Review by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
FREE: Adventures on the margins of a wasteful society
by Katharine Hibbert
320p Trade Paperback,
published by Ebury Press, January 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-0919-3273-2
Price: £11.99
For many the daily grind can feel like a trap – work, gym, drinks, shops, home, bed, work. But what would happen if one day you just jacked it all in, to survive on next to nothing? Katharine Hibbert decided to find out.
No job, no rented flat, no shopping, no debit card or credit card and no travel pass. Katharine decided to give it all up, to walk the streets with only a backpack and spend a year living off the food, clothes, other goods and accommodation that would otherwise go to waste. It would be year of squatting, scavenging and no spending. Would she survive and if she did would she ever want to go back?
The journey takes her on a fascinating trip, from drug-dens to lavish squatted mansions. She has to learn to fend for herself and to trust the generosity of strangers and friends she makes along the way.
She falls into a hidden community who teach her how to build a life using the things that others throw away, and finds that life on the margins amounts to so much more than you might think.
The genre under which the publishers places this book – Travel – is a little strange, not to say far fetched, to me at least. While the author may indeed have embarked on a journey into the unknown and also traveled in the book a little for free it is not a travel book, per se.
That aside, however, this is a most interesting book and the author's adventures in free living on the margins of this wasteful society of ours is a real eye opener. Not necessarily to those of us who are aware of it, as I was and am, though there are even some things in their that surprised me, as to how much really gets wasted in numbers.
Just reading about the amount of food that is daily been thrown out and guarded and also rendered unusable by some stores should make people feel indignation, and a righteous one at that, rising. While some people, like “Freegans” and some like minded ones liberate quite some of it there is too much wasted that could feed people.
With many many people going hungry, even in our developed countries, such waste as this is not just shameful, it is criminal and should, in fact, be regarded as a crime proper and treated as such.
I wonder what the reaction and attitude of the general public would be if they were but aware of the way that homes and other properties that could be used as homes and that may, at some time in the past have been homes but then became fices, are being left empty and allowed to be left empty while there are homeless individuals and families are all around us – as much in Britain as in the USA and elsewhere.
Property speculation by both councils and others leave buildings empty for years and years while people have to do without a home; this is not just a scandal, it is a crime.
This book is extremely easy to read and an extremely good read and, even though it should, maybe, not have been in the genre of “Travel Writing”, it reads like a good travel book or such. It is a must read, I think, for everyone, and the more people read it the better, for maybe they can then get some sense into those in government as to housing stock and food- and other -waste.
While some would like to put this book under the label of frugality this book is not so much about frugality but about highlighting the wasteful system of empty homes while there are 1,000s of homeless and the wasted food – and other goods.
On the other hand, even if someone dos not wish to go the whole hog and squat and live for free – more or less – it still can give food for thought, and that is what is important, and maybe will lead people to see how they can reduce their impact on Mother Earth and how they can also reduce their outgoings by making use of what is being thrown away. It would be nice, I think.
Katharine Hibbert lives in a squat in London. She is an active member of the Advisory Service for Squatters, the only national organization giving legal and practical advice to squatters and would-be squatters. She is 28 and, as a freelance journalist, has written cover stories for the Guardian’s G2 section and for The Sunday Times Magazine.
I can most highly recommend this book as a good read and as a great eye opener.
© 2010
