It wasn�t the sight of Ben Law�s magic treehouse on Grand Designs that started my off-grid fantasies, but he certainly gave them a seductive visual form.

In common with most of my fellow fantasists, I�m not likely to be going off-grid any time soon. I�ve a husband and children addicted to London, we�re knitted in by family, work and commitments.

But, also like many others, I am predisposed; my children�s diet was the place I put all the anxieties of first parenthood (�will he die if his bread isn�t stone ground?�) which became a more general concern with the politics of agriculture.

As the children grew, and with it concern about the planet and their future on it, my family nickname �The Food Nazi� mutated to the even more endearing �The Environmental Taliban�. It�s probably true that a Quaker upbringing had been lying in wait for an excuse to reassert its Puritanism; I would always rather make something than buy it, while my husband thinks Selfridges is the highest manifestation of human civility, and all technology is, in principle, good.

I am generally of the belief that a bit of dirt is no bad thing, and have been known to scrape the mould off food and serve it up, as my mother did before me, to give a boost to the immune systems of a family etiolated by fancy modern refrigeration. Meanwhile my husband is so fastidious that he looks as though Scotchgard, not blood, flows in his veins. We may well be the only house on the Tooth Fairy�s itinerary where she finds her offerings pre-sealed in tiny Ziploc bags.

Over the years, attempts to win each other over have relapsed into a sort of resigned standoff. We now have a household in which every Saturday morning he drives off in his Mistubishi Shogun to the supermarket, while I jump on my bike, loaded up with shopping bags, and pedal to one of our two local organic shops, coincidentally named �Earth� and �Paradise.� (Earth, as you might expect, has more in the way of seductions, while Paradise is more inclusive. We live closer to Paradise, which gives me a little thrill every time)

But he has put up uncomplainingly with the constraints on our travel (no more flying) and our diet (nothing apart from tea and coffee from outside Europe, though in mid-winter Europe has been known to venture as far as Morocco). His response to my crusades has been pragmatic. When I decided we had to compost, he fabricated a compost bin, and when I railed against the endless use of the dryer, he put up a clothes line. In some ways, we�d be well suited to the off grid, post-oil apocalypse life; I can cook and sew and darn, and never throw anything away. His father sold cars, and his first Saturday job was in a hardware shop, so he can make, or mend, just about anything mechanical.

There�s one small problem; he hates the countryside. For him, there�s as much interest in a landscape as in the Korean language section of an instruction manual (possibly less, if the manual had diagrams). He�s not sociable, so the idea of a community of any sort is fairly unappealing, but a community inclined to singing, hugging and practical footwear is the stuff of nightmares.

So we�re probably doomed to stay in London; but meanwhile, as we argued and fought and aired our differences, I needed a place to put my frustrations, and it became a novel, called Mrs Normal Saves the Word. It�s a comedy, because seeing the funny side is a marital lifeline, and because trying to be Joan of Arc with a family and a job or three very quickly becomes farcical. And now it�s a web site, because I needed a place to put all the information and ideas that sprang up along the way.

Nor is it just about domestic disputes, because life is no longer just about the domestic. Since the arrival of the climate crisis, everyday decisions, previously based on pragmatism, convenience or how long it is until payday, now have to be viewed through a lens of morality and consequence. Even when it�s as banal as staring at the ceiling of Aisle 12, trying to weigh up the environmental costs of imported spinach vs domestic beef as a source of iron for the family, we�ve all been sent back into a world of good and evil, roundheads and cavaliers, self against humanity. And it�s full of paradox and puzzles, so Mrs Normal has a page called �confusion� where I�m trying to sort some of it out, for other people like me.

But I had another reason, which gave rise to the page called �shock� on the site, a page put there to scare us all into action. There�s a moment, in the film �The Whistleblower�, where an implausibly miscast Russell Crowe is about to rush off to blow the whistle, heedless of the consequences, so long as he does the right thing. And as he sprints, bursting with unstoppable heroism, towards the car humming by the manicured kerb, his wife pulls on her Marigolds and yelps piteously from behind the picket fence, �But what about us?�

And I wanted, just for once, to read a book where the heroic, principled person who risks everything to make the world a better place is not a man, but a woman. And a woman who manages to care about her family, too.

I thought, if in these frightening times, when many of us feel uneasy, if not downright guilty, but aren�t sure what to do, and aren�t ready to give up on the modern world completely; if I can write that book, and make a site, that will make people feel, �I could do something, too� � and give them a laugh � that will be my small contribution to the world beyond the sock drawer. Until I escape from the grid.

Mrs Nomal saves the world at www.mrsnormal.com