The Straw House

Subtitle: A) What they tell you and B) what you find out yourself, afterwards.

A) Straw is a natural, renewable material.
B) Being natural, naturally, it wants to keep growing. Green shoots may sprout out of your straw bales, the ones in the wall and the ones stored in the back garden, for later. Some will see this as an added bonus, with a good wheat crop harvested before the first coat of plaster.
B) Being natural, and being denied further growth, straw will try alternatively to decompose. If – as in our case – a good storm starts the day after the straw wall is up, you will find portions of your home take a sharp turn towards silage.
B) Renewable also refers to you, the homeowner, having to regularly renew the purchase of straw bales. These will be used for wall repairs and also to replace the stack of spare straw bales they told you would be stored safely outside, on a raised platform and covered with a tarpaulin. After a weekend of rain, you will find these limp, grey and sprouting mushrooms. Over a mushroom omelette you will decide to use them for straw bale gardening.

A) A straw bale house is much cheaper to build. Straw bales are inexpensive and abundantly available.
B) You'll start forking out the big dosh later, on all that scooping out and replacing of the wet straw from the silage wall. Straw is not only a renewable material but a frequently renewable cost.

A) Labour costs are also low. Anyone, regardless of experience, can successfully join a straw bale project.
B) Of course, once the volunteers are gone and the straw has sprouted, you will need to hire some local builders at professional rates to replace the wet straw and do a solid plastering job.

A) The work is accessible to people otherwise excluded from the building process. It has an empowering effect on everyone.
B) Exactly. The moment they appear on the building site, they also become straw bale specialists and straw bale enthusiasts. No straw bale is safe thereafter!

A) Straw walls are so densely packed they will be highly resistant to fire.
B) But not to rodents. Despite what the book says, we've seen some happy mouse-families running along our unplastered walls.

A) Straw doesn't cause hayfever, in fact it's the material of choice for many allergy sufferers.
B) I have hayfever. I worked with strawbales. The moment I got within ten feet of one, my eyes leaked, my nose streamed and all conversation had to be done in sneezes: one sneeze for yes, two sneezes for no, complex sneeze sequences for anything else.

There are things as yet unchecked: the thermal performance (highly praised) and how much it'll shave off the heating bill. The acoustic performance – a lot will hinge on this, what with the dogs across the valley. And I hope never to test the fire resistance factor.

Then there are those things that remain undisputed: the joy of not using modern and toxic building alternatives, the incomparable feeling of well-being within a straw bale space, the breathing walls. I look forward to these.

Our straw bale walls are built. And rebuilt. And tweaked a little more. It's been fun and it's not over. Luckily, as winter settles in, the roof is on and the second coat of lime plaster is carbonating nicely. If you check carefully inside the wall, you will find some humid patches. I'm giving them until spring to dry or decompose. Then we'll probably start all over again!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Weekend

Of course they wanted to go to the new Harry Potter. Such is the hype that they'll watch “the boy who lived” sleeping in the woods for three hours, if that's what the film will show them.

Three things were in the way of a trip to the cinema: Kira's dance lesson (the local equivalent of Dumbledore's Army); the NATO summit in Lisbon, which has been to the police force what rain is to mushrooms: they're all out to harass random motorists, even along obscure C-roads. Long black boots, stiff caps, shiny gun holsters: will someone tell Harry P. that we muggles have our own dementors? And my patronus isn't that strong these days.

Besides, at least once in a lifetime, one is made aware of the importance of windowsills. They are underrated magical objects of great power and have lately become our raison d'etre. Nikita arranged an appointment with the stonemason to install the said windowsills on Saturday afternoon.

Thus, while Harry waves, loses, finds, breaks and superglues his wand at Hogwarts, we wander around our land - Felixwarts, let's call it - servicing the chickens (read dragons, and they require straw, food, water and occasional bottom washing with a hose). We also picked up litter (you know, troll bogies, horcruxes, socks lost by house elves, pumpkin juice bottles, old sorting hats). The Master Builder doesn't turn up. Eventually we call him ('where art thee, Dark Lord?') It turns out he forgot all about our windowsills and on the phone he sounds like someone reminded of an ingrown toenail (under the Cruciatus curse?). 'Fica para amanha!' Try again tomorrow. We loiter for a while longer in complete silence, stunned - you may say.

The next day, while Hermione gives a First Kiss to Ron (Ewww!) and the rain pounds the roofs, the stonemason arrives and we all take shelter. Harry Potter fans will instantly see a strong resemblance to Professor Gilderoy Lockhart: today our man is wearing a light leather jacket, jeans and pointy shoes. And do we detect a whiff of aftershave? It turns out that we've come for a job, and Gilderoy's come for a demonstration. Only one windowsill makes it to the window, briefly. He bosses Nikita around: 'measure this', 'lift that', 'take the level'. The sill is measured and lifted, a level is taken.

Thereupon we go one stage up with the lesson: now Nikita has to take 'the level of the level'. Huh? 'The level of the LEVEL!' the craftsman repeats in a louder voice. We stare at him with vacant eyes. Hush Gilderoy, the children are clearly under the confundus curse!

There is a trick here (that'll be the counter-curse) and we should know it! The master gets cranky, chants: 'THE LEVEL OF THE LEVEL'. It turns out that a pencil and two wood chips are needed in order to establish the new level whose level we must take. Accio horcrux!

Could it be possible that our stonemason intends for us to install the windowsills ourselves, sometime later? ('you must do it alone, Harry! It's your destiny!') Will our windows rest on our capacity to remember these random instructions: 'right, here you need to build the wall up five centimeters with stone and lime mortar', 'and rip this old windowsill here then take another level', 'oh, and put a thin layer of mortar here', 'by the way, make sure this side is up', 'you'll be FINE!' It's old magic and utterly impenetrable. Nothing ever written in books will help. Hermione weeps.

After some small talk, the Pro makes his farewells and dashes out to his black broom, while the shoes are still shiny. Another moment of staring into space. Then, with hunched shoulders, we carry the windowsill back to the pile of identical slabs in the front yard.

Had we been to Harry Potter, perhaps we'd have learned some useful spells. We could have then gone to Felixwarts and waved some chestnut sticks with cores made of factory chicken feathers. And the job would have been magically done. Not just the windowsills, the whole house. Wingardium leviosa!