He has certainly triggered something major in my thinking with his series " New Lives in the Wild" (Channel 5). I watched the last series in 2013 from my warm sofa with the glass of the TV safely protecting me as I marvelled at the dedication and resourcefulness of these brave but bonkers people but that was in a world pre Brexit,Trump, obvious climate change,before 'Before the Flood' and 'Hypernormalisation'.Now with all that's happening on the playing field, suddenly those people abandoning society seem like the sane ones.
When I was a angsty teenager, inspired by Henry Rollins, I wrote shouty poetry about being a lab rat trapped in a cage being experimented on and how I would spend my life gnawing at the cage to get out, then I got into debt at university and there I was slap bang in the middle of the cage,though I was too busy having fun to realise it. ( As an aside act of rebellion I still earn too little to pay my student loans.)
Bogged down by an overdraft and a ridiculous loan and having worked in pubs since I was 16, I ended up in a career I never aimed at, as a restaurant (ironically still a word I can't spell) Manager and spent over 20 years serving food & drinks to large swathes of the population.
But everything happens for a reason right? I've watched people pretty closely over a whole generation but last Christmas eve (of all nights) after a long night of watching the worst of people (Wether you like it or not, very drunk people are hell to the sober) a customer was so rude to me I knew I'd finally seen enough.
It's taken me a while to recover & realise but thinking back to my early working days people were just, nicer, friendlier, generous and definitely had more manners, there's always some idiots by the numbers game, but the generation and the mood back then were an infinite improvement on the behaviour of customers of the last few years. People have got more and more pissed off and some of them are so unaware of it they act out like frustrated toddlers who can't express yet how they are feeling. The rest just get drunk.
Yesterday I cleaned out my daughters tiny bedroom and somehow filled copious boxes with stuff.I had a huge bag of rubbish let alone bags of discarded toys and clothes for the charity shop,it took me hours to sort it all out and all the time I was thinking how we're all conditioned to constantly buy more stuff when there is more than enough stuff here all ready,perfectly good stuff , so why import more from China at great environmental cost? And how much stuff do we actually need? If you were forced to flee for your life,would you waste any time taking all that stuff? After yesterdays marathon I realised it would take days to pack what I own, when actually all you'd need to survive is warmth,food and water.
I won't get started on the commerciality of Christmas,again, but in my head when I see all those gift sets in the shops, I have this image of a giant pile of rubbish with a droopy christmas tree on top as Noddy Holder sings hollowly to the blackened sky. Bigger,better, faster, it's all distraction from the ugly truth that we are trapped in a financial and political system that pretends but does not serve the greater good,especially that most crucial of elements,the ecosystem we live in.
The facts are all out there if you look, our ecosystem, to which we are all connected,know it or not, is a delicate balance of many things and like a house of cards we're now just one degree celsius away from serious repercussions.Let's not forget that the UK was joined to the continent before a huge seismic shift in the atlantic resulted in a Tsunami & made us an island.It's predicted half the UK could disappear again as tides grow higher.
To get to my point, things is only gonna get uglier so perhaps now would be a good time to get gnawing on that cage.
But could we, just go wild, I mean? For a start there are all sorts of tedious laws preventing you from leaving the system and just living on some wild land, right now you still need serious money and planning for that to happen.I feel increasingly frustrated by the housing system which puts us in tiny boxes which we pay through the nose for,or can't even get that far, in many peoples cases. Whose land is all of it if not ours?
Then there's the question of coping, I might like to imagine I'm Sarah Connors but my skills need work. I'm pretty sure I would kill someone if it mean't saving my loved ones, but would that be enough to survive in a post flooded world?
This last year working alone has made me pretty feral and I can't say I miss the Rat race.
I've never achieved more in my creative work or had better relationships, however it maybe a joyful thing to get off the treadmill,but in financial terms I am subjugated by poverty and my single parent status.
I think retreat is the best option, far away from "civilisation" and high up, away from the coast 'cos when the North pole melts there's gonna be a lot more water to contend with...
I can't help but wonder,however, if we started society again would we eventually make all the same mistakes again? I like to think future generations wouldn't be so stupid as to put faith in money and politics, the way things are going, they really are going to learn the hard way about greed and need so as not to repeat our mistakes.
So whose up for it ? Granted though Outer Mongolia is very cheap it's cold, so I'll keep watching Ben F for suggestions, if we all chipped in a bit I'm sure we could find somewhere in the world to go & have a go at living better, loving the land instead of abusing it, caring for animals instead of killing them and using our skills to survive,not our credit cards.
FYI though, I'll be banning Christmas as we know it.
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