All over bar the recycling

That's done for another year. I confess to spending the whole of yesterday in bed, eating toast, keeping warm, reading Any Human Heart, and rejoicing when the sun broke through the clouds to shine on Christopher, truly a bear for all seasons.

I'm getting better at it, but I don't think I'll ever be a natural. I hate enforced jollity, I hate having carcasses in the kitchen, and I hate waste. Christmas seems to be full of all three, unless you opt out completely, which I've tried, but then I just feel bleak and selfish.

These last two years we've had ex-housemate S, her Young Man, Tungsten, Particle and her in-laws over on the day. The in-laws bring much wine and a ton of cheese, S brings the turkey and we do the rest. There was a moment when the oven started leaking beetroot juice all over the floor, and another when Tungsten attempted to sabotage the beautiful-yet-delicate Moomin mobile we got Particle (textbook inner fury of the firstborn - I do feel for him, but he's not getting away with wilful damage on my watch), but on the whole it went off extremely well. No tears, no swearing. Well, not much.

And we had M's offspring and associated others over on Christmas Eve, where we had a vegetarian curry extravaganza with mulled cider and it was all fleecy blankets and festive warmth *and* they went home in time for us to have a small sherry and open a present each. Mine was a Rob Ryan tile, which made me cry a bit.

I tend to get excellent presents from M, because a) he knows me best, and b) he has an extravagant streak I haven't quite talked him out of yet. And I get good things from my parents, because I get to choose them. And a few other people stick to the failsafe brands - Hendricks, Dr Hauschka, Neal's Yard, Kniepp, Toast, Pukka Tea, Real Seed Catalogue - or simply look at my Amazon wishlist, which I endeavour to keep in reasonable shape at this time of year. These are things I would buy for myself if I had an extravagant streak of my own. You can make me very happy with a visit to a single corner of Boswells, if you so choose. Or you can not get me anything, and I won't mind at all.

But what I find hard is the gimmicky presents - "funny" books, novelty chocolates, DVDs that I'll never watch, chemical toiletries, things made of plastic then sealed in more plastic, generic girl-gifts that sparkle with man-made geegaws.

I don't want this stuff. It's keeping someone in business, but it's killing us all softly. When I get it, I put it straight in a bag, and take the bag to the nearest charity shop as soon as they open after Christmas. Each year, I swear I will broadcast that this is what I do, but I never quite have the balls.

So this is an aide memoire for next year. I vow to say to these people: please, if you don't want to get me something I would get for myself, save your money. If you still want to spend, do something useful with it. Build a toilet. Buy some sanitary towels for girls in Uganda. Get me some peace oil, man.

I'm a bleeding heart liberal, I know. Sue me.

Now I'm annoying the man of the house by playing tunes I remember dancing to in Blackpool nightclubs in the 80s. All together now, heaven must be missing an angel...

joella

Ladies and gentlemen, we are moving Up North

I go quiet when I'm making big decisions. And this is one of the biggest decisions I've ever made. Me and M have joined Lancaster Cohousing*. We will be moving to a new eco-house in an intentional community on the banks of the River Lune, just outside Lancaster, sometime in 2012.

FAQ

Q. WTF?

A. There was a confluence. Last winter was SO COLD. We could get warm, but it wasn't the natural state of affairs. The price of gas in recent years has really freaked me out. It suddenly feels like a finite resource. We are all going to have to live differently in the future, and our houses were built for the past. Our house is better than most - it's not damp, it's well-ventilated, it's well-built, it's cool in the summer. It's a lovely house. And it could be retro-upgraded - double glazing, external insulation, sheep's wool under the floorboards, wood-burner, new boiler.

But we can't afford to do that and still live there. True fact. Meanwhile, ex-housemate S and her Young Man are buildng an eco-house in Kennington. They are using phrases like 'passive solar', 'ground source heat pump', 'rainwater harvesting' and 'folding sliding doors'. Now, having seen how insanely stressful it is to self-build, especially when you're not doing standard things, and also having lived in Kennington, I didn't have any interest in following suit. I did realise, though, that I was getting major house envy. And I spend a lot of time in my house. The pub is only my second-favourite place.

One lunchtime at NGO X I was idly Googling for eco-housing in Oxford. Nothing. So then I widened it to Oxfordshire. Nothing remotely affordable. And then I thought 'but I don't even *like* Oxfordshire' (I like Oxford very much, but have never had much time for its environs). So I did a search for eco-housing in Lancashire, that being a county I do like. And there was Lancaster Cohousing. Hmm, I thought, it has communal stuff as well. I should tell M (who has long yearned to live communally. He doesn't see why we should all have our own lawnmowers).

So I emailed him the link and got on with my day. When I got home, he gave me his 'serious look'**, and said 'we have to go and meet them'.

For real? I said. But it's Up North! Yes, he said. I think I want to do this.

I left him to it, thinking it would be like the time he wanted to go and live at Gram Vikas, or the time he wanted to open a breakfast cafe in our front room -- both excellent ideas in their way, but entirely unfeasible. But before I knew it, he had called up the lovely L, had a chat with her, and agreed that we would go up for one of their monthly vegetarian-brunch-and-site-visit Sundays. We asked Tim and Beth if we could stay with them, they said we could, and off we went.

We were early for brunch at the Whale Tail that Sunday, and we were a bit nervous. It was all quite strange, though it's hard to imagine how it could be otherwise. Tim and Beth walked us there, and withdrew to a safe distance, and the co-housers started to appear. We ordered our veggie breakfasts and started talking to people. After a while, a man walked in bearing three giant (and clearly allotment-grown) courgettes. I thought 'he looks like he lives in East Oxford!'. I got talking to him, and it turned out he used to live in East Oxford. We had a conversation about plumbing.

Then we headed out to the site, in Halton, for a site tour. I stood on the riverside path (not far from where the photo above was taken two months later), with a weir to the left of me and a hidden garden built over a filled-in mill pond to the right, and some deep, slow-moving cog inside of me clicked round a gear. And I knew then that I wanted to do this too.

There are more questions, and I have answers to some of them. But the decision was made for us both on a totally different level, like an accident waiting to happen. So I will stop there for now, and come back to the detail...

joella

* The website is about to get better, because there is now a web team. And it's us.

** A slightly set jaw and a hard stare. Makes me giggle.