Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed

[Brian.]

Copied across from my blog thread.

 

Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed by Catrina Davies (3/5)

The blurb on the back of this book reads as follows

 

"Aged thirty-one, barely making the rent and homesick for the landscape of her childhood, Catrina Davies moves away from the city and into a tiny, dilapidated shed in Cornwall. As a child, she saw her family and their security torn apart; now, on this battered granite peninsula, she slowly rebuilds the shed and, piece by piece, her own sense of self. This is the story of a personal housing crisis and a country-wide one, showing how it can trap us or set us free, and what it means to feel at home."

 

I have two strands to my thoughts on this book. The book as a book, and what the book has to say. 

 

As a book, its works well. The writing is descriptive without being flowery, the chapters nicely defined, and thoughtful quotes used in the right places. Davies also makes it clear at the start that the timeline is tweaked and certain things changed to make it flow better but the story is truthful to her experience. This was a good decision because the book is very readable when it could easily have been a disjointed mess at the hands of someone else. It would have been nice if the book contained some photos of the building as many are available online as part of news articles.

 

Now onto what the book has to say. We have a housing crisis in the UK as a whole but it is particularly bad in some places such as Cornwall where Davies lives. Loads of houses are bought up as second homes which sit empty outside the holiday season. This means a lack of houses for those who live there year round. This lack of houses means house prices are beyond most of the residents and that rental prices are also very high compared to the average wage of locals. Davies says this is very unfair and something needs to be done about it. So far, so good. I agree with all this and I'm constantly bewildered by the rate at which house prices increase across the UK each year. 

 

After having enough of paying rent for a pokey room in a shared house in Bristol, Catrina decides to move into an old shed (more or a ramshackle studio truth be told) which has been left to run down. The shed is owned by her father and it has sat empty for years so it takes a lot of work to make it even barely habitable.This is where my agreement with Davies started to diverge. She claims the housing crisis made it a necessity but I don't believe this is true. She has a degree (but she never tell us what in) so she is educated, but hates the idea of working so picks up the odd bit of casual work here and there until she gets sick of it. This is the reason why she moves into the shed. It is a conscious choice, not a forced necessity. Many of us have to do jobs we don't really like because we know it gives us the security of four walls. Yes, there is big issue with the housing market, be it rental or ownership, but choosing not to work is a choice. I'll use myself here as an example. I would love to live in the Lake District or near the hills in Scotland. However, I work in an industry which means I need to live near a city which means I can't live in one of these areas and do the job I do. So I make a conscious choice to carry on doing the job I do because it provides me with a level of financial security that I am comfortable with (at the moment at least). My compromise is that I can't live in my dream location. It is a trade off like most of life is. Incidentally the Lake District shares many of the same housing issues that Cornwall does. 

 

Catrina seems to want to spend all her life around nature or surfing but doesn't feel like the compromises she needs to make are fair. Reading the book it is clear, and she admits as much, that she has some mental health issues brought about because of her past. I couldn't help but wonder how much of her situation is due to her mental health issues rather than the housing situation. She wants to run away to her carefree upbringing where she had no responsibilities. I feel mean writing all this as I believe there is a lot of validity in what she has to say but at the same time if we all ran away from life's hardships where would we be. She talks about landlords not paying tax and how this hurts society as a whole but then mentions ordering stuff from Amazon regularly throughout the book. The final thing which pushed me over the edge was the following quote when she came across a rotting Dolphin carcass on the beach

 

"The Dolphin had either got caught in a net, or lost its way because GPS interfered with it's sonar".

 

GPS does not interfere with Sonar in this way and the statement is utter hogwash. In the end I guess I feel a level of empathy with Davies, and because I largely agree that the housing system in the UK needs fixing I gave it 3 out of 5.