I’m not going to kid you, this past year has been  one I would not have chosen to have. Facing a life threatening illness and the uncertainty and fear that comes with it (and stays long after the immediate fear of dying has gone), has been the most difficult thing Richard and I have ever dealt with.

Alongside that, the ongoing challenges of our build, uncertainties and pressure of our permits, and diminishing finances, has left us both feeling utterly exhausted.

But as I now know, winter gardens give way to summer beauty, yin has its yang, death is only possible because we have life; so alongside that awful, interminable sadness and fear has been progress and hope and joy.

When I look back on these images, from April to November 2017, and ruminate on all that we otherwise endured, I am amazed at what we actually did manage to complete. We started the year with three rooms still only at first coat render, and a huge amount of work to be done on ‘that end’ of the house. We didn’t quite get to celebrate being ‘in by Christmas’, but we did have Christmas lunch in the main house; including cooking and preparing, not just ferrying pre-prepared food across as we have previous years.

And now, early 2018, still not living in the house, but it is almost a house. And I can start to ‘see’ us being in there. Picturing where furniture might go. How we move from room to room. How the rhythm of our life might work in that space. That beautiful, extraordinary space.

We will never be quite the same as we were before, and neither will our house as such obvious and tangible progress will attest, but we are stronger, more connected, and more committed than ever before.