{"id":666,"date":"2008-08-27T19:47:08","date_gmt":"2008-08-27T19:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/08\/27\/in_which_i_contemplate_hunting_and_gathering_in_central_london\/"},"modified":"2008-08-27T19:47:08","modified_gmt":"2008-08-27T19:47:08","slug":"in_which_i_contemplate_hunting_and_gathering_in_central_london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/08\/27\/in_which_i_contemplate_hunting_and_gathering_in_central_london\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I contemplate hunting and gathering in Central London"},"content":{"rendered":"

In some long-forgotten undergraduate anthropology course, I learned that our primitive ancestors spent no more than twenty hours a week on sustenance activities. The logical extension was, of course, that our forty-hour-plus work ethic was a sort of modern madness. Now that I am older and wiser, I’m not so sure I believe this theory. During my recent camping trip, for example, we tried to do most of our cooking over a fire, and spent a surprising amount of time just starting and maintaining the coals, boiling water, and cooking and cleaning up \u2013 and this was with food we’d bought at the local Safeway (except for one trout<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nThe good life<\/strong> Non-supermarket food in Zone 2<\/p>\n

\nThere is, however, something undoubtedly attractive about the idea of our noble savage ancestors living hand-to-mouth in the lap of the land \u2013 with plenty of time left over for naps, games, sex and whatever stone-age equivalent of TV and surfing the internet happened to be big in the cave. How close can city-dwellers get to this sort of lifestyle?<\/p>\n

\nAnyone who gardens in subtropical Central London knows that the local snail and slug populations are almost unstoppable. But this just makes any successes that much sweeter. After a few years of trial and error, I’ve worked out that semi-poisonous plants work the best, so it’s the Solanaceae<\/em> all the way: chili, tomato and potato, and a garden-full of snails with serious gut-ache. The tomatoes and chili have been a bit of a disappointment this year; apparently the UK honeybee population is succumbing to Colony Collapse Disorder<\/a>, which could explain the poor yields. But the spuds are indestructible, and it’s a wonderful feeling, unearthing these tubers like pale white treasure from the ground and eating them soon afterwards, preferably steamed with a bit of butter, salt and home-grown herbs. <\/p>\n

\nCome the apocalypse, could I feed myself and a family hunting and gathering in Russia Dock Woodlands<\/a>, the 35-acre green space which runs along the back of our garden? Possibly. One of my favorite books, an SAS manual called Survive Safely Anywhere<\/a> by John Wiseman, is full of useful tips about living off bugs and rainwater. We’ve got firewood, foxes and squirrels, doves and magpies. We’ve got canals, ponds and the nearby River Thames full of fish and the makings of canard a l’orange<\/em> — without the orange<\/em>. I might be able to train the cat to bring in his various rodents and amphibians instead of devouring them outright. There are copious edible nettles and other weeds and fungi, the odd wild apple tree. And of course, a superfluity of blackberries, which I’ve been gathering and eating several times a week during this peak season.<\/p>\n

\nIs there an evolutionary imperative that makes gathering especially attractive for me, as the female of the species? Although I am not brilliant at reading maps that are reversed towards the direction I’m facing, I am extremely good at navigating back home by remembering where I’ve come from. This, yet another university lecturer informed me, must be the heritage of my gathering ancestral sisterhood. And it’s true that I go into a bit of a trance when I’m picking berries: the hot sun on my back, the dreamy buzz of insects, the prick of the thorns, the sticky purple juice on my skin and the way it feels when a ripe fruit falls into my fingers without even a tug on the stem. It’s addictive, the urge to gather just one more berry, and I often have to force myself to stop. But equally, I like the thrill of the chase; I have never hunted anything other than fish, but I think I would quite enjoy it (with something sporting like a spear or arrow, not a gun), and I do chase the foxes when I scare them up on my runs, imaging what it would be like to corner them and go in for the kill. <\/p>\n

\nIs this all in my genes, or just a myth of imagination?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In some long-forgotten undergraduate anthropology course, I learned that our primitive ancestors spent no more than twenty hours a week on sustenance activities. The logical extension was, of course, that our forty-hour-plus work ethic was a sort of modern madness. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}