The drawback of keeping it local
IN some very real sense, I and my family can say we are disciples of the über-eco slowliving movement. Some would claim that slow living is unavoidable in the Highlands, where, famously, even mañana smacks too much of urgency. Nonetheless, our support for the buy-local element of ‘slow’ is enthusiastic. For example, we do our best to eat locally produced food: organic veg and beer from the Black Isle, venison from the hill, trout from the loch, lamb from the next-door farm.
I ’fess up to having bought Moroccan raspberries, but I can probably buy a carbon credit or wear repurposed tweed knickers to offset them. Indeed, slow fashion is endemic in my wardrobe, much of which is multigenerational hand me downs—if it hasn’t been upcycled as moth food. The distaff element may crave some fast fashion, as is their wont, but they source it from local charity shops.
There really is no alternative to slow travel on Highland singletrack roads during the imminent campervan season. The mantra of ‘no-dig’ gardening we assiduously follow, our garden being entirely undug and what is politely known as a ‘green garden’ or, stylistically, as sheep up to the front door. Slow money happens whether we like it or not. We can claim, although not through choice, to be part of the slow-medicine movement, which fosters ‘taking time to develop a relationship between practitioner and patient’.
In a small community such as the Highlands, there are times when keeping it in the ’hood has drawbacks. Over a longish lunch, our artist friend Michael told us the cautionary tale of how he opted to stay local for a vasectomy. A lesser man might have slunk off to a distant private clinic to put an end to his reproductive era. Michael was attracted by the free local service, probably not the carbon credits. Come ‘snip day’ in the hospital, he was there with 19 other nervous fellas in their curtained cubicles. Anonymity was important to him, but there should be safety in numbers.
His confrères had all chosen to be knocked out so no second thoughts could halt the process at le moment critique. Michael alone, he found, was going the whole hog locally, anaesthetic and all. He planned to keep an eye on things. Finding himself amid more attractive nurses than he had anticipated, all of them potential acquaintances: ‘The only way I could get through it was by repeating to myself: “I am anonymous”,’ he said, as we circulated the homemade sloe gin after pudding (those Moroccan raspberries). ‘Nobody knows who I am. I’m just some guy. After all, they shouldn’t be looking at my face…’
Laid out in a surgical gown, he was alarmed to hear the surgeon start up conversation. ‘So you managed to get a weekday off.’ ‘Er, I’m self-employed so it wasn’t really a problem.’ ‘So what do you do?’ the medic seemed to bellow from somewhere below Michael’s line of vision. It wasn’t meant to happen like this. Lose the bedside manner, he thought. Don’t go digging. Keep your eye on the balls. I’ll say I’m a painter. He’ll think decorator. There must be hundreds of those locally. ‘Painter decorator or artist painter?’ ‘Artist,’ Michael whispered. ‘D’you know the artist Leonie Gibbs?’ A pause. ‘Yeah. I know Leonie.’ ‘Really? I’m having dinner with Joe and Leonie tonight. What’s your name?’ Leonie and I had to break it to Michael that we weren’t acquainted with any surgeons who performed vasectomies. All a bit of a mystery—and whether that left him feeling better or worse it is hard to say.
Next week Jason Goodwin
A lesser man might have slunk off to a distant clinic; he was attracted by the free local service