The Moneyless Man (21 page)

Two weeks after I got back from my last foraging trip, I decided I’d have a week of silence. I didn’t think this would be much of a challenge, though I did find it hilarious that for one week I’d give up both speech and money. If someone had told me that ten years ago, I would have choked on my big greasy burger.

I wanted to regain control of my tongue and become more aware of how I express myself through my actions. My year had been intense in so many ways, from media and public interest in the experiment to the daily realities of my existence; my life had
changed a lot. I’d started to dislike the person I was becoming; among other things, a person far too loose in his speech. I’d criticized people for things, when I’d done much worse in the past. I’d heard myself saying things tainted with the intention of making me look good, impressive, a person others would want to be around and attracted to. I thought I’d better shut up for a while and take a good hard look at myself.

During a foraging trip in August, I’d realized that I sometimes use speech to replace action and other, more genuine, forms of communication. I’d never hesitated to say ‘I love you’ to a partner, and while I’d often genuinely meant it, I’d also said it out of laziness or a desire to manipulate the person I claimed to love into giving me what I wanted. If you take away speech, you’ve got to show the person you love them. Much more difficult, though a lot more sincere. Telling someone you love them is a fantastic compliment, but a terrible primary source of reassurance; all too often, the words lack depth and substance.

On the heath, Lear asks Gloucester, ‘How do you see the world?’ Gloucester, who is blind, answers, ‘I see it feelingly’. I see it feelingly. I wanted to start ‘seeing it feelingly’ more. Ours has become a very intellectualized culture, in which those who display a strong intellect are admired, while those who feel and understand things instinctively get much less recognition. I found myself falling into the former category. In interviews and articles, I could only justify why I was doing what I was doing intellectually. The fact I simply felt using money went against all my instincts was not something I felt I could use to argue my case. Yet, in my experience, ‘feeling’ is often much closer to truth than ‘knowing’. I could give you a presentation of why organic methods of farming are more ecologically sound than conventional agriculture, or I could take you to an organic and a conventional farm, say nothing, and leave you to let your heart decide which one makes more sense.

It was hard for the first few days. The longest I’d ever managed to stay silent was probably the same as my longest night’s sleep. Not responding when people spoke to me was mentally draining; my natural urge is to give my opinion on anything and everything. And I was no budding Buddha. I had rarely meditated in the past and the few times I had I’d been thinking about all the things I should have been getting on with rather than focusing on my breathing. I do think meditation is beneficial; a very useful tool in a more conscious and aware life. It is just that I’ve never been very good at it!

It was interesting to observe how people interacted with me. On Monday, people spoke to me a lot and engaged with me regularly. The same on Tuesday. But by Wednesday, I felt people were talking much less to me, probably because people prefer to talk to people who respond and laugh with them. This made me think about how it must feel to be deaf or mute in a world in which everyone else can hear and talk. Or how it feels to live alone in a city, yet surrounded by people. I felt lonely at times and finished my silence with a greater sense of empathy towards those whom society doesn’t seem to value.

The week did wonders for my self-discipline; a tool I find needs constant sharpening. The beautiful thing about self-discipline is that when you practice it in one area of your life it can be easily transferred to another. Siddhartha, the hero of Hermann Hesse’s classic book of the same name, when a potential employer asks him what his skills are, says: ‘I can fast’. ‘Fasting?’ says the employer, ‘what good is that?’ Siddhartha replies: ‘If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most important thing he can do’. Giving up something that you are free to do builds character.

What did I learn from my silent week? That it’s definitely much harder, if not impossible, to criticize people when you can’t speak. That being unable to jump in with knee-jerk reactions to
something I didn’t like saved me hurting people’s feelings. And that while I found a week without speaking to be very beneficial and something I’d recommend, I had absolutely no intention of continuing with it.

However, when it came to making a decision about whether or not to continue living without money past the end of my official year, I wasn’t anywhere near as decisive. And I had only a few weeks to go.

Things were about to go crazy again in moneyless world. With only a month of my experiment left, I had been expecting another surge of media interest. The day after my week-long vow of silence ended, I got an email from Adam Vaughan, one of the editors of
Guardian online
. He asked me if I wanted to write a blog post, a quick seven hundred words, about why I was doing what I was doing and how my experience was going. This scared me: I was really busy and even though I welcome the chance to get my message out, my body and mind told me I needed a proper break, the kind in which you see nobody and do nothing. I asked Adam how many people would be likely to read the blog, to make sure it was worth my while. Adam said it would have at least a couple of thousand readers but if it went down well, tens of thousands were possible. That was good enough for me, especially as you never know where things might lead. What happened shocked both me and Adam. Within hours of my blog posting, an intense debate was raging. A few hours more, and it was climbing its way up to the top five of the website’s ‘Most Read’ stories chart.

The
Guardian online
’s charts are something of a self-perpetuating system. People short of time go there to read the top news stories quickly. If a story rapidly rises to the top of this chart, it can stay there for days, moving out across the internet.
And the intense debate sent my post straight to the top by the afternoon, with comments coming in thick and fast. About 60% of the comments were positive and supportive to an extent I had never experienced, about 10% were curious, and the remaining 30% thought that I was a middle-class ‘trustafarian’ (a trust-fund-supported, free-spirited, counter-cultural Bohemian) with nothing better to do.

Ironically, it was my critics who kept the debate going and the story at the top of the chart. The comments were totally polarized and the jury completely out. I had offers of marriage and casual sex (from both women and men). I had testimonials I didn’t remotely deserve. I was a hypocrite for using a cell phone and laptop. What I was doing was an insult to the poor people of Africa. I was a fame-seeking egomaniac on a publicity stunt ... My reality was in between: an ordinary guy, doing what he thinks is best right now, knowing, all too well, that he has as much chance of being wrong as of being right.

The post eventually became the most-read story on
Guardian online
, with 400,000 readers. Paul Kingsnorth (author of
Real England
and
One No, Many Yeses
) and George Monbiot (author of
Heat
and
The Age of Consent
, among much else), two people whose thoughts have greatly influenced me, joined in the debate. Adam was pleasantly surprised and asked me to do a follow-up post, while the
Guardian
itself wanted an article for their
G2
magazine. Off we went again.

I’d included a link to the Freeconomy Community website and it was going nuts. For days, it had a new member every minute. In one week, the community grew by more than 15%. During November, I got anywhere from 75 to 150 emails a day from well-wishers and people interested in bringing the online Freeconomy Community to its next logical conclusion: real life. Somehow, I even managed to get letters through the mail, though I’d never disclosed where I was living. Interestingly, not one of
the emails or letters was negative or threatening. The negative stuff seemed to need the anonymity of a blog comment, which my own blog had made me used to.

It was impossible to keep up with the emails and the world’s media was back on my tail. One day, I did interviews with journalists in eight countries. It was insane: much too much for one person. I had a book to write with a deadline only six weeks away, a free feast and festival for thousands of people to organize, and the small matter of survival without money to think about. But it was an exciting time. To see the message I feel most passionate about spread across the world filled me full of joy and, thankfully, gave me a much-needed jolt of adrenaline. And for the first time in a while, I didn’t feel so alone in what I was doing. A lot of the emails and letters came from people wanting to start their journey into moneyless living. Knowing that gave me a lot of strength for the weeks ahead.

Never in my life had time gone by so quickly. The exhaustion and apprehension I’d felt on Buy Nothing Eve were fresh in my memory, yet the finishing line was in sight. Ten months ago, I’d thought November couldn’t come quickly enough, but now my only concern was the sobering thought of re-entering officialdom. It had been almost a year since I’d received envelopes with little clear plastic windows (a clear sign that it comes from a machine and not a person) in the mail. I was getting attached to the idea of having no bank statements, utility bills or tax returns.

Barring major health problems, I thought nothing could prevent me from finishing my year. At this stage, I felt I could manage thirty days of almost anything. But I didn’t realize that the final stretch would be the most mentally punishing of the whole twelve months. It wasn’t that I struggled to survive; that was a piece of out-of-date cake. Rather, I had a unique opportunity to finish something I’d started, in a way that would maximize its impact and, I hoped, give birth to something bigger than just one man living without money. I felt there was more to life than staying within the confines of my comfort zone.

A couple of days before the
Guardian online
blogs were published, my friends Francene and Andy had reminded me that I’d promised to end my year without money with a feast even bigger than the one that began it. I said ‘no’. I had no idea that the story would cause such a stir on the website, and in the rest of the media, but nonetheless, I still said ‘no’. I was barely treading water as it was and I knew the responsibility would, inevitably, fall on my shoulders.

But after a couple of days’ thought and persuasion, I eventually agreed. Last year’s feast had been one of the most uplifting days I could remember. I told myself I’d have plenty of time to sleep when I was dead. With high anxiety and trepidation, I agreed not only to organize a free three-course feast for hundreds of people, but also a one-day festival of all things free. It was a great chance to show how Freeconomy could work, even in a city and if just for one day, and a fantastic way to celebrate the end of my year without money. It would be a huge challenge; making it free for everyone would depend on everyone freely offering whatever they could on the day. ‘Let’s make this massive’, I thought. Last year’s event had been a three-course feast for a hundred and fifty people. I felt that the growth and interest in the Freeconomy Community over the year meant it deserved to be a lot bigger this time.

I needed to decide what we wanted to happen on the day and make a list of everything we’d need for it to become reality. It felt like the list I made for myself at the beginning, except this was a list for just one day. But for thousands of people. I put a shout out to all the members of the Bristol and Bath Freeconomy Communities living within a twenty-five-mile radius of my trailer: in four weeks’ time I wanted to put on the biggest moneyless festival the city had ever seen, with no cash, no funding, and no monetary donations. I hoped for at least ten
committed volunteers; any fewer and it would have been really difficult. I wasn’t over-confident; the day was only weeks away. But the response was huge; a sign of how far the Freeconomy movement had come in twelve months. Even Brigit Strawbridge, star of the hit BBC series,
It’s not Easy being Green
, got in touch, asking if she could volunteer on the day. Within a week, I had a team of almost sixty volunteers, most of whom I’d never met. Yet by the end, many of the volunteers had become friends.