23 Apr 2009
Dig for Victory
For my international readers the next few sentences might make no sense – you have to be a Brit. The day before St Georges Day, Chancellor Darling announced austerity Britain for the next 10 years in his budget. " Hallo Darling ", "Yes Darling" – it’s all Blackadder to us with no cunning plan. Drag Baldrick back from TIME TEAM and start digging for victory in the trenches. Digging For Victory was a campaign instigated in Britain as soon as World War 2 started. The government realised that the population would go hungry if the war was to last longer than a few months and the result was that formal gardens, lawns and even sports pitches were transformed into allotments and everybody on the home front was encouraged to grow their own food.
Now we just go to Lidl. So much for austerity. The Swarmite has survived many recessions with success and this present one will be the easiest methinks. The first one was around my birth in 1947 when food and furniture was rationed so for the first 3 years of my life I slept in a drawer. It was a Victorian mahogany chest of drawers and the bottom one was pulled out, lined with blankets and pillows for sleeping. Many have asked whether the drawer was slammed shut as according to my mother I cried for 3 years, even with my dummy dipped in Gin, an old wartime trick for soothing babies in blackout Air Raids. Gordon’s Gin has a lot to answer for.
BTW the answer is no, the drawer was pulled out each night.
My first orange was in 1952 rammed into a Coronation Mug at school to celebrate the young queen and even now I never buy them, all that peeling and sticky fingers.
It must have left its mark on me. As Peggy Lee sang around that time – " Is that all there is? ". Huge disappointment. My addictive personality demanded fruit baskets not a solitary fruit you can’t get into. The allotment we had held no fruit just veg but my Dad taught me about sex on the allotment, explaining pollination between marrows as we dug for victory between spadework. Very embarassing, but those big marrows stayed with me.
In 1974 I was a graphic artist in a London studio during the recession of Ted Heath’s " Winter of Discontent ", when we had a 3 day working week, electricity was rationed, rubbish men refused to dump and food distribution was dire but the flares saved us along with the horny Bay City Rollers. The recession after the Summer Of Love started in ’89 and it lasted 10 years if you had negative equity. I hadn’t as I lost everything in 1982 forced to sell the contents of my flat just to survive and eat. I had come to the end of the road of addiction and in 1984 I went voluntary bankrupt for £38K, ( about £120K now ) the consequences of my habits and I had no credit anywhere for 5 years. It served me well. No cheque book, no borrowings and no credit cards. I had 15 cards when I went bankrupt.
For the first 3 years of recovery I was told never to go into shopping areas during the day, that way I couldn’t get a resentment about having no money for shopping.
Instead I learnt about jumble sales and how my rich friends only wore a shirt once and threw it away. I got all my belts and bags rummaging through their wardrobes searching for cast off treasure. I also had a kind friend who worked at the BBC wardrobe department and for 2 years was forever wearing Wayne Sleeps clothes from THE HOT SHOE SHOW. I didn’t wear the Keith Harris/Orville hairdo though, my style was more Rick Astley.
Having dug for emotional victory during 2 years of therapy 1984-86 I discovered that I never asked for help until it hurt so I stopped hurting and started hunting.
Since then I have lived in several countries and a homeless hostel. I’m still here.
This present credit crunch is essential for all of us, to create baby reins, to make do and mend. Travel as I have done so often and you will see how we suffer in the West from the disease of too much and not enough gratitude. The financial porn that we have been immersed in since Thatcher’s " loadsamoney " has obliterated feelings, emotions, balance and creativity. We need to get back to the earth.
The base lines of our lives need to be dug up in therapy, coaching or group work in order to find that we are not the attachments we have consumed or the thrones we have been placed upon by status.
This week try cutting back on something you saviour, even if it’s a walnut whip.
It’s the principle that needs to be observed. Cut back on resentment, fear and worry. Cut back on expecting to be rescued. Cut back on childish games.
Observe the seeds of change. Poverty is relative.
Poverty is definitely relative. Especially if you have experienced the street life of Mumbai or anywhere else of that nature. I was there this time two years ago on a work trip. The guy I worked with cannot stay in anything less than a 5 star palace. The company paid for our ridiculous level of luxury whilst families huddle outside cooking there meal over an open fire, children and street dogs everywhere. It was a very humbling experience. Don’t get me wrong, the hotel was awesome and I was grateful for the fact I was safely tucked up in my suite. I spent time that night gazing out the window, Mumbai Airport’s control tower in view. Surrounding the airport are the slums, maybe you saw that film recently? You just have to ask yourself what is going on in the world. Me, sitting in my prime bit of real estate and the locals and lepers spending another night on the street just metres away. I could not help feel ‘guilty’ and ashamed of my little complaints in life comparing myself to this midnight mass of misery. Indians do have a way of looking at life where they believe it is better to be happy for what you have rather than unhappy for what you don’t have. Is there another way to survive that lifestyle? It’s all about what you choose to think. Twenty million people in one city. There simply is just not enough work to go around as daily thousands more flock from the countryside in search of a better life. Our rooms were costing us hundreds of dollars a night. Not my dollars though. We did a trip to Colaba (posh part of Mumabi). I stayed on my own there wandering the streets after my boss had had enough and wanted the sanctity of luxury again. I wanted to breathe in the local atmosphere, not the sanitised hotel air con. After a while the heat got too much and it was time to fly home. My taxi driver crawled through the chaos and an hour and a half later we arrived at the hotel. “How much?” I asked, “300 rupees” came the reply. Not a lot for the effort put in. Weighing him in with over triple made me feel a little better for his efforts, still, bugger all by our standards.
Poverty indeed is relative and this trip to Mumbai was a wake up call, a reality check for myself. It’s not that I think being rich or having some wedge is bad, it’s that wealth and prosperity need to come with a change in consciousness, a change in our thinking, for it to actually really be appreciated or have any meaning. Otherwise, it can just be more of the same. Money certainly makes life easier and frees us from the worries of rent etc and also can give us time to do the things we’d like to. All I have learnt is that cash does not buy happiness so I do not rely on it to do that. That is quite a freedom.
A few weeks later I returned to Mumbai alone. I found that I slept just as well in a hotel room that cost way less than the previous visit. When I awoke life was good and the bustle of the market on the street outside my window had begun. I am still me, regardless of what building I am in…
As the purse strings tighten and the plastic goes into retirement over this recession I do not worry about lack of cash. Why bother? More will be revealed through these testing times.
Aum namah Shivaya!
Droid
droid
April 24th, 2009 at 12:39 ampermalink
Last night I attended a meeting geared to trying to save one of this city’s last big tracts of land – save as in keeping it public and green. While I was there, I thought of your blog, Madge, which I read yesterday but didn’t have time to comment on.
I think many people would benefit from being able to work a small garden – for so many reasons. The therapeudic benefits are finally being recognized.
I also have been doing a lot of thinking about how our society has been geared to amassing ‘things’. At one point it was the legacy you left your children, friends etc. Then it became part of the snare used to lure us into credit/debt. For many of us, having a lot of stuff can be a burden…. who do we leave it to? Some, like me didn’t have children…
Why do we ‘need’ to do this?
Seems a waste of a lot of resources.
False affluence?
File this under ‘unfinished thoughts’ resulting from the visit to my Mom in a nursing home last week.
Lafang
April 24th, 2009 at 1:41 pmpermalink
Thanks Droidy for time taken to read, digest and reflect in your detailed response to my thoughts. It’s what we do in recovery terms innit. Yes India is a shattering experience on all levels, is this why it calls so often . . to handle the other 11 months of the year for us in the west? Even if times are tough there is still time for a decent ” ruby “!
theswarmite
April 24th, 2009 at 9:38 pmpermalink
I am running a project myself LaFang here in London on the social housing estate where I live. What a gift.
We have created a Gardening Club for our 6 storey block of 42 flats with 48 Window boxes, one new patio entrance terrace and digging up back pavement to create a flower garden. We started it 18 months ago and gained local council funding to create the community project. All it needs is action sometimes.
Both my parents are dead but thank god I was going through personal development stuff when my dad was alive, to get questions answered, amends and completion done. My mum died in 1975 age 47, well before I stopped active addiction, my dad died age 73 in 1992 after having the time of his life retired in Spain. Both died within minutes of heart attack so no nursing homes.
Here in the UK, Saturday is spent ” shopping ” for things we don’t need because consumption has become a way of dealing with insecurity. I AM therefore I SHOP has become I SHOP to stop discovering WHO I AM. I HOARD therefore I AM SAFE. Sad.
theswarmite
April 24th, 2009 at 9:53 pmpermalink
You’re right. It is sad.
Love the garden idea though – that’s beautiful.
Lafang
April 25th, 2009 at 1:24 ampermalink