ONCE UPON A TIME
THERE WAS NO MORE COD AND CHIPS.
Once upon a time
there was no more cod and chips. No more cod, because like the dodo we hunted them
to extinction. No more chips because oil was so expensive it couldn’t be wasted
on mere food. So there was no more cod and chips; but nobody really noticed,
because petrol was so expensive that nobody could afford to drive to the
chippie to buy any. No more cod
and chips and no more popping in the car to the shops to buy stuff and no more
ignoring the weather.
There was, millions
of channels of telly and shoot ‘em up games. If you wanted to you could watch a
screen from morning till night. Many of the programmes were repeats though and
once you had seen a series through a couple of times even millions of channels
was not enough. Some people went a bit stir crazy watching the people on the
telly doing things that they could no longer even dream of doing themselves and
they took to drinking and drugging, fighting and stealing; but this story is
not about those people. This story
is about the people who trudged through mud to meet up in village halls and
talk about how to survive and how to find solutions.
Can you see them?
Through the orange lit windows of the village hall on this rainy Autumn
evening? Their coats dripping in
the porch as they gather in a semi circle around a big log fire? Watch how they
make sure the old people take the chairs nearest the heat and the children have
blankets to sit on the floor in front of the fire. These are people who have
learned the lessons of sharing fire so that everyone has what they need.
A tiny woman in the
crowd has stood up indicating she wishes to speak. For a long while nobody
notices, she patiently waits as neighbours chat away about the state of their
day until gradually elbows are dug into ribs and finally someone yells out “shut
up will you”.
So why is the crowd
so eager to hear this short woman speak? As the warmth of the fire dries the
curls back into her hair we can see that she is one of the gypsy people that
has been staying nearby all year. She and her tribe have taught the villagers
much about how to feed themselves and their animals from the hedgerows. They
have shown them how to find dry kindling in a wet wood and how to strip down
the old petrol machines to find the useful parts. Her tribe were rich in the knowledge of how to survive
without money and generous enough to share it.
Into the crackling
fire silence the woman places a question for the crowd, “for so long tried you’ve
to change everything to fit your desires are you now prepared to make the
changes that will more food to go round?” they look at her with skin stretched
tight over their hungry faces and nod, “are you really prepared,” again they
called out “yes”, and so the woman continues; “do you recognise that you have forced huge beasts to come
into your barns so you can steal their body fluids. “Yes” they murmur, shamed
with the memories. “Do you acknowledge that you have interfered with the nature
of plants so that they could no longer make viable seeds and emptied your
wastes and pollutants into the water supplies like fools.” Again, a barely
audible, “Yes”. “Are you now ready to put right your relationship to the finite
resources of the planet you call home? “Yes” they call out, and then like with
a the pantomime, “yes, yes, yes”
The petite woman
holds up her hand to indicate she is serious, “if you think you are ready to
live in harmony with the planet i have a big solution for you right here” and
from her bag she takes a bottle of capsules and the little woman tells them her
big idea right to their shocked and confused faces.
A big red faced man
at the back is scoffing. “that is ridiculous and impossible” he yells out, his
words slurring from the effects of home made alcohol.
A young woman
holding hopeful hands with her partner asks “can i get this right please, are
you saying that these pills will make our children grow to half size”
The woman nods, “if
you take these. Your children and their children in perpetuity will be, like me,
three foot tall at full grown height.”
“But the animals
how will we manage our cattle and our crops, if we become reduced to the size
of children”
The small woman
smiles at them a smile of infinite kindness, her voice soft now and low, “just
think how many more of you could get around this fire if you were half the
size. Being small changes everything, i can live in smaller places and keep
warm with half the fuel, i eat half as much and i can even get a lift from my dog
when she’s in the mood to give one. Doesn’t reducing your consumption mean
changing yourselves fundamentally?”
And her question
hung in the air like a lantern.
The end.
