We watched Kevin McCloud playing the hippie last night - http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kevin-mcclouds-man-made-home/4od
It was an entertaining programme and I would have liked to
see a straight documentary about him building a cabin on his patch of land, but
as ever with modern TV the producers took over and turned it into something
silly. It had to follow the model of other “lads” programmes and go completely
over the top with biodiesel from sewage. Still, it came at a good time. We have
just sold out boat.
The money had been transferred the day before and at 9 am
yesterday we handed over the keys of the wide-beam barge “Father Goose” to
Jonathan Taphouse. This had been our
second home in Bristol Harbour for nearly 3 years. Unfortunately, our situation
had changed and six months ago we decided we would have to sell it. We had 30
people view it, two price reductions and three previous buyers pull out. It
took a month of negotiations, surveys, and an ever growing catalogue of things
wrong before we finally agreed a price.
This then was the moment I’d been working towards for 6
months and I felt awful.
Yesterday morning we went shopping and I spent an hour in
Jessops unsuccessfully trying to decide what camera I wanted to buy. It didn’t
make me feel any better, and even getting home, knowing I had a large chunk of
money in the bank didn’t improve my mood much.
I suppose it’s a bit like losing a cantankerous old family
member. Father Goose was something I had loved; it had become an intimate part
of our lives. There were lots of happy
memories as well as much that was stressful and not so happy. Actually perhaps
it’s wrong to think in terms of happy and unhappy. The boat, the pontoon, the
people, the barges, cruisers, boats and ships, the streets, the buildings, the
water, the swans, the light, the sounds...they were all intensely familiar. We
can easily experience them again, but we will never be part of them again.
For several months now my huge three year house-building project
has been winding down. As I approached the last of the jobs on the house, the
job of selling the boat took over as my primary focus. Now it’s gone and I’m
finding it hard to replace. We have reached the position that Thelma has been
longing for - financial stability. My brain tells me I am very fortunate, but
my stomach is telling a different story. I’ve been feeling slight nausea for
several days. It could have a physical cause – fighting off a virus perhaps-
but it’s much more likely to be subconscious. I dreamed last night of being
suddenly sick on the floor. What’s that about? I can’t remember the last time I
was sick.
All my reading and research tells me that our human lives
have no purpose, so why do I feel the need for my comfortable existence to have
a purpose? Why do I want to achieve
something?
Partly I am uncomfortable with having large sums of money in
the bank. By head buzzes with big ideas
- the flat in Bristol, the camper van and lately the cabin in the woods.
What’s the common thread? I suppose they are all ways of finding an alternative
to living all my life in one place. For
most of my life I’ve had a second home of some kind, even though my income has
seldom risen even to the average. Now it’s very unlikely I will ever have
another second home.
Oh, poor you! No second home! Join the real world!
For Thelma it’s easy – if you want to live somewhere else
for a while you rent. She does not share my intense need for “My Space” so well
understood by the digital community, and by Kevin McCloud. A rented space is
someone else’s space you are borrowing for a while. It’s probably a male territorial thing. We carry our personal life with us in our
gadgets. This is why cars are so popular – the car is your space. What Thelma sees so clearly is that the
greater your commitment to an alternative space, the more like a second home it
becomes, and the less freedom you have to move and change.
The challenge for me now is to adapt to a period of greater
flexibility but less territory. Perhaps
just a little cabin? A shed?
No comments:
Post a Comment