Austerity measures

How would we cope if we went back to the austerity measures of the 1940s and 50s? I'm sitting here typing on my laptop having uploaded photos from my digital camera and at the same time texting my friends (I'm a lady who can multi-task!).  I've just been pottering about in the garden feeling pretty smugly virtuous that I've got a glut of blueberries and that I'll probably turn my late season tomatoes into green tomato chutney. I've been saving my seeds, taking cuttings and using boxes as plant containers. And yet i know that i wouldn't be able to cope without my laptop or my phone. The public funding cuts and the talks of austerity measures have been washing over me and I've been able to selectively ignore what's going on. Of course, as a public sector worker I'm fully aware of the pressures that are going to come our way but the reality hasn't fully hit yet. Every area is doing things differently and Croydon has got there first. Many of the third sector projects they fund have been cut. When i say many i mean out of 48 only 6 have funding.  That's quite a difference. The knock on effect on employment figures will be staggering let alone the effects on the statutory services left.  

As we all know I often have fantasies of unilaterally taking charge and implementing radical social justice plans (you will in time hear all about my 'hamster wheel' idea). But on this occasion I'm not sure what I would do. I'd like to think I'd encourage households to be more self-sufficient in terms of food production and enable individuals to reclaim municipally planted land around them for their personal cultivation. This is what my housemates and i have done outside our flat.

However, there's something else that would need tackling - the uniformity we have come to expect from our food.

If I'm totally honest my food growing efforts this year have been rather paltry - so far only five of my tomatoes have turned red. And I have blamed this for my reluctance to eat any of it. But I also wonder if I've been groomed by the supermarkets to only accept 'perfect' fruit and veg.  I love watching my salads grow but this year have felt strangely odd about cutting and eating them. Watching the courgette plants grow got me so excited but the strange round thing that one of them produced sent me into a spin of consternation. What should i do with it?? Obviously I couldn't discard the offering of this lovely plant but the beast looked grotesque and quite clearly wasn't meant for human consumption. In the end i took it to my cousin's BBQ and hoped she might have some good ideas for it. To my knowledge it hasn't been used but as I reflect on this i feel a little sad that a perfectly good vegetable has been rejected purely because it didn't look like something from Sainsbury's.

I hope that my horticultural endeavours with my neighbours will help me overcome my pickiness and that we will have the chance to sit down together and enjoy a feast of mis-shapen vegetables...