'Beam me up Scotty'

I had one of those moments last week, in the middle of a vast supermarket, half way down the ‘dried pasta’ aisle, between the fusilli and a vast range of different flavoured bolognaise sauces.

Maybe it’s my age. I did have a birthday last month which was something of a reality check. Or maybe it is the time of year, with Christmas, the festive shopping season and now the new year sales. Or perhaps it was the blue fading from the sky outside and the dusk gathering across the rows of parked cars, reminding me I needed to get home to shut up my ducks and chickens before Mr. Fox seized the opportunity of an easy meal.

Perhaps, I also need to explain that I don’t often shop in large supermarkets these days. The allotment provides the vegetables I need. The ducks and chickens more than keep me in eggs and the sheep are there to provide meat for the freezer. I try hard to shop locally and I am lucky because the village has a reasonable supermarket, a real greengrocer, two butchers and a fishmonger. Oh, and a chemist.  What more could you need? There is also a monthly farmer’s market which blends local food and local people, adds a dash of laughter, chatter and quite often music, stirs them together and serves them up warm with a sense of community as a side dish.

If all else fails there is always modern technology and home delivery from a van that blocks our narrow road when it unloads the food I have ordered.

Maybe all of this explains why I suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the aisle causing the shopper behind me to mutter something under his breath. Packets, jars, boxes, bottles screamed at me, pleading with outstretched fingers for me to buy them. There were tempting new recipes, bargains galore, a hundred ways to make a quick meal. So much choice I stopped

As I stood grasping the handles of my half-filled trolley I had this overwhelming sense of needing to escape. A ‘beam me up Scotty’ moment.

Suddenly I didn’t belong. I no longer wanted to be part of the feeding frenzy that was going on around me. I wanted to step off this enormous consumer conveyor belt that our human race has built. Saturation point had arrived. I didn’t want to buy anything, spend anything. There was nothing to tempt me. The ads since Boxing Day had failed. I didn’t need a new smart phone, a tablet or a vast television screen. I didn’t even want a choice of six different shaped pasta.

I shut my eyes for a second. Nobody needs all these things. We may want them, desire them but we don’t need them. We are manipulated into believing that happiness and fulfilment can be found in objects; in the latest intel processor or the most up to the minute coffee machine. (If it can’t do the ironing it isn’t worth having!!). Nobody’s life would be empty without them, less rich, less fulfilled but our world, our planet might be in a better state of repair if we were not driven by our greed to own more and more. Our atmosphere might not be clogged with greenhouse gases, our oceans trashed with pieces of non-biodegradable plastic, our forests logged, our rivers polluted and our countryside covered in concrete. Our future might be brighter.

Economists argue we need growth, ecologists plead for sustainability. Me; I want my new grand-daughter to grow up surrounded by a beautiful world that she can touch and see and hear and smell, a world where we have learnt to balance our needs with the needs of everything else alive on this tiny blob in space. I pray that when she looks at nature it is not through a screen, a virtual world of what once existed. I want her to feel the cold, wade through the mud, lick falling snowflakes, enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face, listen to the storm. I want it to be real.

So, what did I do? I chose the fusilli and headed for the cash out, piled the shopping in the back of the car and drove into the deepening dusk. I took the country lane leading down to my small holding, avoided the pot holes at the side of the road and watched the trees glide passed against the evening sky. I fed and shut up my ducks and chickens and stood for a moment looking out across the field to the wood set against the sky and the swelling hills beyond as the day drained away in the west.

What I so WANTED was a small cabin beside a forest fence surrounded by wilderness. A log burner, running water, the basics, energy from a solar panel, a small domestic wind turbine, carbon neutral where the rule was do I want it or do I need it? A home where I could wake to the sound of rooks lifting into the dawn sky and go to sleep to the call of tawny owls across an empty valley.

We all have our dreams. Mine is to step off this world and leave only a small footprint behind.

Is it just me or are there others like me out there?