I recently answered some questions put to me by Grace from Meadowbrook, a social enterprise in Wiltshire. They are creating a nurturing outdoors setting where they want folks to grow and thrive. The resulting blog has just been published (paywall).
Tell us a little about your good self.
I am a 45-year-old descendent of agricultural peasants from Derbyshire who stood in barns all day threshing wheat with big sticks. After seven generations my father signed The Official Secrets Act 1911, left our ancestral homelands, and went to work down in the softy-south at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston.
I was born in the Winter of Discontent, the same year Margaret Thatcher came to power, and as I grew up she systematically pulled apart any remaining sense of community and togetherness the common people had managed to sustain, such that, in 2023, after the so-called pandemic, I decided to abandon the false promises of the commercial, industrial, capitalist society I found myself in and hit the road with my family, cramming two adults and four children into a Mercedes Sprinter. Nearly ten months later we are still going strong.
What things are currently inspiring you in the day-to-day?
We travel from place to place in what has recently become known as a nomadic way of life or van-life. We try to earn money online and work casual jobs to pay for the diesel and food. We have no set agenda to follow but we try to reconnect to what is real and natural as we go along. Usually this involves being in wild natural places: on the coast, on moorland, on the riverside, on mountain passes and down in deep valleys.
The thing that is most inspiring to me is nature, raw and uncooked. It gets hairy sometimes: storms, rain, snow, gales, cold nights and so on. The thing that is most depressing is towns and cities where nature has been trampled over and cast out in favour of comfort and safety.
We don’t meet many inspiring people, but occasionally an undiscovered national treasure crosses our path. For example Leyla, who we met recently on a stoney beach in the Highlands of Scotland. She was gathering seaweed on the tide line and dragging it up to her croft to nourish her carrots. My partner Tara offered to help her and she invited us to her home, let us fill our jerry cans with drinking water and then gave us sausages and tins of beans for dinner. The next day she turned up on the harbour again with homemade strawberry jam for us. It was very fine jam and she was a very fine woman.
Where is your favourite place out in nature?
I like coasts and clifftops and hilltops and waterfalls and riverbanks and anywhere that has very few people living on it and still retains a sense of authenticity despite the relentless onslaught of human progress. There aren’t many such places left in the British Isles but they are more common up north and on the edges, in my limited experience.
What did your younger self want to do/ be?
In the very early days I dreamed about becoming the one-hundred-metre sprint Olympic champion. After about the age of ten I had no idea what I wanted to do or be. I didn’t even realise I had a choice in the matter. Not until my thirties did I start living life on my own terms.
What regular habits keep you functioning well?
Drinking coffee in the morning. Drinking tea in the afternoon. Eating chocolate when nobody’s looking.
When obstacles crop up, how do you keep motivated?
When obstacles crop up, I often lose all motivation, collapse in despair and share the misery out amongst my loved ones. (I wouldn’t recommend this as a life practice.) I think it’s very difficult to avoid giving up and throwing your toys out of the pram.
At the bottom of my personal pit of darkness is a light which refuses to be put out, despite repeated enquiries as to the possibility, and when I reach this point, I have no choice but to turn around and begin climbing out of the hole and up the mountain, dragging my rock with me, like Sisyphus.
What makes you laugh?
My children make me laugh when we do silly things together like make up funny dances or moderate our voices with strange accents. Also, foul-mouthed, abusive, bully, Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It, written by Armando Iannucci.
What makes you feel hopeful?
I don’t believe in hope. I believe in adults taking responsibility for what is actually happening, whether it’s their fault or not, whether there’s hope or not, in fact particularly if it seems like there is no hope, like right now in the world for instance, because that’s when we really need adults who will endure and bear the burdens on behalf of others.
How do you switch off and unwind?
I’ve got four children and I live in a van. I don’t really get time to switch off or unwind. The only break in the day is when we go to sleep. I like it when I get flu because I can legitimately abdicate all my responsibilities and watch films all day.
Last question: what values do you try to live by?
Truth. Clarity. Know thyself. Recognise bullshit and name it.
Hi Ben, your honesty is brutal at times but also refreshing in its clarity. You say you don’t believe in hope. I believe you will need it when your children reach a stage of independence & autonomy. You may hope you have given them a good enough grounding so they can make good decisions, take care of themselves, the environment around them & take responsibility as adults.
Look after yourself & stay away from the pit of despair as much you can - it’s not a great place to find yourself in! (I know that for myself.)
Carol x