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Today on A Free Man: Proudly not footballers’ wives

“I’m free now
Free to look out the window
Free to live my story
Free to sing along…”

-Morphine - “I’m Free Now”

One of the difficult things about a transcontinental move is getting rid of things that aren’t worth shipping. In our move from the U.S. to the U.K. a few years ago, everything that we couldn’t sell in a yard sale went to the dump - which is really kind of a waste. This time around, I discovered freecycling - join a local online group and list what you want to get rid of or what you want

I thought I would give it a go yesterday. I listed a few things - the dog’s crate, our barbecue and a cable box. Within a minute after posting on the Freecycle site my Inbox exploded…

• “hi if the dog crate is still avalibale could i please have it thank you”
• “hi can i have the bbq? i can collect”
• “If still available I would be delighted to give the dog crate a good home.”
• “HI THERE DO YOU STILL HAVE THE DOG CRATE AND FREEVIEW BOX? PLEASE CAN YOU LET ME NO I CAN COLLECT THANKS”

…and so on. In the first few minutes I got close to thirty requests. Ten minutes after posting, I got this despondent message:

“hi there - i am sure that they have already gone but if not could i
please be considered for the dog crate and the freeview box? many
thx :O)”…

…clearly someone used to the fast pace of scavenging in Oxford. One man’s trash is truly another’s treasure. It’s a great idea because otherwise these things were headed for the landfill and they are perfectly good items. I’m into freecycling, in fact when we get to Adelaide I’m not buying anything until I see if I can freecycle something.

Now, this kind of thing can be taken a bit too far. The slightly manic freecycling reminded me of something I saw on the TV the other day. Dr. O’C occasionally gets me sucked in to her trashy programs - one of these is “Wife Swap. The American version is better, there is just a bigger pool of whackos to choose from, but the British version certainly holds its own. A couple of weeks ago there was a swap between a woman from a very wealthy, if remarkably trashy, family and a Christian freegan woman who lived in an RV - with the predictable results. What was interesting about this program was the freegan bit - not a term I was familiar with. If you, like me, are a bit out of the loop freeganism is:

“an anti-consumerism lifestyle whereby people employ alternative living strategies based on “limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources. Freegans embrace community, generosity, social concern, freedom, cooperation, and sharing in opposition to a society based on materialism, moral apathy, competition, conformity, and greed.”The lifestyle involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket dumpsters that have passed their sell by date, but are still edible and nutritious. They salvage the food not because they are poor or homeless, but as a political statement.” (Wikipedia)

Where I come from we called that dumpster diving and it wasn’t really a cutting edge lifestyle choice. I’m as anti-consumerist as the next guy - if the next guy liked a nice frothy corporate cappuccino a day, everything Apple puts on the market and the occasional BigMac - but I don’t think I could get behind freeganism. It’s actually not even the dumpster diving bit - it’s that most freegans are vegans (I guess milk and meat spoil in the dumpster quickly). I’m just way too much of a carnivore for that kind of madness.

All this talk about free this and that stems from the fact that I’ve got about a week before my level of free time is poised to increase massively. My last day of work is a week tomorrow and while I dreamed of a few months of gluttonous leisure, I fear that will not be the case. Between taking on my fair share of parenting and getting ready to move the DVDOC household across a couple of oceans I think I will find that I actually had more free time at work. As many of you know, in a quest for free records I’ve started up my own music blog. Just yesterday I was asked to contribute to a new blogging sideline as well.

If this all sounds like excuses for getting my homework in late, it kind of is. I shall do my best, because I love the feedback I get on this site, but my ravings on this site may slow down a bit over the next few weeks.

Image credits:

Freecycle
Freegan
Moving House

Morphine’s “Cure for Pain” is available from and Amazon.

 

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