Late November 2020 myself, my son Tadhg, and two dogs left my semi-detached house with a postage stamp sized garden on an estate, near the coast in south Dublin and moved to a cottage on three acres in the middle of Wicklow. The two cats were boarded out as it was thought a house-move might be too stressful for them.

I’m surrounded by trees and mountains, I have no mobile phone coverage and my internet is through a satellite. The cottage has three, good sized, double bedrooms, a very small living room with a wood burning stove, a small kitchen with another room adjoining which the previous owner used as a fourth bedroom and a bathroom.

There are three outbuildings, to the left of the cottage, a large metal construction with electricity and a sink with hot and cold taps which I have named the Silver Barn. There is a small electric heater for the hot tap at the sink and there is a water system tucked away in one corner, which, I think, pumps the water from my well into the house, it may also purify the water but that is still under investigation. Although there is running water in the Silver Barn there is no drainage system, just a waste pipe going outside to nowhere in particular. To the right of the cottage there is a concrete building, which looks like a garage to me but I was reliably informed by the estate agent it isn’t a garage but an outbuilding. The non-garage has double doors, it houses the oil tank for the central heating and definitely has enough room for a car! There is currently a scrambler style moped in there which Tadhg has claimed as his own. The cottage sits in between two fields and on the far right at the end of the field is the third outbuilding, a traditional brown barn, which I have, cleverly, named the Brown Barn. The Brown Barn is divided into two sections, with connecting access between the two. There is also a mountain stream running through the field near the Brown Barn.