It is funny how chance encounters can take you down unusual routes in life. Seemingly unimportant events divert you along paths you didn’t even know existed. I can’t remember the first time I saw Simon Dale’s ‘hobbit house’ on the net, but I know that it confirmed in me the belief that there was another way to live that didn’t necessarily entail selling your soul to a bank (although they wouldn’t have mine), and that life could be about more than simply working to pay for the box you lived in.
Finding that website led me to Lammas, which back then was still mired in the planning system. More people, I thought, doing the same thing.
Another year on, and a new life altogether, and I finally got to see the place for myself. “We could do this”, I said to Claire, and imagine my surprise when she agreed.
Another few months on, and I found myself, in February, working on the Lammas Community Hub building, still hooked, and hoping that there might be more of Lammas to come, but disappointed to find that there wasn’t.
Then I came across an online group, forming the next eco village under Lammas. Our chance had come. Seven months later, trips to Wales, and many, many hours of planning, and here we are. Ready at last to submit our ideas to Lammas, as part of the Tir Teg group.  This weekend is ‘it’, and we’ll be parting with not only our plans, but enough money to ensure we are committed to the process.
The point of my rambling, is I suppose, that it is easy to look at a group of people doing something amazing and think ‘lucky old them, I wish I could do something like that’, and leave it at that.
I think we prove that you can look at them, and say “lucky old them, I’m going to join them”, and do it. What holds us back normally is not our abilities, or lack of them, but our self belief (or lack of it). Just a small change in your perceptions of what you can do, could make such a difference. Try it, you might be surprised.