Thursday 26 November 2009

Recuerdos from Dordrecht

Black and white team


From left to right: Ricardo Dobrões, Carina Morais, Mara Leite e Claúdio Silva.

Thursday 12 November 2009


LIVING IN A TREEHOUSE IN SUSSEX

Back to Nature
For the last few months Englishman Nick Weston has been living in a treehouse in Sussex. He doesn’t go to work, but he does hunt and gather his own food and he washes his clothes in a nearby river.
Nick Weston told us that he shoots and cooks rabbits and pheasants, but he said that gathering wild plants is in fact more dangerous.

Nick Weston : There’s a couple of things that are very poisonous like hemlock water dropwort, which grows in rivers. It was growing downriver there, I think it’s disappeared now, with the end of summer coming along. It grows in the ditch over there and in that ditch there’s also a lot of watercress growing but, you know, you have to be able to make that distinction between the two. And also, when you’re picking stuff, you have to be careful, like if I just grabbed a handful of watercress without really thinking about it and there was a bit hemlock growing amongst it, I’d sit there and eat it and would be dead by the afternoon, so you do have to be very careful!

IT SURE BEATS WORKING!
But life in a treehouse does have its advantages:

Nick Weston: I think the best things about living down here is probably not having to go to work and, you know, have to have a boss telling you what to do, and... and not having to deal with things like public transport and commuting and then all the unnecessary stuff you have to pay, like council tax for people to take your bins out and things like that. I mean, all my stuff is either composted down here or I burn it on the fire, it’s just mostly things like this, like food waste. So, yeah, there’s a lot of things I think we pay for in this country that we don’t need to, but I think the other thing that’s really good about... is just being out here and being in the middle of the wood and living your life, I suppose, with your bare hands and creating an existence for yourself and sustaining that, but, yeah, I mean it’s great, especially when it’s nice weather. When it’s not nice weather, it’s all right, ‘cause you could just sit in the treehouse and read.

Speak up - November 2009

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Man and the Tree Competition




All of the MATT project students are invited to participate in the Man and the Tree drawing and text competition.
All information can be found here