Heart in mouth, Katherine Hibbert gives up on the daily round and decides to find out if you can live outside the norm and survive. We have homelessness, we have poverty, we have people unable to afford a nutritious diet, yet there are empty houses, obscene amounts of food thrown away, overflowing skips and a thriving community of people dedicated to living on society’s leftovers. The author charts both the scandal of so much waste and her own attempts to create a new free life living on the margins in a fascinating look at opting out.

Like for Like Reading
How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day, Kath Kelly
How to be Free, Tom Hodgkinson

Synopsis

For many the daily grind can feel like a trap - work, gym, drinks, shops, home, bed, work. But what would happen if one day you just jacked it all in, to survive on next to nothing? Katharine Hibbert decided to find out. No job, no rented flat, no shopping, no debit card and no travel pass. Katharine decided to give it all up, to walk the streets with only a backpack and spend a year living off the food, clothes, other goods and accommodation that would otherwise go to waste. It would be year of squatting, scavenging and no spending. Would she survive and if she did would she ever want to go back? The journey takes her on a fascinating trip, from drug-dens to lavish squatted mansions. She has to learn to fend for herself and to trust the generosity of strangers and friends she makes along the way. She falls into a hidden community who teach her how to build a life using the things that others throw away, and finds that life on the margins amounts to so much more than you might think.

About the Author

Katharine Hibbert is a freelance journalist, who has written cover stories for the Guardian's G2 section and The Sunday Times Magazine as well as contributing regularly to the Culture section, the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman. She was nominated for the Young Journalist of the Year award in 2006. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation