I've lived like this since I got the house in the Eighties. I did it because I was sick of dealing with landlords. I was living in Aberdeen with friends, we'd made the place nice and then suddenly had to move out. It was a nightmare. I decided I would save money by any means to buy the first place I could afford. I always thought people would come and live with me eventually â€" it's not me that's impossible to live with, I'm very friendly â€" but it just hasn't happened yet.
I was a merchant seaman and a technician in 1973. I went round the islands at the north of Canada where you couldn't even go as a tourist back then and I got paid for it! I did that for a while, then in 1980 when I wanted to just save money I went back to that company and saved up enough to get the house.
I don't think my life is unconventional. I am just an owner-occupier. I did the work first and saved up rather than buying a mortgage for three decades or whatever. My expectations of whe re I could live were crumbling and my earnings were increasing and then they crossed over. I moved in the first day I got the place. There weren't any windows and it was very damp. It hadn't been lived in for 20 years. Somebody had stored hay at one end of a long, thin shed and I moved in and camped in it. Then I started making fires and getting the house dried out. That was about Halloween so I needed to get it ready for winter. It was a happy clappy adventure.
I've got a garden with a lot of kale â€" it's like a primitive cabbage. It's 1,000ft up where I live and that affects the climate. I'm not very good at growing carrots here, but I've got a lot of redcurrants. I consider myself to be a hunter-gatherer, so if I'm stopped at a layby and I see some wood, I pick it up. I don't like to miss a chance to get something for nothing. I've reached a level of incompetence in my own life... have you heard of the Peter Principle? You get promoted and promoted, or take too man y things on, until you end up not doing anything very well. That's me. I like to do a lot of different little jobs. I am always busy boiling a pan of tatties on the fire for tomorrow or looking for something I've lost.
I'm a kind of half-arsed hermit; I've always had an open house and people visit me. I've been in Scottish dance bands, I write letters and freelance articles for The Leopard [a magazine on sustainable living] and I was even standing for the Green Party this month in the elections â€" I got 6 per cent of the votes, which they told me is quite good. But mostly I spend my days alone.
Summer is the best time. You can slip outside and cook with an outdoor fire. It's lovely. It's an easy life. If I want to stay at home I can. I stock up on food and firewood so I won't starve if I don't go out.
Three winters ago a bloke from Latvia was with me and the cold was nothing to him. We went skiing in the hills and had a great adventure. Having two people w as good because we could keep the fire nice and toasty.
Then two winters ago it was a hard life... it was a hard winter everywhere. Somebody had tried to sue me and I had to go to Aberdeen to the court. I had to ski six miles in, then stay with a friend and then ski six miles back home regularly for about five months. I'd come home and the fires would be out and you're cold and wet. It was a nightmare. It's usually not that hard, that year was the exception, but I've survived.
To me, this seems like normal life. Having a career seems slightly odd. My main reason for doing this is just meanness. It seems inefficient to work in a job and take money home. This seems more straightforward or easier than that. It's just a blowing in the wind thing. You just do as good as you can, making the best of what's there. That makes it sound sort of depressing, but it's not â€" it's a great adventure.
Interview by Emily Jupp
Jake Williams is the star of the new documentary film, 'Two Years at Sea', out in cinemas now
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