As far as the mud building goes, I love the idea and have w…

It has ghosts (apparently), a priest hole and a secret tunnel network leading to the church opposite and various other locations in the town. https://www.brunningandprice.co.uk/oldhall/

The tunnels… http://www.sandbachtunnelnetwork.co.uk/

Hey thanks for your replies. Wow! I feel good! Even though this is my second attempt. I just wrote a really long well considered reply and before I hit send I lost it all. Violins please.

I feel good to be talking to you, as someone who knows more about treechat than me because even though I’m not part of crypto (except for learning about it) I hold great promise for it and that’s partly why I’m here. This feels like the right place to learn more and take part so thanks.  I relate to the idea of valuing information and communication which ties into being heard and understood and this conversation we are having in this space shows great possibilities for all that.  Thanks for sharing those pics and links to your pub, community and heritage. I am itching to meander off the first topic (treechat and earthen shelter) and say something on my mind that relates to those underground tunnels and those poem riddles but first I want to say that I see you already know so much. You know how durable these structures are and you know they are beautiful. You can feel the artisanship and craftsmanship in them. I’m assuming you might have ancestral ties to those who participated in their creation.  So you already know. I would like to guide you through the process of building a small scale model to rekindle your instincts, and re-familiarise  yourself with the ingredients, recipes, methods and considerations for building in life size to bring you closer to your dream of building and sculpting a cosy little place to recharge in.  I say rekindle and re familiarise because the knowledge is in our DNA awaiting to be awoken. When I first went to teach this at a preschool, during the intro, a little boy said he already knew this and I asked him who he learned it from and he said he taught himself and then I realised the same was true for me. We used to go down to the creek and make “mud pies” to dry on the rock without adult guidance and it was decades later that I found out what mud play really means and perhaps part of why children are instinctively drawn to it. Superior shelter creation!  It starts with playing with some subsoil and water to make mud.   You may know tha…

Ah, thank you for a wonderful reply Mudfun ! Isn’t this platform epic! So much more in-depth than X. Your reply reminded me that I used to build mud huts (and igloos in winter) all the time when I was a kid. I built a buried underground den—a hole with a bin lid and grass covering it and many mud and stone hut dens down by the canal. I was obsessed. I also had fires in them (and set fire to an entire field when I was 5 or 6 —oops!) and used to cook jacket potatoes wrapped in foil and sausages on them. I also had a jet cub boat as I was obsessed with going up and down the canals and adventuring generally. We used to get up to all sorts of mischief and would go Youth Hostelling on our own for 4-5 days at a time, long before mobile phones existed, walking 10-25 miles per day across the countryside. We would always be dropped off 30-50 miles away and walk home. I was a big fan of Lord of the Rings and believed myself to be a hobbit, I think, and used to sing the walking songs I’d heard when Lord of the Rings was a radio play. (The Road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began… etc.) So, yes, I think you’re right, it is in my bones. I used to imagine our local hill, The Cloud, was Hobbiton, and The Roaches (jaggedy hills that look like a dragon) were Mordor. I lived in America for a few years when I was young 7-9 and used to dream at night that I went down a slope in our apartment’s hallway floor and returned home to The Cloud and my life as a Hobbit living in Bag End built into the side of The Cloud. Wow, haven’t thought about that in years! I sound insane, lol. I was a kid at the time. I also used to muck out stables in exchange for rides and would ride up and down The Cloud on my favourite horse Tara. I had a very idyllic childhood I think, compared to kids nowadays, that allowed me a lot of freedom from supervision and my imagination ran riot. I think, even as an adult I’ve been craving dens. I built a treehouse and a log cabin for my two sons, and rec…

An animation I made of our local hill The Cloud. I lived at the foot of it growing up. It’s the first hill of the Peak District.

I do love a bit of history, now I’m older especially so. So I was intrigued to hear about the tunnels in my local town. I ended up only 12 miles away from where I grew up, via many other places in between. Our town is a Saxon market town and our marketplace is called Scotch Common named for a blood soaked encounter during the English Civil War back in 1652 when Scots returning from the Battle of Worcester were set upon and murdered as they slept by the Sandbach locals. I have always felt very drawn to this place, and that it is very haunted by ghosts, or at least I used to think so as a kid. I love all the old Tudor buildings in the town and you can really feel the history throughout this town. I’m currently writing my second novel and will be adding some of this town’s folklore and history of the tunnels into it I think, to add extra dimensionality to the story. I’m pretty level-headed usually, but I crave mystery and writing is such a good outlet for that as you can let loose. You can feel the Druidic spirits here, along with the more recent ones. I sound history obsessed, but I’d actually describe myself more as a futurist, and I’m fanatical about technology and trying new apps, software and tech. I knew in bones when I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide when I was a kid that the internet was coming, and was ecstatic when it finally arrived. I heard about Bitcoin all the way back in 2010 and had a strong instinct it would be very important, and so bought in in 2013 when Mt Gox came along. Via a long path, I’ve ended up in BSV, the only truly functional and scalable blockchain, which is how I found Treechat (or Knovigator as it used to be known). It is a real gem of an app, and as metamitya continues to develop it, I can see it becoming much more than social media. He adds functionality to it almost weekly, so you’ll often find new buttons appearing. I love that he’s integrated AI into it in various forms. If you’ve deep knowledge on a subject, this is a terrific place …

Yes! So much here to celebrate! Well said. You sound very sane and satiated by the fullness of life such that you can reach forward into the future and embrace it all and express yourself and be heard . Much respect to you for the creation of your cave in your garage. A cosy little space is where it’s at.. Thanks for sharing those childhood memories- they triggered more of mine. This path of Mud Fun first opened up in my heart and mind after seeing a bunch of people in a remote village in the Solomon Islands build a beautiful hand woven house together in a festive way with all ages involved, lots of singing and an audience and food sharing. Years later the memory came back to me while I was in the USA in an artistic community-elevating vibes setting. At the same time I discovered earth and mud as a building material. I’ve mainly been experimenting with the mix of mud and music to transform the whole work vibe into playful, interactive entertainment for all ages - to emulate what I experienced in the Solomon Islands but with mud. I found out later that festive earthen building is still a thing in Africa. During Covid I was prevented from running my Musical Mudstomp events in public so I did it here in private land and the sleeping pod cubby evolved from that. It’s where I prefer to sleep now.