Self-Sufficiency in Style
finding the Good Life
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Self-Sufficiency in Style finding the Good Life
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| Maybe,
some of you might enjoy being in at the beginning... The genesis of the idea of living the good life came in an unusual way, about 12 years ago... |
I
came in from work my wife was standing with her back to me in the kitchen. She was looking out the window. Without turning, she said, "Hullo," and then..."There is something I've always wanted to do really badly, but I've always been afraid to tell you." "What?" I said, somewhat taken back. She is not given to this kind of statement. "You heard me," she said. "I'm embarrassed. There is something I haven't told you." "What!" I said, by now thoroughly alarmed. "You will just laugh at me," she said, almost in tears. "I should have told you years ago and wouldn't have this trouble mentioning it now. I always wanted to tell you, but didn't dare." It took the best part of an hour to get her to tell me what was troubling her, and she was right, even after 25 years of marriage, I hadn't even begun to suspect. What she told me then, and the subsequent events changed my life, and hers, for good. |
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She had, it seems, unknown to me always wanted to join the police. The very idea sent me into fits of laughter. "What makes you think they will take you?" She defiantly produced a newspaper. The local force were seeking Special Constables. I pointed out to her that she was a grandmother, with a medical record that included two recent bouts of cancer and a bad back. Her eyesight was the butt of many family jokes. "You have the family to look after too." She was adamant, "I've always wanted to be in the Police." |
I scarcely believed what I was hearing. |
| "Determined"
was hardly the word...
... and the evidence has been found in the attic. The existence of a less than respectful husband making rude gestures in the background has been carefully cropped. |
Needless to say, she joined the Special Constabulary, took her courses in
unarmed combat and the Criminal Justice Act, learned, more or less to
stand to attention and, reluctantly, salute her superiors. I thought they would keep her to policing village fetes. Not a bit of it. She had as exciting a time as any new recruit and was especially valued as the only woman police officer of any kind in a sparsely populated rural area. They threw the lot at her, everything from renewing shotgun licences to searching and interviewing prisoners; even plain clothes work All for nothing in payment, simply to fulfil a long held dream. The house became like a police canteen with more Pandas than Peking zoo, and she caused gusts of laughter when she parked our own Daimler (it was a prosperous time for us) alongside the Chief Constable's at the local Station. She was promoted, pestered to take a full time job and eventually only reluctantly resigned when we left the area. She managed to live for a few years a lifetime dream |
| Disaster
struck a few years after my wife began her involvement with the police. My company's main business was with Yugoslavia and the Balkan wars had just erupted. A heart attack at 47 floored me, and you can't go wandering about a war zone with a dicky ticker. Quite badly disabled at the time, I was devastated when my businesses had to be sold into a poor market and I had to cease working in a profession that I adored. We sold the family home, bought a small place in town and aimlessly wandered Europe in hired cars, or old bangers, half heartedly seeking a solution. We were thoroughly miserable. It was then that I copied my wife and owned up to my unspoken dreams. |
The
lesson was not lost on me. We all have unspoken dreams and ambitions. Irresponsible, unrealistic and unrealisable ideas, that occupy those moments between sleep and the real world. Impossible, secret and silly ideas; impracticable and embarrassing that haunt our private thoughts from childhood to old age. |
| This
is really only the start of the story.
You can click on Writer to read more about his sometimes hectic life and find out the reasons why he and his wife chose a self-sufficient life. |
I
had always dreamt of being self-sufficient. Long before the famous television programme "The Good Life", the idea had constantly revolved about my head. Totally impractical, and with only a skimpy knowledge of a little vegetable gardening, it had always occupied a small corner of my mind. No dreamer, but rather a hard headed businessman, there was no love of poverty and deprivation. I like to live well on good food, in a comfortable house and without worrying about money. No idealist; organic food and corrugated iron are not my scene. My wife was a little better placed. Loving animals she was able to handle sheep. Equally, she had learned to milk a goat. However, dreams are not to be driven away by lack of knowledge. If self-sufficiency is your hidden ambition, then mere ignorance and incompetancy is no barrier to daydream and nocturnal visions. I owned up. Not courageously in a single honest confession, but slowly and sneakily over a much longer time span. It took an
examination of the refuse (see
The Dustbin Challenge)
to finally convince me. |
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...so we bought a cottage and a few acres of land - the ominously named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner. |
