Under the Weather
For the last month or so, I’ve been missing in action for various reasons, and my overwhelming feeling has been one of constraint, imprisonment, even.
In the middle of February, I became uncharacteristically convinced that the removal of my gallbladder was really the best thing to do, and despite my terror of anaesthetic, I went ahead and presented myself for day surgery. All went well, but the ongoing convalescence has undoubtedly contributed to the cabin fever.
Our house and its position - of which more later - has been another factor, and the utterly relentless rain a third. We Brits are known for our weather obsession and in particular an unhealthy preoccupation with precipitation, but really, this has been exceptional.
The final straw on this particular camel’s back has been the need for both of us to work as much and as feverishly as possible, for scary financial reasons.
Unable to drive for a couple of weeks, and pretty much holed up on the sofa, I had originally convinced myself I would use the time to write, only to discover that my brain is one that absorbs general anaesthetic enthusiastically, and holds onto it for as long as possible - leaving me unable to string a sentence together for the entire period of my immobility.
The notes urged me to go for a walk - just five minutes at first, then a bit further the next day, and further the next. Well here was a thing. Without driving, and perched on the edge of the world’s least inspiring housing estate, my only option was to trudge down its faceless pavements, looking listlessly at the people hutches, and longing even more to just escape. How do people do that? I’ve spent more than a quarter of a century trying to escape the rat race, and here I am walking round the flaming vermin velodrome!
My eclectic reading, viewing, and social media consumption does seem to coalesce at least a little around alternative lives: the opters-out, those who have gone counter culture, in order to find the simple, slow life I also crave. The ones that got away.
Restless in my centrally heated box, amid a square of square of boxes, I wondered: Who are they? How have they done it? Have I missed a turning somewhere?
The first group I suppose I would loosely characterise as nomadic. Van dwellers, boat dwellers, travellers. Many of these folk are, to begin with, very young and in each case, I have to accept that a lifestyle which appealed to me at 24 is not the one that will work at 64.
The side benefit of being so young is that this subgroup has Somewhere To Leave The Stuff.
My parents sadly passed away when I was 25, but until then, like many of us, I took full advantage of their loft, their garage, and my old room. I was pretty nomadic myself but never had to worry about storing core stuff.
Should the call of the road reassert itself, of course the storage clause is no excuse. There are lock-ups. But the bigger thing is that those younger folks who are happily globe-trotting have a home to go back to when things get tough, a hopeful future which will probably not involve living in a van, and a lifetime ahead of them to do all the things.
With one or two notable exceptions, older ‘van-lifers’ do often seem to me to be putting the bravest face they’ve got on fear and loneliness, and fair play to them for doing that, but I don’t view it as much of an escape.
An example of a (slightly) older happy nomadic (and I lay no claim to having any background knowledge, so there may well be a hidden layer of security I know nothing about) would be the gorgeous boat dwelling Michaela Cordes.
I note that crafts such as spinning paired with great creativity often unite the nomads.
The Off-the-Gridders
Among my obsessively viewed YouTube playlists the Tiny House Movement snuggles happily in the midst. Unfortunately, Tiny Housing in this country is a bit of a non-starter .
I just love to watch because of the designs, the simplicity of the lives, and the cosy contentment, but building something of that size and complexity and then finding land to site it on would probably cost more than an actual house, if it was possible.
For this reason my favourite Tiny Houser of the moment is Carol of The Dragon’s Nest in Canada, because she at least does seem to face some of the challenges the UK offers to anyone trying to grasp simplicity from a fresh angle. Also, she has goats.
Other off-gridders more successful in this country are Eco Villagers such as Lammas (a project we’ve followed from its inception, and nearly applied for, a quarter of a century or so ago. Nearly. Sigh) and the more recent One Planet Developments in Wales, of which my absolute favourite has to be Dave and Irene at Gardd Darna. I am so often tempted to write off this option with ‘we are just too old’ - and then I look at Dave and wonder if I am just spelling ‘scared’ wrongly!
Again, in honesty, we’d struggle to raise the funds to take part in any such project without pretty much killing ourselves in the process - and then be faced with dragging our burnt out bodies off to a field somewhere to try to figure out how to build a house.
The Just-Stay-Putters
The last group, at least for now, are those who have found the peace to embrace their small, confining spaces, to love and appreciate the flat or very small house that is where they turn out to be, and made a great blessing out of it. Chief among those is perhaps the lovely Amy whose trials and tribulations around their home have been epic, yet still her love for the limitations of that space shines beacon-like through all her content.
I also confess to enviously soaking up Benita Larsson’s ruthlessly minimalist Stockholm apartment, her riverside power walks, and urban wanders. But - a market town in Wiltshire just isn’t Scandi / Brutalist/ Minimalism however you dress it up (or rather, undress it, I suppose) is it?
These people have perhaps accepted that they will not be waking up to songbirds and fast flowing streams, in the middle of their own land, nor to a new and exciting vista each day, and decided, much like my great hero Rhonda Hetzel, that true peace is to love the home you are in.
Oh. Wait. It’s Me.
On reflection, it’s so easy to see each of these gangs as having grasped the nettle, and gained it all, but each of them has its own challenges and downsides.
I think Neil would give nomadic life a go, but I just can’t. Without land to grow things in, and roots to home, I would break. One of the reasons we are stuck in the loop we are in is because we can’t seem to part with our rented land, and to be without so much as a garden I think would finish me off.
The off grid options are not totally out of the question, but the raising of the finances to make it possible would be hard. Had we done that, many years ago, and taken the leap, I think we would be up for it. If we had made different choices, and now sat on property owned outright, which we could sell in order to make a run for it, perhaps we would. (I often smile over Ben Fogle’s ‘New Lives in the Wild’ subjects who have ‘sacrificed’ or ‘given up everything’ to make that change - but of course they had the assets to trade, if you would rather look at it that way!)
The final group, I suppose, if I choose to make it, includes us. So for the hundredth (and please let it be the last) time I have navel gazed my way around to the obvious. We have a roof, and a safe place to be, a place to put the stuff, and, excitingly, land to play with, grow food on, soak up Vitamin D, and escape the estate.
This all goes to show what a battle it is for me to remain ‘Present’ as I have vowed to be this year! And raises the question - how do we know when we have arrived, when we have spent a lifetime trying to escape? How much of the unsettling discontent, the constraint, the imprisonment, is just the state of mind we’re stuck at?
Maybe, I am the one that got away?
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