Gypsy Caravan

I wish I had had the camera with me today. I had dropped Himself off at a meeting at his head office and when he called me two hours later to say that he was going to be in meetings all day - well what was I to do with myself but find a garden centre or two to visit......

I went over to a garden centre that I used to visit about three years ago when Himself was building houses near Horsham. On the way there, parked on a wide grass verge, right next to heavy passing traffic was a green gypsy caravan. A proper one, the sort that you see in old films and in magazines. Tied to it by a long robe was a black collie cross dog and a horse was tethered by a peg in the middle of the grass and was quite contentedly munching away. Walking a little way away from the caravan was a man whom I guessed was the owner. He had a bow saw in his hand and was heading towards an area where there are lots of over grown sapplings.

When I came back the same way after going to the garden centre, the man had got a small fire lit on the grass near the van, with a tripod arrangement over it with a hanging pot over the fire. He was sat near the van and it looked like he was skinning a rabbit. He, the horse and dog all seemed totally unbotherd by the traffic whizzing past - they were just getting on with life. Their way,

The scene I have just described got me thinking on the drive back to collect a very tired and stressed husband up. We (the supposedly civilized human race) are so stressed, so worn down, so damn worried about our lives and the credit crunch, lack of money, losing our homes, not having the latest this and that and here was was this man and his 'family' not appearing to care about anything, just going abut their lives 'their way.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying his way is right and our way is wrong, or vice versa, or that morally or legally we should all throw caution to the wind and go and live where ever we choose without a care for anybody else in this muddled up world of ours. But it did make me think. Who has got the better way of life, who has got less stress, who probably give less of a damn for the bankers who have gotten us into our current crisis than we do? Its quite possible he may not even have a bank account to worry about

And at the end of the day who maybe has the better life? Us with our debts, fast cars, holidays abroad, over priced houses, latest mobile phone or ipods. Or him with his what appears to be a simpler life. I'm not sure I know any more.

But I do know two things for sure. His heavy horse was beautiful and if I could have stopped safely on the busy road I would have stopped and collected the horse muck for my deep beds. :-)