Define your alternative self

[Flo]

Never mind where do all the alternative people hang out, define yourself if you think you are alternative. What, when, how and why?

Go on then.

[diggernotdreamer]

To be honest, I don't think of myself as 'alternative' at all. People used to have to grow their own food and then preserve it out of necessity. Making do and mending also was done out of necessity (I don't do mending as I am hopeless at sewing, knitting and hammering). We have a tv, but not a huge one, we don't really have any hi tech equipment because we don't get on with technology and we don't have a need for it. We got off the hamster wheel and decided that we wanted a life where we weren't just earning money to pay a mortgage and came to live in the countryside, in another country. But it is not for everyone, but then we don't hanker after shiny shops and fine dining restaurants, we were just chuffed when a chinese take away opened up in our little village, it is a bit of a treat every now and again and means I don't have to cook (most of our meals are made from scratch ) I think that when I was in my late twenties and was baking bread, growing and preserving stuff, it was a bit unusual, but I think it is more normal now, isn't it? or do I just move in those circles.

[Odsox]

Oooh errrr you are most definitely weird DnD, nobody in the whole world is like that !!

I'm the same pretty much, except I'm one of the "people" you mentioned. When I was growing up that's the way we lived, all our fruit & vegetables were home grown, eggs, milk, chicken, pork all our own, the only thing I remember us buying in the food line was bread. I have no idea why, other than yeast was only available presumably at the bakers and sour dough was about as foreign as garlic and olive oil.
The reason I keep living in the past growing my own food, apart from the eco thing, food miles and all that, is that it tastes like food should taste like. Whenever I try a ready meal or even a ready made sauce, it tastes disgusting with a overwhelming chemical taste.
Plus I'm a mean old sod and can't really stomach buying something I could produce myself.
However .... I'M NOT "ALTERNATIVE" , I'm just living the way I've always lived from a time when it was normal.

[Green Aura]

I hadn't really thought of myself as "alternative", well except maybe politically, but not when it came to food or lifestyle!

It was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago though. I can't remember the gist of the whole conversation with my daughter but at one point she said "well of course you know my friends all thought we were a really weird family, I had no TV in my bedroom, a set bedtime, we played games together and you cooked all our meals. Most of my friends' parents couldn't cook and they watched watched telly all night if they wanted (the friends presumably). I felt left out a lot of the time. It's only now, as adults, that they're admitting how jealous they were of us".

My Dad grew most of our veg, cooked every day (before he married my stepmother who was a chef), was best friends with the local poacher so game, fish etc was a regular on our table but he couldn't bake bread to save his life! Nor can my mother (step.....just saves time). My aunt taught me to knit and crochet as a small child and Dad made and mended things - I've still got a lovely old stool he made before I was born.

None of these things, apart from cooking every day (or eating in restaurants) followed me until I became a Mum and then it suddenly seemed very important - but apparently not common.

Oh and I forgot to mention folk music - love it.... and punk....and opera.

[baldybloke]

I've always been a hippy at heart and used to have the long hair and beard to go with it. I have always enjoyed the outdoors life and used to like touring on my motorcycle and camping and cooking outdoors. Now prefer to stay home and study ecology, politics and environmental issues. I still like cooking outdoors though and have collection of stoves to play with.
I too like to make and repair things and like nothing better than getting stuck into a project either in the workshop or the garden.
I have never followed the flow and have always ploughed my own path in life. I suppose alternative could be best decribed as bucking the trend and not being swayed by the latest fashion or fad.

[ojay54]

Having finally(after 40 years) been diagnosed as Bipolar,it's one of the classic consequences of the condition that looking back it's virtually impossible to tell 'what was you' and what was the BP.'But supposing that if certain traits were shared with my Dad,and Grandad, I would suggest:

I hate using any tool I can't fix myself(especially this bloody thing).

I don't like being in situations where 'I need' someone else to do something for me.

I can't stand people telling me what to do!

[doofaloofa]

My alternave self is a hot chic with big boobs

[Pumkinpie]

Ha ha..
My hubby did that years ago when he was a cygnet in 'swan lake '.
3 large bearded , hairy men in pink tutus and boffer boots dancing round a dying swan.
Never laughed so much in all my life and his mother nearly fell off her seat as she only went to see her grand daughter dancing . It was a bit of a suprise to say the least.
I can just imagine u boobs, tutu and boffer boots.
But I would prefer not to. Not a pretty sight!

[Pumkinpie]

I have always done things different .
It's nice to stand out from the crowd and be unconventional .
People always seem to remember me though.
At the minute into poetry events with hubby who writes poetry.

[Flo]

You'd hate that doofa - large size bras are a pain to purchase and they also really makes getting a decently paid job hard.

Not a lot of you seem to be real hard core alternatives then - Aldermaston Marchers, Greenham Common protesters, pirate radio fanatics, way out dressing fans at early rock concerts before it all became normal, alternative living off grid tent dwellers, flower power children.

Me? Nope not alternative for a lot of my life. Grew up self sufficient and green living the way we did on the farm and learning all the skills of doing stuff for ourselves, making do and mending, kitting and sewing, cooking from scratch. I can remember an early teddy that granny made which was better than anything in the shops at the time and things being cut down to make bedding for doll's prams and cots. That's not alternative - that's the way in was in the early 1950s.

I do admit to being far more alternative as a grandparent than I have ever been. I'm now almost vegan (things still slip in when I'm out), still cooking from scratch, running an allotment which provides a lot for two households, buying second hand as far as possible, voting green, listening to the odder music radio stations of many sorts. I have yet to go on a protest march though. I mean - everyone seems to be doing that now and going to music festivals so can they be regarded as alternative, given that most of the music seems so commercial. I may have to carry on and re-invent myself as a proper alternative person. How to do it?

I do have a good knowledge of the small off the wall local businesses though - everything from art to organic and beyond.

[ina]

Flo - I seem to have had a similar upbringing, although I was born in the late 50s, and we didn't have a farm. My father would have loved to be a farmer, but was a very pragmatic and realistic person. Not coming from a farming family, he would have had to find a farmer's daughter without brothers to get married to - and he didn't want to chance that. But at one time he had three large productive gardens/allotments, with only a few flowers around the edges for light relief, and definitely no lawn! And our household must have been the last in town to have modern gadgets like fridge, hoover, washing machine... I've kind of carried on from there.

I've rarely gone on protest marches or to music festivals; not for the past 30 years or so. Firstly I can't afford it, secondly I can't stand crowds and noise.

[diggernotdreamer]

I climbed up a tree once to stop it being cut down on a building site, the local paper came and took a picture of me up there . I protested outside a circus that came to our town and lobbied local councilors to stop them allowing these sorts of things on council property, which they did. Used to leave leaflets about how the seals were killed in Canada when we were asked to boycott Canadian fish products, near the fish fingers in T***o. Protests come in many shapes and forms, you don't have to go on a march to make changes happen. When I was younger the only 'festival' was the one at Reading which had started out as Jazz and became Reading Rock and at that time was only 6 quid to get in, you need hundreds now to attend that festival, not having a car you couldn't really get many places in the 70's

[doofaloofa]

I did a bit of road protesting in early 90's (M11 link road, Leytonstone), but I was a squaddy at the time, so it was frowned up

[doofaloofa]

And for the record when I say big boobs, I mean tastefully big

[diggernotdreamer]

like this you mean http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=HN.6080530 ... 38&pid=1.7