Mark Hewitt's Blog

Last month I moved into a surprisingly nice, quirky little faux-Tudor house courtesy of the Housing Benefit folks, and much of the last few weeks has been taken up with getting the place in order. It's almost all in order now; I have a good-sized bedroom which is now my office, courtesy of a Freecycled desk, three cheap magnetic whiteboards and two sets of bookshelves, a small but perfectly formed kitchen with actual gas burners (so much better than electric), and a big living-room with a sofa, a huge bay window and many piles of books (to be remedied tomorrow, hopefully, with more bookshelves).

The best feature of the place is the ridiculously large garden, with a huge tree at the end. I've been working on it today, fighting an epic battle with the weeds which have infested the neat little triangular bed near my front door, in preparation for getting some herbs in there. Pretty much the entire bed consists of roots at this point. I've started my first compost heap under a tarpaulin at the top of the garden, and I had a stab at mowing the lawn but it was too wet and just left a scarred swathe. Give it a couple more days. I'm finding the gardening surprisingly satisfying.

Having my own space again has lifted my spirits and cleared my head enormously, and I've laid down good solid plans for where I go from here. The novel has had to go on the back burner yet again, while I hammer on the stuff that's actually going to (hopefully) pay my bills. I have a ten-point plan for the things I want to get into - pushing back into web design, home computer support, paid article writing and editing, and some other projects which I'll talk about once they're a little further along.

I still haven't been able to pin down a job. Money's tight but just about workable - I finally got all my bills figured into my monthly budget, and I can scrape along on benefit for a while. But having my own place has given me a new craving to be genuinely self-supporting and really feel like the place is mine, and my hopes are riding on some of these business ideas taking off, despite the depressed market. When that stuff starts to get me down, I can sit in my big bay window with a cup of green tea, look out at my garden, and feel better. Seems like hope isn't too far away.

Labels: Bay window, Compost, Garden, Home, Home and Garden, Housing Benefit