I have been thinking a lot these dark days about the wolf that played
puck with the three little pigs. How, in a few breathy huffs, he razed to the
ground their ecologically-sound straw house, their sustainable wooden one, before
he met his lupine demise in a boiling pot on the fire. However cautionary a
tale this is meant to be, it didn’t deter my family from making a life-changing
decision to move back to Galway in the late
90s and build a timber home. It was
built in a factory in Sweden
and delivered to us on the back of a lorry on the winter solstice. It was pre-fairytale
Tiger time, and in the long light of the previous summer the children and I
settled into a small cottage close to our chosen site. We decided that my
husband would remain in Dublin
for the time being as he was the designated bringer home of the bacon.
So I
supervised all the ground work. PJ, the digger-man, ‘a tasty worker’ by all
accounts, broke the earth with the metal claw of his machine and soon the
foundations were taking shape. A woman out standing in her own field, I worked
with my two loyal neighbours to get the water pipes in place, organise conduit
for the electricity cables, oversee installation of the septic tank, the
incessant rain seeping through every stitch of clothing while my beloved sat in
a cosy office in Dublin,
his back to the radiator.
News soon spread throughout the
village that it was to be delivered on the shortest day of the year. Another
fairy tale: how could a real house be built on such a light-starved day? However,
that morning the sound of a truck snailing along the low road drew neighbours
from their beds to stand on mounds of earth and marvel with us at the sight of
our home coming from somewhere beyond in Scandinavia.
Berries blazed as solstice rays began to gild
the tops of the trees. Birds flew out for their days gathering while a mechanical crane manoeuvred
its wheels up our driveway. It grabbed a
panel from the truck and a gable-end with three windows and the main door,
designed to look out onto the burnt sienna of the mountain, swung precariously
above our heads; then expertly lowered into place. Next to be positioned was
the panel that held our son’s bedroom window, our daughter’s, followed by the
large expanse of glass that would be the eye looking into the heart of our home.
Here was a triple-glazed barn-raising that the
Amish would be proud of if they were ever guilty of such a deadly sin. Workmen,
balanced like gymnasts, laboured on top of the now secured walls with not a
whisper of wolf-wind to unsteady them. We watched while panel after panel was slotted into the next as if it were a child’s block set.
Twilight witnessed the roof-felt being stretched
across joists and beams, sealed from all weathers, and here was our house with
its door open to the dark and the first lights glowing from the windows. In the
shadows I’m sure I saw the slink of wolf. He could save his breath to cool his porridge.
No amount of huffing or puffing would blow this house down.
