Davies - HOMESICK: why i live in a shed

Homesick

HOMESICK

Also By

Also by Catrina Davies

The Ribbons are for Fearlessness

Title

HOMESICK

Why I Live in a Shed

Catrina Davies

Copyright

This ebook edition first published in 2019 by

An imprint of

Quercus Publishing Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK company

Copyright 2019 Catrina Davies

The moral right of Catrina Davies to be

identified as the author of this work has been

asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopy, recording, or any

information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

Hardback ISBN 978 1 78747 865 7

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78747 864 0

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders.

However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions

any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention.

Quercus Editions Ltd hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law

for any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense

(whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on

any information contained in this book.

Ebook by CC Book Production

Cover design 2019 nathanburtondesign.com

www.riverrunbooks.co.uk

Authors Note

Everything in this book is true to my experience, although some names and details have been changed, and some individual characters are composites of several real-life characters. I have also altered the time-scale in which events took place, sometimes re-ordering the events, and squashing several years into one. I hope the reader will forgive me these liberties. They were designed to protect peoples identities and to make this a good story, as well as a faithful representation of my life in the shed.

Dedication

For my mother,

with love and gratitude for giving me a childhood

that was made of more than economics.

Epigraphs

As we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Wildness is the preservation of the world.

Henry David Thoreau from an address to the Concord Lyceum in 1851

Contents

Homesick

I am flat on my back in the ocean. Its early enough in the morning for me to be the only person in the world. The sun is rising out of the east, spilling light on my face. The horizon is an invitation. Theres a seal nearby. Seals are people-watchers, they like to observe our habits. I kick my legs, flip over and dive under the surface of the water, crossing the line between sea and sky. I keep my eyes open and let the salt wash in and out of my open mouth. The suns rays have crossed the line too. There are infinite shades of blue.

I am on my way home. It feels good to think the word home. I rattled around rootless for years before I finally managed to carve myself a space for living. Not that Ive been near it all weekend. Spring dragged me outside into the warmth and lengthening days, night skies crowded with stars and blackbirds singing themselves half to death. Its been a weekend of driftwood fires and Spanish guitars and lying upside down on the surface of the earth.

But now its Tuesday and theres work to do the messy and mostly unpaid business of hacking the meaning out of life with words and music. Also, Im hungry. I swivel to face the horizon one more time, then swim towards the shore. I let a gentle wave deposit me on the cold sand, which is made of billions of billions of tiny pieces of shell. I pull my clothes on without bothering to dry myself first (towels are for pussies). I clamber over the granite boulders and haul myself up to the footpath. The footpath is overrun with honeysuckle. The air smells of nutmeg. There are swallows high up above me, floating and swimming in the sky.

Im thinking about porridge. Ill make it with milk from the farm. Or maybe Ill get eggs from the stall. Only I cant remember if Ive got any bread. Even if I do, itll probably be mouldy by now. Porridge, then. Ill drink my coffee in the garden, with the sparrows. Then Ill settle down to work at my home-made desk.

Im drafting and redrafting my second book, which is proving even harder to write than my first book, which was hard enough. The first one was about running away. This one is about coming home, or trying to. Its about how the value of being at home is cancelled out by the soaring cost of having a house. Im using Walden , by Henry David Thoreau, as a lens to help me understand how the current housing crisis sweeping across many parts of the world is a symptom of a deeper homesickness, and how its also manifesting as crises in ecology, social justice and mental health. Ive been exploring the reasons why I felt so homesick when I lived in a house, and yet, now that I live in a shed, I dont feel homesick at all. Im trying to explain that living in a shed isnt a cop-out, or a bums choice, or a romantic hippy dream, but my answer to an impossible question: how to balance on an economic system that is fundamentally unsound.

This is what Im thinking about as I walk up the steep path that leads from the beach to the top of the cliff. My hair is dripping down my back, my feet are bare, my trainers are in my rucksack.

Lots of people have heard of Walden , or at least theyve heard of Thoreau. Theyve read that he was the worlds first hippy, and that he lived for a time in a wooden cabin on the edge of a pond, extolling the virtues of simplicity, growing beans and making bread, sitting in his doorway for hours on end, watching the birds and silently smiling at his incessant good fortune. Thoreau might have been the worlds first hippy, but he was also an activist. His choice to spend two years alone in a wooden cabin was less about running away and more a bold statement about the rampant, blinding materialism of his age, proof that another way of life was possible.

There are plenty of similarities between Thoreaus world and mine. The town he grew up in, Concord, suffered a major economic downturn just after he graduated from Harvard. Most people in Concord didnt own

Like me, Thoreau split his time between writing and manual labour, sometimes working as a kind of servant to the wealthy poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, helping to look after his children and tend his garden. Thoreau understood that it can be quicker to walk somewhere, even somewhere far away, than to spend the time to earn the money to buy the ticket for the seat on the train.

Thoreau died young, of tuberculosis, but his thoughts are still very much alive. Walden was published in 1854, and its been in print ever since. I love that stories can persist for hundreds of years after their authors have died. Walden is as relevant today as it was when it was written. If anything, its more relevant. In the face of ecological Armageddon, the message to slow down and simplify is urgent.

I pause halfway up the steep path and turn towards the ocean. There are two seals now. I watch them for a while as they rest in the morning sunlight, doglike heads bobbing peacefully. A flock of gulls whirls and chants its way to the sea. The seals dive under the water and disappear. I continue my climb to the top of the cliff and turn inland towards a row of big houses. Most of the houses are not lived in; they are rented out during the holidays at extortionate prices to people who are exhausted from toiling in the city, people who dream of seals and waves and freedom. I cant help dreaming about living in one of these empty houses, watching the sun rise out of the sea every morning, having a room for sleeping and a different one for eating and another one for working, digging up the lawn and growing flowers and vegetables in the garden.