There's something primitive inside me that likes reading accounts of people overcoming tremendous obstacles to reach their goals for self sufficiency or the Good Life. I suppose this directly reflects my desire to be self-sufficient one day, although I fear I may have crossed the line at my age and be leaning towards a life of more comfort. I like baths a little too much and my mother-in-law has civilised me somewhat by giving me an electric blanket for Christmas which I adore.
Could I do what Elizabeth and Alan West did? Throw caution to the wind, find a tumbledown cottage in the back waters of Wales to repair and make a home there? After reading their account I'm not sure. They describe digging their house - Hafod - of a hill to stop the flood waters pouring through their home with the same practicality as you would might describe changing a light fitting. Of how they live in the two warmest rooms over the damp winter months and have to move everything away from the walls to allow the condensation and mold to do it's own thing, then redecorate in spring. Of having matey washes in a tin bath in front of the stove and when their spring almost dries up waiting all day for it to fill a couple of buckets of water. Of walking out to the kitchen garden in the morning to find the savage Welsh weather has smashed everything flat into the mud.
I can see this type of life might be a romantic novelty for a while, but wonder whether for me it would wear thin when the rain and snow really bites in the winter. Still, it's still a great book to read when I'm tucked up in bed and the wind is howling outside.
Of all the chapters, the one that resonates with me the most is the "Gadgetry and Botchery".
"There are two species of botcher. one is the humble botcher - a cheerful and optimistic character, with hammer, nails and common sense. The other is the precision botcher. The precision botcher is a much more sensitive fellow. he owns hundreds and hundreds of little metal boxes containing an assortment of screws, nuts, bolts, nails, washers, springs, collars, clips, terminals, bushes, rings, hooks, rods, plates, plugs, knobs, discs, strips, straps, bars etc and dozens of cardboard boxes containing 'useful' parts from other people's abandoned appliances, quantities of unsorted pieces of wood, metal and plastics, and a wide selection of tools from clockmaker's broaches to grubbing mattocks and tack hammers to paviour's mauls.
My father is a good example of a humble botcher. if someone came to our house with a surprise gift of a pet rabbit, my father would wander out of his shed, pick up his hammer, find some nails, an old wooden box, some roofing felt and a piece of wire netting and in about 45 minutes he'd produce a perfectly satisfactory rabbit hutch.
Whereas a rabbit presented to us a Hafod would cause great consternation. Alan is a precision botcher. He would cry out in alarm that he hadn't got any suitable wood, and he didn't know anything about the requirements of rabbits. If he could be persuaded to have a go at the job, he would first of all get a book from the library and, having satisfied himself with regard to required sizes of sleeping quarters, feeding troughs, mesh and guage of wire netting, he would set about constructing a veritable rabbit mansion and might get it finished in five weeks."
I married a precision botcher. My father-in-law is a precision botcher. The pair of them drive me barmy. Anything that gets accomplished is a miracle and usually three weeks longer than it should have done.
As an example, let's take my Dyson hoover. Last Thursday my Dyson gave up the ghost. One day it worked the next it didn't. Martin promised he'd look at it that night so I could either use it the next day or order a new one. For three days following he wandered round the house talking about wires having come off circuit boards, the possibility of a new cable drum assembly, a burnt out motor and the cost of spare parts. By Sunday I was ready to pitch a fit. The house had disappeared until a mound of dust and cat hair and I couldn't sit down anywhere without being covered in fluff. I wanted my hoover.
Martin went out on Sunday to a model airplane event so I sprang into action the second the front door shut. I went in with the logic that you start with the simplest, most obvious thing that can go wrong first and work from there. As I'm always pulling the cable out from the hoover by the plug, it seems sensible to suppose the copper wire had snapped somewhere near the plug. I cut off five inches of cable and rewired the plug, a task that took no more than 15 minutes. Hey presto! One working Dyson.
There's something to be said for humble botchery. And keeping your own set of tools in a box under the bed, far away from precision botcher's fingers that itch to integrate them with their own half a million tools spread haphazardly between every room, cupboard and outhouse.
Oh I just love this book one of my favourites, unfortunately I don't own a copy, but I have got the cookery one!
Posted by: donna | March 14, 2008 at 07:34 PM