Home Page  Lifestyle A Good Life
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A Good Life |
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Written by Judith Hoad
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Tuesday, 30 November 2004 |
Picasso it was who said, ‘In order to live simply, it is necessary to be
very wealthy’ to which I would add, ‘or work very hard’!
It’s nearly forty years since my husband and I decided to live simply. For
a start, we moved to the country and he left his pension-related job.
By trial, error and default, within a couple of years, we were living with no
plumbing, or electricity and with hens, ducks, goats as well as our children.
The life was unquestionably simple, because it held so many responsibilities;
livestock to be fed and milked, lamps to be filled and trimmed (by daylight) children
to be readied for school and a living to be earned. One day was very much like
the next, only differentiated by the seasonal changes.
We never had a television, but, at night, from the Autumn Equinox to the Spring
Equinox, we read aloud in the evenings. The allotted half an hour often stretched
to much longer, we all enjoyed it so much. At other times we sang and made music,
played word games and board games, or cards, as well as spinning, knitting, or
carving and so on during the rest of those dark nights of winter.
We lived for eight years without a radio, although we took a daily paper, which
arrived with the post. It was only when our oldest child reached twelve years
of age and asked for a radio that we bought one, re-discovering rapidly, our pointless
addiction to news bulletins!
Our reason for making life so labour-intensive came from learning of the Benedictine
monastic rule where monks spent eight hours of every twenty-four sleeping, eight
about the busy-ness of living and eight on the contemplative life. As creative
people, we substituted our creativity for the contemplation. In this way, we hoped
to keep our minds and bodies fit and healthy. Looking back over the years, it’s
worked!
The years of living without electricity allowed us to recognise the benefits.
There was no circuitry to disrupt the natural etheric energies of our dwellings;
peacefulness and tranquillity have always pervaded the house. Using outdoor toilets
of varying sorts, has allowed me to indulge my life-long distaste for toilets
in houses, especially in bathrooms!
Having no bathroom has never been a bother; if one is healthy, one cleans oneself
and a basin of water and a sponge is quite sufficient. I can remember wonderful
bathnights in front of a roaring fire, or showers taken under broken spouting
after a hot day’s work, or dips in the river on sunny mornings. Being clean
is in the head! Even people with posh bathrooms, if their heads aren’t clear,
have been known to smell.
My husband named our life, “The Bucket Economy”, because the important
items came and went through the front door in a bucket: drinking water from the
well, washing water from the roof, turf and timber for the fires, ashes from the
same, grey-water slops and food scraps.
Mindful of the hazards of using organochlorine fungicides in paints, sixteen years
ago we began to use ecological, orange-oil protected paints. All our curtains,
bedding and floor coverings have always been from natural fibres; they are warmer
and stay clean longer than the static-electricity-holding man-made fibres. Mindfulness
has really been the agent by which we’ve tuned our lives, allowing true
necessity to dictate how much we used of current technology. Seventeen years without
a car stopped when, through a failing heart, my husband needed one again. No one
lifestyle is perfect, ecologically, or otherwise and compromise is always an option.
We’ve simply done our best to follow our intuition.
With advancing age and a growing dislike of the fossil-fuel-fumes of paraffin,
I gave up oil lamps about three years ago in favour of electricity generated by
my own wind and solar unit. The wires come only eighteen inches into the house
and I charge up battery lamps for use at night. I’m not giving in to circuitry
that I know, from experience, will disrupt the etheric energies I enjoy so much
in this house. For my old age, I plan to make a couple of other changes, taking
advantage of developments in technology and availability of equipment and materials:
I’m designing a truly “Eco-house” - no more adaptations! This
time, no concrete (which is cold and sweats), no plastics, (ditto) and no ferrous
metals, which can disrupt etheric energies, just like ring circuits do.
So soon as I sell my present, desirable eco-dwelling, I’m off to fulfil
my dream. Any offers?
Judith Hoad © 2004
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| The local planet |
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Birr
Co. Offaly
Ireland
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