Ben Rivers: I’m interested to know if there are people who have a different kind of relationship with their surroundings, the landscape, the earth, and the kind of contradictions that come with that, because it’s not that straightforward, because if you go and live in the middle of the wilderness it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything you do is sort of perfect for the environment.
PT Certainly not. I’ve lived a long time now in the country and away from the majority of people but I’m sure, quite sure, my experience… I’m sure. There are people in the country that have a lot to teach us, the townsfolk I mean, and when Mr Page talks about townsfolk he talks about people who haven’t got time. All they do is walk down the street, come to work, buy a newspaper and sit in the office and only get to go home at night. He’s pointing out that they haven’t got any time to have anything at home. No time to reflect and maybe become curious about things, and I think country people may have boring repetitive work to do but in some ways they’ve got an awful lot to teach townsfolk, and I’ve often thought, as I’m sure you have, this chap could teach the Prime Minister a great deal, and he’s just clipping a sheep beside you or something. He’s got clear simple feelings and thoughts which aren’t complicated and, you know, quite honestly, they should be listened to sometimes.
Question from audience: Perhaps the time has come for this sort of film. We’ve talked about ecological awareness, we talked about having to make do with resources. The Pages were experts at that. Being at the end of a tradition of having to make do with virtually nothing now we’re going to have to go back to that. I wondered if Mr Trevelyan has anything to say on that?
PT First thing I’d do… I’d advise the Prime Minister to give everybody a day off work, compulsorily, right? Maybe it’s going to be forced on us anyway, but during that time of voluntary redundancy or whatever it’s called, I think they should use that time to volunteer and organize themselves, to work on the land or prepare us for the transition into another way of living where we don’t use so much energy. What we have to do – and I think probably the only way to do it is to slow down a bit… to slow down for at least 2 days a week. Instead of coming to work five days come in three days a week and the other two spend on the land or spent it organizing ways of changing the ways in which we live.
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