From The Times

Letter from Utopia

A big part of the initial motivation for the Utopia experiment was the fear that climate change would lead to devastating changes to our way of life – so devastating, in fact, that it would lead to the collapse of governments and the infrastructure of modern life. But for the past few weeks climate change has been more benign – sunny days that make the Highlands in May look like Switzerland in June. It all had to end, of course, and when the deluge came there was only one volunteer on site. Poor Georgia – a former medical physicist who opted out of the rat race a few years ago and divides her time between Edinburgh and a caravan in southern France – was, quite rightly, miserable.

“The weather turned cold,” she says. “Even the locals say so. I’ve lived in Scotland for 24 years and know what cold is. The nights are bitter, because it is clear. Lying in a sleeping bag under two duvets and a blanket and still having cold feet is cold in anyone’s language. Now that it’s rained it’s not so bad.

“The evenings spent totally alone with no electricity aren’t better. But I’m still here. I don’t know any other woman who would be. I’m not scared. I’ve got more bloody bottle than that.” But then the yurt she’s sleeping in begins to leak. We tie cord to the corners of a bit of plastic and sling it over the top of the yurt. It’s a temporary solution, but it works.

Finally we’re getting a bit more postapocalyptic. Well, a bit wetter at least. Agric is not impressed. “Best make the most of the next few days of quiet, Georgia; it’s likely to get more hectic soon. But what you should ask is, ‘Will it make you realise that your normal life is less good than you think it is?’ ” “Certainly not!” says Georgia. “My normal life is fabulous!”

Today we are taking our pigs to the abattoir. We could kill them ourselves, but the rules governing such things would prevent us from feeding the meat to anyone except the person who kills the animal and his or her immediate family. Or at least that’s what we are given to understand. Rules that make perfect sense in a complex modern society make it very difficult for people to learn skills that would be vital if that society collapses. Or for ordinary crofters to go about their daily life, for that matter. So we face a choice between becoming hardened criminals and missing out on a chance to learn a skill that would be vital if we had to return to a preindustrial way of life. We opt for the abattoir. Romay tempts the pigs up to the trailer with a bucket of food, scattering little bits on the ground as she goes. The pigs are almost in the trailer when I peer in the back and help Georgia to close the door, at which point they bolt. Clearly I have an adverse effect on porcine behaviour.

Another opportunity to learn skills for postapocalyptic living this week is provided by Paddy and Sue, a couple who are selling their house in a nearby town to take up a nomadic lifestyle. They have come to teach us the basics of green carpentry. They are enthusiastic about working without power tools. They lay out their implements – a side axe, a draw knife, adzes and mallets – and bring a shave horse, so-called because the user sits astride it. Then they take us to look for suitable raw materials, and we come back from the woodland around the burn with ash and cherry. Graham, a 21 year-old architecture student from Sheffield with floppy brown hair, who has just arrived to volunteer, is soon happily whittling a spoon.

It’s all very William Morris. In News from Nowhere Morris sketched a vision of England in the year 2102, by which time it had reverted to a pastoral way of life in which all but the simplest forms of machinery had been eliminated, and the city of London had become a collection of villages. Now that’s a postapocalyptic vision I can enjoy.