On the surface of it, Lois and I have quite a lazy day today, spending the whole afternoon in bed after a shower - and if you were one of our neighbour looking through our windows, you'd say "the lazy so-and-sos!". And we have been retired now since March 2006, so 17 years. But appearances can be deceptive.
When we're on the patio drinking our mid-morning coffee on the patio, for instance, Lois can't resist tweaking her plants, and even getting down on the slabs to make some adjustments. She always knows instinctively when something brown or green needs tweaking - need I say more? What a woman!
Lois can't resist tweaking anything that's brown or green
While she's down there on the slabs or on her "kneeler", making some routine adjustments, I decide to stay sitting at the plastic table, enjoying my coffee.
Earlier this morning I was routinely keeping up with the news from Gentofte, the Copenhagen suburb - did you? It's the suburb where our daughter Alison and her little family lived for 6 years from 2012 to 2018, and Lois and I visited them several times.
This week in Gentofte a very nice woman, Anne-Marie Søndergaard, was giving a talk about "the good life": by which she means, more play, less work. If we started living our lives a little more like the hunter-gatherer societies, then a lot of our problems would disappear.
Hunter-gatherer societies have historically been the most successful form of society, Anne-Marie said. In 99 percent of the approx. two million years we have existed as a species, we have lived as hunter-gatherers without changing our way of life. This long-running type of society only gradually gradually starting disintegrating as agricultural societies gained ground, and only a few societies still exist, e.g. the Hadza in Africa.
According to local man, Gentofte-born anthropologist Rane Willerslev (crazy name, crazy guy!) and his colleagues, who in 2022 published the book "A History of Man - Homo Sapiens and the Meaning of Life", the hunter-gatherer societies' playful and creative approach to life was a large part of the explanation for the societies' long-term success. Yes, incredibly perhaps, playing games, doing a bit of art and culture, and, above all, teasing, kidding about, and general humour formed a large part of hunter-gatherer life. In fact, the biggest and most important part of their lives.
local Danish, Gentofte-born anthropologist
Rane Willerslev - crazy name, crazy guy!
"But how does it all fit together?", I hear you cry. Wasn't the hunter-gatherer life a toil and a struggle to survive from morning to night with hunger, violence and danger everywhere?
Well yes, but not most of the time, apparently, Anne-Marie says. Normally we as a species had time for other things than getting food. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in a world where hunting was exciting, fun and with plenty of opportunities for prey, and gathering was often made a game of fun. The concept of work did not exist at all. So there was plenty of time for play, fun, creativity and fun.
A field study in the 1960's of a hunter-gatherer community in the Kalahari describes how the hunters were teased and mocked for the prey they brought home, no matter how big a meaty animal they brought home. The humorous insults only stopped when the hunter himself laughed along.
Societies were egalitarian, that is, everyone could do the same things and everyone was equal. All efforts to make some feel more valuable than others were curbed, and conflicts about power were avoided.
a typical hunter-gatherer sitting on a nice chair
on his patio, much as I'm doing this morning here in Malvern,
which is weird !!!!
Stress over work was not a problem. The hunter-gatherer societies had very short "working days". After they had gathered food after a few hours, they spent the rest of the time playing games, being together, singing, being creative and other things that we do today in our precious bits of free time.
If you visit one of the few current hunter-gatherer societies, the Hadza, you will be told the same thing. They spend a lot of time laughing, Anne-Marie says: singing, dancing, flirting and telling each other dirty jokes.
Presumably, though, I would imagine, these jokes don't include "knock knock" jokes - which don't resonate as well if you haven't got a door.
Or do they? I wonder.... !
a typical group of modern-day hunter-gatherers
swapping the latest dirty jokes
Could we learn something from it? Yes, we can probably do that, Anne-Marie says. Maybe we are learning. Nowadays, many are quitting their pseudo-work jobs and want something else. Something slower, more playful instead of always rushing off here and there, without having time for family and friends.
Time to play is at the very bottom of our long to-do list, if it's there at all. Instead, we fill our time with things and activities that give us the feeling that our lives will be more fun: drugs, alcohol, hyper-tasty food, sweets, endless streaming and a lot of showy prestige items like big cars and designer clothes.
That doesn't make our hunter-gatherer brain happy. It wants the real thing, not stimulants. It wants to have plenty of time for play, creativity, and general fun.
So let's just get started, Anne-Marie says. Less work, especially of the pseudo kind, less seriousness, less spreadsheets and admin. Instead, more laughter, fun, music, humour and dancing. And yes, then of course the other main ingredients of a hunter-gatherer's life: much more nature, light, air and movement. This would correct many of our mental imbalances, she says.
more light... more air... more tree-climbing: yay!
Fascinating stuff !!!!
But climbing trees like the hunter-gatherer in the photo - a step too far for us, at 77 perhaps? But you see Lois was quite the little tomboy when she was little, and she still is today, in spirit at least - you would not BELIEVE! And she used to love climbing trees.
flashback to the early 1950's: Lois up a tree with her little brother Andrew
15:00 While we're in bed this afternoon I tell Lois about these happy hunter-gatherers, and we look at some pictures on my phone from my Google image search. And immediately Lois spots the "fly in the ointment".
There are lots of pictures of modern-day hunter-gatherers sitting together, having fun, probably sharing dirty jokes etc. But, as Lois observes, they are almost all men. Only the occasional picture show a woman, usually with a child.
a typical Hadza modern-day hunter gatherer woman and child
Enough said, I think haha!!!!
20:00 Lois and I now "wind down" with even more fun, watching tonight's programme in Michael Portillo's new series of "Great British Railway Journeys".
It's fascinating for me tonight to see pictures of Bradford, a city I apparently lived in for 2 years, when my parents moved north from Dover. I was only 6 at the time, and I have only the vaguest memories of our 2 years there, 1952-3.
flashback to about 1953: me and my dear late little sister Kathy,
at a photographer's studio in Bradford.
me in my school photo of the ancient folk ceremony
of "Mayday" : I'm on the left, next-to-front row
We must have arrived from Dover by train, surely - nobody much had cars then, and the bus would have taken far too long. So it's interesting to see pictures of the railway station, where I must have got off the train, one day in 1952 - or maybe I was asleep and just got carried off? There's nobody around to tell me now, sadly!
The old Forster Square Railway Station has disappeared now, anyway, although the old railway hotel, the Midland, that stood next to the station still survives, built in 1890 to serve train-travellers. And this is where Michael spends his first night in the city.
Bradford's Midland Hotel, next to where the city's
old Forster Square railway station used to be
It's also interesting to see pictures of the old Bradford Royal Infirmary, where my mother trained as a nurse in the 1940's during the war, and also, I imagine, where my little brother Steve was born, in 1952. It's now a full-time teaching hospital, and, together with the University, a pioneer in chemotherapy research, Michael tells us.
flashback to 1953: my mother and my dear, late little brother Steve, in Bradford
1953: (left to right) me (7 years), my little brother Steve (1)
and my little sister Kathy (5) by the greenhouses in Bradford Moor Park.
And when Michael leaves Bradford, getting the train to the picturesque hill town of Hebden Bridge, who would have guessed that this sleepy little hill-town is now a mecca for same-sex couples?
And why would that have happened? Apparently a lot of writers (eg Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath), plusartists and other free spirits and "non-conformists" (not the religious ones, necessarily!) moved there when housing in the town was cheap, and the scenery of course was spectacular. After that, I guess it was the herd-instinct that brought in more people with similar attitudes to life. And the LGBTQ people were also attracted to the town, a place where they felt safe.
It's all rather odd for a town that Ted Hughes once considered a tumble-down relic of the Industrial Revolution. It's not at all like that now, says this local expert:
Michael talks to a woman, Helen, who moved here 20 years ago with her partner, now wife.
Helen says that it's nice not to be constantly thinking about whether you're allowed to do something - like holding hands with her wife when they're walking down the street.
Fascinating stuff !!!!
21:00 We wind down for bed with the first episode of a new series of the long-running sitcom "Not Going Out", a title which is usually appropriate for Lois and me. Oh yes, I'm afraid so!
Tonight's story is a complicated farce centring around Lee and Lucy's best friends, fellow-married couple Toby and Anna. Toby suspects Anna is having an affair, and Anna suspects that Toby is having an affair.
In this scene, Lucy tries to persuade Anna that her fears about Toby are groundless.
But still - tremendous fun !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!
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