Dreams of Home

The sanctuary project has not progressed. It has been well over a year since I discovered that one of the main people in the group had a completely different and largely incompatible concept of what we were trying to achieve; they were openly antigonistic to the idea of being open to the visitors who form both the spiritual and financial engine of the project. 

I did my usual of taking on all the planning and realised my mistake when, despite a week-end meeting where we went through proposals line by line, my two partners displayed a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the project. This has happened before: when I started Intercultural Arts, I took on all the planning and got a group to act as its trustees. All I asked them to do was to read monthly reports on the project's progress, which proved too much. By the end; I was shouldering so much of the project on my own I began to miss submissions and incur fines which is why I closed it down. This has been the first time in a long time that I've been out of work and without the ability to raise funds to initiate my own projects. With the Sanctuary Project: I wanted to avoid previous pitfalls by ensuring there was an actual TEAM involved who could contribute to the direction and delivery of the project's aims. I absolutely prefer to be challenged than to schlepp ahead with no feedback. I wanted the people on the Board of the new organiation to have management/development experience and commitment to the aims of the project and we've been stuck at that station ever since. Without those people the organisation can't be registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Without the registration; the project is ineligible for funding. After the pandemic; that funding is likely to disappear.

I've been wondering how we might have coped with the lockdown if we had acquired Whinburn Hall in Keighly. I suppose it would depend on how much of a mortgage we'd have taken on- though most mortgage providers have announced a three month payment holiday. Of course; any planned events would have had to have been cancelled and the business plan relies heavily on a flow of large and small events. I suppose the worst thing that could have happened would have been for us to have been locked down with a large group of visitors. I can imagine a 'Lord of The Flies' or 'High Rise' scenario by week six! There was a snarky piece about a group who went to Panama (?) for some spiritual retreat event but got themselves locked down there where, after a few weeks, the Peace and Love had... deteriorated.

I still dream of acquiring THE perfect house with the perfect outhouses, gatehouses and cottages, in large and private grounds with trees and natural water, where we can cultivate food and generate electricity from renewable sources and biogas from organic waste, where six of us will live to run the estate and host six "elders" as lodgers and welcome groups for as many weeks per year as is practical.

The only route to that at the moment seems to be a lottery win- well why not?!! I'm betting another £2.50 today. I'd very much like to take a look at Swallwell Castle, (pictured and for sale at about £2m)... Actually; in looking for the picture, I found a report of how local people have treated the guy who bought the place. With that information, i wouldn't be looking at this place :-(  In fact; the pic i found shows that the building is just far too close to its neighbours to allow us to be as weird and wonderful as we want to be without generating undue comment in the high street!