There’s A Hippo In My Cistern: One Man’s Misadventures on the Eco-Frontline. Pete May
It’s all good, worthy planet-saving stuff. As an eminently unpractical man I could never design anything propelled by water, not even a paper boat. So maybe I’m a cynic for knocking environmentally-aware people simply trying to promote a sustainable non-polluting lifestyle. Yes, everyone at CAT is doing a fantastic job. It’s just Chris’s alternative loo technology that presents a bit of a problem.
Chris lives with his partner Jane in an old farmhouse that they’ve bought for the price of a London garage. This sounds a good deal on paper, until you discover that it’s, as the estate agents say, in need of some refurbishment. The cottage itself is reached by driving in Chris’s Land Rover across a river, up an improbably steep and winding road for three miles and then down a long muddy track. It’s perched at the bottom of the valley and at times it does look inviting, when there’s a rare burst of sunlight. Chris and Jane are busy turning it into an eco-home. Which means that it doesn’t have any tiles on part of the roof. Just a tarpaulin slung over the rafters.
‘At least the Oxford Greens have roofs,’ I mumble to Nicola.
‘Oh shut up, it’s lovely. And the insulation will be going in soon and when the roof is finished they’re going to have solar panels and a wind turbine.’
It’s the coldest weekend of my life. We’re staying inside a work in progress. Several of the windowpanes have holes in them. They will be replaced with double glazing one day we’re told, but at the moment it’s make do and don’t mend. Chris is clearly a very hardy (and Hardy-esque) environmentalist – a model of low-impact living.
I’m reminded of an old classic black-and-white TV series, The Survivors, which can be dimly remembered from my youth. Nearly all the population had been destroyed by a plague and the few survivors are trying to cannibalise what technology they can still find and construct a new society while growing vegetables and avoiding outlaws. There are no papers here, no TVs, no means of finding out the football results. Civilisation could easily have collapsed in the outside world.
We go for a long walk across muddy hills in a squall and then return to huddle before the log burner in the living room. Several old armchairs lie before a partially collapsed inglenook fireplace. Large pieces of ancient insulating material are hanging precariously above the burner.
We eat toast, hoping the bread will remain warm long enough to thaw fingers now devoid of all tactile sensation. It’s all reminiscent of the arrival of Withnail and I at Uncle Monty’s cottage in the Lake District.
But my major problem here is not the cold, it’s the sanitary arrangements. Green life is starting to seem like a major cistern error. Especially when I discover that the only loo is of the composting variety. Using the compost loo involves defecating into the abyss, and then sprinkling sawdust upon your deposits.
The whole contraption is more than a metre off the ground, meaning you have to climb on top of it and then rest your feet on a piece of wood. It’s like some kind of fiendish interrogation device. Less waterboarding, more faeces skimming.
You can’t urinate while standing up because the whole structure is so precarious. In some kind of act of feminist revenge, all men have to sit down to pee or retreat into the fields outside. And however much you try not to look down into the pit of doom, some irresistible perverted wish means that you can’t help but glance down into the depths – viewing sawdust, horrible bits of scrumpled paper and biodegrading turds.
Small flies retreat into darker quarters of the odorous wooden box. This sewage sludge also contains numerous tiger worms, silently composting our faeces. Chris stands by the compost loo looking down into the depths and admiring his worm’s work.
‘Greedy buggers, aren’t they?’ he says cheerily.
They are diminutive tiger worms, admittedly. But they could get bigger. Remember the giant maggots made from condoms that menaced Jon Pertwee in Doctor Who? My subconscious registers some forgotten primeval fear of white buttocks being clamped by all sorts of creatures emerging from the dirt.
But at least it’s helping me appreciate some of the innovations of modern life. Thomas Crapper was a genius. Defecating into a box of malodorous turds and sawdust was never going to be preferable to the glorious clear water of Crapper’s fabulous flushing closet. Perhaps I’m a bad person for not being able to tackle a compost loo. They save countless litres of water, provide fertiliser (although I’m still not sure I’d want to eat crops grown with ‘humanure’) and are essential in places without sewage systems. Maybe it’s because I’m an anally retentive, pathetic wuss, as the Australians might put it. It’s just that I’ve never worked in the Third World or remote islands, or disaster zones and refugee camps, unlike all of Nicola’s friends. My whole life has been spent using conventional lavatories. And I never realised just what a luxury they are.
I’m trying to get into this, honestly. Chris and Jane are friendly people and attentive hosts. It’s just that they seem oblivious to cold. They even give up their bed for us. And it’s the perfect bed for an ‘eco-bunny’, as Nicola calls her Green friends. Jane has attached four silver birch trunks to each corner of the bed and created a rustic four-poster bed. She’s entwined fairy lights among the twigs, creating a sort of Lord of the Rings meets The Woodlanders ambience.
I’m not sure my mates at football would be that impressed. But as long as I make a big effort to unleash my inner Hobbit then the fairy bed is fine, really. If only Jane and Chris had given the same amount of attention to the window, which looks as if one push would remove the whole crumbling frame from the wall.
The next morning we eat muesli, feet chilling on the stone floor of the kitchen. In order to shower we have to boil the kettle several times and then stand in the bath beneath a bucket with holes in its bottom. In the living room there’s a sort of stable door, which leads directly out to the fields and a vista across the hills. As soon as she’s up, Nicola opens the top section of this door, ensuring the glorious chill of March frost permeates the room.
She’s loving it, and is irritated by my shivering. I suggest a walk among the sheep, hoping it might be warmer outside and on the move.
When we return two of our old Oxford Green chums have colonised the living room. Oliver is lying in a hammock, all booming voice, sure opinions, wild hair and bristly chin. He’s wearing a red-check, padded lumberjack shirt and his pouch. He is also the only man I had ever seen lying in a hammock, if we exclude the odd viewing of South Pacific.
Sitting in an ancient armchair is bespectacled, woolly-jumpered George Monbiot. I realise that George and Oliver’s conversation is as indecipherable to me as my discussions about football must be to Nicola. They mention acronyms in every sentence. Their talk is all of Carmageddon, Undercurrents, the Diggers, park-and-ride schemes, food miles and things George said to John Gummer. They’re bemoaning the tragedy of the commons and then they mention Enclosure.
‘Yes, I’ve seen the movie, Demi Moore was great,’ I declare enthusiastically. They both look a little puzzled.
The morning passes with more Lapsang tea and eco-jargon. I shuffle closer to the wood burner, still wearing my Polartec fleecy jacket, jumper, shirt, T-shirt and thermal vest.
Then it’s a group walk, admiring the sensuous curves of the hills (at least that’s how Nicola describes them, her inner poet inspired by this arctic expedition). We walk to a waterfall and then admire a set of sustainable wind turbines upon a distant hill. The windmills remind me a little of the effigy the islanders create in The Wicker Man. I start to wonder if the Greens sacrifice non-virgin men who write for lad mags, like football and have problems with compost loos in giant wicker turbines.
That evening Chris puts Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits on the cassette and ‘Blowing in the Wind’ has rarely sounded more appropriate. Then he takes off his trousers. Underneath them is another pair.
‘Just how many pairs of trousers are you wearing?’ I ask.
‘Only two and a pair of thermals,’ he answers, as if multi-trousering is a completely normal dress code.
If