Mountains to climb

Back to the fracture clinic for the third and, barring unlikely problems, final time. This time I was seen one and a half hours after my appointment time (these really are fictitious), and again my appointment lasted 30 seconds. I had William Fiennes "The Snow Geese" with me to read: my body was in a past-its-best waiting room lit by fluorescent strips and ventilated by two oscillating desk fans; my mind and heart were standing on top of a prairie knob and leaning back into the wind, surrounded by the bromegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, bluestem, western wheatgrass, echinacea and leafy spurge of the Missouri coteau.

We had maybe an inch of snow over night. The Malverns under their icing were looking positively Alpine, but of course they are much older. The Alpine ranges (Alps, Apennines, Himalayas, etc) were formed 60 million odd years ago. The Malverns are "formed of some of the most ancient rocks in England, mostly igneous and metamorphic rocks from the late pre-Cambrian, around 600 million years old".

Meanwhile, climate negotiators are meeting from 29 November to 10 December at Cancun in Mexico, to try to hammer out a deal on limiting future emissions of carbon dioxide. And I would like to take this opportunity to say that record low November temperatures are not by themselves evidence that the climate is not warming. First, the UK forms less than 0.05% of the world's surface area, and weather in the UK is not exactly representative of the rest of the world; while we are experiencing below-average temperatures, Perth in Australia has been having a heat wave. Second, weather and climate are different beasties. Weather happens day-by-day, and is changing all the time; climate is the 30-year average and is a trend. So, climate change is happening, scientists are more than 90% sure that it is the result of human activity, it is already affecting people in the poorest parts of the world, it is a major issue of justice, it is still possible to avoid dangerous climate change if we get on with it. Please pray for the negotiations in Cancun.

Advent already!

Yesterday was Advent Sunday... which means it's nearly Christmas! But in the 'outside' (aka 'real') world, I expect it's been 'Christmas' for two months already, at least, and there'll be more and more 'Christmas' piled high and sold cheap as the shopping days count down. And there'll be nativity plays and carol singing and carol services galore, because these days not even churches are able to observe Advent. So I am really happy to be in community, and able and allowed to spend time waiting in expectation alongside Isaiah and Mary and John the Baptist.

One thing I do miss, however, is the Advent choral music. For the past few years I was part of a choir singing a candlelit service at St Petrox church down at the furthermost tip of Dartmouth, and before then went to the Advent Sunday choral service at Exeter Cathedral. It is the most beautiful music of the church year. I dare anyone not to be moved by the final verse of "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" by Elizabeth Poston sung as a seven-part round. The music of longing...

Not drowning but waving

Another bitterly cold start; the Met Office website says that it went down to -10.5 °C overnight in Pershore, and barely made it over -4 °C all day. Ice crystals formed on the glass wall of the east link, around the nuclei of imperfections in the glass and along a cobweb blown onto the surface. I found the macro feature on my camera and managed to take a decent close-up showing some of the detail.

Ian, Philip and I took advantage of the frozen ground to get closer to the front of the community building. We then walked south and round a neighbouring field, and stumbled upon the railway cutting. As we got there, we heard a train coming, and re-enacted the Railway Children. But it was going too fast to see if anyone saw us or waved back. The buzzard had also been waiting for the train, maybe for 'rail kill' or jettisoned sandwiches. It must have been watching watching watching us as we approached, completely oblivious, until it suddenly launched itself at about 3 metres. We walked back to the Abbey via the swales, which were frozen over, enough not to crack when we threw stones hard at the surface, but not quite enough to hold our weight. Of course, we were Very Sensible, and didn't venture far. The stones made an eery noise, submarine sonar sound effects translated to outer space.

Sabbath rest

I have no idea where the day went, but it was lovely to wake up to working heating, a warm room and hot shower, and a light dusting of snow! That is to say, I had no idea where the day went when I started writing, but it is coming back to me now...

• Saturday morning lie-in til 7.10am
• Slow start, shower, breakfast, wander round taking photos of the snow, sit in a guest room watching the northern bird scene
• 8.45am Lauds, moved from its usual slot at 7am to replace Terce
• Laundry til 11am or so, including cleaning, which should have been yesterday's job but didn't have time to set foot down there
• Quick cup of tea
• Quick job to make label for front door bell, except the laminator jams so have to take it apart, so not a quick job after all
• [No 12noon Eucharist on Saturdays]
• Write yesterday's blog, while still maintaining the pretence that I am writing it on the day itself; can't think of a title, so don't post it yet
• 1pm Lunch
• Should have been having a siesta, but back down to laundry til 2.15pm None
• Weekly meter reading round; still a discrepancy between mains water input and boosted cold water consumption, so email architects
• Finish off in laundry ready for next week's incumbent, but now have a sneaking feeling I forgot to take the clean tea towels back to the kitchen
• Phone parents
• Tea and conference at 4.30pm
• 5.30pm First Vespers of Advent Sunday
• 6pm Now on cook's assistant for week
• Manage to snatch 15 minutes of prayer before 7pm Supper
• Phone friend, post blog despite unsatisfactory title
• 8.30pm Compline
• Read for a bit
• Lie awake in bed pondering how I could have done the day differently, and resolve to do the bare minimum of work tomorrow, read more and go for a walk

I tried to get a photo of the front door in the snow before there were any footsteps around, but was too late. Here it is anyway.

Settling

Yesterday's heating farrago finished with the LPG back-up boiler showing a red light on the BMS. It was still red at 5.50am this morning, but mysteriously disappeared by 6.50am. We know how the biomass boiler works, the reason for any problems we now have (over-sized fuel) and how to fix them. It's like an old car; you lift the bonnet and can see the mechanics, and anyone (who knows what they're doing) can get underneath it and tinker. The LPG boiler is a whole different kettle of fish. When you lift the bonnet on a new car, it's an impenetrable mask of electronics.

A week last Friday I tried taking the 'short cut' to Pershore station and lost my front number plate in the ford. Gabriel noticed it was missing over the weekend, but then I squashed my thumb - common sense very much in short supply that weekend - so I waited until today to get a new plate. Driving back up the hill to the abbey, there were no vans or diggers in sight, and something within me settled slightly.

Later in the afternoon, gulls and rooks were jostling for position in the field next door while it was being ploughed. A group would start up, circle and feint to land, and circle some more. One or two would then set down, to be harried by one or two others, and start up again, and settle, and start up, and harry, and settle, and so on. As I was watching them from my window, three female roe deer came from behind the pond into my binocular sights, and strolled across the cut as cool you please. One was light brown; the other two were already darkening to black-brown, and one of these had a particularly pale scut. They mooched a while just where the slope hid them from view, then white tail led them off south, springing over the fence. The new-planted trees are being well protected from nibbling and rubbing, and the kitchen garden wall should be higher than their springing range.

Cold cold cold

Dawn was a thin red line on the eastern horizon, changing rapidly up into orange, yellow and green to pale blue, arcing over to indigo in the west and dimpled by Venus and the gibbous moon. It was very cold again but less of a frost.

I was outside in the dawn because I was heading for the boiler shed again; the heating was off, according to our 'towel rail test', and there was no hot water. This time, both of the main pumps had faulted, the pumps that are supposed to deliver all the heating and hot water to the plant rooms. The Building Management System was displaying an impressive array of red lights, and alarming every ten seconds as it tried to switch between faulted pumps. Thankfully, we were due to have another BMS demo at 9.30am, and the guy was able to fix things. The pumps were drawing too much current and had tripped, so he just reset them and turned a small button to control the current. I now know how to open the BMS panel and reset tripped pumps; another piece of little knowledge to add to my store of dangerous things! Unfortunately, when he was checking out the heat meters, he managed to dislodge a tube on the biomass boiler, which later caused a low pressure fault. We only notice these things when we feel cold and go out to check. It was easily fixed, but I at least felt cold all day.

The Met Office seems at last to be providing the general public with some probability-based forecasts (still in beta), to go along with the confidence-based severe weather warnings. Just for maximum and minimum temperatures, and only the mostly likely temperature and the 5% to 95% range, but it's a start. The cold snap is forecast to continue, so I hope nothing else goes wrong with the heating! Daft thing to hope, as none of us has any confidence in the thermostats. They have an error range of +/- 2 °C, but the one in the general office is showing 6 °C and cold though it is, it's not that bad! And the one in the Oratory is just blank.

Views

After last night's sunset, this morning we had another beautiful dawn. Philip's room has the only east-facing window on the first floor with a view that isn't obscured by roofs. But from my south-facing window, I could still see Venus aloft, and Bredon below encircled in mist, and many of the buildings climbing Malvern were on fire with the reflected sun. The frost was very hard, and the standing water in the cut was frozen. No snow yet, though.

Philip and I ventured up through the hatch onto the community building roof at 11am. The frost was still frosty underfoot, but the solar water panels were scalding to the touch. We had fantastic views, at the level of the Oratory (the wagtails had a good old chunter at us), down to the courtyard, Spetchley Park to the north, and the unfolding fields, hedge-rows, copses and wind-breaks around the compass. It would be a great vantage point for sunrises and sunsets, and an excellent spot for sunbathing, if a little chilly at the moment.

Then I speculatively went buzzard watching, but the only sign I saw was a second nest high in the solitary oak.

Thumbs up!

Back to the fracture clinic, where I had to wait over an hour (would have got a refund if it were a train) for a 30 second consultation. The thumb is doing very well, and the bandages are now off so it can be seen in all its gory glory (you are spared the photo). As we arrived, there was a BOC lorry at the trades entrance. Emblazoned on its side was "It's all about the image". Quite right! Substance is totally over-rated!

Sigh. I shouldn't read lorry slogans; they only make me cross.

I've taken some photos of the solar panels and, coincidentally, the community building and the barn. I've already blogged that we have 18.5 kWth of solar water heating capacity, which is on the barn and at the tip of the community building roof. The rest of the panels on the community building are photovoltaics, with a capacity of about 12 kWp and estimated annual generation of 9.4 MWh.

The sunset over the Malverns was amazing. I caught it when the sun was just touching the rim, but then had to rush away and only returned to see the red fading from the field of cloud. The builders commissioned a photographer, who was on site today, and had amazing light for it. He kindly said he'd send us a CD of his photos, so we'll be able to use them on the website.

Technology!

The telephone handsets have arrived, and I spent the afternoon running around checking various POTs* were functioning, making a list of extensions, figuring out how to work my handsets, and doling out handsets to all and sundry. All of which, compounded by a 'TV dinner', meant this blog didn't get written.

We were watching a DVD called "No Greater Love", a portrayal of the Carmelite community at Notting Hill. One section was about their attitude to new technology, about being careful it doesn't take over... I can't help but agree! The two stand-out scenes for me were completely different: a tender moment as one sister fed one of her older sisters; and a terrifying moment as one sister wielded a chainsaw with abandon, seemingly very close to another stood pruning the hedge. In some ways the film is similar to "Into Great Silence", about La Grande Chartreuse, but less artistically directed. A good difference was the chance to hear the sisters speak about their life, in particular two of them about the 'dark night of the soul'.

At the beginning of Compline, the moon, just past full, was framed in the high east window of the Oratory.

* I'm picking up engineer speak: Pretty Ordinary Telephones.

Mucknell metaphors

In today's Gospel we heard Jesus say to the criminal from the cross: "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43; NRSV). Having spent some time wandering around the grounds in the sun on Friday, the verse spoke to me of Mucknell as an earthly paradise and of the 'today' of being with Christ. Other metaphors have already been used of Mucknell. Stuart has described Mucknell as a 'thin place', which has become meaningful to the men working on the site for up to a year. Also, one possible meaning of the name is 'hill with a big (muckle) view'. At our blessing in on 1 November, we had the reading from Matthew: "A city built on a hill cannot be hid" (Matt 5.14; NRSV). Well, we are built on a hill, and we cannot be hid, but we need to work out what that means in practice. 

This week it is my turn in the laundry, where I hopefully cannot do any damage, and which brings back memories. It is down in the basement, but still with lovely views over the cut and beyond. The basement corridor gets quite warm, and I found a painted lady butterfly sheltering from the falling temperatures outside, which reminds me of another metaphor... The community described their time at Broad Marston as being in a chrysalis, preparing for a new creation to emerge at Mucknell. It takes time for the butterfly to emerge and dry in the sun, before it can spread its wings; we are very much still emerging.

Onions, cheese and cake

I spent much of today glued to my laptop, still assembling all the information about the systems that we've gleaned from the various demos and from living with them. Wychavon District Council had a 'special interest' in Mucknell during the planning process, so they are visiting next Friday. I volunteered to give them a tour of the sustainable technology, and had better know my onions. All the operation and maintenance manuals now seem to have arrived - seven thick files for construction, three for mechanical and three for electrical - so a bit of light reading should provide the requisite information.

It being Saturday, there are hardly any workmen around - just one in the building and a bit of digger action in the northern distance. The list of snaggings is still pages long, and I am starting to expect to be living with workmen for ever. I suppose (WARNING! Cheesy bit coming up!) it's a metaphor for the journey of life: we can work on ourselves, put lots of effort into trying to be perfect, but there will always be more things that aren't quite right.

There is nothing much else to report. The days are flashing past, tomorrow is the feast of Christ the King, and it will soon be Advent and Christmas... speaking of which, tomorrow is also 'Stir-up Sunday', and Gabriel has made the Christmas cake... yum yum!!

Birding

After writing that I had barely been outside yesterday, I reflected that at the moment I probably spend less time outside now than I did at Broad Marston, especially during the hours of darkness. At Broad Marston, I looked up at the stars when I crossed the courtyard to get to chapel and breakfast in the early mornings, and to go to bed after Compline. At Mucknell, I walk down corridors, and although there are many windows and large doors, the light inside obscures the darkness outside. And so, I haven't yet seen a single star.

Today it was dawning pink over the kitchen garden as we came out of chapel - that I could see through the glass of the East Link. The sort of pastel colours that would look hideous if artificially reproduced, but in the sky are delicate and glorious. "Red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning"; but the day belied the adage, and turned out mild and sunny and perfect for taking photos of the new bell. I had a wander round the grounds, my first reasonably long walk for a week. In the hedgerows, there are still some haws, hips and sloes clinging on. The brambles are still mostly green. But now is the time of ivy and mistletoe.

In the eastern distance, five men were walking in a line across a field, waving large flags, with their dogs fanning out ahead. Cars were parked in the lane. Then came the sound of whistles and gun shots - a shooting party. Possibly not surprisingly, there were hardly any birds to be seen or heard on that side of Mucknell, even along the stream on the north, beyond which sheep may safely graze. I did, however, see a buzzard. Anthony told me a while ago that one was nesting along the stream, but he wasn't sure whether the nest was still being used since our neighbours grubbed up a lot of the trees on their bank. I found it in the fairly mature oak by the stream, and then wandered over to the solitary oak, whereupon I saw the buzzard glide up to perch in one of the bank-side trees, then fly off to the north west. When I reached the base of the oak, I found a mostly eaten dove or pigeon, still quite fresh. So I withdrew up the ridge and furrow, and waited. The buzzard returned within a few minutes, but to the fields on the northern side of the stream, and flew tantalisingly to and fro. I had to give up, and squelched back through the area the diggers had recently smoothed. I put up a few pied wagtails, which had been enjoying the watery quagmire, and skylark from the more grassy areas in the cut.

The bells!

I was barely out today, a grey and rainy and windy day. Much of the morning I spent in the company of the fire alarm technician, who was on site to sort out the fault in the system and tweak our set-up. The problem turned out to be a faulty detector in my room, but there wouldn't have been much danger of me burning in my bed in this construction and this weather.

We now have a proper front door to the barn and a bell in our bell tower. I went up to the icon studio to video the raising of the bell, sneezing the while from dust or maybe chemicals, so it might not look like a completely smooth ascent! The vital statistics: it weighs 9 cwt, is tuned to F, and we are naming it Wulfstan. It came from All Saints Wokingham, which I visited a couple of times while living in Bracknell. Now it will sound over the Vale of Evesham, probably for miles around. Here's a photo of it waiting at the base of the tower. The scaffolding is still in the way of a decent photo of it in situ.

Peregrines

My bed-time reading at the moment is "The Peregrine" by JA Baker. The blurb on my US reprint says that he "set out to track the daily comings and goings of a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fenlands of eastern England." There are at least three inaccuracies in that sentence! "...And as he continued his mysterious private quest, his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable consciousness of a hawk." Perhaps it is the Land of the Free speaking in the blurb, glorifying the "journey to the limits of the human", or perhaps it is just a man thing. The very English Robert MacFarlane writes in the Introduction with greater insight, but doesn't seem to have noticed the book's dedication "To My Wife", which puts me in mind of an amused toleration; tracking hawks and dissolving self in the daytime, warm and dry and well-fed at night.

But don't let the blurb put you off! Baker touches on the inscape of the peregrine, and writes beautifully. Here he is on the subject of the Essex mud:

"All day the low clouds lay above the marshes and thin rain drifted in from the sea. Mud was deep in the lanes and along the sea-wall; thick ochre mud, like paint; oozing glutinous mud that seemed to sprout on the marsh, like fungus; octopus mud that clutched and clung and squelched and sucked; slippery mud, smooth and treacherous as oil; mud stagnant; mud evil; mud in the clothes, in the hair, in the eyes; mud to the bone."

Coincidentally, peregrines are nesting up high on a Worcester spire. It is a regular spot, and nest cams are installed. So of course there is a website, and activity updates on Facebook.

At about 4pm, a kestrel crossed the cut and hovered briefly near the pond, before gliding east over the farmland. It seemed to shine golden even in the greyness of the afternoon.

Boiler-room farce

Here is my latest rendition of the biomass boiler set-up, so hopefully the foregoing postings and the following para may make some sense. Click on the image to enlarge.

The boilerman came, and thinks the fuel delivered is the wrong specification - G50 instead of the required G30, for those in the know. BUT he also found a problem with the installation. The store auger and the stoker auger have different gearings, and the gears were fitted the wrong way round. So the store auger was gushing chip into the stoker auger, which was only dribbling into the boiler, and it was all piling up around the burn-back flap. He has now changed them over; we may get infrequent blockages until we've burnt the oversized fuel, but otherwise it should work. Alleluia! And in the meantime, alleluia for excellent insulation!

At this point, I'd like to defend renewable technology and say it's not just the biomass boiler; we've had a series of tragi-comedies in various areas. For example:

• The lift started off working but broke down after a couple of days. We waited a week for the repairman to get the parts, he came today, and he'd brought the wrong stuff.
• The bell also arrived today, but the installers hadn't brought any kit to drill fixings in the bell tower.
• The self-binding gravel hasn't been laid properly, so has turned into a mushy sandy beach.
• Two paper towel dispensers arrived for the kitchen and toilet in the kitchen area, but were fitted in nearby disabled toilets, because you don't need to ask, do you?

But overall, it's still fantastic, and the guys have worked really hard to diagnose and fix things!

Weather

Back to the Worcester Royal fracture clinic. The consultant asked me to draw a picture of what happened... um, well here's a metal corkscrew thing, and here's my thumb... and student years of playing Pictionary failed to come to my assistance. Then he confirmed the opinion of yesterday's excellent nurse. So I was just rebandaged, and will keep taking the antibiotics and go back next Tuesday for presumably another x-ray.

There was a hard frost overnight, and still fog on the hill when we returned at 11.30am. Meanwhile, east Worcester was bathed in sunshine. It looks as though we have our own microclimate - not so much a frost hollow as a frost eminence. And while it was sunny outside, I was stuck in a windowless outpatients waiting room with fans going. Ho hum. Still, it brightened up in the afternoon, there was a wonderful golden sunset behind the Malverns, and the boilerman is coming tomorrow.

Benedictines have a book read aloud at meals. We had been reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's "History of Christianity", but since the move, we think it is (deliberately?!) in a box at the bottom of a big pile of boxes. So for light relief, we are reading Kate Fox's "Watching the English". The first chapter is on the weather. Apparently we talk about it a lot, but not because of any interest in the weather or because English weather is interesting; it's a form of greeting, an ice-breaker, a lull-filler. "Cold today, isn't it?" "Yes, freezing." And it is bad manners not to agree with the first statement/question. So I hereby declare that I might on occasion break some rules by talking about the weather as though I'm interested, or not necessarily agree with you - "Actually, I think it's quite mild compared with the seasonal average" - but I make no apologies!

Bleeding eejit

In order to demonstrate the difference between knowledge and common sense, I have managed to squash my thumb in the boiler auger while trying to clear a wood chip blockage. Cue a trip to the Worcester Royal A&E, where I found I have a small fracture. A&E were superb, whisking me into triage and the x-ray department, then not long to wait before being bandaged up by a really excellent nurse. It is only my second ever broken bone, the first being a little toe. Of course, it is my right thumb, so only two months after my operation for a ganglion on my right wrist, my right arm is back in a sling, and I am having to have my food cut up for me! Tomorrow I go back for an assessment of the fracture. The nurse said it shouldn't need anything doing, and I am inclined to think that she knows at least as much as the consultant!

Solar photovoltaics

The photovoltaics were switched on yesterday... at last! We have about 12 kW in three strings on the community building, and a little display telling us the current output (kW), how much electricity has been generated (kWh), and how much carbon has been saved (kg). We thought we weren't going to be able to use the electricity ourselves, but it turns out that we can, and only the surplus at any point in time will be exported to the grid. So we can get a largish payment per kWh from the government's Feed-In Tariffs, a smallish payment per kWh for any we export, and avoid electricity bills. We do use quite a bit, even though we have low energy bulbs throughout. There are lots of systems in the background whirring and clunking and using energy: fire alarm panels, emergency lights, ultra-violet fly killer in the kitchen, and so on. But any electricity we import is from a green supplier, so I hope it has a high renewables and low carbon content.

A glorious calm day (for the time of year); Mucknell seems to do one extreme or the other. Lots of solar electricity, and even some solar water heating from the panels on the north wing, where the roof has a greater pitch.

Exploring

A free day, and a chance to explore some of the local paths. I struck out eastward in the morning, to get the best (least worst) of the weather. It's not quite flat; there are rolling fields running down to the brook. Beyond, on the neighbouring farm, there's a reservoir for anglers, next to a row of shooting butts. There are plenty of routes marked for horse riders, but the footpath across the field wasn't marked, so I took a route round the edge and past the reservoir. Two fine mute swans and their five grown cygnets glided over in curiosity, or seeking food. The waterline bushes rustled with chaffinches and blue tits, and other larger unidentified birds. Two moorhens scooted off to the other side, their wings playing ducks and drakes on the surface. The fields beyond, to the A44 and White Ladies Aston, were a mix of stubble and new crop planting, interspersed with small copses. The hedges are mostly hawthorn, punctuated by trees, with oak distinguishable at a distance by its tanned leaves. On my morning circuit, I met two of our neighbours, farmers father and son; and the churchwarden and two others at the church in White Ladies Aston. The churchwarden recommended I visit the chapel Churchill, a bit further north, which I found to be both peaceful and covered in bat droppings. My return route took in the Berkeley Arms, which does Elvis and Tom Jones tributes, wedding functions, and serves a decidedly unpleasant cup of tea.

In the afternoon, the rain closed in. I watched Have I Got News for You on iPlayer, to see my brother waving his hand as the camera pulled back and onto the audience during the closing credits.

1 Peter 5.8b-9a*

The biomass boiler stopped again at about 4am, this time due to chip piling up in the stoker auger preventing the burn-back flap from opening. We managed to sort that out and fire it up again, when a false alarm in the Oratory set the fire alarm off just before the Lauds bell. The boiler tripped again twice during the day, with the same problem. The ash also contains some unburnt fuel, which it shouldn't. So altogether it warrants getting someone out to make sure it's set up properly. The fire alarm was also triggered twice more, by steam or heat from opening the kitchen oven; and by dust from the delivery of wood chip.

But I wasn't there for the 'twice mores', as Ian and I headed down after Lauds to an inter-novitiate day in Oxford on "Why Community?" It was good to meet folk from other communities near and far, some old friends and new (to me) faces. There was a Great Wind during the night, and it was still howling when we returned. At Compline, it was beating on the prow of the Oratory, but everything holds firm.

* Verses often used at the beginning of Compline: "Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith"

When the chips are down

We really shouldn't have been let loose with a biomass boiler! We let it run out of fuel and stop overnight because we were waiting to see whether the Jurassic Coast cliff, which the collecting mechanism was eroding into the wood chip, would collapse.* Steve the site manager jumped in first thing with a shovel and brought the cliffs down so we still have heating and hot water. There's still plenty of chip in the store; it's just that the mechanism can't get at it. Thomas spoke to a supplier, who said that drier fuel is less likely to collapse because there is more friction between the chips, while we were thinking that wetter fuel was more likely to 'clump'. Our commissioning supply was apparently about 30% moisture content. We won't be using the boiler in the summer, and we're thinking of emptying out the store and putting in a bit of sloped flooring. That way, there will be less chip stuck on the floor and merrily composting or fermenting away.

I took the opportunity to go for a walk in the unseasonal sunshine, with the excuse of picking up pieces of plastic. Inevitably on a building site, there's a lot around, not least the blue plastic overshoes that the workmen have been wearing inside which have got EVERYWHERE. The ridge and furrow to the north was nicely picked out by the low afternoon sun. I haven't written about the photovoltaics yet, because they haven't been switched on. They were wasted today.

 

* We're making mistakes, so you don't have to!

Whirlybirds

Standing at my window in the early morning, I can watch the winter migrations. Flock after flock of birds, and the occasional solitary, pass over from left to right, always flying south west. This afternoon, a slightly different bird flew north east. There isn't an RAF base particularly near, but we get the occasional jet screaming over - Cosford? Brize Norton? This guy came for a bit of a closer look.

Otherwise, I spent the afternoon with the architect and mechanical installation guy, going round the snaggings with the thermostats. And we found out the slightly hard way that the biomass boiler will shut off if the ash box gets over full. Exciting times!

Vision for sustainability

Abbot Stuart is an ordained Anglican priest and Novice Ian is an ordained Methodist pastor, and they preside in turn at the Eucharist. Alison, another Anglican priest, will arrive next January to live alongside for a couple of months, and she will also take her turn.

Today we had our first Methodist communion* in the new chapel, and confessed: "You care for all that you have made, but we ignore the needs of others and misuse your creation." Later in the service, Ian used the "God our Father and our Mother, we give you thanks and praise for all that you have made, for the stars in their splendour and the world in its wonder and for the glorious gift of human life."

When I stayed at Broad Marston for a few days back in the summer, I wrote some blurb about sustainability at Mucknell Abbey in anticipation of the launch of the new website. To quote:

God delights in creation. At Mucknell Abbey, we want to show in our lives some echo of that delight. So we want to affirm the greatness of the created material order, and that we exist in relationship to God, to each other, and to the rest of creation. Why should Christians care about the earth? Primarily because God cares.

But it is also a question of justice. Human activity, mostly in developed countries, has caused great harm to our planet home, affecting the atmosphere, land and ocean. We have caused great hardship for our neighbours in developing countries, and damaged many ecosystems, often beyond repair.

It is also in our own self-interest. Because we are only one thread in an inter-dependent web, we are endangering our own future. We have caused the extinction of many species, and may cause the extinction of our own.

In moving to Mucknell Abbey, we are seeking to live more simply, more sustainably, more lightly on the earth. We want to become more aware of the web of relationships, and how our common life is lived as part of a wider ecology. We want to live our lives in celebration of God’s creation, in deep gratitude and humility, with generosity and hospitality.

Of course, this is a work in progress! We have had a long journey to where we are now, and have only just arrived at Mucknell. Much is aspirational, and there will be much more we could do, and probably much we haven’t even considered. Our current aim is to settle into Mucknell, live on the land and understand the place, and do our best with the other things.

But if we can still be an example to others, thanks be to God!

* Using the liturgy Holy Communion during Ordinary Seasons (Second Service)

Room with a view

My room faces south towards the village of Stoulton. If I stand to the right of the window I can see Bredon, and if I stand to the left I can see the Malverns. In the early morning, it was atmospherically misty, and at about 7.30am the sun came round and the mist glowed.

In the afternoon, we said goodbye to two of our four marvellous helpers. A big thank you to Madeleine and Liz, and also to Fraser and Bill for everything you've done over the last few days. And then I went to pick sloes in the sunshine, before...

Meanwhile, Stuart was holding a 'snagging surgery', and we all took it in turns to come with a great long list of the problems we have found with the buildings and grounds, big and small. One issue is the Oratory fire system and incense. We managed to isolate it from the main fire panel during the morning Eucharist, but it makes a horrendous humming, buzzing and beeping, distinctly audible through two sets of doors. And it was still registering the smoke at 6pm, when Ian re-enabled it on the main fire panel and set off the fire alarm throughout the building. Still, at least we know it works!

Beating the bounds

The sunshine returned, and I've at last had a chance to walk around the 40 acres of grounds. Here's a photo showing the pond (low in biodiversity but with potential), the hermitage then community building on the left, the top of the Oratory and bell tower centre, various other buildings centre right and the kitchen garden wall on the right.

We have a mature oak to the north west, which has now been surrounded by tree planting; a stream on the north boundary lined with some existing hedging, willow, oak and other trees; some scrappy bits of hedge along the east boundary, and mature hedge along the south west. The hedging is mostly hawthorn, blackthorn, rose hip and bramble. More specimen trees - oak, chestnut - have already been planted along the south boundary, and there are plans for a lot more trees, not forgetting the orchard to be planted to the right of the kitchen garden / hermitage area. A lot of the tree planting is native woodland eventually for coppicing and ending up in the boiler. The orchard will I think be local varieties of apple, pear and plum.

Today we had our first office in the new Oratory - the first Vespers of All Saints, having moved the feast from Monday 1st to Sunday 7th. I took a photo from the gallery of the space below waiting in expectation, and I've uploaded more photos to a Facebook album. There's a good one of sunset over the Malverns.

Damp squib

The first load from store arrived, and so did the rain. Everyone is tired. Today was also the handover meeting, and we now have two copies of seven large files of operation & maintenance information. There is also a snagging list running to 12 pages.

The sign for Pershore Fireworks disappeared from the side of the road yesterday. They must have sold out. So much for our idea of celebratory fireworks on Sunday evening.

Really moving!

The rest of us have moved, and there is nothing left at Broad Marston. That's not quite it, as there will be three loads of stuff that went into storage from Burford arriving on Friday, Monday and Wednesday. But we could all at last sit down together for our evening meal,cooked for us by the wonderful Janet.

The first tranche of movers have had teething problems overnight with water hammer and bleeping emergency lighting, and everyone is tired. The heating also needs to settle down. My self-imposed task in the afternoon was to go round the entire building setting all the room thermostats to something that was fairly reasonable, instead of the default 30 °C. We also thought the back-up LPG boiler was running too much... probably because the biomass boiler goes to sleep when the external temperature is over a threshold, and the external temperature sensor was sitting safely inside the boiler control panel and reading 29 °C! It's now been fixed to the north wall of the shed, so fingers and toes crossed.

It was blowing a gale later in the day. The Oratory windows, which haven't had their control mechanism installed yet, were flapping in a worrying manner. One of the main heavy doors blew off the building a few weeks ago. And they say there isn't enough wind resource for a turbine...

Gee, ain't it swale!

Today was demo of the building management system day, when we didn't quite manage to get our heads around the mass of pipes and valves and control panels. We also pottered down to Poo Corner to have a look in the biodigester. There is a mass of black plastic balls bobbing around on the surface, making a lovely environment for bacteria to grow and break down... well, perhaps too much information. But the water that comes out is good enough for animals to drink, and it pumped out into a series of swales. And here finally is a photo of the monastery, from the bank of the lowest swale.

There are quite a few workmen still on site, and many of them are fascinated by the biomass boiler. We often see one or two poking their heads round the door of the wood chip store, watching the metal arms sweeping the chip into the auger, or popping into the boiler shed.

Rain check

15 October was Blog Action Day. I found out after the fact, as I'm new to this blogging malarkey. But anyway, the subject was water, so I'm dedicating today's blog to Blog Action Day and writing about the rainwater harvesting system. Here's a schematic of the system.

Rainwater is used in all the loos and in six outside taps, supplemented by butts in the kitchen garden. When the rainwater tank level goes below about 60cm, the high level float triggers a top-up drip feed of mains water. When the level goes below 20cm, the low level float triggers an alarm, to tell us to stop flushing! But the tank is apparently the size of a house, so hopefully there won't be any shortages even in drought conditions.

Half of us have now moved, and the rest of us are due to move on Thursday. I popped into my room-to-be after the demo, to find a man in my wardrobe, varnishing at the last minute!

Moving!!

The first day we can starting moves things into the new monastery. A bit of a damp squib, not because it was raining, but because we only had access to the refectory. So Thomas and Anthony were going to sleep in the new building tonight, but we all came back to Broad Marston. Nevertheless, we still had our short service of 'blessing in' with John Bishop of Worcester. Steve, who replaced Tony as site manager for the last push to completion, managed to get the builders not to angle-grind or plane or hoover during proceedings.

The biomass boiler stopped working at 12.30pm. We found out later it was tripped by testing of the fire alarms, i.e. it was working. But our demo - we're learning to call these sessions demos instead of training, as our expectations have lowered - hadn't quite covered the useful information of which button to press to get it back on again. A quick email to the installers, and we now know. I'm slightly worried that the information we've been given is just theoretical, and might not be particularly helpful when things go wrong.