The Good Life

When we tell people we've moved to the country and we're growing our own veg, they often comment and say "oh you're living the good life". I'm too young to have watched the "The Good Life" the first time around as it originally aired in 1975. I was born in 78. I decided to watch the first few episodes to find out if we really are living the good life…

In the first episode of The Good Life, the day after Tom Good's 40th Birthday he has an epiphany. He’s tired of his 9-5 job, he’s tired of being in an endless consumerist cycle of working to earn money, just to spend it, and having to earn more.

Unable to sleep, at 3 o'clock in the morning, Tom gives the following speech to Barbra his wife.

I quit work, and we become as damned near self sufficient as possible. We’ve got bags of garden. We grow our own food. We keep some animals, chickens, a pig. We produce our own energy. We recycle rubbish, we design the things we need. Now, some things we can’t make, right. Somethings we can’t grow, right. So we flog our surplus and buy stuff, and that’s without good old medieval barter. It’ll be damned hard work, we won’t have much in the way of mod cons, but we might even enjoy discovering what we can do without and we won’t need the world and his wife to give us the yay or nay. It’ll be just us, doing it for us. What do you think? Eh, what do you think?!

In essence Tom's grand plan is to become self-sufficent. While I'm not as radical as Tom and we don't plan on getting any animals, I did find myself nodding along in agreement to every word he said. I'm also the same age as Tom — well, I'm 41, but I plan on being 40 for at least a few more years yet should anyone ask.

For such an old show and one that could have dated badly, it was quite entertaining and held up rather well. I'll certainly be watching a few more episode to see how things pan out for the Goods.

I wouldn't say we're living "the good life" just yet, but we're trying to get there.