Venting

Having time off is a mixed blessing, it’s a lovely day outside and ordinarily I’d be out there teaching gardening at this time. I went for a short walk this morning and it wiped me out for the day, I can’t bear this exhaustion, I’m doing fragments of work, the odd email but I can’t seem to get my teeth into anything. Since I last blogged my landlady has actually been round to serve an eviction notice, we’ve been told to pack our bags around a week after my new book is released.
I told her it was bad timing as I’m really unwell and she blamed her parents for wanting to sell the house, saying it wasn’t up to her. In the same conversation she did say ‘It’s my house’ like a child would say ‘it’s my balloon’ – it annoys me that she already owns a house and her parents own a huge house just down the road. It is not as if they are short of money, they don’t need to sell and they don’t need to kick us out just yet, an extra month would help. I saw her father (who bankrolled the buying of this place) today mowing the lawn of the local church and it struck me what an odd sense of morality he must have – he’s clearly voluntarily improving the local area by mowing the lawn yet he would deprive someone of a home to leave an empty house for sale during a time when houses aren’t selling. It makes no sense to me morally or financially – perhaps it’s because I’ve let my hair grow long again and he thinks I’m bringing down the neighbourhood with my hippy ways!
Anyway, we knew this could happen when we moved in, we just thought we’d be okay because the house had no chance of selling. So, anyone reading this know of a 2 bed house or flat in the general Totnes area on a long term let? We’re very good tenants, no pets, no kids, no DHSS etc (long shot worth a try).

Kidney Problems/ Minimal change Nephropathy

So let’s not make this a bleak blog, I have good news, I seem to be responding well to the treatment, my oedema has all but gone. My weight is just crashing; I’ve gone from around 12 stone (around 75 kilos) back down to 11 stone or just under 70 kilos in around three days. Normally it would be dangerous to lose five kilos in three days but, this means the excess fluid is leaving my system and it hopefully means my kidneys are getting back to normal. I can call the doctors tomorrow for results of a recent blood test to confirm that but it all looks good so far.

The great thing about the internet is that things like this remain there for a while and this can be googled. So if anyone is reading this who has just had a child diagnosed Minimal change Nephropathy, MCD, Minimal Change Disease, Childhood Nephrotic Syndrome (sadly children are MUCH more likely to get this than adults) or they have it themselves, then rest assured it gets easier. I’ve read up on this and it is very unlikely you can die from this, you might feel tired, the steroids keep you awake at night and that wipes you out for the day BUT all that scary swelling DOES go away.

I’ll leave a short blog tomorrow if I get my results back if not I’ll blog soon keep your fingers crossed.
Here are some useful links in the meantime.
Straight forward BBC article
MCD in adults

I have a drawn up a 11 point plan to get me started.

1. Bin My Energy Saving Bulbs – It will be good getting back to the good old fashion type, they’re a lot brighter and cheaper to put in.
2. Stop Recycling – I’ll just bin all my plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, garden and kitchen waste. Not separating these out should save me at least 2 minutes a day.
3. Buy a wide-screen TV – One the same size as my living room wall, the biggest I can get with as many channels as humanly possible.
4. Stop walking – I tend to take at least one or  two walks a day, especially in the summer but instead I’ll get my exercise in front of a Wii wired up to my wall sized TV.
5. Stop growing my own and stop foraging – From now on all my food will come via a supermarket delivery service.  This also means I can spend more time playing on the Wii or watching TV. It will mean I no longer have to wait for the right season for my food, I can enjoy it all year round.
6. Bin the bike – I’ll learn to drive and get a car. It will be handy for those short trips to the shops.
7. Fly more – Perhaps I’ll fly to see my sister in Brussels next time I see her rather than get the Eurostar. She does live much nearer the train station than the airport but isn’t that what taxi’s were made for?  I’ll also try and squeeze in around 2-3 long haul flights a year, some of those resorts you don’t have to leave all week sound nice.
8. Turn the heating up – It can get cold in my house and there is no reason I should not be able to walk around my house in just my underpants in the middle of winter!
9. Start shopping for fun – I don’t have nearly enough things, I mean I only own 2 DVD’s for christ sake, how have I survived all year I must be in an entertainment deficit, I don’t even own a box set of anything!!!
10. Get a 9-5 job – This change in life-style doesn’t come cheap so I’ll have to give up my studies and get a full time job. I could get a job in a bank or go back to office temping, I did really enjoy my old job as a data entry clerk.
11. Take some medication – I might get a little down at first, this is inevitable when undertaking such a change in lifestyle.  I hear Seroxat is good for that kind of thing and it   has very little side-effects. Failing that, I’ll just drink heavily.

As I couldn’t find any who would take me up on the offer of a trade, I decided to log onto ‘justfortheloveofit.org’ and see if I could find someone to barter with. For those who have never heard of it ‘Just for the love of it’ was set up by a forward thinker, one of life’s doers and good friend of mine Mark Boyle. It promotes the idea of a ‘freeconomy’ and rather than babble on in my own words instead I have copied and pasted the website’s philosofree below –

The Freeconomy Community’s aim is to help reconnect people in their local communities through the simple act of sharing. Not only is sharing our resources better for the environment, it saves you money and builds friendships with those people who live closest to you. It is what we call a WIN-WIN-WIN situation.

Everything is shared for FREE on Freeconomy, and no money changes hands between members.
We do not use advertising, we receive no donations or income from the website and it is completely free to join, forever. Why? Just for the love of it!

I should also pay homage to the fact that Mark has been living without money for far longer than myself and being far more hardcore than I could ever be.

I am still paying rent and bills, living in a ordinary terraced house so still using a flush toilet, electric lights etc, etc. I have been trying to use the rocket stove and storm kettle whenever possible to minimize on energy usage but I must admit that I have been using the gas cooker, the microwave and an ordinary kettle. Mark on the other hand digs a hole for his toilet, cooks on a wood burning stove and will cycle everywhere and is in short not spending ANYTHING for a year without compromise.

My experiment into free living is really to see if it can be done at the drop of a hat, with no forward preparation and fitted around a normal (ish) existence. The other reasons for doing it keep changing, I think that’s what happens with a project like this. At first my reasons were simply to make the most of the abundance of free food that is on offer in this country. However soon after I couldn’t help but see what waste is produced and how much of it is still usable. The energy needed to ship tropical fruit half way round the world only to throw it in the bin is simply shocking. It could at the very least be composted! Supermarkets are essentially lazy, greedy entities that would rather throw away perfectly good food to keep profits rolling in rather than have any kind of social conscience. The farmers are forced into selling their produce for less than they can comfortably survive on only for us to buy it in cheap and let it rot in our fridges! Something is clearly wrong. As energy becomes more scarce will we want to pay for food to be shipped to landfill sites by paying an extra premium on our food? Will we want to pay for New Zealand apples during British apple season or due to market forces will we want to pay for imported milk from the continent whilst those across the water import British milk?
The way our modern food system is set up is simply crazy and after this experiment is over and I am buying things again I for one will not be buying from any of the large supermarkets but instead will glean what I can from their bins!

So, what became of the coffee? Well I did find someone to barter with and managed to get some stuffed pasta, some oats and some sugar. One of the hardest things (apart from bread) to get without money is grains, so in the end the coffee was exchanged for something of much greater value to me.

I like looking back at the old diary I used to keep, it gives me a sense of how much and sometimes how little has changed. In the summer of 2005 I was trying to get a book published, not the Self-Sufficientish Bible, one quite unrelated. I’d also recorded a pop song with my friend Dom which I thought would storm the charts. Here’s an extract from 5th October following that summer -

“I was offered some work today, just crappy call centre stuff but it should be my first regular work since February. Shit, that’s seven months ago! The book was rejected by the publisher last Thursday and Dom’s decided the single won’t get released until January so I’m going to have to bite the bullet and just do it for a while. The pay is crap and I may jump ship if something better comes along. It’s for the quit-line for smokers, which is ironic as I am in a constant state of smoking and quitting at the moment.”

Well, that particular book never got published and the pop song was shelved after EMI told us we couldn’t release it as it infringed on the copyright of one of their songs. It was a bit irritating as the tune was essentially Pachelbel’s Canon but they refused us permission, as it was too similar to ‘Go West’ by the Village People. Quite how you can claim copyright on a song from the 1680s is beyond me!

I’ve giving up smoking AGAIN, it’s been three or four weeks now, it feels like I might do it this time but I always say that. I’m not working in a call centre (thankfully); I did that job for about 3 or 4 weeks and then worked at the Soil Association for about three months. I then temped for a further year before getting the book contract at the close of 2006.

It is now 2009 and the last trickle of the advance for the book has just about to run out – the bonus about living like I do is I can stretch money quite far! At this time of year my food bill is almost nothing, the only energy I use is for hot water (washing myself and clothes), cooking, my laptop and the radio so bills are low.

People assume that if you have a website and a book then somehow you must be doing really well financially. Well the truth is I can work quite hard, writing, maintaining an allotment and garden, organising wild food walks, studying wild food and gardening (amongst other things) doing volunteer work, preserving and cooking food and skip diving. I seem to put the hours in but I get little financial reward for it.

What I do get is really, really great food that hasn’t been flown half way across the planet. I get the sense that I’m actually living rather than just counting the hours until I can leave work. I’m healthy, I’m happy and what’s more if someone asks what I’ve been up to then I’ve usually got a story to tell rather than just saying ‘you know, same old, same old’. Most days I can also have an afternoon nap, it’s one of the greatest pleasures in life, who needs caffeine when you can just snooze for 20 minutes!

What I don’t have is a flat-screen TV, a new computer (my laptop is on it’s last legs but still holding up), I don’t have a car instead I cycle around on my £30 bike.My mobile phone is rubbish but it still works (don’t go for the 3 skype phone –it’s crap), my clothes are okay but I’m certainly not in any fashion trend. I don’t eat meat, I don’t fill my house with brand new furniture, and I don’t pay a mortgage. If anyone was to look at my bank account on the surface I’m not very successful.However is success really earning £20K, £30K or £100K a year but never having time to enjoy it?

-Dave

Urban living is so embedded in me that even my surname ‘Hamilton’ means either ‘treeless hill town’ or ‘mountain town’. Where I was born and raised (Northampton) gets its name from two Saxon words ‘ham’ and ‘ton’ meaning small town or village and town respectively. I spent my formative years in this market town deemed the most demographically average town in the country leading to the strange phenomenon that it is often targeted by companies for product trials (the first place to have chip and pin, extended pub hours and various crisp flavours which never made it to the rest of the country).

So in other words I am David Mountain Town from North Town Town Town the most average town in the UK.

It’s been a while since I lived in Northampton but my other choices of where to live have always been leaning heavily on the urban side of things- Nottingham, London, Oxford and now Bristol.

So when my girlfriend suggested we should move to the countryside I was more than a little anxious. She has applied to do teacher training in Exeter but rather than live in the town she wants to move to the countryside. She was brought up in the countryside and unlike myself, has never really taken to life in a city.

We’re heading down to Exeter this week and when she goes for her interview I shall be exploring the countryside. The idea of the move is causing me to have a slight shift in consciousness and as a result I am now seeing Bristol with new eyes. I have started noticing all the fly tipping, the rats, and the paranoia that accompanies walking past gangs of ‘yoofs’ late at night. I’ve also began to look at the past in a different way and realised that despite being an urbanite I have always found whenever I had any free time I would be off into the green belts or woods of wherever I live. Even the few spells I had in London I would find myself wandering around the large parks or discovering green stretches of land such as Highgate woods or old railway lines long since abandoned and now turned into green corridors.

Does this mean I shall become a fraud, that being involved in the ‘urban guide to near self-sufficiency’ and we should change the tag line to our site? Have I just become another in a long line of people who are giving up the rat race and leaving the big city? Well hardly – I would have had to be in the rat race in the first place! Perhaps I should just stop being such a wimp and start looking forward to a more peaceful life!?

WELL THAT SURE IS NEWS TO ME!!!

Jesus Christ, are we a nation of utter morons!? Do we really need to be told that spending £3000 on a fucking television isn’t going to make us happy! Does it really have to be spelled out that perhaps taking a month off to do the Camino de Santiago de Compostela or the Offas dyke path with a partner or good friend might just put a bit of a grin on our face!!???

One of the high points I can remember whilst writing out book was taking some time off and visiting Gloucester during the floods. It was shamefully voyeuristic and we were only there as flood tourists but, it was one of the only days out Andy and I had together during the writing of the book. The rest of the time was spent frantically writing and researching to reach our 150 000 word deadline (it’s a big book) or shouting at each other down the phone.

That day in Gloucester we took sometime out and it has remained a happy memory ever since. Can I remember the day I bought my laptop or the day I decided it was time I replaced my ailing Casio watch?

So having bagged five of them throughout the year, this Christmas I intended to make a meat extravaganza of a chef within a chef within a chef…. Etc.

The recipe is based on a delightful British culinary tradition of a bird within a bird, in which a small bird such as a pigeon, quail or even blackbird is stuffed inside a larger bird such as a chicken or duck. These two birds are then stuffed inside a much larger bird such as a goose or a turkey. The combination of textures and flavours results in a luxurious dish where the diner can consume a week’s food in a single meal!

The chef within a chef recipe is even more indulgent as the diner attempts to eat a months worth of meat in a single sitting.

Ingredients

• Five celebrity chefs of increasing sizes boned and gutted
• One bottle of nettle beer (preferably Stinger)
• A ‘flavour shaker’ full of home-grown herbs and spices (preferably grown by a professional gardener in your five acre Hampshire garden)
• A churn of Butter
• Chestnuts
• Some Fat Hen leaves
• 300 Cloves of garlic
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Method

1. The night before your feast, marinate your Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or second smallest chef) in the nettle beer. I’ve used Stinger beer rather than waste my home-brew.

2.Stuff your Anthony Worral-Thompson with the chestnuts and hemlock, sorry, fat-hen leaves and baste in butter.

3. Remove the tongue of your Jamie Oliver and set aside

4.Lovingly insert the Anthony Worral-Thompson into your Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall using extra butter if any lubrication is needed.

5.Mop up any drool from the side of your Valentine Warner’s mouth before basting in butter and inserting the first two chefs.

6.You may feel you’re running out of room to put the three chefs inside your Jamie Oliver but having removed the tongue there will be ample space in the oral cavity.

7.Place the 300 cloves of garlic in your ‘flavour shaker’ along with the homegrown herbs and spices and coat the skin of the Jamie. Having been raised in Essex the Oliver’s skin can be a little on the tough side so this is an essential part of the preparation.

8.For the last step it is important to have a team of runners on hand as the combined weight of the chefs is quite considerable. Place your Gordon Ramsey on an extremely large baking tray with its head facing away from you. Take your four stuffed chefs and shove them all in the nearest orifice.

9.Roast in a moderate oven for a week.

10. Serve with roast potatoes and a side of seasonal vegetables.

]]> http://dave.selfsufficientish.com/blogs/2008/12/chef-within-a-chef/feed/ 7 http://dave.selfsufficientish.com/blogs/2008/11/rowan-berries/ http://dave.selfsufficientish.com/blogs/2008/11/rowan-berries/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:08:11 +0000 admin http://dave.selfsufficientish.com/blogs/2008/10/rowan-berries/ As some readers of this blog or visitors to our main website may know I recently broke my wrist. To add insult to injury, or rather to add injury to injury yesterday I managed to burn the same hand. One of my housemates had left a plastic washing up bowl on top of the cooker and I decided to make myself a little snack of cheese on toast. A strange smell started to fill the kitchen and a strange greyish lump appeared on my toast. I poked it wondering what it was, within an instant my hand was in immense pain and I washed off the molten plastic from my thumb and forefinger.

I’m now typing this with my remaining fingers on my left hand and letting my right hand do the majority of the work. They say that bad luck comes in three’s so what’s next – am I going to loose my left arm altogether? I’m hoping that I can buck this trend of bad luck coming in threes and can’t help thinking that I’m owed some good luck for a change!

I’ve got two carrier bags full of rowans in my larder that need my attention today before I have two carrier bags full of rowan slush. I don’t eat meat so rowan jelly might not be the best plan for them – will they accompany nut roast, stuffed peppers? – Perhaps

I thought I’d make some rowan chutney, some apple and rowan sauce, maybe even some rowan jam or rowan wine. I can see myself getting used to the taste of rowan pretty quickly whatever I do with them. Can I say rowan a few more times? Rowan, rowan, rowan – it would appear so.