The results of all this is that I have developed two key design goals that really drive me. One is to enable people with very specialised interests and skill sets to make a living, where they probably can’t now, and the other is to save the planet. So, no pressure there then.

Let me give you an example of how this often plays out. Susan has compiled a list of subject areas that we might put on a questionnaire to find out what things are important to people. Well, this is yet another area where I’m a bit of a know-it-all—it’s what I researched for my M.Phil. in Knowledge Engineering. So I rather foolishly said that that wouldn’t be how I would do it. “So, smarty-pants”, she might have said, “why not?”

Well, on this putative questionnaire there might be a question with a sliding scale about how much you’re willing or able to pay for your NFCH dwelling, from 1=Cheap as chips, through to 7=I’m rolling in cash and want total luxury.

If the questionnaire gets really sophisticated there might be an attached question—How important is this to you, 1=I really don’t give two hoots, 7=It’s of vital importance.

So, presented with this questionnaire, I might put “cheap as chips” and “vital”. And you might think I’d put that because either I’m broke, or because I’m a tight-wad, or both. But it isn’t. It’s because of my dad’s onyx art-deco style mantelpiece clock that’s stopped working.

And I’d be a bit irritated (as I often am by questionnaires) by the fact that it hadn’t actually asked me the question that’s really important to me (how important is it that living in the community lowers everyone’s overall cost of living?) and hadn’t uncovered why that question is important and what it has to do with my dad’s onyx art-deco clock.

It’s because one of the effects of the way our economy and lives are structured today is that, in order to survive, there’s a minimum hourly rate we all need to earn, just to survive. Add together housing costs, utility costs, transport costs, food costs, clothing costs, etc etc, and divide by the number of hours you’re prepared to work and you arrive at the minimum hourly rate you need to survive.

And then, if you’re a clock repair person with a small shop in a local town, you have to add rent, utilities for the shop, etc., and you have to be charging £50/hour for your services.

So when presented with my dad’s non-functioning clock, and you know from your professional experience that it’s probably going to take you six hours to fix it (factoring in your commuting time to get from home to work each day) you know you’re going to have to charge £300, and you know the clock’s only worth £100, so your answer is “chuck it in the bin”.

But if you lived in NFCH and that whole project was designed to lower your total cost of living: not just housing costs, but utilities costs (microgrid and solar), food costs (horticulture and agriculture), transport costs (your workshop is just a few steps from your home), and, on top of that, there are other people who want to learn from you and become apprentices, and would be happy to work on that clock, under your tutelage, for peanuts, then the clock doesn’t get thrown in the bin, it gets repaired and recycled, and a great deal of satisfaction is felt by all concerned.

And this is true of so many small businesses possibilities: good ideas for which we can’t make a business case because the person concerned needs to make a living, and that living makes their products or services too expensive.

Going back to that questionnaire—I wouldn’t start with a questionnaire, I’d start with a series of very open interviews, with as little structure as possible, to unearth as many strange ideas like this as possible, before sieving all those interviews and using the results to come up with the questionnaire. Questions often produce “closed results” whereas chatty interviews tend to produce open results. And if you do two rounds, where people get to read each other’s interviews, very often it opens up even more, as people go “Oh! I never thought of that”, and produce even more interesting stuff. And we start thinking about such things as “how can we structure the community to make Basia’s doula business work better?”, or “could we all benefit if the community could, in some way, facilitate Lisa’s craft-work hobby?”

It would produce a different sort of community.

How About a Community of Communities?

I think that Jeremy is heading towards making a problem for us!  But worry not, I may have come up with a solution.

We are being just too successful with our marketing, albeit we're working with a small budget

Look how many people have joined the Facebook Group.

That's quite a lot for a co-housing community with 30 dwellings!

But if you think that's a lot, look how many have registered their interest on the Facebook Page!

Of course, these aren't paid-up shareholders.  We've only got about 60 of those.

Clearly there's a demand out there that we may not be able to fulfill.


Now some people are hanging on tight to their £50 until they've got an iron-clad guarantee that they will get a house.  Others have divvied up, just to be able to be involved, even though they don't actually want to move in.  But, I suspect, that leaves a considerable number who would put their hands in the pockets for the £50, if only actually getting a dwelling didn't look like such a distant prospect.

So here's my thought.

What About a Community of Communities?

There's a huge amount of work to be done to set up one New Forest Co-housing Community (and quite a lot of expense).  But a lot of that work would be reusable if there were a second (third, fourth) community.

At present there are people who want to live in Bransgore, Hordle, Woodlands, etc.  Instead of squabbling, how about we have more than one community?  The legal work will probably be the same, the establishing of the infrastructure (sociocracy, Loomio, etc) will be the same (just change the name for each community).  All would be interfacing with the same planning authority.  The Communities Circle work would probably be very similar.  Each community would just copy the work so far, tweak the details--job done.

This way we can collect more fifty quids with a clear conscience, have more people to do the work, have a greater range of choices.

What do you think?  You could put comments below, and if the idea gets that far it cold be sent for consideration to a circle (which one?)

Are we living comfortably yet? Some thoughts for the New Forest Co-housing Community

I have been thinking about the word “comfortable” recently. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but I think living in an exciting community might be too exhausting. Instead, I’m going to suggest that we build two sorts of “comfortable” into our project: environmental comfort and social comfort.

My guru of environmental comfort is the architect Professor Christopher Alexander. To give you some hints about him, here’s a quote from The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth:

“The purpose of all architecture … is to provide opportunities for life-giving situations. The central … purpose is to … provide encouragement and support for life-giving comfort and profound satisfaction … so that one experiences life as worth living.”

If you would like to experience how it feels to be in a building built with this philosophy in mind, visit West Dean Gardens, just outside Chichester, and sit in the visitor centre. When I first went there my initial thought was “this doesn’t feel very architectural”.

But that’s the point. It fits perfectly into its surroundings, and when I sit inside I feel perfectly comfortable (except for my bum: Alexander had no part in designing the cushions for the wooden chairs!) Certainly when I’m at West Dean Gardens I experience life as worth living. Alexander’s ideas help us to design all our spaces, from rooms, to buildings to the overall site, to provide encouragement and support for life-giving comfort.

But today I want to talk more about social comfort.

I’m a bit of a complicated character with a life story that’s too long to go into. Don’t encourage me, I’m likely to go on forever! Recently I have felt uncomfortable in NFCH: not the fault of anyone, just my own “stuff”. As a result I felt the need to withdraw to reduce my level of discomfort.

Several interesting things happened. The first was that I became aware of other people experiencing discomfort (not for the same reasons as me). I also experienced various people offering comfort and support (with varying degrees of success).

And, coincidentally Susan and I were attending (via Zoom link) a retreat that was taking place 5000 miles away in the very top-left corner of the USA, just inside the Canadian border. It was a strange experience: we were sitting on our sofa in Eastleigh, with the laptop on the coffee table, and there were these lovely people speaking words of wisdom. Odd, but very comforting.

It reminded me of the days when I used to teach Co-counselling. Co-co was (is) a form of self-help emotional support where you attend a course to learn the skills and the culture and then subsequently you join a co-counselling community (not a physical community, like NFCH, but a local, national or world-wide community of co-counsellors) and can always find someone to work with, and/or be with, without it feeling like a culture shock. Once trained as a co-counsellor you can always find social comfort in group of other co-counsellors.

I recently realised that I can divide co-counselling into two pieces: the psychological part and the social part. These days I have many disagreements with the psychological part, but the social part I now see is highly relevant to our current endeavour.

Back in the day the Winchester co-counselling community used to suspend meetings in the summer (everyone was away on holiday) and I can still remember that first meeting in September, being back in the group, with a heart-felt “ahhh”. Like sinking into a warm bath. The culture that we had built for our group—our community—was profoundly comfortable.

I want more of that, and so I would like to offer NFCH a one-day course on culture setting. I propose to call it “Are we comfortable yet?” It will be highly experiential—no Power-points, no handouts, no manuals, no “propositional knowledge”. Hopefully, it will be fun (you can never predict these things). There will be lots of exercises and some games. Sometimes you may not be able to tell which is which. We will ask participants to wear loose, comfortable clothing, and to bring food to share at lunchtime. There will be no guidance or rules about what food you bring. If quinoa salad is your thing, fine, and if you want to bring a bucket of KFC, also fine.

I propose that the workshop is free to all attendees, and there is also a “tip bucket”. People will be asked to contribute as much as they can afford to cover the cost of the venue, drinks, and expenses.

My ideal number of attendees is 12, simply because it’s the best number if you have small-group work (you can have groups of 2, 3, 4, 6). It is usually my luck that if I aim for 12 I get 11 or 13: the prime numbers either side! The biggest group I ever ran was 72, which took a big room, some nimble planning-on-the-fly on my part, and a resolution not to do that again! I have run these groups for the universities of Surrey, Southampton, and Bath, various GP surgeries, and many private groups.

We could run this on either a Saturday or a Sunday (or both if the demand is high enough). 

To register interest for the course, please click this link.