If you have a problem, just throw money at it...

We moved to Lewis after renovating our house in Tile Hill, Coventry. The property price bubble had just exploded over the West Midlands and prices still being cheaper in Scotland and especially Lewis, we upscaled on size, but downscaled on the mortgage.


This meant that during the property renovation we weren't faced with the same budgetry constraints that had hindered us renovating the house for the 5 years that we'd lived there.

We discovered a mantra used by the rich - If you've got a problem, just throw money at it.

It is amazing how many of normal life's woes and worries suddenly disappear when you are able to buy your way out of them.


When we moved to Lewis it took us a while to climb back down from our care-free with money ways. We rented for 2 years before finally finding the right place to buy. The pot of money waiting in our bank account, which we had hoped back in Coventry would buy us a house, had been eaten into by things we felt were needed at the time.... a new van for Mark's work that turned out to be an overpriced rust bucket; a round trip back to England by plane and hire car, only a year after we had got there; another van which wasn't so much of a rust bucket, but still cost a couple of thousand.  When you get used to having money its hard to stop spending it.

But then, we also learned to noticed the value of things, even when the price tag didn't match...

By the time we had moved into the house, at 1 Kershader, the new renovation project, our budget was greatly hindered.

We had unwittingly got mixed up in a land grab situation with the neighbours and ended up spending another £10k on extra croft-land. We only just managed to buy some solar-thermal panels (which have been amazing and worth 10 times their weight in gold) and decorate the boys bedroom and kitchen before we moved in.

Since then, our mantra has changed. No longer throwing money at our problems, we now make do or do without.

The crofting way of life has always been one of making use of what is immediately available to you.   We can see the evidence of this just by looking around us. Things have been bodged together from rubbish - they do the job, but back in Coventry this would be scoffed at.  I like it though.  British society has become so disposable and consumer - influenced by over 3 thousand years of snobbery and class system, I find it refreshing to have the space to just experiment and figure things out by myself - and be surrounded by like-minded people with their own history....

When was money invented? When did value and money get so disparate?

The Hebrideans have an ancient history - the Callanish stones were built, and from what the latest archaeological studies are saying, were also renovated, around 5 thousand years ago.  I'm sure people back then had problems that only a change in mantra had helped them with - no money yet invented to throw at it and keep the status quo, only some small change in ideas.

Callanish stone 'circle'

I could never have imagined back In Coventry, in the city, how my perspective could be so influenced by my surroundings.  I have dreamt here, about being one of the people back then, living on the moor, before the days of the stone circles, or much sooner when the Brochs, came.

Dunn Broch Carloway

Being wild, before civilisation offered company, conversation, structure.  Before money was invented.... what a concept...what a dream....