“We default to ‘stuff’ as the answer to our woes. It’s so easy to just buy stuff, but the pleasure is so often fleeting, short lived. I might be sad but if I go into my greenhouse I can look for hours at the chillis I have grown. That gives me real pleasure.
“I love manual, what’s considered menial work, like mucking out my chickens. People think I’m mad but I love it.”
And it seems Kate is not alone. Earlier this year Kate presented a fascinating TV series for Channel 5 called A Country Life for Half the Price. She followed the journey of several families, all looking to uproot their urban lives for not just a new house in the country, but a totally different lifestyle. The perfect choice to present the show as Kate had done just that herself over a decade earlier, she was able to offer them advice and pointers to make the transition work for them.
“It was such an uplifting show to do. All of them had been thinking about it for a long time and had various impetuses.
“The nosy part of me loved finding out about their dreams and their ideas but it was also lovely to be able to offer some help to them too.
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Kate is at pains to point out the book isn’t a self-help book and is in no way preachy. There is no ‘should’ about any of it. It’s simply her story of how she tried a more stripped back lifestyle and how that impacted on her, told in her typical refreshing and often funny style. It is also packed with personal anecdotes which had me both laughing and shaking my head in despair as I saw so many of my own traits in things Kate describes, particularly her frustrations at creating the perfect loaf of bread.
“This isn’t about living a life of penury, devoid of joy and fun – quite the opposite. It is about finding, or rediscovering, the aspects of life that really matter and having time to value and enjoy them. It is a search for simplicity and the contentment that go with them.”
She’s leaning against an open door with me on this but I wonder whether everyone would be so easily convinced that an hour reading in the garden will give them as much pleasure as a shopping splurge for example.
“Well they don’t have to do it. It’s not a law, it’s not for everyone. It’s just about giving yourself time and space to identify that makes you happier. Others might have a different wish list to me.”
The book isn’t just Kate’s ponderings. For it she spoke to many different people, from a lady who taught her (patiently) how to bake bread to another who runs a repair café in Malaysia, all of whom were living a different life and her findings gave her food for thought.
“I could see that for many people convenience has been confused with simple pleasure.
“Convenience is all very well but it doesn’t give you any sense of achievement or satisfaction and lots of us are left feeling not that content in life.
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“There was one family who ended up with a load of pigs and three puppies at the same time and they gave me sleepless nights, but I did them a disservice and it all worked out fine. One of the great joys in life is the learning process and I didn’t want to rob them of that but it was good to be able to share some of my experiences and point them in the right direction for certain things.”
Filming has just started on the second series so hopefully that will be on our screens next year.
A Year of Living Simply, The Joys of a Life Less Complicated, is published by Aster, out now, priced £20.
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