Economic Science Fictions

by Davies, William;

  Doing everything slowly and carefully is a key ingredient of this plan. But as we near the bridge, a little later than I’d hoped, I realise there is a catch. If we do everything slowly we’ll miss the tide. There’ll be insufficient room beneath the bridge. We’ll bump our heads, damage our pride and probably lose our security deposit.

  The treacherous westerly is now quite clearly out to cause havoc. And, despite the pilot’s reassurances, the river is teeming with oversized motor cruisers whose owners seem to have little sympathy for the constraints of a sailing yacht. The assembled ranks of onlookers, swelled perhaps by post-Brexit staycationers, line the crossing itself on the lookout for mishap. Other people’s indignity is a no-brainer, when it comes to entertainment. There is also, of course, a latent appreciation for a tricky manoeuvre skilfully executed. Our interest in each other is nothing if not ambivalent.

  Safely moored at some distance from prying eyes, it takes us a nervy half-hour to lower and secure the mast and stays. It’s less than I had feared; but longer than I had hoped. And now we find ourselves right on the cusp of a viable crossing. Without really knowing our precise headroom, on a gusty day, with a novice crew, the manoeuvre is becoming trickier by the minute. I put in a second call to the bridge pilot. ‘We have 6 foot 3 inches under the bridge,’ he tells me. ‘Your call. We can take you through if you want.’

  Occasionally, I wonder what it is I’m trying to impart to my kids on our various outdoor excursions. I certainly have it in mind to show them a life beyond the consumer comforts of mobile phone and social media. I’d like them to learn a different set of skills, and gain a sense of their own physical capabilities (and limitations) in the process. I sometimes dare to hope that they will discover for themselves the lasting satisfactions that flow from an appropriate balance between skill and challenge. That they’ll have a chance to deepen their resilience and widen their horizons. To experience the possibilities of having more fun with less stuff. These lessons were all much easier to learn when I was a kid myself. Affluence and technology have hidden them from us.

  Critical to this vision is the physical and mental effort that’s needed to access the slightly less civilised regions of nature. I’m not talking (just yet) about climbing in the Himalayas or crossing the Southern Ocean. But I want them to understand that the rewards which lie above the comfort of the lower slopes and beyond the safer reaches of the river must be earned somehow.

  OK. I admit. There’s a corner of my ego which harbours more selfish aspirations. But I’m also aware of the dangers this ambition presents to my long-term project. Today’s objective is not to prove to my kids and a crowd of ambivalent onlookers my dubious ability to take an unfamiliar boat of indeterminate height through an unforgiving tunnel against a perilous wind. It’s to arrive safely at the more rewarding sailing which lies beyond.

  Our mastless state is curiously destabilising. Despite our efforts to secure the rigging, the cockpit is a mess of unforeseen hazards. A stay around the tiller. A halyard trailing in the water. A view obstructed by cross-trees and rigging lines. All or any of this could turn our intentions upside down and place our comfort, possibly even our lives, at risk. I’d prefer not to put them off sailing for good. So a little help doesn’t seem an unreasonable thing to ask. The knot in my stomach does another nervous dance as my brain tumbles through the options.

  Anthropologists have a word for this state of mind. They call it ‘liminality’, from the Latin word (limen) for a threshold. The bridge is a threshold. Passing through the threshold is a rite of passage. It involves a distinct dismantling of social identity and its reconstruction in a new and altered form. Between deconstruction and reconstruction lies a period of uncertainty and confusion: liminality.

  Over time, the concept of the liminal has proved a fertile one in understanding – indeed, in guiding – transitions of a social as well as a personal nature. Theories of social change make use of liminality to describe what happens as one social order begins to break down and before another is established. Cultural theory sees liminality as a source of social innovation.

  There are dark sides to this process. It challenges self-control. That’s part of the point. Routine enhances our skill base, reinforcing its validity and raising our confidence in our own abilities. Liminality forces us away from the comforting light of day and towards the hideous dark.

  In doing so, it can paralyse self-efficacy. The liminal is fraught with danger. At a stroke, our skills become redundant and we’re forced to learn anew how to survive in a temporarily unrecognisable reality. The disruption is both functional and dysfunctional. On the one hand, it opens up new and previously unforeseen avenues of change. But, to reach them, we must stumble naked into an uncertain future, with no guarantee of a benevolent outcome.

  Yearning for a guide is natural: someone who can lead us safely through the disarray. Not necessarily to do the whole thing for us. But definitely to contribute some experience to an unfamiliar situation. This is the role of the shaman in medicine, the guru in religion, the mentor in education, the internet in almost everything, the muse in art. And the bridge pilot. This is the role of the bridge pilot at Potter Heigham. He’s waiting for an answer as the seconds tick away and the water creeps higher beneath the bridge.

  It takes far less time for me to respond, of course, than it’s taken to reflect on the decision in retrospect. Today is a day for discretion. I hand over the £10 fee in exchange for a scrawled blue receipt. The small butterfly in the pit of my stomach unfurls its cramped wings and flutters away unsteadily into the viscous air. I feel sure we’ll meet again later, but for now I’m happy to wish her farewell.

  The passage itself is a curious confidence trick. The archway is patently too low. The boat is clearly too high – even with the mast lying dormant. As we approach the bridge I find myself unable even to judge the headroom, let alone feel assured of clearance. One moment we are self-evidently heading for disaster. And yet, the next, we are inexplicably slipping unscathed beneath the medieval arch. Its cold historicity grazes our outstretched fingers. Grey-green lichen shimmers on the moist stones. Their musty scent conjures the grim reality of long-forgotten lives. Liminality is populated with restless spectres from earlier transitions and uncomfortable glimpses into the immortal abyss.

  And then, precipitously, we are through. The sun dazzles us anew after the shadow of the arch. Blue sky dances on the dappled water. Is it my imagination or did the wind just ease a little? Passing beneath the modern road bridge with its less demanding clearance is an anticlimactic formality. And now, with a practised ease, we are once again safely moored against the riverbank, north of both bridges, one significant step closer to our goal.

  We thank our guide – resolving, with only the faintest hint of bravura, to try and do without him on the return passage – and set about rebuilding our vessel. The winch is cranky. The capricious spaghetti of stays and halyards threatens to derail us. A recalcitrant shackle or two demands a little persuasion. But 20 minutes of careful reverse-engineering sees us restored to functionality. Tropical Wind is ready for the northern reaches of the river Thurne.

  As we look around at our new surroundings, I notice for the first time the unaccustomed calm. The threshold, I realise, is also a filter. Its physical limitations set the rules of passage and govern the outcome. The dimensions of each threshold establish the proportions of tomorrow. The teeming gaggle of wide-beamed motor cruisers could wait for the lowest tide in the year. They would still have too much height and too much beam for this ancient bridge.

  ‘Steam gives way to sail’ is the oldest rule in the book, from the smallest waterway to the widest ocean. And yet, inevitably, our days in the lower reaches were dogged by thwarted tacks to windward and hurried avoidance strategies. To be small and reliant on wind is to be at the mercy of those who are large – and guzzling diesel. South of the bridge was all about noise and speed. Power was everything. Might was right. But, now, the relentless stream of oversiz
ed launches has vanished, filtered out by the unforgiving dimensions of hard stone.

  And the constant competition for physical space has also slipped away behind us. Or changed its form. Against the odds, sail has prevailed. Not through power but through restraint. Everything is quieter and more peaceful here. Our lives will be less harried and hurried in this more spartan land. Soon we’ll set sail for Horsey Mere. But, for a little while longer, the curious proportions of liminality reverberate around us.

  Buoyed by our successful passage we decide on a trip ashore in search of lunch. We’re in for a nasty surprise. Clustered around the archaic bridge lies a purgatory of fast food and cheap toot, centred around an enormous discount store named Latham’s, which occupies four large warehouses on the banks of the Thurne.

  Back in the mid-1960s its founder, Ken Latham, set out to provide year-round local employment, supplying fishing tackle and provisions to Broads visitors. Somewhere along the line it got bought out by a discount retail chain offering customers ‘constantly changing quality stock at the very lowest prices’. Today it’s a mad seething mongrel: half stadium, half stampede. ‘Latham’s,’ claims its website, has become ‘an attraction in its own right’. People converge on the store from all over the country to partake in a frenzy of shopping.

  We stand there perplexed at the chaos. ‘This can’t be right,’ I say. ‘Let’s find something in the village.’ So we venture a little further from the river in search of Potter Heigham proper. But there is no Potter Heigham proper. Away from the bridge we find just one small, sparsely provisioned former post office that has recently changed hands and is desperately understocked. And an unexpectedly friendly antique dealer, leaning against the doorway of his almost empty shop. ‘I’m selling up,’ he confides to us.

  The logic of the situation begins to dawn on me. Half a century ago tourism brought unaccustomed wealth to rural Norfolk: visitors seeking recreation; customers needing provisions; jobs for local people. It also brought competition, profit, productivity: the paraphernalia of capital driving the sector forwards. The most accessible areas were more easily commercialised. But, as the economy expanded, so did the number and size of the boats. Latham’s grew to cater to them; but the bridge resolutely didn’t. The old stone archway imposed its own indefatigable logic on progress: the land beyond is not to be colonised by the insatiable acolytes of hedonism. Its frontier heralds a more fragile economy, less conducive to profit, more reliant on local patronage and conservation. And Potter Heigham itself became the unruly locus of thwarted expansion.

  I think suddenly of London, Beijing, Mumbai: teeming emblems of twenty-first-century progress. Or chaotic communities at the mercy of restless expansion. I think of Marx’s enduring maxim. ‘Accumulate, accumulate! That is the Moses and the profits.’ And yet that relentless process is always and everywhere circumscribed by thresholds. Limits to our resources. Limits on our climate. Limits on financial stability. Limits to the appetite of the human soul for material excess. Limits on our ability to curb that appetite.

  Were it not for the finite nature of our planet, the economy could expand forever. Were it not for the laws of physics, things could be different. ‘If we had some eggs, we could have some eggs and bacon. If we had some bacon.’ If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

  If it were not for the dimensions of an old stone bridge, Potter Heigham would be a different place. People would move on. Or pass through. Or reach a different compromise with each ancient threshold. Or renounce their vicarious pleasures. Or rise from the armchair of voyeurism and achieve new and wonderful feats of their own. But the intransigent stones dictate otherwise.

  This one small bridge in the middle of rural Norfolk, I suddenly realise, is emblematic of a bigger, more intractable story. Potter Heigham is what happens when the spirit of restless expansion comes up against the physical constraints of a material world. Society’s growth imperative yields a surreal, dysfunctional purgatory. And the once proud ‘heart and soul’ of the Broads is stolen away by a glorified bazaar.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘What?’ I start and turn.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I mutter.

  It’s clear that our success in navigating the bridge carries no weight in this twilight world. We are just four nondescript souls in a teeming crowd of dispossessed sojourners: the motor cruiser occupants who can get no further; the dedicated fishermen yearning for a peace no longer there; the armchair sailors in search of other people’s mishaps; the pilgrims and the pick-pockets; the vendors and the vagabonds. A trapped and tormented congregation, worshipping in the cathedral of a liminal capitalism.

  I remind myself that we have another world to repair to. Our life aboard the Tropical Wind is, inevitably, a simple one. A two-ring gas stove, a tank of fresh water, a couple of guitars for entertainment and whatever we can find along the way constitute the parameters of our comfort. We’ll be thrown more heavily on our own resources in the new and uncluttered land beyond the bridge. There’s simply not enough profit to sustain the expansionary urge. But we’ll survive. Even when there’s no 3G.

  Over the next few days we’ll find ourselves trekking miles in search of village shops or local pubs. Occasionally we’ll find a small farm offering jam or butter or eggs. Mostly we’ll meet bemused locals who’ll answer our innocent query after groceries with a candid laugh. ‘Not any more,’ we’ll hear; ‘not round here.’ Time and again we’ll encounter the social experiment of a post-capitalist hinterland.

  On one occasion we’ll find a small converted barn, now home to a welcoming National Trust café, open for a few short hours each day to service those who arrive at Horsey Windpump. On another, in search of a lemon to grace my young daughter’s ambitious plans for a consolatory cheesecake, we’ll stumble on an isolated household selling its own lemon curd. A dying relic from the forgotten past. Or cottage industry at the frontier of a new economy. ‘Transmodernity’, Zia Sardar might call it: a tried and tested yesterday in league with an ingenious tomorrow.

  Perhaps the most innovative beacon from this post-growth world is the community pub we discover in another inaccessible corner of the Broads. ‘How does this work?’ I want to know. The barman is eager to embellish. Faced with declining visitors and impatient investors, the White Horse pub at Upton, near Acle, was threatened with imminent closure. So the community got together to buy out both the pub and the nearby store. They ploughed their own savings into a risky future, and, for as long as it lasts, they’ll serve home-cooked meals and local ales to grateful patrons. The clientele are mostly local too.

  ‘The Prince of Wales came here once,’ the barista tells me, pointing proudly to His Royal Highness’s photograph on the wall, surrounded by beaming community entrepreneurs. ‘And occasionally, of course, a family of accidental punters will arrive in a boat still small enough to navigate one of the narrowest dykes on the river.’ I smile.

  Could this really work? Could the White Horse be the model for a new economy? A different kind of enterprise? A more resilient community? A more sustainable society? It has an aura of home. A barely definable quality of everyday simplicity and comfort. The food is good and the staff are friendly. The economics seem to work. For now at least. In defiance of all the dysfunctionality around us. Perhaps these social entrepreneurs are the bridge pilots for a passage that must lie ahead.

  I want to believe in it. I want to go on believing in it. But I cannot quite yet. Because we haven’t yet arrived. We are still undeniably at the bridge. The liminal chaos clings to our garments and clouds our vision. We must move. We must create this future. We must create it before we can believe it. One windward tack at a time.

  And so, with an ease borne of diligent practice, we hoist the sail. Its wide expanse billows gracefully against the azure sky. The west wind is kinder to us now. We lift ourselves easily away from the riverbank, and the sounds of the bazaar slip away behind us.

  Peac
e returns to the river. Here a fisherman. There a fish. Waiting patiently for one another. By Martham boatyard we skirt around a row of gaff-rigged dayboats, their antique wood immaculately caulked and varnished. Transmodernity again.

  As the river turns sharply to windward, the boat heels over and there is a huge clatter of pots and pans and cutlery from below. My younger daughter yelps with anxiety. The elder laughs in delight. My son strums an unruffled A minor, and I lean a little more firmly against the tiller, keeping our head up towards the wind.

  A single oncoming cruiser, an unlikely survivor of the bridge’s hard dimensionality, threatens to consign us to the reeds. Fortunately, the riverbank is tenuous now. It’s hard to see exactly where the water ends and the land takes over, and it begins not to matter. The mainsail flaps complainingly. But we sneak around the deceptive bend and the wind shifts onto our beam again.

  Now there is nothing. Reeds. Reeds and sky. Reeds and water and sky. In the distance a white sail floats miraculously across the fields. We must seem much the same to them. A ghostly apparition. A half-breed. A creature of neither land nor sea. A misfit from a fantasy novel, sketched uncertainly against a backdrop of dreams. The reeds are murmuring conspiratorially.

  Too late. Too late.

  Their conversation is urgent and restless, as the wind bears us slowly north.

  ‘Is it true?’ I wonder. Is it already too late?

  I look at my wrist, forgetting for a moment that I no longer wear a watch. Nobody wears a watch any more. Time itself is dissolving. I think of reaching for my phone. But I can’t make sense of the instruction.

  Are we here at all? Is this real life? Or are we still lost in Potter Heigham? Did the bridge accept our bargain? Or is the late afternoon sun just a mirage, reflecting the glitter and bauble of Latham’s bazaar? A faint light-headedness seeps across the glistening wetlands. Liminality clings to the Tropical Wind like lichen to the stone archway, slowly distorting her casual wake.