Link to podcast to follow
People who have lived in England long enough have learned not to treat sunlight as granted but rather as a phenomenon that must be talked about, cherished and enjoyed at all cost.
That, of course, is a bit hard when you’re stuck in an office all day, staring at your computer screen, taking calls and…well, doing any work indoors, really.
In fact, I’ve always found it quite strange how they don’t have ‘sun days’ in England whereas children are off school and busybodies are off work. Surely, that’s some sort of unacceptable discrimination on someone’s behalf; I mean, they’ve got ‘snow days’ and, lately, the Sun’s been around a lot less than snow.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I do love my job- I love helping people, doing legal stuff, etc, etc. and, frankly, I don’t think I can live a normal life without doing that.
Yet, sometimes I do wonder…Let me tell you why.
My grandparents back home live in the countryside. They’ve got two goats, a dozen hens, a couple of roosters, a cow and a ginormous garden in which they grow their own fruit and vegetables.
They also have a small vineyard and make their own wine.
Consequently, they rarely ever go to the local corner shop (let alone to the city) to get anything- they do it all by themselves.
The other day (another unusually sunny day), my housemate came up to me and said:
‘Mate, if it was sunny more often, everyone around would be so much happier! I mean, everyone was joking about at work today, we all had lunch at this place’s roof terrace, stress- free and all that! Amazing!’
And then it dawned on me: wouldn’t it be awesome if I could get a small house somewhere, growing my own fruit and veg and making my own wine whilst enjoying the Sun?
A couple of days ago, I stumbled across the following article in the Independent:
To cut a long story short, the above is about a journalist who, at the age of 33, decided to retire to a small house in the French countryside. The reason behind his decision was that he was wasting the best years of his life on what he calls ‘the rat race’, id est being stuck in an office, gazing at the screen all day.
Quite a marvelous story, I thought. I then, however, read on to find out that the said journalist had a flat in London which he rented out to create enough income to ‘live off’ in France.
The idea of (very) early retirement in today’s capitalistic world is, then, in itself somewhat utopic. It might be true that such a peaceful existence greatly reduces stress but it is also true that it might also cause a great deal of stress when your income/ savings start dwindling at the speed of love (no intention to infringe copyright, Coldplay).
My grandparents would, however, beg to differ.
Why would you need money, they’d say, when you had all the sun, fresh produce and peace and quiet you could possibly ask for?
What more could you possibly want?
‘Everything’, said capitalism.
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