life on the hill – a potted history (2)

The price was right, too—much cheaper than equivalently-sized plots in the pine forest below. Which should have set the alarm bells ringing. But such bells as there may have been were of joy, and delight, and excitement in the examination of possibilities. 

The Princess, all of 5 or 6 years-old, was the first to throw her hat into the ring, with a fashionably minimalist proposal.

Another couple of concepts from other quarters also more or less immediately offered themselves, seemingly self-evident like the truths in the American Declaration of Independence—one was a long house tumbling down the hill like a great train along the centreline of the plot, with judicious kinks worked into the plan here and there, to open rooms to the views; the other, conversely, was sat athwartships on the land (across the grain as it were), more compact due to the narrowness of the available space (so cheaper), but requiring some solution to the problem of giving all rooms good sun exposure and as much of a view as possible (no north-facing windows in other words).

Athwartships won. 

In the event, the long house never made it to paper (not even as the traditional few lines on the back of a napkin). As envisaged in the mind's eye, it simply created more problems, and required the ability to deal with more complexity, than we were prepared to tackle. 

So sketches began to be sketched, and ideas bandied about (the basic requirements having long been set – since I was 10 or 12, in fact, and first started dreaming of building a house for myself …) 

And then came the catch, in the form of a call from the zoning authorities – the plot was in a protected environment zone, sorry. Off-limits to construction. 

Negotiations ground to a halt.