Bonfire of the Vanities...

The farmer and I seem to be in demand tonight. We have been invited to not one, but two bonfire and firework displays: one in the fishing village of nearby Cromarty by my Mum, the other by one of our neighbours here on the farm... exactly! Who in their right mind has fireworks on a farm populated by calves, pregnant cows and piggies? Not to mention our own little ones, Millie and Molly.

As unhappy as we may be about this annual get together, we're not party poopers so don’t make a fuss. We even went one year, leaving Millie at home with the TV blaring, while we sipped mulled wine with all the folk who live around the track bordering our farm. This year, however, we are less inclined to toast marshmallows with our neighbours (okay, we never did that) since learning that a few of them are not our biggest fans.

This revelation came to light a few months ago when we put in for planning to build a new house because we need the farmhouse for an additional staff member. Six out of 10 of the neighbours objected. Admittedly, our proposed house is fairly radical. Designed by a local eco architect with curved walls, sustainable timber and lots of glass, it would be dug into the hillside facing away from the neighbours to maximise privacy for them and us.

‘Did you go round with muffins before you made the application?’ my sweet friend Morn asked reproachfully. Of course not, I’m a bad farmer’s wife! I doubt it would have made any difference to their clandestine meetings and ridiculous concerns though, such as the increased traffic on account of the farm shop we were putting in (what farm shop?) or the fact that the local primary school was full (what?!).

Needless to say, the local planner who had been on board pre-objections, jumped ship. We were furious!

Our architects set to work sketching landscape plans to show the house in context, pegging the footprint out on the site, redrawing the elevations to show that the pitch of the roof was in fact lower than a storey and a half, not higher. They even conjured up photo montages of how the house would look when built...and that’s when it hit us.

Despite proudly showing off the dinky model of our cool, contemporary house to friends and family, when confronted with a 3D image of it on the site, we were alarmed. It didn’t look right at all – way too modern. We were kind of embarrassed about this architectural awakening, although to be fair our original brief had been for open plan inside, lodge-style outside; we had just got carried away with our architect’s vision.

So tonight we’ll be heading to Cromarty for the fireworks. Well, we’re hardly going to wave sparklers around with our neighbours (okay, we didn’t do that either) and admit we object to our own house!