Have less and do more

When my ex-partner put those fresh, neigh impenetrable, stainless-steel padlocks on my property, and imprisoned the house that I paid for out of my entire life savings, she effectively barred me entrance to my own belongings, books, clothes, house, car etc. In one very real sense - she had freed me. I had effectively lost my whole world, but notionally gained my soul.

At that moment I was forced to take stock of my being and my life. It was a very small and very quick inventory. Assets - one – I am alive. Ok - so I did manage, in a brief moment of rare enlightenment, to grab my computers and the merest handful of back-up CDs, but other than a few items of clothing - that was it – the sum total of my worth. The house, car etc had all been paid for in cash, and were in her name, which she had gloatingly reminded me of on the day I discovered the stainless-steel padlocks.

Bob Dylan sang - When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal. And in a way he was right. Someone else sang The only way is up, and no doubt many other singers have sung about loss and the positive aspects therein through the ages. I felt as though a great burden had been lifted from me. I no longer had that money, those possessions, and they no longer were able to demand my time, or possess me. Finally I was free of materialism. True it had not been a conscious decision to give up all my worldly possessions, but gave them up I did. I was then free, but to do what, that was the burning question. I had no intent to take up saffron robes, though the colour yellow did appeal, nor did I wish to grow my hair and finger nails and wear nothing by a laterite stained dhoti, live in India and chant all day long.

But what I really, really did want to do was to eat a bacon sandwich. A seven year deprivation had left me longing for that one very special comfort food. The one which excels all others – the iniquitous bacon sandwich – incidentally the bacon sandwich of my dreams. It was that luscious and delectable bacon sandwich, dripping with fat which used to console me at Colchester Bus Station - after a long hard day’s slog at St. Helena secondary modern school. Thoughts of back bacon, streaky bacon cooked with garlic, began to consume me. I lusted for a mouth watering bacon sandwich.

I sought it here; I sought it there and imagined real pork bacon to be as elusive as that infamous pimpernel. But just as my quest was proving futile, and dizzy with my newly found freedom, I found the non-halal section of our local Tesco. If there be saints I would have praised them. There, in that humble lean-to, and adjunct to the main Tesco, was the haven of all things porcine. I purchased not just enough bacon for several bacon sandwiches, but pork belly to cook later and pork enough to feed a small army – ok, well a very small army - perhaps five people. Inside Tesco I also purchased wine enough to quench a seven year thirst, and what a thirst it was.

So with Janis Joplin singing Freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose in my ear I strode into the rest of my life chewing a bacon sandwich and guzzling red wine - a little poorer than before, but also a lot richer in many ways. I’ve learned that it is better to have less and do more……..so this is me doing more.