Everyone has an idea of a perfect life. One part of that perfect life is the perfect home and this is something that comes in all forms. Over the years I have fantasised about pretty much all of them, usually the random interesting ones or even better the non-permanent structures. While I am enjoying living in an actual flat, and have enjoyed living in the little cottage I grew up in, there seems to be something lacking in living in such places. Perhaps this will change as I age, or if I have a family, but there is something too fixed and permanent about it that never sits too easily for me. Of course were I to acquire an old house that needed renovating, and which I could create something cool out of then things may change.
I don’t deny I am a total romantic. I also make fun of romantics for being romantics and find myself being completely practical and unsentimental whenever possible just to convince myself and others that I’m not a romantic. I then go and fantasise about living in a horse box lorry similar to the one I saw in Nepal, or the sailing yacht traveling the world. Even when fixed the romantic dreams of the hob house surrounded by a permaculture garden. The sailing boat actually isn’t that far fetched it’s just I haven’t got money to buy a van let alone a boat. Talking of water though, my most favourite dream has and seemingly continues to be the canal barge.
About four years ago I very nearly managed to acquire a narrowboat but backed out through my own fears of living such a tame life, more than some external thing preventing it’s happening. That fear seems to have passed as I move deeper into my thirties, but I’m now stuck with the issue of the Scottish canals being tiny and expensive to live on and having absolutely no desire to live much further south than I am amongst the English. About a year ago some plans were drunkenly drawn up with a cousin to build something really cool on a barge and sell it’s produce on the canals running through Dublin. I would mention what it is but seeing as I still think it’s a great idea and nobody has done it yet, I’m not so silly to just reveal the secret.
Anyway the point is that the more I’m in Dublin, the more I’m finding myself romanticising over the prospect of living on the canal here. It seems cheap, 175 euro for a one year license apparently, although I’m sceptical there aren’t other costs, but even then with it being over one thousand in England and anything from one to five thousand in Scotland, Dublin all of a sudden starts seemingly looking like good value. I enjoy Ireland too, and a large part of my heritage is from here, I could even get over the fact it’s a poor mans Scotland. It’s not something that will happen immediately but with seeds planted already they have now been watered, certainly a watch this space moment.
Observations and Misunderstandings 