designing heaven

I live in a terrace house with a south-facing courtyard. (For those of you in the northern hemisphere, this is the shady side). It is pretty, pleasant and private but I never seem to want to sit out there.

My cabin in the mountains is one small room and a deck which serves as the kitchen, bathroom and sitting room in all but brass monkey weather. It faces north, as does the whole slope so it has the disadvantage of the sun in your face and the convective heat coming up the hill on hot days, but the advantage of looking across at the south-facing side of the valley – the greener side – and of the sun coming through the leaves, showing them off at their greenest and sparkliest.

My previous house in the Adelaide Hills had a north-facing patch of lawn outside the kitchen door, surrounded by a garden bed of herbs, flowers, fruit trees and sometimes vegetables. There was a mature cypress tree at the western end so I could move my little table around to keep it in the sun or the shade as the season demanded. The land sloped gently uphill from there and several of my neighbours overlooked it, albeit from a distance, but I used to sit out there in almost all weather. This was the time my children were at school and would come home and watch afternoon TV so I needed somewhere else to be.

I love to live outside as much as possible. Not so much camping and hiking and such, although I quite like that in moderation too, but I love my home to be as outdoor as possible. Since I have become addicted to blogging my morning alfresco coffee is sometimes my only connection with the planet that feeds me. Sometimes the day finishes and I find I have forgotten to commune with her. This doesn’t quite feel comfortable to me.

So when I am designing hilary’s heaven – the physical, I want to have a north-facing deck or terrace, well shaded by deciduous trees, leading directly off the kitchen or sitting room and preferably with privacy and outlook. When you are an architect you can stipulate all this stuff. Also partially covered so it can still be used in wet weather. (Tin roof, naturally, for the sound of the rain.) It will have a barbecue that someone else will cook on all summer long. There will be facilities (possibly just a bench and a plastic sink) for washing dishes and for food preparation without having to go inside and get things all the time.

Also, inspired by global warming, I want to have a spa. Doesn’t have to bubble, but a swimming pool seems excessive and too much work. I mean a small pool with seating in it. And outlook. I want to lean my chin on my forearms on the coping of my spa and gaze at the view which will be something like the view at the top of my blog. (I don’t have very many functioning pixels on my computer, so I think that’s the view I want but will have to check when I get the chance.)

This is all going to happen back in the Adelaide Hills after we have moved there and rented for long enough to check that we still do want to live there. When I say ‘we’ I mean me and Jasmine who already knows that she does and spends as much time as she can afford staying in Adelaide with an old school friend.

I went to the UK last year for the first time because I am a bit of an anglophile and I thought I would want to live there. Glad I went, still an anglophile, but found that it didn’t feel right. It looked outrageously beautiful as expected, but didn’t feel like hilary’s heaven. I kept on thinking of Adelaide.

There are more ingredients for hilary’s heaven, other than the physical, in incubation but this is enough to be going on with.