Documentary about man living self sufficiently - Leeds festival

[MinorHour]

There's an interesting documentary which is going to be shown at Leeds film festival on 12th November. It's about a man from Leeds who has been living self sufficiently on a remote Scottish island near the Isle of Mull for the last 6 years. BBC Radio Leeds recently interviewed the filmmaker who made the documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddb3VY70PsI

Here are more details about the event: http://www.leedsfilm.com/films/island-se...andscapes/

We have some free tickets to the event which we would like to give away, please email us if you want to come along: info@minorhourfilms.com



The story:
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Lifelong drifter CHRISTOPHER ELLIS has made his home on a small island off the west coast of Scotland. For six years he has lived in virtual isolation, being the only inhabitant of the island and rarely returning to the mainland. Every winter Christopher journeys on foot to his home town of Leeds to earn a month’s wage as a pot washer in an Italian restaurant - enough for him to live off for the next year.

The documentary is a portrait about one man’s lifelong pursuit for independence. A proud, self defined tramp, Christopher Ellis challenges modern expectations about settling down, instead finding a simple pleasure in living hand-to-mouth in reflective isolation.

[Barneyboy]

very good life if you can do it

[Prepper1]

Ha ha ha council trying to get council tax off him despite no council services.....
what a shower of bastards....

[BDG]

Very interesting. I cannot get to Leeds at the moment, but I will share the video with some people that may be able to.

I would not describe the chap as self sufficient, it is a little misleading however as he still needs to undertake paid employment.

Hats off to his council for being a bunch of money grabbing bastards.

[Tarrel]

Total self-sufficiency is difficult (though not impossible). We visited a bronze-age settlement in Shetland recently, with evidence of bronze tools and artifacts. The nearest known tin deposits are in Cornwall, indicating that some form of trade would have occured in order for them to live their lives.

Taking a small amount of paid employment in order to provide for the things that self-sufficiency cannot provide for is just the modern, monetised version of barter, where you trade excesses of what you have produced (or a skill you have) for stuff that you want or need.

No man is an island (although this guy happens to live on one).

Out of interest, I noticed one of the Summer Isles came up for sale a couple of years ago. IIRC, it was about £400k for 20-odd acres, complete with a house, generator room, radio mast and radio room, and a jetty. It was about 45 minutes sail from the mainland. Envy!

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Actually, it strikes me that self-sufficiency is a continuum. One can take a series of small steps towards greater self-sufficiency. Not everyone is in a position to go the whole hog.

One big step in this direction is to reduce the stuff you need. We have done this by down-sizing. When we lived down south, we were so highly geared it would make your eyes water. Both working and earning decent income (wife from public sector, me self-employed), but just p***ing it all away in expenses every month. We sold up, moved north, bought a smaller house and paid off all the debts. We've invested in renewable energy to reduce our dependency on the energy firms. The only real essentials for us are; council tax (to avoid ending up in jail) and food (to avoid going hungry) plus a small electricity bill and consumables/maintenance costs. Everything else is discretionary expense. Next steps are growing more of our own food, and further reducing dependency on grid electricity. We're warm, comfortable and eat well. We have more time,so we have been able to reach out and make friends in our new location.

I won't say it's been easy making the adjustment, and it wouldn't suit everyone, but we feel we've made the right choice. Every "mini-SHTF" episode that crops up (e.g. Hurricane Sandy) just confirms this.

[NorthernRaider]

Tarrel do you think what you and many other inteligent Brits are trying to do in real terms, is adapt to a" modernised" version of the semi self sufficient lifestyle most of eastern Europe has lived with since 1900 ish, Mainly once you get out of modern western Europe into places like Serbia, Czech republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland Ukraine and central France most non city dwellers have continued to live in smallholding with their own livestock, wells, wood burners etc. They live a livestyle not much changed since the 1800 just with cars, cell phones, internet, modern medicines etc, something we " Modern" western europeans frowned upon for the last 60 years.

[MinorHour]

Thanks for the response guys!

BDG you are quite right, Chris' life is semi self-sufficient, as he does earn a small amount in Leeds - hadn't really thought about that. In the documentary he mentions that he uses that money to buy the things he cannot grow on the island - for example coffee, and I think he also buys some fuel to run a small lamp which he seems to use very sparingly.

Here is another still from the documentary:

[Prepper1]

looks like santa in that one...
So thats where santa lives....

[BDG]

Does he get seals on the island? Fat buggers, seals.

If it was me, I would be catching them and rendering the fat for lamp oil. I can understand the months work for coffee, I have said before I would not like to live without tea or coffee.

[Tarrel]

(6 November 2012, 09:45)NorthernRaider Wrote: Tarrel do you think what you and many other inteligent Brits are trying to do in real terms, is adapt to a" modernised" version of the semi self sufficient lifestyle most of eastern Europe has lived with since 1900 ish, Mainly once you get out of modern western Europe into places like Serbia, Czech republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland Ukraine and central France most non city dwellers have continued to live in smallholding with their own livestock, wells, wood burners etc. They live a livestyle not much changed since the 1800 just with cars, cell phones, internet, modern medicines etc, something we " Modern" western europeans frowned upon for the last 60 years.

Hey NR, I guess you rumbled me! I never really thought about it before, but my Dad's from Poland. He's been here since the war. He had a pretty tough teenage upbringing; taken by the Russians into a gulag at age 14, in lieu of his older brother (a serving army officer). Put to work on the trans-arctic railway construction. Lied about his age and managed to join the Polish army-under-Russian-command as a way out.

He always told me stories of how hard it was to get by during the years leading up to the conflict and, obviously, as a prisoner. Basically a life of barter, improvisation, black economy, swapping home-made booze for shoes, etc. In 1968 he took me to Poland and I met my family for the first time. Bear in mind this was at the time when Poland was still very much behind the iron curtain. NR is right; very much a "make do and mend" culture - a legacy of the past I guess. We were last there in 2004, just before they entered the EU. The attitudes still prevailed. I got to know a cousin very well, who I had not met previously. He was one of the new breed of entrepreneurs, running a steel stockholding business, but still had all the underlying mindset (and skills). They owned an area of woodland which provided them with firewood and mushrooms for pickling. He also shoots deer there, and is a good fisherman.

My Dad was brought up in the Ukraine, which was Polish occupied territory before the war. He tells a great story about his Grandfather, who was a resistance fighter against the advancing Russians. (Maybe it was his Father; I'm not too certain about the history around that time). Anyway, apparently he got caught out in the middle of nowhere in a major snowstorm. He was taken in by an elderly woman living alone. She fed him a stew to warm him up. He found it delicious and asked what was in it. Apparently, she'd made it from a whole load of mice she'd caught in her barn! Tough times...