Saturday 16th December.

The civil engineer guys came at 7.30am to put the hole-for-the-water under the road, without even digging the road up. Very clever. So that's one thing done before Christmas. There will be a hiatus of about three weeks now, but at least it gives us chance to think about how it's going to be built, i.e. the walls.

We currently have two main contenders for wall spec:
1. A traditional double skin of dense masonry blockwork with a humungous cavity of 300mm, filled with Rockwool or similar.
2. A mixture of lime and chopped up bits of hemp, which sets like concrete and acts as insulation (see www.limetechnology.co.uk for the technical details).

We went to see the hemp company yesterday and were inpressed both by the presentation and by the man himself. I don't want to go into it in too much details, because we think it may turn out to be too expensive. He's working on a quote for us and we have to sort out the exact price of alternative no. 1, and then we'll know. If we can use it, that would be terrific in all sorts of ways both technical and ethical. Then you'll get the full story of hemp in boring detail.

Fingers crossed.

Christmas taking over - this may be the last post for a week or so. So for those in the know, I'll just say a bit about The Girls to keep you up to date. They are both very excited about an eco-house. Kate is in the way of turning into an eco-professiona;, not to say an eco-activist. She's just started an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development at UCL in London and is also fairly chuffed 'cos she's landed a graduate-traineeship-for-top-management job with a Housing Association. The course is part-time and the HA pays for the course too. So that's all right.

Emily is in her 4th year at Imperial doing Hard Sums, and will get a MSci at the end of it. She lives with boyfriend, Tom, also a bit of an eco-activist. She also volunteers as a teaching assistant in Maths in a run-down comp once a week - possibly even Harder Sums.

It is great being closer to them and being able to do up to London for the night. Emily is the Arts Editor of Imperial's weekly paper and as such gets free tickets to all kinds of arts events. As her mum, I get included in the share-out of extra tickets - she took me to Porgy and Bess last month.

I'm sorry to be further away from my mum and dad in Yorkshire though- it was great being able to pop in for an hour whenever I felt like it.

I am retraining to teach Skills for Life, or Basic Skills as the government sometimes calls it. The said govt is putting a lot of money into free education for the 7 million adults in this country who can't read, write and/or add up properly, ie who need basic skills. Lots of opportunities and you don't even need to be a schoolteacher to do it - just do one of the courses on offer, which I am doing part-time. There's also the English language for immigrants and foreign visitors. It's very interesting: I am doing a C&G course one day a week until February as well as teaching both adults and 17-20 year-olds in the college.

In the New Year we move onto the site in a caravan and the place starts to look like the trenches. Mud and holes in the ground. It's a giant caravan though and with any luck we'll have all mod cons including broadband which will make this blog a lot easier. Happy Christmas.