Wife Swap

The friends we are staying with have Foxtel (cable TV for all of you non-Aussies), and the other night after the kids were asleep, we flipped through the stations until we came across this episode of the UK Wife Swap. Jackpot.

This episode featured two English families that living in Spain. One family (we'll call them The Posh Family) are financially loaded. Four kids, three paid staff, a dad who works 12 hour days at his jet-ski business. The oldest girl, 15, has her own credit card with a 300 POUND a WEEK shopping allowance. The youngest, a 3 year old boy, has a full time nanny and speaks as much Spanish as English because of the time he spends with her.

The other family (we'll call them the Hippy Family) lives on a houseboat on the river and has a small plot of land on the shore. Their entire weekly budget, for a five person family, is something like 6 Euros. They grow their own veggies, raise their own animals for meat, and homeschool. They don't use any chemicals in the house and aim to be self-sustainable.

I watched this episode with mainstream friends who both happen to be school teachers, so there was some conversation to be had. The slaughtering of a chicken and the saving of urine as fertiliser would have been a bit confronting to watch for a lot of people. It seems a lot more normal in our society to just go to the shops for synthetic fertiliser and clean-looking chicken flesh packed in sterile plastic, easy to separate from its history. The Posh mom thought it was all a waste of time. Why spend all of that time doing it yourself when you could go to work for the money to pay someone else to do it for you?

But the Hippies chose a life together over the modern commercial life, plain and simple. The Posh mom said that her marriage and family are so strong precisely because they hardly see eachother. Yikes.

The Posh mom sent the Hippy dad out to work while she took the kids shopping for food they would have never bought otherwise - Fanta, ChocoSomething breakfast cereal, harsh chemical cleaning products. The dad was portrayed as lazy since he wasn't working outside of the home and "earning a living", and man that shits me. He spends half of the day working around the house planting and harvesting food for his kids - isn't that the same thing? Isn't that providing?? - and the other half is quality time together. I daresay the Posh children would trade some of their possessions for more quality time with their dad. They said it themselves.

The Hippies were so inspirational. They live within their means, spending quality time with eachother rather than farming out their kids. Yeah, I prefer my bathroom to be a bit cleaner than theirs, but hey. A little baking soda, vinegar and elbow grease, and you're golden.

Maybe in a few years we'll be in Spain. I love that it is a very distinct possibility.