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| I don't know where the muddy daffodils came from |
It was bluntly pointed out to me once, by someone who went right off me after I split up with my Significant Ex, that my problem is that I think too much. The implication being, I assumed, that if I'd been less of a thinker I might have realised what a sweet deal I had. But what can I say? Like all such "feedback", it had a little sting of truth in it. I do stew. I unpack and untangle and scrutinise. I wrangle and I rant and I rage. I am insanely fortunate that life gave me options, and I take my responsibility to them seriously. It *was* a sweet deal, but it was not the deal for me. All indications are that, indirectly, I made another woman very happy, and I'll take that as a win.
But it came at a cost. Any woman who's left a long term relationship will tell you that some shoulders get pretty fucking cold pretty fucking fast. We have so much invested in the status quo, consciously or subconsciously. No one likes a disruptor, apart from the people who do.
So there's my opener. I have always had things to say. I have not always said them. I still don't always say them: one of the things I (over?) think about is consequences. We have norms, we have social contracts, we are interdependent. I know all this. I do my cost-benefit analysis. Just so you know.
Fish Can the first
It started during Lockdown 1 with a conversation on our allotment. One of our neighbours, who has the next allotment over, was angry about the fact that several requests for our community food store to start stocking tinned fish had been, to choose a polite word, deflected.
We have criteria for making such requests (number of households who might be interested in buying said product, ethical sourcing, inability to purchase locally etc). Fish is, obviously, fish, and not available from our main food store supplier, Suma. But with ye olde pandemic, we had diversified to the extent of supplementing from Sainsbo's, and in fact we've always used multiple suppliers. It's a lot of work, running the food store. I know, because I was its Treasurer for several years. The team currently running it had taken on even more work in order to make sure that people, especially more vulnerable community members, could source food on site rather than having to go to shops.
So far so lovely. But the store has a vegetarian and vegan only restriction, and most of us, actually, literally, in reality, are neither. Most of us eat fish. Most of us also eat meat, but there is a great local butcher that you can walk to, if you can walk, which most of us can. I believe he will deliver if you can't. We also have Andy, who comes to the end of our street every Tuesday with his fish van, and this meets our wet fish needs.
But there's a gap. A sardine shaped gap. They can be sourced locally, yes, but they will be, at best, John West. We can do better than this, sustainability-wise, in the shape of brands like Fish 4 Ever, and many of us would like to. And you can't get those brands easily around here. So... hey, can we have some nice tinned fish in the food store please?
We made a proposal to this effect, and the place went nuts. Someone asked me how I would feel if there were tins of human fingers in the food store. I mean, I wouldn't buy them, but it would also be illegal? If we *were* in the business of eating each other, I expect fingers would be quite far down the list of bits, but I didn't say that. I didn't think it would be helpful.
Like, guys. It's fish, but it's in a tin. You can't see it, you can't smell it. You can even get vegan "tunah" these days, presumably for the vegans who can cope with the idea of tuna existing in the world, maybe even the ones who miss it. Hard to see how you can have a tunah sandwich and not be at some level ok with the idea that someone else might be having a tuna one. At least, it's hard for me to see. At the point where we had our "community conversation" (sounds friendlier than it is) about it, I was able to accept that there are people who feel "unsafe" sourcing their foodstuffs from a store that also contains some tins that have fish in them, even if those tins are in a cupboard that they don't have to open. I was able to accept it because they said so, and I am not about to accuse people of lying. But this is not a standard operating procedure. I know a lot of vegans, and most of them go into shops. Quite a lot of them go to fish and chip shops, where the presence of fish is kind of there on the sign. And in the air.
But no, we prefer to make like the world is not the world, and require our pescatarian neighbours to venture out in a pandemic to buy fish that is worse for the marine environment (and likely the fish, and certainly the workers involved) than using our shared food sourcing system to bring them something better. Go us!
This proposal did not go forward. I had several conversations during the ensuing fallout where I tried to explore what we mean by aiming to be "vegan friendly" - because my reading of it is that there has to be some space between "vegan friendly" and "vegan" or else the word 'friendly' is redundant. And I see sustainably sourced tinned fish as something that lives in that space. During the best of these conversations, my neighbour (who is not vegan) said 'well, this place doesn't feel very vegan friendly to me at the moment'.
She was absolutely right. I still think we have to define it at some point, because I still think there are vegans I feel friendly towards and vegans I absolutely don't. And the difference is the extent to which they want to impose their veganism on me. I am on my own journey, and I think very hard about it. Too much, you might even say.
But I took this to heart. I put an empty Fish 4 Ever can out on my windowsill, like some kind of fishy X on the door, but I also shut up for a bit. That was Fish Can 1.
Fish Can the second
I found that the best way for me to deal with my issues, my fishues if you will, was to do all of my shopping elsewhere. In short, I went Full Supermarket, something that I have avoided for most of the last decade. During Lockdown 1 I went around sourcing from little local shops -- we ate some odd things, but we enjoyed them. By late summer I'd pivoted to Sainsbury's, and (like a lot of people I think) started in on the comfort food: jacket potatoes, spaghetti bolognese, keema curry, a *lot* of toasted sandwiches. There are so many things they sell in supermarkets that I'd forgotten about. Readymade prawn cocktail! Thai basil! Bacon flavour bits! Gnocchi! And when you're not schlepping around seeking out artisanal produce, you do save money.
In September, two things happened. Ocado flipped from Waitrose to M&S, and the ready meal came back into our lives (can report that the M&S Best Ever Macaroni Cheese is really very good). This was not just Full Supermarket etc. Also the ready washed watercress, the little tins of refried beans, the Luchito jalapeno and pineapple salsa, some pretty sweet wine deals. That was the good part. The bad part was that M had a TIA (mini stroke) and we had to have a Big Lifestyle Chat. Exercise-wise, we started going swimming every day. Food-wise, we re-pivoted. Now it was all about the poke and the ramen. Fish, vegetables, rice, noodles, seaweed, seeds, eggs, tofu. Many kinds of chilli, sesame oil, rice vinegar, lots of searing in griddle pans. A big order from Sous Chef. Neither of us got Covid, so we never lost our sense of taste, and I am deeply thankful for that. But it was all quite scary. I put out another fish can. It's great healthy protein, you know.
Fish Can the third
Christmas was a bit of a write off (we had plans, we had to cancel plans) and January started with Lockdown 3 meaning we couldn't go swimming, or do anything much at all really. We were hardly alone in this of course, and luckily, like millions of others, we met Adriene, and we did another Sous Chef order. They have these incredible ramen noodles, unpasteurised soy sauce, and all manner of fancy tinned fish, especially if Galician cockles are your thing. I didn't go into a shop for the whole of January. I didn't mind. But there were stirrings in Ecoville. When we were still allowed to walk in packs of six, a pack of six went for a walk. Entirely coincidentally, the following week there was an offer of a takeaway communal meal (vegan and gluten free). This was followed by another offer of a takeaway communal meal (vegan and gluten free), plus some 'vegan milky drinks'. There was much public appreciation of the people putting the work in to make these meals happen.
Jo, you might say. What can possibly be wrong with this? Why do you want to stop people having a vegan milky drink, are you some kind of monster?
It was cold. It was dark. We were isolated in our not-actually-that-big houses. It's easy to get paranoid. I (over) thought about this. But actually, one of the things I have really liked about this pandemic is that we had to shut our Common House. There have been no communal meals. Communal meals cause me pain. I have written about this at length before so I won't go over the whole territory again, but one of the things that is absolutely the worst about them, for me, is that we are legally, contractually obliged to provide them (and clean up after them) even if we absolutely hate them. And I absolutely hate them, in their current form, and I have never been able to shift them very far towards something I don't absolutely hate -- I remain convinced that a lot of people would love them to move in at least some of the directions that I would, but it's like being that little digger on the Suez canal. Honestly, for me, when they went away it was really good for my wellbeing. And here they are, back again, and we are feting the great people who are bringing us together in this way, aren't they just the best?
Come on, I said to myself. They aren't doing it to piss you off. Don't think you're *that* important, love. So at the end of my (over) think I decided that what I would do was say that unless and until we are able to revisit our Common Meals Policy (it's a thing, if you're new here), I will not be partaking, even though I know this puts me in contravention of my lease, thank you and goodnight.
Some of the people did not like this. Why can't we have some time off arguing about veganism, said one of them. I did not actually mention veganism! And actually it is very much not just about veganism! I replied. You upset people! said another of them. I'm sorry that happened but I am also upset! I replied. I am just trying to take myself out of the situation, and when we're ready to talk, I am ready to talk. Let's get into it, we won't get out of it until we get into it.
I am missing out a strand of the story here, which is that we did a community Secret Santa. I generally hate organised fun, but I had a word with myself and put my hat in the ring, and actually, it was nice. Some time over the Christmas that wasn't, Mimi the cat posted a photo on Slack thanking Secret Santa for his gift, which was a can of Happy Shopper tuna flakes from the Shop at the Top. My fave, he said.
Oh... did Mimi get a public bollocking for that from the vegan milky drinks contingent. In fact, the human behind it was accused of abusing the cat by hiding behind him.
I have to confess. It was me. I was impersonating a cat on this occasion, and on several other occasions before and since. If you think he gives the slightest of fucks about this, you have not met him. This is genuinely also his favourite food, he's lazy and it's already sloppy. He'd eat a can of it a day if we let him. If he could understand his digital alter ego (which he can't, on account of being a cat), then he'd love it, he's a disruptive little bastard. Some people here hate him, to the extent that a few years ago someone suggested he should be put down. How vegan friendly is that, could I say?
Anyhoo, I did totally accept the point that impersonating a cat in order to make a point was probably an indicator that I was a bit nuts my own self, and Mimi did apologise and withdraw his appreciation for Santa. And my subsequent reflection caused me to make my (I thought pretty clear and neutral even if strong) statement that here is my position, I want to be transparent about it, as and when you want to move things on, here I am.
That week, I reached Fish Can 3.
Fish Can the fourth
One of my kinder neighbours asked me to go for a walk. It was the time of all the snow, and it was dark for what felt like 20 hours a day, so this was really a shuffle down the river with torches, and a chat outside the hydro (where there is a light!) until our teeth started chattering. What is this about, he said. What do you need? What will fix this for you? He's an engineer, so he likes to find a fix, and is always optimistic that there is one. What I need, I said, is a process. Our system is broken. We have to talk about it. I do still believe that there could be a way through this. But not without some Deep Thought. We use consensus as a decision-making process, and while I was dazzled by it as a concept when I first met it, I now see that it has a couple of deeply baked in weaknesses. Firstly, it hugely favours the status quo. Creating change if there are people who feel threatened by change, or even by considering change, can be next to impossible. An intransigent minority can absolutely block progress. I used to see it as progressive, but I increasingly realise that only holds if everyone engages and assumes good intent. Secondly, you can absolutely game it if you have the skills and the energy. It can totally be facipulated as a process. Seven years ago, I was part of a team that brought some proposals to a meeting. The process itself was hijacked by someone who didn't want the proposals to be heard. Later, as part of the fallout, one of our kinder neighbours came round and tried to explain to me that the reason he'd hijacked the process was because if you make a proposal, that sets the stage, and that's what people are responding to, and he didn't (to paraphrase) want to be starting from there. I actually laughed. I learnt this from that guy. That's exactly why I did it. It didn't work, but don't think I didn't know that this exact strategy is how we got locked into something that we still haven't been able to bust out of. What I will say is that I have learnt a lot in the seven years since then. I have learnt about the power of community when you are experiencing loss. I have learnt about what you can ask for when you are feeling vulnerable. I have learnt about how hard it is to do that asking, and how easy it is to assume that other people are fine, or to ignore the signs that they aren't. I have learnt that people can be absolute asshats to each other, often unintentionally, but sometimes deliberately. It's a cornucopia of learning, living around here. And our collective ability to assume good intent, which is one of the things that I found so hopeful and so radical about the community that I first joined, is a bit shredded.
It's such a delicate little thing, is trust. Mine was stamped on several times before we even moved in, and has been several times since. When it happens, I withdraw for a bit, but then I try and stick its pieces back together with different kinds of glue, wabi sabi style. When the glue takes, my trust looks different than it did before, but feels strong enough, so far anyway, for me to venture out again.
I do this because I want to understand. What actually *are* we all doing here? What should we be aiming to provide for each other? Do we even have ambitions beyond being a bunch of neighbours living in nice eco houses by the river? I have always been so sure that we did, you don't bring something like this to fruition without a serious sense of purpose. So what should that look like in 2021, after a year of pandemic, with a climate emergency looming?
We have a risk register, here in Ecoville (small children, big river, sharp knives), and a couple of the chewier items on it are to do with our community resilience. What if it all falls apart? What would that mean? We are entangled legally as well as socially. We run a microgrid, we have district heating, we have communal buildings and land to maintain, we don't have nearly enough parking spaces if we fuck up our ability to share cars.
Our community resilience in large part (in my view - and you know me, I've done a lot of thinking about it) rests with a shared understanding of what we each commit to, what we can each expect, how much tolerance we can have of difference, how much we are able to see past our individual interests and look towards those of the community as a whole, and how we understand what those shared interests are.
And that stuff... well, it takes work. Some of it is fairly low level work, you can paint a wall together, cook a meal together, attack buddleia together, drink wine and dance on the terrace together. Do this on the regular, and your understanding of each other will grow. But... what happens when you get to the point, as we have, where there are people who are in conflict with each other, or people who would never call it that but would also never join a group activity because they just can't bear to spend time with some of the other people.
A group of us (the current directors, who 'own' these risks) decided we would put some ££ into this coming year's budget to help us address this. We proposed some £ for external facilitation, to help us with some of our thornier issues (or even to diagnose what those issues are), and some £ for general 'wellbeing' activities. Coming at it from both ends, if you like. We have a nascent wellbeing team, but they are still forming, and in the meantime, for years now, the whole issue of 'wellbeing' has been parked with directors. This is not our first go at having a wellbeing team, nor even our second, so you can maybe already see the case for giving this some attention.
Well. The place went even more nuts. It's all very much a live issue and I don't want to make anyone I actually like's life any harder so I'll spare the really gory details, but a few weeks in to this three members of the very-clear-that-they're-not-actually-a-team-yet wellbeing team send a message out to the whole community about how they are "surprised and saddened" that we'd thought it appropriate to do this. Mmm, sure. One of them was actually literally in the (Zoom) room at the time, as she was a director herself, and she supported both the original proposal *and* the significantly reduced proposal we made based on community feedback about not putting the overall budget up. One of them lives with that one, so must have missed that memo. And the third one just thinks wellbeing should be free. I can accept that as a position, but what about the other people who would like to be able to spend some money on some nice things? Can't we think about them? Because whatever wellbeing looks like, this ain't it.
The director who thought something she agreed to twice was now the worst thing ever resigned, in some style. As I said to my fellow remaining directors, there is an obvious point I could make about this absolutely proving the case about the conversations we need to have as a community and how it feels to be hammered for being out there saying that.
As I also said, it's not my first cohousing shithouse rodeo, but it's not great.
And so, we reach Fish Can 4. Surprised and saddened? Fuck off. Come back when you're ready. I'll be alone, dancing, you know it, baby.
