A kind of living

HAVE the day-to-day realities of getting by in the modern world led us to abandon something fundamental in the way we live our lives?

Anglican priest Peter Owen Jones believes that we’ve become a culture dominated by money and have lost touch with how to lead a simpler and more meaningful existence.

“As we all know, the credit crunch came upon all of us and I just found it rather strange that we were all being encouraged, during that process; we were being told the only way out of this is for all of us to spend, and I thought this was an insanity,”

he says.

Coming to believe that modern life has become a cycle of spending and working, he sets out to attain a life of simplicity, with a deeper connection to both nature and the people around him.

Filmed over the course of eight months, the three-part series begins with Jones turning his back on consumerism by downsizing, helping out the local farmer and growing his own vegetables.

When this doesn’t prove enough, he tries to live without money altogether.

“The idea comes really from the life of St Francis, who was the son of a wealthy merchant,” he explains.

“He gave up money in an attempt to discover a greater humanity. I didn’t give up working; what I did was I exchanged my work for food, or the occasional bit of petrol.”

It was only when he gave up spending that he realised just how much we’re all tied into the financial system.

“We live in a society where our whole way of being is predicated by money. We can’t drive anywhere, we can’t live anywhere, we can’t turn on the television, we can’t turn on the computer, we can’t turn on a light bulb, we can’t do anything unless we pay for it.

“So, when you give up money, to a large extent you forsake the ability to take part with the rest of the spending society. You can’t just disappear down the pub and buy a pint, because you can’t buy a pint, so, in a sense, the toughest part is that sense of very real dislocation from everyone else who’s living with money.

“You become very quickly quite separated from that mainstream. That takes about three or four days, and you can feel that separation taking place.”

HAVE the new teens on EastEnders brought a new injection of life into the soap with their street slang and comedy antics involving an icecream van? Or are they just taking up valuable screen time that could be better used with the more established characters?

It was spin-off E20 that first introduced viewers to comic relief Fat Boy and Albert Square’s oldest school kids, Zsa Zsa and Leon.

In the latest episode, Mercy reveals the identity of her baby’s father, Leon prepares for his big boxing match and Fat Boy’s party gets out of control.

But be warned – a new run, with new teens, will be screened later this year.

IF anyone can get us yo ho ho-ing without the aid of a bottle of rum, it’s Gareth Malone, who has a track record for making some of the unlikeliest people burst into song.

In the series, The Choir, and its followup, Boys Don’t Sing, he persuaded some fairly reluctant teens to start harmonising their voices. More recently, he helped to transform the residents of the cashstrapped South Oxhey estate, in Hertfordshire, into one of Britain’s biggest community choirs, in Unsung Town.

Now, he’s exploring the history of sea songs that make up a big part of Britain’s maritime tradition, in Shanties and Sea Songs With Gareth Malone.

His journey takes him across Britain to hear shanties, from the Herring Girls, in Scotland, the Filey Fisherman’s Choir to the anglers of Port Isaac, in Cornwall.