Me and Lauren have been house sitting for the last 4 months in Ireland, looking after in total: 7 dogs, 10 cats and 3 donkeys. We were particularly excited about the donkeys. Last Christmas we house-sat some goats which we found wonderfully ridiculous and we've never stopped talking about them - they are below. Aren’t goats just totally mental, i’m sat in a Buddhist centre right now and 3 wild goats have appeared out of nowhere, all with giant beards, emo fringes and massive horns, they look totally mythical like someone has just made them up, i’ll try and befriend them when they take a pause from destroying everything.
And here is a picture of me playing to the donkeys:
House sitting is a great gig. After living in the van for the last 8 years and enduring as many Winters, it's been a real luxury to have radiators on when you wake up and hot water at the twist of a tap. There's definitely something I love about Winter in the van, you really feel the elements, especially in the morning as it's basically living in a big fridge, there's also a survival feeling to it which adds to the coziness when you've chopped your wood and got the fire blazing. But it's been great having a year off from that. And in exchange for free heating and electricity and the novelty factor of meeting new people and exploring their homes and areas, all you have to do is hang out with amazing animals and laugh at how funny and lovely they are. There's been one particular tiny little dog we've totally adored...
She's the tiniest dog ever (with the biggest picture ahhh!) and her bottom jaw is barely there so her tongue lols out her mouth all the time, and to get her to eat her dinner you have to leave a trail of it leading to the bowl like in a fairytale. And at night she’ll bravely stride out barking into the pitch black to protect us from all the creatures that could eat her in one mouthful. She is ridiculously adorable.
If you have an unusual lifestyle, want a break or just want to hang out with animals that you don't have to keep forever then i highly recommend house sitting. I guess you need a medium level of responsibility too, it's felt a bit of pressure at points looking after people's most beloved and cherished animals, praying they don't run away or decide to spontaneously die.
Oh yeah, the music, one of the other great parts for me about house sitting has been being able to set up my little DIY studio and record a few tracks. I've got a 3-parter about a slug which i’ve just released, and a little 2 track solo guitar EP coming out this Friday! The track i've attached to this post is from that. I've called it Toots, the name of one of the cats we looked after. I might rename or remaster it before it goes to streaming. This is one of the things I feel excited by Substack - to be a place where things don't have to be totally 100% finished to be shared. I hope you like the track, it's tuned E A D F# B E with a capo on 5. I was inspired by Derek Gripper, trying to learn his guitar arrangement of Jarabi that uses this tuning. I was playing around with it for a few days and this tune kind of fell out. It's felt like a game changer for me to use different tunings, i've played around with them before, but this time it really allowed me to move out of the grooves i've been plateauing in for years now. A new wave of inspiration which i've really appreciated.
Find the EP when it's released on Friday and all my other solo music here:
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