City living Old Style?

smileyt_2

juliapenguin wrote: »

Hello! I've been off the OS board for a while dealing with personal stuff but I'm back now and still keen to set up some sort of Manchester OS meet-up if anyone's interested....

Hello again juliapenguin. I'm still interested in an OS Manc meet. Just trying to think where's cheap .... there's Cafe Pop on Oldham Street where you can get a proper mug of tea. It's a veggie/vegan cafe.

I did pop into the Nexus Art Cafe, which is underneath Central Methodist Buildings on Oldham Street too. That seemed quite nice, not veggie though and if it's in a Methodist property it will probably be teetotal. There is apparently a Sunday afternoon 'Crafternoon' session there which I keep forgetting to go to! The entrance is down a flight of stairs though, so if there was anyone coming with mobility difficulties we'd have to check out the disability access. Oh wait - you can get a chair lift into the building and then go down in a proper lift, so that's OK.

I,m a notetaker at both universities, maybe we should set up an os uni group :rotfl:

Fruball

For instance...

Are you in a village/rural area where open fires are the norm or in a modern town where you can't burn stuff...

Are you able to walk a few minutes and have access to wonderful free food, or do you have to take the car to find somewhere?

I used to live in a tiny village (just a little PO, not even a pub!) and backed onto fields, had a little brook at the bottom of the garden, got snowed in in winter, washing covered in yellow rape pollen in summer , had a big veggie patch and kept chickens, lots of space to store chopped wood for the fire, collected fruits from the hedgerows, was given game birds by locals, all the kids played out doing OS things like making HM swings/mud pies etc! everything was very much OS and it was easy to be OS there...

However, now I live in a town, no open fire , not much space to grow things, everyone seems to be trying to keep up with everyone else and goes to the malls at weekends, not the allotment , got told off by the council for keeping chickens and had to get rid of them , have no idea where I can go forraging as what I have seen is by main roads and would worry about it all being polluted. Kids don't seem to play out much and the ones that do I wouldn't like my kids to associate with

There are good things here too, but it doesn't lend itself to OS as much as our old place... despite my best efforts

Just wondered what others think

Annie56

I know where your coming from Frugal..I was brought up in Scotland, my grandparents round the corner, cousins in the next street, small school and a beautiful village, we ran free and wild, plodging in local brook, catching bees in jam jars (norty) and collecting the brambles from the bushes and my grandads garden andall the a to z of veggies, apple trees ooh the memories.
My dad worked for the Coal Board and the NCB recruited for new mines in Staffordshire,so down we came, we arrived on Stafford Station at 5pm on a cold winters night, climbed in a bus and went to out newly built coal fired cental heated house on a NCB estate, my god was it a shock, street on street of facelss houses, no greenery in sight, the whole estate was a mixture of Geordies Scots Irish Welsh all used to smaller villages etc it took months to integrate.

I discovered the local canal, and was excited only to thrown into canal by some older kids, I got out and gave them a good clout, playing with my older cousins in Scotland had hardened me up they never bothered me again
My mother loved the house, hot water, central heating, 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, my dad managed to buy an old car and we went out at weekends with flasks of soup and sarnie, raincoats and wellies, we never had much but we had love and a close knit family.

Fast forward 25 years, the estate is filled with renters from abroad,nobody speaks to one another, each week another old established family moves out and foreigners move in, theres no local jobsas the Mining industry has gone, most jobs are short terms contracts...

The fruit trees my dad planted in the garden were sawed down by the Poles that had the house, they have tarmaced the front garden and trashed the side bit of the garden that we kids played on...theres litter in the street, beer cans in the gutters and funny looking types hanging about on the corners smoking and swearing.







I moved from there when I got married, to a small village, with the chickens, children, dog at my feet , and veggie garden dream, that never really came to fruition, was too busy running round trying to keep up with the Jonses, exOh had to have a new carevery year I worked insane hours to achieve what, debt, broken marriage, a business he has lost interest in...typical of the 21stC, I want all now society so I have stopped the treadmill and walked off into a life of my choosing...

Now at the age of 44, Im living on my own, divorce pending, have just an allotment, learning to live frugally and the prospects of a job not too good, Im happy, have my health, have some good friends (hiya all..yoo hoo) dont have much money, and the future is looking a wee bit hairy but I will take what life chucks at me as I have freedom of choice and looking forward to the future optimistically.

I intend honing my new life to Old Style and have all the basic foundations to do so on here and with some time effort and trial and error I will achieve it, never again am I getting on to the consumer treadmill Im in control not that invisible monster called life...

Annie 56

editing just to say its not all doom and gloom where I live.. I have Morrisons,Tesco Lidl and Aldi Home Bargains and Poundland virtually on the doorstep...have Canock Chase a 10 minute walk from the doorstep and a few large B& Q type stores 15 mins away.

Am indeed lucky and live in a nice ground floor converted flat of an old house, with high crilings and lovley plaster cornices and Landlady is so far seems brill my only moan is the storage heaters, oh for awood burning stove...behave Annie56 be grateful for what you have

rachbc

I live in the city - I forage blackberries, apples, pears and crapabbles, I gorw veg in planters and the front garden, I'm getting chickens (fingers crossed). My neighbours are freindly and we share our gardens and play equipment - my kids play football, ride bikes, build dens and tree swings in the local green spaces. I have an open fire and even though I shoudn't do burn wood as well as smokeless fuel (tut).

Plus we have access to all the brilliant resources of a big city - theatre, activities for the kids, museums, sporting facilities, great shops (bargain ones as luxury ones) and are only 20 mins from wide open moors!

Linda32

Perhaps we've got the best of both, we live about 5 miles from town, which is very very easy to get to, our town has a massive market.

Locally, we have a butches, pub, post office and co-op within walking distance, a library with decent opening times - late twice a week and all day Saturday, and if your at home every day, it is open for an amount of time everyday.
A Loros shop. An allotment where we have a plot.

We like living here.

BellaBeau

I Live on the outskirts of the city and work part time. We forage for food, grow our own in the garden and at the alotment, make mend and do and couldnt care less what the Jones's have. I dont think it matters where you live, if you want to live Old Style and you put the effort in you can do it.

B x

cmazza

I grew up in a small hamlet in Wales, loved getting snowed in - no school! We didn't have much land though, but I often went picking blackberries, raspberries and hazelnuts with my mum. I didn't really appreciate how lucky I was as a teenager to live there. In my adult life I have always lived in cities or large towns, it is mine and my OH's dream to live in the countryside again. We are quite lucky where we live now as our housing estate is right on the outskirts of town and has paths into the surrounding fields and footpaths to local villages. But I would love an old farmhouse with open fires and a little bit of land.

adelight

I grew up in Birmingham, now live on the outskirts of London, though I'm still growing! I love living in a big city, not crammed right in the centre but so everything's accessible, there's good public transport and plenty of amenities. Family still had alotments, vegetable patches, grandparents had chickens, and a big park or country is never that far away.
After spending time at my boyfriend's, a village down south, I know I don't want to live anywhere rural anytime soon! I couldn't get used to being so isolated. Him and his friends had nothing to do when they were younger, no way of getting to a city, no jobs around. It's pretty hard to choose your surrounding when you're a kid or a student, but I don't really want to change them much.

Butterfly_Brain

It is 5 minutes walk to fields and countryside where I live but we can't keep chooks or have open fires either. There is a two year plus waiting list for allotments and the council are building on every bit of land that they can find green belt or not :mad:
I don't know why because there are no jobs and we don't even have a train station (If you can afford to use trains these days :eek: the prices are criminal as they are for all forms of public transport, it is cheaper and much less stressful to use the car )

ceridwen

I recognise a description of Brighton when I read it:rotfl::rotfl:. Hope you manage to get back up North soon:)

Britains larger cities ARE more difficult to live O.S. style in - though my personal view is that probably THE most difficult places to be O.S. in are our large industrial cities (unless one lives on the outskirts - ie some access to nearby countryside).

The countryside/towns/villages look to me like the best places to try for an O.S. lifestyle in personally.