As it says on the tin, this is about my adventures and misadventures (for there will be many of both) on and around a 'co-housing community' where I live.
If you're interested in finding one or many to visit, there are loads of 'intentional communities' of all shapes and sizes, Diggers and Dreamers is great for listing Bristish ones. The place I'm at, Trelay, is in North Cornwall and is quite unusual in being a kind of hamlet with surrounding land; and unique, as far as we know, in its 'mutual home ownership' model.
My partner Marie and I moved to Trelay in October 2012. Although I'll increasingly become less of a new boy, I hope to give a fresh perspective on the kind of things we get up to. I'd love this blog to be of interest to all sorts of people - friends and family, neighbours, and others considering communities in general. Also to people specifically considering Trelay as a potential place to live in, either as a short(ish) term volunteer, or as a longer term resident/investor.
Clearly in any community - family, village, national, intergalactic, or co-housing - there are challenges of personal dynamics, communication breakdowns, frustrations and so on. I'll tend not to write about these kind of issues, as however objective and non-judgemental I might like to think I am, I could very possibly cause distress to people and the evolving situation which might not be helpful! I don't want this to be a place for me to vent; but nor do I want to give the false impression that things are permanently enthused, joyful, perfect! That would be patently untrue, horribly smug, and as unattractive and depressing as being bombarded by someone's endless stream of Facebook holidays and parties. It's not real, and would actually lack true richness or positive challenge (I write this on a good day!)
All that said, Trelay's generally an amazing place - beautiful, well situated, and comprising a great array of lovely people with different backgrounds and interests, who have both already done brilliant things, and have the potential to do loads more with the place. I feel really privileged to be living here, and am very glad we've made this lifestyle leap. Some of our background and the reasons why we leapt are in the Introduction post; other reasons will hopefully be apparent in other virtual scrawls.
I truly hope not to go on too much, or sound sanctimonious about anything relating to climate change or sustainability, or state the obvious. Have never tried writing something kind of personal to an unknown audience - so I'm learnin.. If you can't bear the text, and/or want to see larger photos, you can click on a photo and then just scroll through them.
If any said scrawls have prompted interest or questions, please write a comment and I'll certainly respond; alternatively if you'd like to have a chat about any of it, including coming to visit (we have interest weekends for potential residents), please feel free to get in touch - 07980 509003 or chriskeppie@gmail.com
If you'd like to subscribe for 'RSS feed', please copy the following into the box where you type in website addresses (sorry, can't remember technical name!) - http://chrisattrelay.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default - and you should get links each time I put on a new post.
(The background photo, by the way, was just one of many I took on my first walk to the sea, along the lane from Trelay. I'd not been very well before we moved, and gobbling blackberries really helped me make it back up the hills! I later loved the imagery of nature's delicious delights appearing out of the prickly brambles. I'm not sure if it's distracting from the posts though, or just looks rubbish.. Please let me know if so! Cheers, Chris)
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