Less than a week to go...

This time next week – fingers crossed – we'll have moved into our little house on the hill. What we need now is some rain to make sure our 10,000-litre cisterna is full, then some sunshine for the solar panels to charge up the batteries.

It's difficult not to take for granted the things that we've lived with all of our lives – as much hot and cold running water as we like (barring the odd hosepipe ban in London over the past few years) and electricity when and where we need it. Soon we'll have to fire up the generator when we turn on the washing machine, there will be no more leaving the tap running when we clean our teeth and vacuuming might well become a luxury that we decide we can do without (dust allergy or not).

We're going to swap the chatter and clatter of village life (church bells every quarter of an hour, the neighbour's garage door rattling up and down four times a day, the loudspeakered village announcements preceded by the Chariots of Fire theme, the shrieking house martins) for the silence of the countryside. Mind you, if that silence is broken by the thundering of wild boar hooves, I'm coming right back down to civilisation.