Most books and newspaper or magazine articles conceptualise living simply in a rural environment – back to the land.
Living simply is popularly seen as wabi-sabi and vaguely muddy: an exercise requiring gum boots, and probably a dog.
There is a great difference between England and America here (and obviously other parts of the world too), centring mainly on the issue of space. The American tiny house websites often show pictures of enchanting little dwellings only X square feet, squeezed in impossible nooks between larger houses. In England, most ordinary people’s houses look like that anyway. Land is at a premium, because there is less of it, and what there is either belongs to an individual or the government; so you can’t build on it or camp on it or stop a trailer on it overnight.
This means that in England living in the country is not as it was in Jane Austen’s novels, what you did when you ran out of money. It is now what you do when you win the lottery.
There are people who live simply and don’t have much money in the English countryside. Some have inherited farms. Some work as volunteers in retreat houses, or are part of intentional communities or New Age groups that have won the planning consents battle to settle (like Tinker’s Bubble). Some are very old people who have lived there since before the price of accommodation was pushed sky-high by the feminist movement with its working women moving the goalposts so that house mortgages were set to factor in two incomes. Some are people who had a lump of capital to spend on a house but do not have high incomes. Some have high incomes entirely absorbed by massive mortgages.
But people who have not inherited houses in the countryside, do not have and do not aspire to have the kind of jobs that attract high wages, are plain individuals not part of an intentional community or staff of a country house, probably live in the town.
In the English villages, the shops, post offices, pubs, schools, chapels, public transport and other facilities have gradually dwindled away. So people for whom living simply has an important Earth-friendly component, and who therefore want to live without cars, almost certainly (though not always) live in the town.
When television programmes discuss Earth-friendly initiatives and lifestyles, and look at choosing to live simply, generally keeping hens and installing solar panels and large underground rain-water reservoirs and wind turbines come into the equation.
All very interesting, but involves the living-simply-by-accumulating-gadgetry-and-accessories approach that is likely to appeal in a consumer society.
Urban simplicity is a far more practical proposition for young people starting out (with no inheritance) or for people who have been divorced and lost half their assets at a stroke, or who have been made ill by the rat race and forced to drop out and seek something richer in peace and poorer in finance, or who earn only enough money for a modest home for their family and can afford either for everyone to get weekly bus tickets or run a car but not both.
For people who cannot even consider the cost of installing photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, Earth-friendly simplicity is made possible in an urban setting. Here are some of the strategies.
• Ditch the car. Walk, use public transport. In some towns bikes are really good. I went everywhere on a bike when we lived in Bromley, because the terrain was even, the roads were wide and the people lived in big houses with off-road parking. In Hastings I don’t cycle: the hills are very steep, the roads are narrow and lined with parked cars because the houses are small and close with no off-road parking. Cycling here is for the bold and intrepid and the very fit. I get a £9.50 mega-rider bus ticket once a week, which takes me anywhere in Hastings and out as far as Bexhill (the next town, five miles along the coast). If you live in a town, you don't have to run a car. If you live in the country you almost have to have one (or someone does, to give you lifts).
• Share accommodation. We have sometimes had lodgers, and are currently in process of setting up a household of 5 adults, all family members. Living by cultural norms, those people would have 4 (there is one couple) sets of rent/mortgage, 4 TV licences, 4 sets of council tax & utilities, 4 heating and water boilers running, 4 stoves on for supper, 4 computers, 4 TV sets, 4 fridges, 4 freezers. So we shall have reduced all that by 75%, except the council tax which will be a little higher than for the sort of dwelling one of us would have been able to afford – but still much lower than 4 separate ones.
• Share costs and possessions. We shall have a car (a Toyota Prius) for our household, paid for by the company one of us works for, but we probably won’t run a second one. We certainly shan’t have one each!! We shall have a little more furniture than each of us would have had alone, but nothing like as much as all of us would have had living separately. Shopping, eating, cooking and utilizing garden produce is more economical per capita as a big household than as a household of one. One Christmas tree. One wood stack. One DVD to watch in the evening. Und so weite.
• The usual mantra – repair, re-use, recycle. The towns are rich in pickings of second-hand stuff. Hastings is stuffed to the gunwales with second-hand furniture shops and charity shops, and if you live locally they will deliver your purchases free, and if you only bought a small thing – a stool or shelf – there is a bus to take it home on or home is not too far from the shop to walk.
• Wholefood shops and co-operatives tend to centre in towns, just because there are more people there to make them viable.
• I get a lot of things on ebay. Recently I got a warm winter coat with a glam faux-fur collar on ebay, for £8. When my children were small, we got almost all their clothes second-hand. Their winter coats we acquired at the end of the summer term (the end of the school year), when all the items languishing in Lost Property were put out to be claimed or moved on. Some of the wealthier children had in fact not lost but dumped the new coats their parents had bought them, because they were not fashionable. We waited for those. We never had to buy a winter coat for our children until they all moved to a school where a uniform coat was required, when I became chaplain there. So we had to buy them second-hand coats but we did get a free house, so that was OK. But the thing about second-hand clothes is you depend on what’s available more and can be less demanding about what you want (unless you are mega shrewd and patient). We found that hardwearing practical clothes came up less often – when they were little our children’s everyday wear tended to be other people’s outgrown party-dresses because the track suits never made it to the charity shops. This means it’s easier to be a Second-hand Rose in the town, where the environment doesn’t need special shoes etc.
More thoughts on same subject to come…
Monday, 26 October 2009
Friday, 18 September 2009
Cautious Pudding
You've heard of Hasty Pudding? This is like it but subtly different: It is Cautious Pudding.
My doctor told me, my scales told me, the medical charts told me, the mirror told me: I have to lose some weight. Then eventually my joints and varicose veins began to tell me the same thing, but louder and a little more shrill – and I gave in.
After the menopause, weight is easy to accumulate and hard to shift: I was prepared for that, so I felt encouraged to discover it’s not as hard as I’d been dreading.
Acid reflux and fluid retention (sorry, this isn’t too much information for you, is it?), and relentless inflammation pain in my legs mean that fats, sugar, and citrus fruit (and any other very sour food) cause me quite intense pain. There’s something else too – either wheat or yeast, I can’t figure out which, that makes me very bloated and stiff.
So I’ve upped the exercise, and been eating food very, very low in fat and sugar. I eat almost no wheat (rice/corn/oatcakes R us) making my own muesli with oats as the only grain. I don’t go near acidic fruits, especially citrus, except for the smidge of citrus in my Earl Grey tea. I can’t imagine life without a cup of tea, and Earl Grey is about the only one that doesn’t set off the acid stomach problems.
It’s been very effective. Where I was having to take analgesics every night because of the intense pain in my legs, and experiencing a lot of fluid retention and deep, dragging weariness, I now have no pain, enough (though not loads of) energy, and the fluid has all gone away.
The thing I have missed is comfort food. I love steamed vegetables and fish and salads and fruit. But sometimes, especially if I feel lonely or cold, I long for a bit of stodge.
Today I made a pudding I hope might be OK. It might not. If I eat bread – any, even a slice or two – I can reckon to gain 3lbs weight: if it’s the wheat doing it, then this pudding must remain a distant dream. Time will tell.
I put an ounce of semolina (which is wheat, but I tried making this with brown rice flakes and the result was disgusterous), with just a scant teaspoon of sugar and a dash of vanilla, in a glass bowl. I added a cup of skimmed milk, and microwaved it for about 3 minutes, whisking it up with a fork every so often to stop it clumping. When I had made it, I put a very small amount (about half a teaspoon) of jam on it. And it was delicious.
I don’t think it can be very fattening, because the amounts of the wheat and sugar are so small. It has to be better than a slice of toast with butter and jam.
You may be wondering why we have jam and semolina and sugar in our house at all! Well, the jam is Badger’s because he loves it and eats quite a lot. The semolina is left over from before I started this reformation. The sugar is for Badger’s porridge in the winter, and for when people come who like sugar in their tea.
I suspect that it would be more intelligent to just cross wheat and sugar right off my list. I have a bad relationship with sugar, because it sends me a bit bi-polar and creates anxiety. I am also suspicious of the voice inside me that says, ‘Just once in a while – just now and again for a treat’: because past experience tells me that today’s treat is tomorrow’s habit.
But I’m hoping it will be all right. We’ll see.
My doctor told me, my scales told me, the medical charts told me, the mirror told me: I have to lose some weight. Then eventually my joints and varicose veins began to tell me the same thing, but louder and a little more shrill – and I gave in.
After the menopause, weight is easy to accumulate and hard to shift: I was prepared for that, so I felt encouraged to discover it’s not as hard as I’d been dreading.
Acid reflux and fluid retention (sorry, this isn’t too much information for you, is it?), and relentless inflammation pain in my legs mean that fats, sugar, and citrus fruit (and any other very sour food) cause me quite intense pain. There’s something else too – either wheat or yeast, I can’t figure out which, that makes me very bloated and stiff.
So I’ve upped the exercise, and been eating food very, very low in fat and sugar. I eat almost no wheat (rice/corn/oatcakes R us) making my own muesli with oats as the only grain. I don’t go near acidic fruits, especially citrus, except for the smidge of citrus in my Earl Grey tea. I can’t imagine life without a cup of tea, and Earl Grey is about the only one that doesn’t set off the acid stomach problems.
It’s been very effective. Where I was having to take analgesics every night because of the intense pain in my legs, and experiencing a lot of fluid retention and deep, dragging weariness, I now have no pain, enough (though not loads of) energy, and the fluid has all gone away.
The thing I have missed is comfort food. I love steamed vegetables and fish and salads and fruit. But sometimes, especially if I feel lonely or cold, I long for a bit of stodge.
Today I made a pudding I hope might be OK. It might not. If I eat bread – any, even a slice or two – I can reckon to gain 3lbs weight: if it’s the wheat doing it, then this pudding must remain a distant dream. Time will tell.
I put an ounce of semolina (which is wheat, but I tried making this with brown rice flakes and the result was disgusterous), with just a scant teaspoon of sugar and a dash of vanilla, in a glass bowl. I added a cup of skimmed milk, and microwaved it for about 3 minutes, whisking it up with a fork every so often to stop it clumping. When I had made it, I put a very small amount (about half a teaspoon) of jam on it. And it was delicious.
I don’t think it can be very fattening, because the amounts of the wheat and sugar are so small. It has to be better than a slice of toast with butter and jam.
You may be wondering why we have jam and semolina and sugar in our house at all! Well, the jam is Badger’s because he loves it and eats quite a lot. The semolina is left over from before I started this reformation. The sugar is for Badger’s porridge in the winter, and for when people come who like sugar in their tea.
I suspect that it would be more intelligent to just cross wheat and sugar right off my list. I have a bad relationship with sugar, because it sends me a bit bi-polar and creates anxiety. I am also suspicious of the voice inside me that says, ‘Just once in a while – just now and again for a treat’: because past experience tells me that today’s treat is tomorrow’s habit.
But I’m hoping it will be all right. We’ll see.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
In Celebration of Simplicity - Chapter One
Click on the Scribd tool bar top right for full screen, then zoom in to get a big, properly readable page.
In Celebration of Simplicity - Chapter 1
In Celebration of Simplicity - Chapter 1
Monday, 24 August 2009
Dirt Woman Transcends the Dust Mites!
Worried about the way mattresses take your sweat and dead skin cells and give you allergens and dustmites in return?
Wish you could go on holiday in the Caribbean but haven't got the money?
Wondering how to furnish a very long thin room?
Or just in need of a blissfully relaxing place to chill out?
A hammock could be your answer! This one came from Handmade Hammocks UK: the frame is made of sustainably produced rubberwood and the woven bit is made from fairly traded organic cotton.
"My life is my vacation" (Mohandas Gandhi) Woohoo!
Hallelujah!
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
The Bad Woman's Guide to Painting and Decorating
Almond White.
If you look round your cosy home – because your mother is coming to stay, or you want to sell it, or it’s your turn to host Thanksgiving – and the only words that spring to mind are ‘Oh ****!’ – then what you need is almond white.
Because almond white has the happy property of being uncannily similar to paint that was white, once long ago.
So a duster and a damp rag will do for the passable bits, and the bits that need something a little more radical can be uplifted by a couple of coats of almond white.
Now, personally, I have grasped that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. I would not climb on the desk and the filing cabinet because I can’t be bothered to move them, and have a damp rag handy to wipe up the spots of paint that fall on the new telly. I would not skip the bit above the bay window because I can’t raise the energy to move the sofa and take down the curtains. And it would never, ever occur to me to paint over a brown patch where some damp got in once, without really bothering with the rest. Not me. Oh, no. I would have all the furniture moved out or covered in dust sheets, I would spread special floor-coverings made of recycled old bedding that I’d fallen on with a glad cry when someone else was throwing them out, and kept on their own shelf in the Useful Things Cupboard particularly for that very purpose. I would wash things down and sand things off and take days and days and days over the whole palaver. But you – now you might not be such a thorough kind of person. You might think, as some people do: ‘Oh, blow that for a lark – won’t a dab of paint just do the trick?’
And if you are that kind of dubious, half-hearted, indolent type of person – the words you need to hear are ‘Almond White’. Okay?
Thursday, 13 August 2009
O the ingenuity!
In our kitchen we have these really good pan shelves that Badger made.
Today in the post came a skirt I bought on ebay. It is max priti but also makes me look max fat.
Noooooooo!
So I combined the skirt with the pan shelves.
Ta da!!
Leo Babauta's Zen Habits blog
I really love this blog. His post of yesterday (August 12th) - The Minimalist Principle: Omit Needless Things is, I think, one of his best.
It has good writing advice, and a link to his excellent piece on creating a minimalist home, which I have just read again and enjoyed and found inspiring all over again - and paragraph on buying is spot-on.
I haven't yet explored the links to other related sites he's posted, but when I have done that in the past I've found them to be treasure indeed (so I'm off to do that next).
My two next tasks in my personal discipleship are:
It has good writing advice, and a link to his excellent piece on creating a minimalist home, which I have just read again and enjoyed and found inspiring all over again - and paragraph on buying is spot-on.
I haven't yet explored the links to other related sites he's posted, but when I have done that in the past I've found them to be treasure indeed (so I'm off to do that next).
My two next tasks in my personal discipleship are:
- Establishing in my life a discipline of joy. Joy is a source of energy and dispels discontentment. It encourages others, creates beauty and light. Too often (and increasingly) I have allowed my soul strength to dissolve into anxiety and restlessness, and this needs addressing now. I know that joy is linked to freedom and peace, and all three are linked to a discipline of simplicity - so I intend to meditate into this for a while.
- Thinking carefully about treats and the creation of cheerfulness. When I am under emotional stress, to keep myself cheerful and prevent myself nosediving into depression, I ask less of myself and give myself treats. The problem comes when the treats cost money and involve accumulation of stuff - ie shopping. I mainly do internet shopping now, and restrict myself absolutely to very inexpensive items (or I would crash the simple and focussed lifestyle I have chosen, which is low-income). In the past I have noticed that companionship does the same for me as shopping - so planning a party with someone, and having a film from the library and party food for supper supplies the cheerfulness element of the treat. The challenge for me at the present time is being isolated from my family (and the writing discipline requires a lot of solitude, so working up a second group of people to have fun with would be writing suicide!), which has the effect of my cheerfulness draining away like water through sand. So when I get low, I buy some clothes (very, very cheap and usually on ebay). Then when I get too many for the allocated space I send some to the charity shop. But this is wasteful of time and money. So I need to address it.
'Thank you' to Leo Babauta, then, for his continued inspiration on the Zen Habits blog!
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Opus Interruptus
Working from home. Oh, glory! The snag is, it’s not only your own home you're working from, but also the home of the other people who live there but work somewhere else. So you become the natural troubleshooter and all-purpose person to deal with everything of any description concerned with that location.
It wouldn’t be like that, living in a shed. There would be no phones to go wrong, no wiring or plumbing challenges, no painting and decorating, and only minimal repairs. Shed life is my heart’s desire.
I asked the magazine Woman Alive if they would like a regular column on living simply, and the editor thought that might fit in well with their vision for the development of the magazine. She offered me a regular column of 290 words in length, and after some deliberating I said ‘yes’. The hesitation was because it’s mighty difficult to convey or discuss a concept in 290 words – much harder than if you have 1,000 words, or even 500. Part of the reason I said yes is because it isn’t easy; it’s a writing challenge, and I like that.
The last few weeks have been full to overflowing with family and house matters – looming especially large was the interaction with estate agents and the preparation of our home for sale.
FINALLY today offered a clear space for some writing, and this had to be a Good Thing, because today is also the deadline for the copy for December’s issue of Woman Alive, when my regular column begins (though I do also have an article in this month’s issue, about my new book which comes out in September).
Yesterday, at teatime, the telephones in our house ceased to work.
This morning I phoned British Telecom and had a lengthy interaction with a very nicely spoken female automaton. The outcome of this call was an assurance that an engineer would fix the problem by tomorrow, and that updates would be texted to my mobile phone in the meantime.
I thought that was okay, and went to hang out the washing.
When I came back into the house, there were letters on the mat – I had left the front door open, to be friendly and so the postie could drop in any parcels, knowing I was at home. One of the letters was a Post Office card explaining that, as I was out when the postman called, the parcel he had brought (which had to be signed for) would be taken back to the sorting office. The card had a time written on it – 3 minutes before the time of my reading it. I grabbed my sandals and dashed out to look for the postie, knowing I might have to be at home the rest of the day waiting for BT, so not be in a position to go to the sorting office. No sign of him anywhere up and down our road, or in the next road. Hey ho.
I gave myself a pep talk. ‘Why are you so stressed? Why do you get so het up about these things? What does it matter? There will be time to get the parcel, it’s no big deal! For goodness sake calm down, Ember!’
Resolutely, I set myself to the tricksy task of saying something useful, inspiring, interesting and intelligent in 290 words.
I fired up the computer, set up a file, typed one sentence, and the house phone rang, just one little trill, then stopped. A short while later, it did it again. ‘They must be testing the line,’ I thought – and addressed myself again to the task in hand. Then my mobile phone rang. It was BT to say they had an engineer not far away – would I be home later on? Yes, indeed.
I returned to writing the article, and began to warm to the task. Then came a knock at the front door. ‘Ah!’ I thought – this must be the BT engineer.’ But no – it was a man come to read the gas and electricity meters. The gas meter presented no problem, but the electricity meter lies deep within the cupboard under the stairs where we have put all the junk to be disposed of in the course of preparing our house for sale. I heaved it out to the point that with the help of a powerful torch he could get at the meter. Then put it all back when he went.
My computer had started to play a quiet little piano tune to itself when I returned to it, but I jerked it back to reality and read through what I had written. With some effort I felt my way to the state of mind I had been in before. Then came another knock at the front door. ‘Ah!’ I thought – this must be the BT engineer.’ But no – it was a delivery man with a large parcel from Amazon for the people at No 31 who are cunning enough to work in some other place than their own home, and were therefore not available to take delivery of their parcel. I felt a certain sense of injustice that things had so fallen out that I had missed my own parcel but been home for theirs; but, hey.
I signed for the parcel and gave the man back his clipboard. He gave it back to me. Could I please print my name in that box too? I did.
Then I went back and once more interrupted my computer’s harmless little ditties, and read through what I had written. To my astonishment, it seemed okay. I wrote another sentence.
A text message came in to my mobile phone. Assuming it to be one of the promised updates from BT, I opened it. It was a message from Orange to tell me I could now text anyone in Europe for 10p. I deleted it, and returned to my article. I wrote another sentence. My mobile phone rang. It was BT. The engineer would be with me in five to ten minutes. Was that okay? ‘Yes,’ I said through gritted teeth – ‘that will be fine.’
I finished the sentence I had been writing and shut down the computer. The engineer arrived. He needed constant attention. All the phones in the house had to be unplugged and plugged in elsewhere. Two of the sockets were behind large bookcases, one of which could be accessed only by moving our lodger's stereo speaker, which stood on a heavy and unwieldy metal stand fixed into the carpet with prongs and supporting a tall thin candlestick and a houseplant. And then the engineer asked for a cup of tea. Since he had done a nice job of fixing the phone I made him one, and gave him a cake, both of which he enjoyed slowly, while pursuing a conversation of considerable length.
‘D’you work locally, then?’ he asked me. This was an improvement on what most people say, which is: 'Day off, is it?'
‘I work from home,’ I replied.
‘Oh,’ he said; ‘what do you do?’
‘I am a writer,’ I said.
We then had the usual conversation – he has a fourteen year old daughter with a rich imagination; what did I think were her chances of becoming a writer? And we had the other conversation –
‘What does your husband do?’
‘He is a publisher.’
‘Oh, right! So that’s how you got your books published!’
‘No. No, not at all. After twenty years of writing books, I married my publisher.’
Then he tested the phone one more time and went away.
I switched on the computer. It was sulking now and didn’t want to play any pretty tunes. It has to be left in peace before it feels like playing little tunes to itself.
I opened the file with the article. It was looking good.
There came a knock at the front door. ‘Hello? Hellooo! HELLOOO!’
It was Melissa from No 31. She had come for her parcel.
For some obscure reason, my mind has just made a connection with a Christmas card my sister sent me when our children were small. The first four lines of text were on the outside, beneath a cartoon showing Father Christmas with a child on his lap. The last line was on the inside, discovered when you opened the card:
‘You’d better not pout
You’d better not cry
You’d better not shout, and I’m telling you why:
I have a gun.’
I have finished the article. 290 words exactement. I have submitted it, invoice attached. The phone is working. The sun is shining. I am off to the sorting office to collect my parcel. Howzat!
It wouldn’t be like that, living in a shed. There would be no phones to go wrong, no wiring or plumbing challenges, no painting and decorating, and only minimal repairs. Shed life is my heart’s desire.
I asked the magazine Woman Alive if they would like a regular column on living simply, and the editor thought that might fit in well with their vision for the development of the magazine. She offered me a regular column of 290 words in length, and after some deliberating I said ‘yes’. The hesitation was because it’s mighty difficult to convey or discuss a concept in 290 words – much harder than if you have 1,000 words, or even 500. Part of the reason I said yes is because it isn’t easy; it’s a writing challenge, and I like that.
The last few weeks have been full to overflowing with family and house matters – looming especially large was the interaction with estate agents and the preparation of our home for sale.
FINALLY today offered a clear space for some writing, and this had to be a Good Thing, because today is also the deadline for the copy for December’s issue of Woman Alive, when my regular column begins (though I do also have an article in this month’s issue, about my new book which comes out in September).
Yesterday, at teatime, the telephones in our house ceased to work.
This morning I phoned British Telecom and had a lengthy interaction with a very nicely spoken female automaton. The outcome of this call was an assurance that an engineer would fix the problem by tomorrow, and that updates would be texted to my mobile phone in the meantime.
I thought that was okay, and went to hang out the washing.
When I came back into the house, there were letters on the mat – I had left the front door open, to be friendly and so the postie could drop in any parcels, knowing I was at home. One of the letters was a Post Office card explaining that, as I was out when the postman called, the parcel he had brought (which had to be signed for) would be taken back to the sorting office. The card had a time written on it – 3 minutes before the time of my reading it. I grabbed my sandals and dashed out to look for the postie, knowing I might have to be at home the rest of the day waiting for BT, so not be in a position to go to the sorting office. No sign of him anywhere up and down our road, or in the next road. Hey ho.
I gave myself a pep talk. ‘Why are you so stressed? Why do you get so het up about these things? What does it matter? There will be time to get the parcel, it’s no big deal! For goodness sake calm down, Ember!’
Resolutely, I set myself to the tricksy task of saying something useful, inspiring, interesting and intelligent in 290 words.
I fired up the computer, set up a file, typed one sentence, and the house phone rang, just one little trill, then stopped. A short while later, it did it again. ‘They must be testing the line,’ I thought – and addressed myself again to the task in hand. Then my mobile phone rang. It was BT to say they had an engineer not far away – would I be home later on? Yes, indeed.
I returned to writing the article, and began to warm to the task. Then came a knock at the front door. ‘Ah!’ I thought – this must be the BT engineer.’ But no – it was a man come to read the gas and electricity meters. The gas meter presented no problem, but the electricity meter lies deep within the cupboard under the stairs where we have put all the junk to be disposed of in the course of preparing our house for sale. I heaved it out to the point that with the help of a powerful torch he could get at the meter. Then put it all back when he went.
My computer had started to play a quiet little piano tune to itself when I returned to it, but I jerked it back to reality and read through what I had written. With some effort I felt my way to the state of mind I had been in before. Then came another knock at the front door. ‘Ah!’ I thought – this must be the BT engineer.’ But no – it was a delivery man with a large parcel from Amazon for the people at No 31 who are cunning enough to work in some other place than their own home, and were therefore not available to take delivery of their parcel. I felt a certain sense of injustice that things had so fallen out that I had missed my own parcel but been home for theirs; but, hey.
I signed for the parcel and gave the man back his clipboard. He gave it back to me. Could I please print my name in that box too? I did.
Then I went back and once more interrupted my computer’s harmless little ditties, and read through what I had written. To my astonishment, it seemed okay. I wrote another sentence.
A text message came in to my mobile phone. Assuming it to be one of the promised updates from BT, I opened it. It was a message from Orange to tell me I could now text anyone in Europe for 10p. I deleted it, and returned to my article. I wrote another sentence. My mobile phone rang. It was BT. The engineer would be with me in five to ten minutes. Was that okay? ‘Yes,’ I said through gritted teeth – ‘that will be fine.’
I finished the sentence I had been writing and shut down the computer. The engineer arrived. He needed constant attention. All the phones in the house had to be unplugged and plugged in elsewhere. Two of the sockets were behind large bookcases, one of which could be accessed only by moving our lodger's stereo speaker, which stood on a heavy and unwieldy metal stand fixed into the carpet with prongs and supporting a tall thin candlestick and a houseplant. And then the engineer asked for a cup of tea. Since he had done a nice job of fixing the phone I made him one, and gave him a cake, both of which he enjoyed slowly, while pursuing a conversation of considerable length.
‘D’you work locally, then?’ he asked me. This was an improvement on what most people say, which is: 'Day off, is it?'
‘I work from home,’ I replied.
‘Oh,’ he said; ‘what do you do?’
‘I am a writer,’ I said.
We then had the usual conversation – he has a fourteen year old daughter with a rich imagination; what did I think were her chances of becoming a writer? And we had the other conversation –
‘What does your husband do?’
‘He is a publisher.’
‘Oh, right! So that’s how you got your books published!’
‘No. No, not at all. After twenty years of writing books, I married my publisher.’
Then he tested the phone one more time and went away.
I switched on the computer. It was sulking now and didn’t want to play any pretty tunes. It has to be left in peace before it feels like playing little tunes to itself.
I opened the file with the article. It was looking good.
There came a knock at the front door. ‘Hello? Hellooo! HELLOOO!’
It was Melissa from No 31. She had come for her parcel.
For some obscure reason, my mind has just made a connection with a Christmas card my sister sent me when our children were small. The first four lines of text were on the outside, beneath a cartoon showing Father Christmas with a child on his lap. The last line was on the inside, discovered when you opened the card:
‘You’d better not pout
You’d better not cry
You’d better not shout, and I’m telling you why:
I have a gun.’
I have finished the article. 290 words exactement. I have submitted it, invoice attached. The phone is working. The sun is shining. I am off to the sorting office to collect my parcel. Howzat!
Friday, 24 July 2009
Dirtwoman - the Final Resignation
In the house where I live, I am Dirtwoman. To be fair to him, for a long time my beloved did not fully realise that I was Dirtwoman – and in any case he was so pleased to be relieved of juggling washing, hoovering, shopping, cooking, cleaning, ironing and washing up with the demands of a very full-time job that he didn’t give it too much thought – except always to be willing to help Dirtwoman whenever asked.
Some homes don’t actually have a Dirtwoman. When the estate of my beloved’s previous marriage was split 50/50 and the family home sold, he and I cleaned through. I spent an evening scrubbing, bleaching, de-greasing another woman’s kitchen – because in that home they had Careerwoman and Intellectualwoman and Findyoursoulwoman – but they had no Dirtwoman as such.
We have lodgers share our home with us, and all of them have been very clean and tidy. They do their own laundry and washing up; they cook for themselves and keep their rooms pleasant and tidy. But it is always Dirtwoman who crawls around on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors; who cleans around and in and behind the toilet; who moves the shampoo bottles and bleaches the bits of the bath where mould grows if you don’t; who bleaches the shower curtain, and scrubs the grime that gathers in the corner of the window frames, and empties the bins, and scrubs out the recycling boxes and takes a nail brush to the moulding on the skirting boards and brushes the yard.
There is a glorious exception. In our house, my beloved cleans the oven. Last night at my request (graciously and willingly) he also took the remainder of the stew that had gone bad up the garden and buried it. When he dies, he will go straight to heaven for this. God sees.
My mother has been a Dirtwoman Extraordinaire all her life. I remember the Lost Soul feeling of coming home early from school on the last day of term – when home was not yet home as I knew it, with home-made cake and jam sandwiches, but a Grim Place dominated by floor wax, Windowlene and Jif.
I was okay with the nappies when my children were babes – though despite all my eco-principles I have advised my daughter to let go of this one Shining Act of Environmental Responsibility – stuff the terries: go for disposable. Mopping up sick, pee, spilt food and drinks: the mountains of washing up and laundry, the endless sorting of belongings – I felt this was fair enough.
Around and after the ending of my first marriage, every member of our family went through multiple moves; and we were a kind of corporate Dirtwoman as each inhabitant marched out. We bagged and boxed and carried and scrubbed and wiped and swept. I guess that was okay.
I’ve even been a Dirtwoman by trade; skivvying as a cleaner and as a care assistant shovelling in Ready Brek at one end and catching it as it came out the other. I guess that was okay: I needed the money.
When I got together with my beloved, I used at first to stay some weekends at his place, and he came and stayed some weekends with me. When I went to stay at his place I’d clean through; hoovering, polishing, washing the floors, cleaning down the bathrooms, doing the ironing. Sometimes his ex-wife would have been to stay with his daughter while he was away, and left behind some big oven dishes from a roast dinner for me to clean up. I guess it was okay. My beloved was grateful, and I do love him very much.
When I go to stay with my family, sometimes I dabble as a Dirtwoman – it doesn’t hurt to pick up a cloth and help out, and they all have their hands full earning a living or raising a family.
And just now I am getting a home ready to sell. They say, don’t they, that it doesn’t matter too much about the condition of the home you sell: hey, don’t try too hard! – the next people will want to do things their own way; they will expect to re-decorate, re-carpet, change everything to their own tastes. Will they? I am not convinced. I try to imagine myself viewing a house and thinking, ‘Oh, cat-sick stains on the carpet, toilet stained dark brown, walls in need of painting – woohoo! I was hoping it would be this way; now I can refurbish a whole house! Out of my way! Here comes Dirtwoman!’ Nah. I’d rather it was clean and fresh and ready to move into, every time.
What I would really like is to live in a shed. One small room. Almost no belongings. A brush, a cloth, flimsy curtains that wash out quick and go up on the line without a struggle, without hurting my neck and my arms; a bucket toilet. People think a bucket toilet in the shed where you live is not hygienic and not private. I think shitting in the middle of a house where everyone can hear you and smell you is not private, and you can clean a bucket a lot more effectively than a flush toilet. And cooking over charcoal outdoors, draining dishes on the grass, is clean. The stuff that accumulates in sink traps and the powder drawer of washing machines is disgusting.
But I have to choose between the way I would like to live, and the companion I would like to live with, who prefers a large house, two bathrooms, a nice fitted kitchen – and lots and lots and lots of ornaments. Memorabilia.
I have chosen the person. Not without struggle, I admit. There have been a series of moments when I have almost, almost chosen the way of life instead. For the freedom. Because I want to live with cleanliness, order and peace; I don’t want dust and moulds and parasites and grease and the stains of spilt food and drink and the stains of stuff that dropped out of the orifices of living beings: but I don’t want to be Dirtwoman any more either. I don’t want to choose between using a toilet with stuck-on bits of shit from who knows which resident, or scraping it off myself. I don’t want every day to clean out the slimy bits of onion and soya and hair stuck round the thing that catches stuff as water goes down the kitchen sink plug. I don’t want to scrub the stuck-on gunk off the wire racks on the draining board and under the washing up bowl, or poke out the slime mould that gathers under the draining board drain-holes with a knife. I don’t want to poke out the grey fluff that gathers where the radiator pipe goes into the floor.
Not now, not never, not ever again. I like to be clean, but I hate being the household dalit, everybody’s Dirtwoman.
This last time, as we move house, I will be Dirtwoman. But after we have moved, Dirtwoman will have resigned. Even while I think about it, I have no idea how I can share a home with a bunch of other people and accomplish this.
But I will. Somehow I will.
The enemy of cleanliness and order is the accumulation of possessions. Everywhere stuff accumulates there is either filth or a Dirtwoman. The gift of life was not meant for this.
Some homes don’t actually have a Dirtwoman. When the estate of my beloved’s previous marriage was split 50/50 and the family home sold, he and I cleaned through. I spent an evening scrubbing, bleaching, de-greasing another woman’s kitchen – because in that home they had Careerwoman and Intellectualwoman and Findyoursoulwoman – but they had no Dirtwoman as such.
We have lodgers share our home with us, and all of them have been very clean and tidy. They do their own laundry and washing up; they cook for themselves and keep their rooms pleasant and tidy. But it is always Dirtwoman who crawls around on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors; who cleans around and in and behind the toilet; who moves the shampoo bottles and bleaches the bits of the bath where mould grows if you don’t; who bleaches the shower curtain, and scrubs the grime that gathers in the corner of the window frames, and empties the bins, and scrubs out the recycling boxes and takes a nail brush to the moulding on the skirting boards and brushes the yard.
There is a glorious exception. In our house, my beloved cleans the oven. Last night at my request (graciously and willingly) he also took the remainder of the stew that had gone bad up the garden and buried it. When he dies, he will go straight to heaven for this. God sees.
My mother has been a Dirtwoman Extraordinaire all her life. I remember the Lost Soul feeling of coming home early from school on the last day of term – when home was not yet home as I knew it, with home-made cake and jam sandwiches, but a Grim Place dominated by floor wax, Windowlene and Jif.
I was okay with the nappies when my children were babes – though despite all my eco-principles I have advised my daughter to let go of this one Shining Act of Environmental Responsibility – stuff the terries: go for disposable. Mopping up sick, pee, spilt food and drinks: the mountains of washing up and laundry, the endless sorting of belongings – I felt this was fair enough.
Around and after the ending of my first marriage, every member of our family went through multiple moves; and we were a kind of corporate Dirtwoman as each inhabitant marched out. We bagged and boxed and carried and scrubbed and wiped and swept. I guess that was okay.
I’ve even been a Dirtwoman by trade; skivvying as a cleaner and as a care assistant shovelling in Ready Brek at one end and catching it as it came out the other. I guess that was okay: I needed the money.
When I got together with my beloved, I used at first to stay some weekends at his place, and he came and stayed some weekends with me. When I went to stay at his place I’d clean through; hoovering, polishing, washing the floors, cleaning down the bathrooms, doing the ironing. Sometimes his ex-wife would have been to stay with his daughter while he was away, and left behind some big oven dishes from a roast dinner for me to clean up. I guess it was okay. My beloved was grateful, and I do love him very much.
When I go to stay with my family, sometimes I dabble as a Dirtwoman – it doesn’t hurt to pick up a cloth and help out, and they all have their hands full earning a living or raising a family.
And just now I am getting a home ready to sell. They say, don’t they, that it doesn’t matter too much about the condition of the home you sell: hey, don’t try too hard! – the next people will want to do things their own way; they will expect to re-decorate, re-carpet, change everything to their own tastes. Will they? I am not convinced. I try to imagine myself viewing a house and thinking, ‘Oh, cat-sick stains on the carpet, toilet stained dark brown, walls in need of painting – woohoo! I was hoping it would be this way; now I can refurbish a whole house! Out of my way! Here comes Dirtwoman!’ Nah. I’d rather it was clean and fresh and ready to move into, every time.
What I would really like is to live in a shed. One small room. Almost no belongings. A brush, a cloth, flimsy curtains that wash out quick and go up on the line without a struggle, without hurting my neck and my arms; a bucket toilet. People think a bucket toilet in the shed where you live is not hygienic and not private. I think shitting in the middle of a house where everyone can hear you and smell you is not private, and you can clean a bucket a lot more effectively than a flush toilet. And cooking over charcoal outdoors, draining dishes on the grass, is clean. The stuff that accumulates in sink traps and the powder drawer of washing machines is disgusting.
But I have to choose between the way I would like to live, and the companion I would like to live with, who prefers a large house, two bathrooms, a nice fitted kitchen – and lots and lots and lots of ornaments. Memorabilia.
I have chosen the person. Not without struggle, I admit. There have been a series of moments when I have almost, almost chosen the way of life instead. For the freedom. Because I want to live with cleanliness, order and peace; I don’t want dust and moulds and parasites and grease and the stains of spilt food and drink and the stains of stuff that dropped out of the orifices of living beings: but I don’t want to be Dirtwoman any more either. I don’t want to choose between using a toilet with stuck-on bits of shit from who knows which resident, or scraping it off myself. I don’t want every day to clean out the slimy bits of onion and soya and hair stuck round the thing that catches stuff as water goes down the kitchen sink plug. I don’t want to scrub the stuck-on gunk off the wire racks on the draining board and under the washing up bowl, or poke out the slime mould that gathers under the draining board drain-holes with a knife. I don’t want to poke out the grey fluff that gathers where the radiator pipe goes into the floor.
Not now, not never, not ever again. I like to be clean, but I hate being the household dalit, everybody’s Dirtwoman.
This last time, as we move house, I will be Dirtwoman. But after we have moved, Dirtwoman will have resigned. Even while I think about it, I have no idea how I can share a home with a bunch of other people and accomplish this.
But I will. Somehow I will.
The enemy of cleanliness and order is the accumulation of possessions. Everywhere stuff accumulates there is either filth or a Dirtwoman. The gift of life was not meant for this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)